A history lesson, told musically in secular songs that spoke of belief in mankind and perseverance and in stories of bold moves by strong leader, served as Barack Obama's first public celebration in Washington, D.C. Actors read monologues that emphasized moment in which the status quo was rejected and public service was encouraged, quoting Lincoln and FDR extensively. It was an effective marriage of song and speech, a two-hour refresher course about how the country's leaders and the American people have confronted hard times and how artists have represented the American spirit in their songs.
Appropriately, Bruce Springsteen went first after Denzel Washington said the day would "speak to the future of America," and he turned to one of his strongest songs about renewal, "The Rising," Originally written about troubles in the New Jersey beach town he is permanently associated with, Asbury Park, a tune that served as a post-9/11 balm when it was released in 2003. With the Obama and Biden families to his right and a choir behind him, Springsteen's tune took on a new air, its message of community and hope in line with a political administration rather than at odds with one. It was opening salvo that took hold as the song asked people to join hands and realize, that when they look into the sky there are a multitude of possibilities -- "memory and shadow," "longing and emptiness," "fullness and blessed life." 

The afternoon's penultimate moment again found Springsteen, joined this time by Pete Seeger and a different choir singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," a song once viewed as a leftist national anthem that the Boss rightfully referred to as "the greatest song written about our home." The perf was a moment of community with no star turns, a song that worked off a collective voice of the people onstage and the thousands gathered around the reflecting pool on the Mall. It was the song that did the best part of reinforcing and galvanizing the thoughts that had been expressed throughout the day and the Obama campaign.

Perhaps the performance will lead to campaign to rid Seventh Inning Stretches of "God Bless America" and restore "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Guthrie wrote it as antidote to Irving Berlin's jingoistic tune and since everyone is in the mood to shake up the status quo, let;s hoe it extends to America's ballparks.

It was a day of concise speeches delivered effectively by actors, the comedians in the group choosing to play it straight rather yuk it up. The musicians, except for Bono, did not speak and Will.i.am was the lone singer to venture into a lyrical re-write, rapping about racism over Bob Marley's "One Love." Song choice, as viewers have learned over the years from "American Idol," is critical. And if it means picking the obvious, the performer had better bring some magic to the rendition.
U2 went that route, performing their Martin Luther King Jr. tribute "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and then "City of Blinding Lights," a tune that became an anthem of the Barack campaign after his win in the Iowa caucuses. "Pride" came off as flat and routine; "City" was inspiring, a breath of fresh air from the band. Bono sang it with a broad smile, his face telegraphing humility and, no pun intended, pride.
Music, Washington said at the top of the program, is "the creative heartbeat of the American experience" though Sunday's concert was indeed a rare one serving to entertain and unite the American people.
The last time the U.S. turned toward musicians on this level was the concerts that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That solemn affair gave us Neil Young's version of John Lennon's "Imagine" and Alicia Keys' reading of Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free" while serving as a reminder that the shed of musical artists who reflect modern society in their music continues to diminish in size and effect.  
That was on view again as the material for much of the day, whether it be performed by young R&B singers of 89-year-old Seeger, was familiar and often geared toward audience participation. Garth Brooks, joined by yet another choir, cris-crossed the stage performing segments of Don McLean's "American Pie," the Isley Brothers' "Shout" and his own ode to equality "We Shall be Free." Director Don Mischer made it appear to be the viscerally engaging performance of the day. 
Headliners were placed in two- and three-artist configurations, placed on a landing beneath the steps that lead to the statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln. A band, which included strings, horns and percussion played by military personnel and hired musicians, performed on a lower platform that only occasionally came into view. It was obvious there was not a lot of time for rehearsal, but a few of the pairings proved quite engaging.
Bettye Lavette, who took D.C. by storm last month at the Kennedy Center Honors, was partnered with Jon Bon Jovi on Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come." She invested it with anguish, he approached it from a perspective of reasoned logic, giving the perf considerable gravitas.
Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait," the lone classical piece, paired eloquently with a reading by Tom Hanks. The radiant Renee Fleming, backed by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Cub, delivered an affecting operatic take on Rodgers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Along." 

John Mellencamp, the most political of the assembled performers, wheeled out "Pink Houses" and its refrain of "ain't that America" enthusiastically sung by a choir. It was accompanied by images of the America Mellencamp was singing about when he wrote the song 25 years ago. The photo collection was of people in their jobs - a waitress, an auto factory worker, farmers, a woman working a hot dog stand - suggesting that the people overlooked by the Reagan administration are still not being heard in D.C. today. But that was the beauty of the program: Some of the history lessons reached back to Washington and Jefferson; others are more immediate and still require solutions.

The day's set list:

"Star Spangled Banner" by Master Sgt. Caleb Green, "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen, "Lean on Me" by Mary J. Blige, "A Change is Gonna Come" by Jon Bon Jovi with Bettye Lavette, "Shower the People" by James Taylor with John Legend and Jennifer Nettle, "Pink Houses" by  John Mellencamp, "America (My Country Tis of Thee)" by Josh Groban and Heather Headley, "One Love" by Will.i.am with Herbie Hancock and Sheryl Crow, "You'll Never Walk Alone" by Renee Fleming, "American Pie"//"Shout"/"We Shall be Free" by Garth Brooks, "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder with Usher and Shakira, "Pride in the Name of Love" and "City of Blinding Lights" by U2, "This Land is Your Land" By Pete Seeger and Springsteen, "America the Beautiful" by Beyonce and the ensemble

Perhaps we jumped the gun on assessing Live Nation's newly implemented ticketing system, which is is not completely in place at all Live Nation venues. This entry has been edited to reflect changes that have come about on the websites over the last 48 hours or so and clarification from a Live Nation rep who admitted that the online Live Nation ticketing site does not make a distinction between shows the promoter handles exclusively and those that are sold in conjunction with Ticketmaster.
Here we go:
With the fanfare that the new year brings, the way consumers purchased concert tickets was expected to undergo a major upheaval once everyone recovered from their New Year's Eve hangovers and started making plans to see shows. But is it really all that different now that Live Nation have begun its own ticketing service? But little changed over the weekend.
It's confusing as Ticketmaster.com has no interest in sending customers to Livenation.com. And Concert-goers are still mostly living in a Ticketmaster world. But when there is no choice but Live Nation's ticketing service, the tariff can be as steep is as much as or more than Ticketmaster's.
Live Nation opened the New Year with a clean looking website that, in Los Angeles at least, directed fans to four different concerts: John Legend, Lewis Black, Katy Perry and provided you were willing to travel, Fleetwood Mac. Tickets for Legend and Black were being sold through Ticketmaster; anyone interested in seeing Perry needed a CitiCard to purchase ADVANCE tickets; and the East Coast Fleetwood Mac shows were seemingly unavailable after one clicked from site to site.
An astonishing number of Live Nation concerts require that the purchaser use a CitiCard. and not just for presales. Add to that, Live Nation's requirement that every user supply a valid email address to purchase a ticket, and it feels as if a chunk of the potential audience for any given show has been eliminated.
Ultimately, the key concern is cost: Will the introduction of competition have an effect on service fees? Coming out of the gate, Live Nation appears to be a bit expensive.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster are handling the entire operation for the Zappa Plays Zappa show at the House of Blues in Anaheim. (Show was chosen because it was one of the few on offer that did not have credit card caveats, was in Southern California and had a printed price of more than $20). Tickets are $45 apiece, to which a service charge of $10.05 is attached to bring it to $55.05. Add to that a $3.80 order fee and what is offered at $90 for a pair becomes $113.90. THOSE FEES ARE THE SAME AT BOTH TICKETING SERVICES.
The area of convenience fees is always a bit of dicey comparisons when you go from show to show or venue to venue. Maybe not apples to oranges but certainly apple to pears. I picked an example, Brett Dennen, who has a fair number of Live Nation venues on his national tour this year.

Tickets for his House of Blues show in Los Angeles go for $22.50, which Ticketmaster the Live Nation service is handling. Add to that an $8.70 convenience fee and a $3.80 order fee. To get that pair of tickets - $45 total, theoretically - it will cost an extra $21.20, nearly the entire price of another ticket.
Be glad if you don't live in Los Angeles. Cities where other ticket services are used were considerably cheaper.
In Boise, Idaho, where Dennen will play the Knitting Factory, a $15 ticket is slapped with a a sliding service fee - $4.50 for one, $7.50 for a pair. His appearance at the Georgia Theater in Athens requires adding $7 to a pair of $15 tickets; a World Cafe concert in Philadelphia has a $5 processing fee attached to an $18 ducat.
The State Theater in Falls Church, Va. wants a $3.75 convenience fee per $18 ticket and a $1.50 processing fee is added to each order.
On Monday, a Live Nation rep explained that the House of Blues is still under contract to Ticketmaster. The Wiltern Theater, however, is now a Live Nation Tickets venue. Here's a comparison:
Brian Wilson is playing the Hosue of Blues in San Diego where a GA set goes for $47. Ticketmaster is adding a $10.70 service fee. Wilson is also performing at the Wiltern in L.A. where second tier tickets are $49.50. Service fee on those tickets is $13.50 apiece.

Architects and developers clearly learn lessons as time passes: From a design persepctive, Club Nokia is a dream with superb sightlines, roominess and amenities to spare. It's a pleasant, if soul-less, marriage of the extended balcony of the Wiltern and wide, open ground floor of the West Hollywood House of Blues.
Divided into two levels, the first floor is all standing, the second floor permanent seats. The curved balcony extends far over the floor making its first several rows of seats prime areas for viewing. The uncovered are a of the floor was packed during Beck's opening night performance, but it left a good third of the room in the back wide open. Maneuvering around the back half of the room was quite easy.
Balcony looks more steep upon approach than once you are in the seats - which proved comfortable and with sufficient leg room. Oddly enough, the difference between a seat in the second to last row in the middle was not significantly different from a set in the eighth row on the left hand side. It helped that Beck flooded the stage with light, making it easy to see him and the band from every location. (Jenny Lewis opened the show. A full review is here)
Sound was a little tough to determine on opening night, especially in attempting to calculate what fault lies with the room, what elements owe to the P.A. and which can be attributed to the artist. It certainly did not possess the overall clarity of the Nokia Theater, but in many spots - balcony especially - the individual instruments were easy to distinguish. The electronic beeps and beats, followed by the guitar and bass were remarkably well-positioned on "Girl"; vocals, however, were buried.

Muddy or sonically overwhelmed vocals were a problem all night and the room still needs to be tuned for performers such as Beck who add heavy pre-recorded bass to a standard rock band set-up. More troubling was the reproduction of the acoustic guitar, which sounded tinny and one-dimensional. It's likely that it's the tightness of all the elements, a bit like trying to catch a baseball with a glove that was purchased an hour ago.
Entire room is heavy on TV screens and as much as one welcomes the chance to not miss the perfromance while at the bar, it seems like overkill. Standing straight back on the floor, Beck could be seen on six screens - or live. In the balcony, two screen hang from the ceiling and prove a bit distracting.
Club's public levels are on the third and fifth floors of the L.A. Live complex. The fourth is an impressively large VIP lounge from which the stage cannot be seen; two floors below are the yet-to-open Conga Room and Lucky Strike bowling alley. Both levels have outdoor patios, mostly occupied by smokers on Sunday.

  Steve Mirkin was impressed by Jay-Z and the renovated Palladium. He reports:
Decked out with new carpets and freshly painted, the refurbished marquee and a circular ceiling return the room to its original look;  the venerable venue is certainly swank. For the opening at least, the prison-like security searches have become a thing of the past. (How often are you patted down by a man wearing white gloves and a tux?). And most importantly the sound is much improved. 
There was still some boominess on the low end (although this is a problem at most live hip hop shows) but the vocals were audible and the mix was crisp and clear, without the muddy echo that was the most prominent feature of the old Palladium.
Jay-Z opened with “Say Hello” and acknowledged the historic nature of his perf, commenting that the venerable ballroom’ opened up in 1940 with a show by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra featuring Frank Sinatra. “I like to think I’m the Sinatra of today.If he was ‘Old Blue Eyes,’ I’m ‘Old Brown Eyes.’”
Jay-Z then made the case that he is by far the most exciting performing in hip hop today.
The set included “Swagga Like Us,” featuring T.I. in the evening’s lone guest appearance, “99 Problems,” “Excuse Me Miss,” “Blue Magic,”  “Public Service Announcement,” “Minority Report” and "Hard Knock Life."

With Filipino singer Arnel Pineda having crossed the line from Steve Perry Karaoke master to respectable lead singer and  a new album that taps into the energy and formulas of Journey's hitmaking era, there's little reason to doubt Journey has ability to keep their train moving with new passengers boarding at every stop.
But there's more than immediately meets the eye. Beyond it's pair of smart moves - the hiring of Pineda and the Wal-Mart exclusive release of "Revelation" - there are timing issues as well. The pop world is so devoid of well-crafted and polished rock music and bands with uniquely identifiable elements that Journey rises above the landscape like one of those birds on their album covers. There are plenty of us who looked at Journey differently  when  "Don't Stop Believin'" closed out "The Sopranos,"  but that's not who sold out the Greek for two nights; these fans, whether new or veteran, are attracted to the oeuvre and, for a certain segment, the nationality of the new singer.
Like Santana, who employed Neal Schon prior to him creating Journey in 1973, the band has gone through a series of reinventions in the last decade before coming to this point, a focused celebration of the "Infinity" to "Frontiers" ('78-'83) edition of the band.(Santana learned how a bit of focus can help your career back in '99).
Everything about Journey feels rejuvenated - the energy in the playing, the songwriting, the feeding off the energy of the fans and, maybe quite significantly, their re-establishment as bona-fide headliners. Yes, without journeys into all that has defined Journey, their 90 minutes are divided into blocks of screaming rock tunes and power ballads, but there's nothing to derail them - no obsessive solos, nothing sonically wayward or off-putting and nothing that does not sound exactly like the audience's image of Journey.
This summer, Journey has headlined one of the smartest triple bills of the last several years. Cheap Trick played the nostalgia card and performed every tune that made it into heavy rotation 20-30 years ago. Ann Wilson demonstrated her pipes are still Superman-like and that the guitar riffs in Heart's songs still put smiles on the band members' faces; they perform like they're still eying potential in their act to breakthrough to headliner status.
It's not simply evidence that tours  packaging artists whose heydays  came in the late 1970s and early '80s will win over fans every time. Journey and Heart are full of life and vigor, making their standards such as "Lights" and "Magic Man" sound powerful and from the heart.   

Here is my review that was published.   

It's always a treat when an artist sends you back into the library to pull out old vinyl or CDs that you have not thought about for awhile. Kurt Elling, the jazz singer, and the saxophonist Ernie Watts are touring with a tribute to "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," the album of duets they recorded on March 7, 1963. The album  is one of those distinctly beautiful and romantic albums that any jazz fan would hold onto it with a hope to someday share it; it's jazz at its most sensual and inviting.
Hartman's baritone, Trane's tenor sax and McCoy Tyner's supple piano take the album's six ballads at a relaxed pace, each note articulated with warmth and belying the fact that there was little, if any, rehearsal for the work. It reflected Coltrane's mood at the time, his most recent recordings being the equally sensitive "Ballads" and his collaboration with Duke Ellington. (Their "Prelude to a Kiss" still sends shivers).
Elling and Watts, whose best known work has been with Charlie Haden's Quartet West, add a string quartet and take their program into more upbeat terrain. Thursday at USC's Bing Theater, "Coltrane and Hartman" was a starting point - two of the album's cuts, "Lush Life" and "Autumn Serenade," went into a medley with "What's New" and  "My One and Only Love" was partnered "Nancy (With the Laughing  Face)." The emphasis was Coltrane, with Elling using his voice in the styles of both Hartman and Trane. He connected in the baritone with the singer, using flourishes, some of them wordless, to channel a Coltrane improvisation.
Watts has a tone substantially  different from Coltrane. Trane's playing at the time was moans, caresses and hallelujahs; Watts opts for pleas, promises and linear thought. Pianist Laurence Hobgood, who has been with Elling for 15 years, combined Tyner's romanticism with some of Bill Evans'' pensiveness in addition to writing the arrangements for the evening.
There are no plans at this time to record the program, which also includes Coltrane versions of "Bessie's Blues," "All of Nothing at All and "Say It (Over and Over Again)."   Elling, who now records for Concord after a decade with Blue Note, is in the early stages of selecting songs with producer Don Was for his next album.   
On a side note, Elling has one of the most interesting collection of links I have ever seen on a website.

For the record, my quest to attend 100 shows and see 300 acts this year is down to  34 shows and 128 acts to go.

Sixteen minutes of Sigur Ros is better than no minutes at all. Shot live at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this film shows highlights material from  "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust."
The set list: Glósoli / Sé Lest / Við spilum endalaust / Sæglópur / Icelandic National Anthem / Inní mér syngur vitleysingur / Hoppípolla / Gobbledigook

The tough call in reviewing is almost always how much of curve is one willing to grade on when it comes to a legend.
Recently, Glen Campbell, Solomon Burke and Steely Dan made it easy. Campbell, for example,showed up with a big band of ace rock and country musicians capable of re-creating his current album and his hits from the '60s. The others were impeccable.
Some acts you go in knowing it might be  a struggle. Crosby, Stills and Nash can't find a note to save their lives on some nights, but if they don't embarrass themselves or tarnish their legacy they get the benefit of the doubt. Al Green is chief among the artists whose careers began in the '60s and '50s who always gives a good show yet rarely a great one.
Then there's Bob Dylan, the ultimate iconoclast. How in the world does one judge one of his performances without basing the quality of the show on the critic's experiences? Can a show's greatness be determined by a setlist? Can the abilities of the backing band scale the bar that separates good from great? Can exuberance in Bob's vocals make up for problems in pitch?
It seems like anyone seeing Dylan for the first times, whether they are a critic or an observer making a post on a website, cut considerable slack for Bob and his crusty vocal delivery. For those of us who see nearly every show on every tour, a line has to be drawn between nitpicking and deciding whether he is as good as he could be on any given night. I gave a thumbs down to Wednesday night's show, one of the last concerts on his North America trek, even though he thrilled another critic or two.
In this case it's personal. My odyssey with Dylan recordings began when I was 10 and I acquired Dylan's "Greatest Hits." "Positively Fourth Street" hit like few other songs; "Blowin' in the Wind" felt like it was 100 years old. I kept buying more records until the Dylan section was the largest in my collection. That occurred when I was in high school and remained true for a decade after college. "Blood on the Tracks," released when I was 15,was one of those life-changing records, music that makes you see the world through a different set of eyes.
As far as concerts go, my first  came in 1978, when Dylan was wearing the clear mask and traveling with a good-sized band, many of the musicians carrying over from the Rolling Thunder Revue that never got closer than 1,500 miles to my home.
But over the years I never got that great Dylan show, regardless of whether I was seeing him in New York, Philly, Boston or L.A. A Hollywood Bowl show came close, but it was not until the December 1997 run at the El Rey that I finally saw a great one, a concert worthy of his stature that made the songs all magical. Night one of the El Rey stand was my 14th Dylan concert, bringing about a monumental shift in my desire to see him every time he visits.
That run from 1997 to 2002 really spoiled us, and for a good three or four years after that it was quite easy to cut him a break, especially when he was moving between piano and guitar. Wednesday night it felt like Bob forced my critical and fan sides into a corner, making it hard to defend his 100 minutes onstage. He's still the greatest, he just does not look it.

Post by Matt Kivel

The F Yeah fest wrapped this past Sunday with an intimate performance by Baltimore's Dan Deacon at Hanger 1018 in downtown LA. Attendance was surprisingly sparse due to a last minute location change (the gig was originally planned for the 6th street warehouse -- an equally obscure locale), but the small crowd was anything but diminutive in its unyielding display of affection and enthusiasm for Deacon's neck-snapping electronica.

100 to 200 hundred kids piled into the hanger's medium-sized front room and formed an ebullient circle around Deacon, who sang and spazzed ferociously. The group's collective body heat transformed the once airy space into a dense, oven-like enclosure. Intrepid fans unveiled a large quilt, which continually rose and receded above the bobbing audience who -- despite the effervescent sweat and body odor -- danced beneath its stitched patterns with reckless abandon. Deacon capped his 45 minute set with the epic sing-along "Silence Like The Wind Overtakes Me."

All in all, this F Yeah Fest was a wonderful celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant youth culture. It rallied independent music lovers and benefited from a truly positive, cynicism-free ethos that all but equaled the transcendent spirit of Arthurfest in 2005.   

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

It may be strange to acknowledge, but New York's Animal Collective might just be the most influential indie group of the last 3 years. Ever since "Sung Tongs" came out, bands just keep cropping up with mixing boards and samples pushed heavily to the forefront. Deeply layered reverb, ethereal harmonies and tribal percussion are all components of this now commonly used aesthetic -- displayed in the sounds of artists like El Guincho, Health and now Brooklyn's High Places.

High Places is a duo comprised of vocalist Mary Pearson and percussionist Rob Barber. The Echoplex stage seemed like a bit of a stretch for the band who have only recently begun to enjoy some notoriety in the online music press. As a result, the crowd was thin and a bit bewildered by Pearson's breathy refrains and Barber's wildly undulating electronic beats.

There are shades of shoegaze, Steve Reich and Tropicalia in High Places' sound, but their live performance definitely left room for improvement. The vocals and looped samples coagulated to form this sort of vague, impenetrable wall of sound that made it difficult to digest the complexity and catchiness of some of the tunes. It's evident that they are very much a studio project at the moment, but their set hinted at a rich and rewarding album lying beneath the oblique sonic constructions.

Post by Matt Kivel

The Glass Candy set was a tale of two shows. If you were up close and crammed into the throbbing stageside pit, the dance beats and tightly-wound synth refrains were all too much to deal with -- boogie fever overtook the entire crowd. Friends of mine came back sweating and sucking for air, claiming they had "seen god" and danced to his sweet funk. The other experience was my own -- casually observing beside the well-lit merch table, jotting down notes and generally feeling bored with what I gleaned to be an average set of mid-tempo disco.

But I give my friends the benefit of the doubt on this one. I should have been down there, sweating alongside them, fixing my eyes on the nodding heads and Ginger Green's emerald tube top. I'm off my high horse -- the ecstatic looks that concertgoers gave one another after the set were enough. Glass Candy rocked the f&%ing house.

Post by Sammy JC

Abe Vigoda played a set of highly inventive songs with rollicking rhythms, echo- drenched guitars, dub-thick bass lines and yelping dual vocals that put their sound somewhere between Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and calypso music. However, the jam-packed audience never let their hipster-selves get too lost in the danceable grooves and instead, remained polite and patient even when one of the guitar players took a few minutes to change a broken string.

Coupled with the sweet smell of bar-b-q wafting in from the back of the club, the band socialized with friends between numbers and kept the mood loose and carefree. Fixtures of the LA scene, much of the F Yeah Fest would play out as a celebration of Abe Vigoda and other Smell-based bands like No Age and Mika Miko whose recent success seems to have taken the whole community by surprise.

Photo by Dan Monick

Post by Matt Kivel

Alright, we get it. Country is cool. Late nights barnstorming, plowing through bottles of Jack Daniels, lamenting broken love affairs, firing a 12-gauge -- it's all well and good, but where is the new angle? Where is the next level of artistic depth that once seemed inevitable when bands like Uncle Tupelo and The Jayhawks roamed the midwest? David Vandervelde is cut from that same cloth of talented country songsmiths as Tweedy, Louris and Farrar, but he really doesn't stray from the tried and true formula of honky-tonk rave-ups and weep into your Pabst ballads that seems to define nearly every band under the alt-country tag. 

His trio proved to be a nice change of pace for the Echo stage, whose audience was ready for a reprieve after an altercation with the police and a brutal series of hardcore acts. Bass, drums and guitar, simply played with Vandervelde's axe floating high above the mix. They dutifully channelled the hard-rocking power of Southern rock overlords Lynard Skynard and were met with a modest reception from the weary crowd of punks and hardcore addicts. 

There is no doubt that David Vandervelde is good at what he does -- especially the ultra morose ballads, which are quite reminiscent of Secretly Canadian labelmate Jason Molina's work. His high wail cuts clear and warbly, much like Neil Young's more somber vocal inflections ("Old Man" and "Mellow My Mind"). But he's just not adding anything new or exciting to the tested songwriting formulas.

Photo by Nick Befort

Post by Matt Kivel

With a name that inspires second-looks and suspicions of pre-pubescent speech impediments, Best Fwends are pranksters with a simple agenda -- to play loud music recklessly without pretense. A swelling crowd crammed into the undersized Annex venue two storefronts down from the Echo to dance and thrash to a rapid set of homespun karaoke freak-outs. The duo, comprised of Austin-based performers Dustin and Anthony pumped-fists and sang their hearts out to a series of ipod backing tracks, which ran the gamut from dance-floor friendly electronica to barroom, Pogues-style punk.

It was one of the more popular shows hosted at the surreal, linoleum-lined Annex venue and the group's extreme DIY aesthetic seemed to resonate with the F Yeah faithful on a visceral level. It's music that doesn't wait for the corroded wheels of bureaucracy to turn, completely obliterating the pedestal we so often place our musical heroes upon.

Photo by S. Cass

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The first day of the F Yeah Fest in Echo Park proudly displayed a veritable all star team of bands from Los Angeles' vibrant counterculture. Hipsters and teenagers decked out in florescent t-shirts and wide-rimmed spectacles engulfed the three block stretch of Sunset Blvd between Glendale Blvd and Echo Park Ave, within which which the Echo and Echoplex venues reside.

Festivities kicked off at around 3: 30 PM and for the most part, early concerts enjoyed moderate attendance. The Mae Shi proved to be an exception. Fans packed into the Echoplex at around 4: 15 PM to catch a glimpse of the band's spastic punk rock -- a refreshingly unpretentious blend of seemingly incongruous musical sub-genres. Some of the songs employ long, avant-garde freak outs and Kraut-flavored improvisations while others borrow unashamedly from early 90s mainstream FM radio with epic hooks and gleeful crowd-bating chants.

Band members propelled themselves across the stage and the lead vocalists screamed and shouted in tandem, echoing each other's refrains and hammering home the choruses. The Mae Shi set was galvanizing in the best of ways, revving up the crowd and uniting concertgoers from different ends of the musical spectrum. Hardcore and punk fans pumped fists with pop-lovers and ska fans alike -- that sort of unity among fans regardless of musical preference continued throughout the night and made for a celebratory concert experience.

Photo by Faith Crawford

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Oasis has booked a club show in New York and an open air show in Cornwall prior to the Oct. 7 release of "Dig Out Your Soul" through Warner Music's Reprise in the U.S. 
Oasis will perform at Manhattan's Terminal 5 on Sept. 12 and  the Eden Project in Cornwell on Sept. 27. The U.K. show will be filmed by MTV for a later broadcast.
Getting tickets requires registering on the band's website. Applications for the New York ticket purchase will close midday Wednesday; U.K. applications will be taken until midday Sept. 5.

By ANDREW BARKER
88 BoaDrum, masterminded and conducted by unclassifiable Japanese collective the Boredoms, brought 88 drummers to the La Brea Tar Pits at 8:08 p.m. to perform a specially commissioned piece scheduled to last 88 minutes. (By my count, strangely, the performance went exactly 20 minutes over the 88 minute mark.) The piece was performed concurrently by a proxy band in Brooklyn, both perfs a follow up to last year’s 77 BoaDrum, featuring a mere 77 drummers on 07/07/07.
With the four Boredoms arranged on a circular stage, frontman Yamantaka Eye used a series of signals to conduct his bandmates (each at a drum set), who would then signal the army of drummers arranged in a circle surrounding them. (Among the percussive chorus: Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse, Kevin Haskins of Bauhaus and Mika Miko’s adorable powderkeg Kate Hall). Eye also used a sampler to augment the percussion, chanted and screamed into a microphone and, most dramatically, played his custom-built seven-necked guitar with drumsticks, like a marimba.
While the notion of 88 drummers all wailing at once sounds like a practical joke to play on irritable neighbors, the piece was actually tightly controlled and classically arranged, composed of four distinct movements. The first was a lulling overture; the second a long fugue of perpetually permuting rhythms that built to an explosive climax; the fourth a rousing tribal call-and-response. The third movement – quiet and impressionistic – was something else entirely.
With Eye laying down a bedrock of low white noise, the drummer chorus switched to gentle rolls on the cymbals, rising and falling in unison like waves on a beach. Repeating the pattern long enough to ease onlookers into a trance, Eye then abruptly broke the rhythm with a programmed drum track, rattling in the lower frequencies like a slow hip-hop beat recorded underwater, subsequently layering sub-aqueous squeals and swells over the higher frequencies while all 88 drummers dispersed into a quiet pitter-patter on their ride cymbals, like dozens of  little minnows darting around beneath the surface.
Using an army of drummers to sculpt a mood of quiet tranquility, the Boredoms assiduously confounded expectations, and in doing so, exceeded them. For those unfortunate enough to have missed out, a repeat performance is scheduled for the next time the calendar reads 08/08/08.

Fender's electric guitar that lingered in the shadow of the Strat and the Telecaster, the Jazzmaster, turns 50 this year.
Thurston Moore, J Mascis, Nels Cline, Tom Verlaine  and others will fete the Fender's Jazzmaster guitar with a concert on Sept. 12 at New York’s Knitting Factory. The anniversary will also be celebrated with new and historic Fender guitar displays as well as a Jazzmaster guitar giveaway.
"Under the radar, it became an underground icon in its own right and more than worthy of its own time in the spotlight," Justin Norvell, Fender marketing director for electric guitars, said in a statement."The artists who played it then and play it now are some of the musical prime movers who’ve kept the guitar relevant and have pushed it forward sonically.” 
The Jazzmaster has had roles in the birth of surf, punk, new wave, goth and grunge. Fender recently introduced three new models: the J Mascis Jazzmaster, the Elvis Costello Jazzmaster and the Classic Player Jazzmaster Special.
Fender introduced the Jazzmaster guitar in 1958 as a high-end alternative to the Telecaster and Stratocaster. With an abundance of controls and chrome, the Jazzmaster became an unexpected hit with young players.

Pollstar has released its midyear report on concert grosses with two New Jersey acts, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street band, leading the way.
Bon Jovi has pulled in $56.3 million on its well-received North American tour and the second leg of Springsteen's "Magic" tour has grossed $40.8 million.
Van Halen, Kenny Chesney, Michael Buble, Kanye West and the double bill of Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige all land between $36.8 million and $30.7 million.
Now that the big guns are out of the way, let's examine the rest of the tote board.

REUNION MANIA: After Van Halen, we have Spice Girls and the Police (both at $23.3 million); the Eagles ($15.8 million); Stone Temple Pilots ($5.2 million); and Duran Duran ($4.5 million). 

GENRE BREAKDOWN:  Veteran rockers (24); country (12); Spanish-language (eight, led by Juanes at $9.7 million); R&B/Hip-hop (six);  Christian (three, topped by Casting Crowns at $6.3 million).

CELINE'S VEGAS REPLACEMENTS: Bette Midler's show has earned $14.8 million; Cher has drawn $10.3 million.

WHO NEEDS 4? THE KID SHOWS: The "double bill" of the real Miley Cyrus and the fictional Hannah Montana pulled in $17.1 million. The Jonas Brothers grossed $12.6 million.

NON-CONCERT  LIVE ENTERTAINMENT:   Five shows in the top 10 led by "Riverdance" at $17.9 million. "Dancing With the Stars" has pulled in $12.6 million.

TRIBUTE BANDS: The grand total of one made it into the list, Rain - the Beatles Experience, grossing $4.6 million.

FIVE SHOWS, TWO DAYS, ONE CITY: Garth Brooks grossed $3.8 million doing a benefit for firefighters, which landed him at No. 89.

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH CONCERT GROSSES?: Jerry Seinfeld was the last of six comedians to make the list, pulling $3.7 million. Top-selling funnyman was Katt Williams at $16 million.

RUSH: The Canadian trio grossed $18.3 million. They are No. 12 on the list. (Last time I reported on Pollstar's list several e-mailers wondered why Rush was not on the list. The reason was a lack of North American  shows. Now they have done enough to rank high.)

MORE CANADIANS: Anne Murray ($4.7 million); Blue Rodeo ($4.2 million); Leonard Cohen ($3.7 million). Neil Young is not on the list.

“End.>vacuum,” an orchestral piece composed by Incubus guitarist Michael Einziger, will receive its premiere Aug. 23 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
The 40-minute piece consists of nine musical movements and will be performed by a chamber orchestra - the Graviton Modern Ensemble - led by conductor and Einziger’s longtime collaborator Suzie Katayama.The piece was inspired by  Igor Stravinsky, George Crumb, Samuel Barber, Krzysztof Penderecki and Frank Zappa.
A major portion of the piece’s inspiration resides in Einziger’s love of science.  He has recently participated in articles with Brown University evolutionary biologist Dr. Kenneth Miller, British physicist Dr. Brian Cox and Pulitzer Prize-winning science historian Dr. Ed Larson.
Therefore, it's only logical that the night should begin with a 20-minute lecture from Cox about particle physics and experiments being conducted at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).
Einziger wrote the piece while recovering form surgery for carpel tunnel syndrome.Einziger begins musical studies this fall at Harvard.

The 20th anniversary of Hal Willner’s Disney music tribute album “Stay Awake” will be celebrated with a concert Oct. 30 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Intention of Willner is to book as many of the album’s participants as possible.
“Yes, we will invite Ringo,” says David Sefton, the executive and artistic director of UCLA Live. Terry Allen of NRBQ and Marshall Allen, who leads the Sun Ra Arkestra, are the first to confirm their appearances. 
back in 1988, the former Beatle performed “When You Wish Upon a Star” with Herb Alpert on trumpet and the track closed out the album that put Willner on the map as king of the tribute discs. He did Nino Rota, Thelonious Monk and Kurt Weill prior to Walt Disney and has done Harry Smith's "Anthology of Folk Music," Carl Stalling and Charles Mingus since.
The 64-minute album contained five medleys plus Tom Waits performing "Heigh Ho" from "Snow White." Performers included Bill Frisell, Bonnie Raitt with Was (Not Was), Los Lobos, Suzanne Vega, Yma Sumac, NRBQ, the Replacements, James Taylor and Sinead O'Connor.
Jazz poet Ken Nordine did "Hi Diddle Dee Dee (An Actors Life for Me)" and "Desolation Theme" from "Pinocchio." Sun Ra and his Arkestra recorded ""Pink Elephants on Parade." Most of the participants are still alive; Sun Ra, Harry Nilsson and Betty Carter have died since its release.
“Stay Awake” concerts have been presented in London and New York, but Sefton says this is the one time it will not be held to a time limit.
“Since the Harry Smith (tribute show), one of our strengths has been putting on these humongous multi-act shows,” he says. “People have the commitment to the place to (stay and watch). It’s part of our identity. … Once it starts, we have to remain incredibly calm because it becomes what it becomes and it always surprises.”
In New York, Adams, Allen, Vega were joined by Steve Buscemi , David Byrne, Gavin Friday, Beth Orton,  and Richard Strange.  London concert was part of Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown Festival.
“My greatest ambition,” Sefton says, “is to bring out Ken Nordine. I’ll stretch the budget to make that happen.”

Having made their way through doo-wop, the early '60s folk scare and neo-operatic pop, PBS is turning to Philly soul to fill its coffers.
On Saturday, a New Jersey  concert headlined by Jerry Butler, the Delfonics, Harold Melvin's Blue Notes, the Intruders and the O'Jays will filmed in hi-def for broadcast on PBS stations and, soon thereafter, sold on DVD. Concert, taking place at the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, will also feature Bunny Sigler, G.C. Cameron, the Soul Survivors, Jean Carne, Russell Thompkins Jr. & the New Stylistics, the Three Degrees and Bill Jolly.
PBS will premiere the first one-hour special "Love Train: The Sound of Philadelphia" as part of December's  Pledge Week with repeat broadcasts slated to run through 2009.  The "Love Train" Pledge Week broadcasts will offer PBS subscribers the "Love Train" companion DVD as well as selections from the Legacy Recordings Philadelphia International Recordings reissue catalog.  The second one-hour special will be scheduled for pledge broadcast in 2009.
The "Love Train: Sound of Philadelphia" DVD (SD and Blu-ray) will include bonus tracks, interviews with the featured artists, and a documentary on the history of Kenny  Gamble & Leon Huff.
While the evening will naturally be devoted to the hits, one  can hope the Three Degrees will perform one of the greatest "jail bait rejects pass from married man" songs ever record.

  A reunion of Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom - Handsome Dick Manitoba, Andy Shernoff, Ross the Boss and JP Thunderbolt - will be among the key acts at the eighth annual Joey Ramone Birthday bash on Monday at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza.
Mary Weiss of the Shangri-La's and Television guitarist Richard Lloyd will headline.
Celebrating what would have been Joey's 57th birthday, party will conclude with the Joey Ramone Birthday Bashers featuring Jesse Malin, Cheetah Chrome, Walter Lure, Tish & Snooky, Jean Beauvior, Shernoff, Joe McGinty, Thunderbolt, Al Maddy, Ivan Julian, Bobby Steele and Joey's brother, Mickey Leigh.  Also appearing are Charm School, Semi-Precious Weapons, the Independents, Local H, L.E.S. Stitches and Rachel Newman. Sean O’Sullivan's Punk Pipers will round out the night on the bagpipes.   “Little Steven” Van Zandt, Matt Pinfield and Peter Aschner will be the emcees. Tickets are $25 ($30 day of show).

It would not surprise me if many people who went to their first concerts in the 1970s or earlier remember being taken aback the first time they saw a corporate sponsor on a bill. Case in point: the Who on their alleged final trek under the sponsorship banner of Schlitz. It was not the quality of the product that troubled music fans, it was the idea that an entity not in the business of concert promotion was now involved in a show, forcing its agenda, possibly stealth-like, and somehow tampering with the fans’ altruistic idea of the performer.
Twenty five years later and distrust out the door: We’re shocked when there is not a sponsor listed on the ticket along side the name of the promoter. Oddly enough, this week saw two events that may well become new models for the concert business and I’m not sure if the one that involves just the standard promoter is the safer bet for consumers.
First, Alicia Keys came to Los Angeles on a tour overseen by Lexus. Not Lexus and a promoter, just the car company. Call it subliminal propositional marketing: You came for a concert, but you need a car and if you can afford these tickets, you might well soon want a bit of affordable luxury in your next vehicle. Care to test drive an ES or IS?
On Thursday Madonna announced her first tour with Live Nation under her 10-year, $100 million pact with the concert promoter. The dates themselves were of paramount concern, but deep in the details on the trek was a note that can be translated thusly: In Europe, Madonna and Live Nation are in bed with a company that facilitates the resale of concert tickets, aka, the secondary marketplace. It’s not scalping per se, just a facilitator of the resale of tickets, most likely at a price significantly above face value.

Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show will this weekend celebrate the New Orleans music festival Ponderosa Stomp, being held April 29 and 30 at the Crescent City's House of Blues.
Dr. Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos curated the lineup but it looks like he invaded my closet and asked which artists had special meaning to me. For example:
? & The Mysterians (my favorite record ever, "96 Tears")
Dr. John (the performer at the club on my first date with my future wife)
Eddie Bo (the performer at a N'awlins club where we were celebrating our first anniversary)
Ronnie Spector (top 3 in my list of favorite female singers)
13th Floor Elevators ("Nuggets," anyone?)
Roy Head (As a fan of songs with "hey" chants, is there anything better than "Treat Her Right"?)

POSTED BY STUART LEVINE

Following Bruce Springsteen’s pair of Anaheim shows this week at the Honda Center, many fans were chatting up how these concerts felt much more off the cuff and extemporaneous than the two played at the Los Angeles Sports Arena in late October.

Looking back at Springsteen’s Southern California performances dating back to the mid-’70s, it’s tough to say if the second leg of a tour is traditionally a time for Springsteen to open things up, but it certainly was the case this time around.

The Oct. 30 pre-Halloween show — marked by Springsteen’s arrival on stage via a coffin — saw only four song changes in the set list from the previous night (“The Ties That Bind” in the “No Surrender” slot, “Night” for “Candy’s Room,” “Tunnel of Love” for “Backstreets” and “Kitty’s Back” for “Thundercrack” in the encore).

Shift to Anaheim six months later, and for night two, about a third of the set list offered different material from night one. Songs heard on Monday — “Light of Day,” “Trapped,” “Working on the Highway,” “The Devil’s Arcade, “The Rising,” “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” “Rosalita,” “Ramrod” — were replaced by “Thunder Road” (as a stunning opener), “Atlantic City,” “Candy’s Room,” “Prove It All Night,” “Brilliant Disguise,” the rarely played “Meeting Across the River,” “Jungleland” and “Dancing in the Dark.”

Unlike at the Sports Arena, he acknowledged the change of new material Tuesday, asking the crowd who was there the night before and letting them know he’d be adding some fresh tunes for the repeat customers.

For both the current “Magic” tour and “The Rising” tour back in 2002-03, Springsteen was very much on message for the first legs, not wanting to differentiate the set too much from night to night — be it in L.A. or anywhere else.

That wasn’t always the case, however, when Springsteen came to L.A. Back in 1984, when he and the band arrived in town for seven nights at the Sports Arena to promote “Born in the USA,” Springsteen, who hadn’t toured for the stark “Nebraska” album, was trumpeting anti-Reagan themes for much of the night. Yet the only message the audience may have taken home was how long could this guy play without dropping dead of exhaustion? A 33-song set with an intermission was common, as were a handful of changes in the set list.

(All except for the four-song package of “Cover Me,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Hungry Heart” and “Cadillac Ranch,” which were the post-intermission standards to open the second set almost every night.)

That changed on the second leg a year later when he arrived for four nights at the cavernous L.A. Coliseum to close out the tour, which had grown into industrial-strength size at that point. Of course, it can be much more difficult to call last-second audibles in a stadium because of lighting and other logistical circumstances.

The same was true of the second leg of “The Rising” tour, when Springsteen played a single night at Dodger Stadium and other ballparks around the country. The shows in each town didn’t vary all that much compared to years past.

As the tour continues into Europe this summer and then stadiums in America soon thereafter, it’s tough to say how much Springsteen and his E Streeters will toy with the set list.

Which brings us back to Anaheim. The Honda Center shows were prime examples of man who, while acknowledging his “Magic” message, didn’t let his political views get in the way of a good time for all.

Saxophonist Thomas Chapin was onto something back in the late 1970s.
When we were in college he stood out from just about everyone else. An easygoing guy with a gentle laugh, he used the saxophone to express his soul with authority. He was an astute technician playing with the jazz band at Rutgers University and when he returned with Lionel Hampton's outfit. He was a fiery and inventive performer in his own bands, like Machine Gun, and within  two decades after graduation - at which he played a mean "Pomp and Circumstance"  - he was one of the most compelling forces in the downtown New York jazz scene. I was fortunate enough to catch a performance with one of his bands that included William Hooker at the Knitting Factory during a Gotham Visit. One piece, one hour, indescribable intensity.
That was shortly before his death from leukemia in 1998. He was 40.
To celebrate his life, two NYC concerts under the umbrella of "Lift Off! Remembering Thomas Chapin" will take place Feb. 13 and 15.

Moms, Dads: If you thought the crying was unbearable when little Samantha or Ashley was told there was no way to get Miley Cyrus concert tickets, well hold on.
Turns out the Jonas Brothers can sell ducats at potentially an even faster rate. In L.A., the Jonas Brothers set a new record for the fastest sell-out in the 36-year history of the Gibson, formerly Universal, Amphitheater. Two minutes. More than 5,000 seats sold.
The band immediately added two more shows and sold every ticket again. And this is in a  town where many parents can tell their kids "I know a guy who knows a guy who can hook us up" and not the Midwest where the Cyrus dust-up originated. 
But if you think that sell out was fast, how about the 203 postings that went up today on StubHub for the Jonas Brothers' Universal shows. Ducats are running from $69.95 apiece to $858 a ticket for four seats in the fourth row.   Face value is $49.50 for the orchestra; $39.50 for the mezzanine. Then there are the 130 listings on eBay, including one that started at one dollar from the private party known as Mr. Best Available Seating. 
Dates for the teens 'n' ticket scalping extravaganza after the jump:

Ever since the Internet made ticket scalping  a business to enjoy in the comfort of your own home, we have seen a parade of legit businesses get involved, from startups like  StubHub to mainstays such as Ticketmaster.
Live Nation, which is implementing its own ticketing system in 2009 to replace its Ticketmaster agreements, is no fool and intends to jump in the resale arena, pledging to share  its extra  revenue with the artists themselves.
The idea: Evil or genius? Or is it both?
Live Nation says its research shows that the average StubHub sale is two-times face value. So let's say Bruce Springsteen is still touring when LN's system goes into place and is still charging about $100 a ticket. We'll be generous and say the fees on the ticket are $10. The initial purchaser lists, and sells the ticket for 200 bucks a pop so he's happy with his profit.
Now then, will Live Nation do the double dip the way StubHub does, charging the seller and the buyer a commission? On StubHub, the seller would receive a check for $170; the buyer, who gets the ticket FedEx'd to him, is probably sending about $230.
Live Nation will have the benefit of canceling the bar code on one ticket and creating a new one, eliminating the need for physical delivery. The promoter could therefore look very competitive charging a 10% fee on both ends of the transaction.
But will they? And when a performer such as Springsteen, who has kept his prices reasonable for decades, or any other performer receives a statement showing the percentage of fees they receive from the secondary market, will they be satisfied with the amount? Or will they see this as  case of leaving money on the table?
Concert tickets are pretty much like fine wine: They have the ability to appreciate overnight based on supply and demand. Winemakers and visual artists don't participate in the secondary market, but if Live Nation finds an equitable way to compensate artists who appear to not be greedy when they initially sell their tickets, they may create a groundbreaking pact with musicians.
The flip side, of course, is an even-more out of control ticket-scalping marketplace. 
The Variety news story on Live Nation's ticketing plans follows.      

Pollstar has released its list of the top 100 North American tours of 2007 with the Police, who pulled $133.2 million, at the top and Bill Gaither & Friends at No. 100, having grossed 7.5 million.
Two acts who had their first hits in the 1950s made the list: Tony Bennett, who made $9.1 million from 37 shows, and B.B. King, who grossed $7.8 from 47 concerts.The youngest entrant, Miley Cyrus, grossed $36 million from 49 shows.
Contrary to popular opinion that oldies acts make the most, the leader in terms of decades in which the acts got their starts, was the 1990s. The decade was repped by 23 acts, followed by 20 from the '80s, 15 from the 1970s, 12 from the '60s and 11 from the '80s. Rock 'n' rollers represented nearly half the list (47) and only three R&B performers were on it (Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Jamie Foxx). Ten acts came in from the country side.
Cirque du Soleil's "Saltimbanco" did the most shows, 132, of any touring act; Trans-Siberian Orchestra had the most for a music act, 109 shows, but there are two editions of that holiday season band. Hinder tops the list of single edition bands (what a strange classification to make up), doing 104 shows and pulling in $10 million.
The cash cow on the list is Bon Jovi, who did 26 shows in 14 cities, had an average gross of $2.95 million, played to crowds averaging 27,000 people and pulled in $41.4 million. The fewest number of shows belonged to Heroes del Silencio, who played four shows, attracted almost 260,000 fans and grossed $9.6 million.
Among English-speaking bands, the double bill of the Eagles and Dixie Chicks played six concerts to open the Nokia Theater in L.A., pulling in 9.1 million; Shakira made $11.3 million from 10 shows; and Aerosmith ($14.8 million), the Who ($10.1 million) and Il Divo ($9.1 million) did 14 each.
The highest average ticket price belonged to the Eagles/Chicks shows at $213.06; cheapest was Three Day Grace and Breaking Benjamin's $23.81.
Acts that averaged less than 30 bucks per ticket: Vans Warped Tour, Fall Out Boy, the Fray, Hinder and 311.
Those that averaged more than $100: The Police, Celine Dion, Van Halen, Genesis, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Marc Anthony & Jennifer Lopez, Neil Young and Van Morrison.
Number of the Top 100 acts I saw: 11
Number I could have seen: 58

Live Nation will create its own ticketing service beginning Jan. 1, 2009 to replace its deals with Ticketmaster.
The live entertainment promoter has entered into a long-term agreement with German ticketing company CTS Eventim. Live Nation will license the Eventim platform in North America, and Eventim will provide back office ticketing services in the U.K. and ticketing services across Europe.
"Live Nation will use its most important asset, the concert ticket, to build artist careers and customer relationships, forge innovative sponsorship deals, create a fan and artist friendly secondary ticketing platform and provide a ticketing alternative for third-party venues," Live Nation president and CEO Michael Rapino said in a statement.
Live Nation was bullish on the decision as they termed it "limited investment." The key, and Rapino has repeated this often, is to control customer data, increase the amount of interaction with concert-goers and to capitalize on expanded distribution channels and sponsorship opportunities.

Bob Mould has joined the lineup of performers appearing Jan. 8 at L.A.'s Walt Disney Concert Hall for “Songs of the City,” part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Concrete Frequency series.
The series is described as “a multi-disciplinary series of events designed to examine and celebrate the elements that define a city, and how they are affected by, and reflected in, music.”
Besides the former front man of Husker Du and Sugar, the show will feature Zooey Deschanel,  John Doe, Sondre Lerche, Sean Lennon and members of TV on the Radio, Grizzly Bear and Belle and Sebastian. Tickets.

Four nights into Neil Young's New York City run at the United Palace and he appears to be sticking to the same basic set list he has used on most of the tour, save for a few surprises each night.
He pulled out his biggest curio Sunday when he performed "The Sultan," a local hit by his Canadian high school band the Squires.
Rather than obscurities, each night has seen an old hit or two make the set list: "Old Man" and "Heart Of Gold" were performed on night one,"Cowgirl In The Sand" and "After The Gold Rush" on night two, and "Don't Let It Bring You Down" on night four. "Cortez the Killer" has cropped up as well.
According to the website Sugar Mountain, Young performed a tune called "Try," a song so obscure it doesn't even appear on one of the most in-depth Young song lists.
Young closes out his run at the United Palace tonight (Tuesday) and Wednesday.

On night 2 of the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, Muse surprised the crowd at the Gibson Amphitheater with a cover of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good." Surprises, rather than rundown of hits,  give these shows a purpose. Simone, who preferred to be addressed as Doctor, set aside her disdain for the United States toward the end of her life and started appearing here on a more regular basis than she had in the 1980s and '90s. (Being in her presence enriched our lives). Her impressive catalog continues to be in a state of disarray - only a portion of it has been treated with any respect - and it seems that any attempt at definitively chronicling her life via film or music-centric biography never comes to fruition. Her legacy deserves a better treatment; she should be celebrated for being the one artist who married Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and civil rights into a singular uncompromising persona.
Here's her "Feeling Good":

Carrie Underwood as Julie Andrews? (Well, obviously, based on the Rodgers & Hammerstein reference in the headline).
And Beyonce gets to be Judy Garland. Apparently that's one producer's idea of "rock."
Those two will be part of the "Movies Rock" that will be filmed Sunday at the Kodak Theater for a two-hour prime-time special airing Dec. 7 on CBS. A spinoff of "Fashion Rocks," the initial lineup seems rather devoid of anything resembling "rock."
Underwood will perform "The Sound of Music," Beyonce gets to tackle “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and Mary J. Blige and John Legend will duet on “As Time Goes By.” Where exactly the rock performers or even rock songs are is anyone's guess.
Being given medley duty are Elton John (an actual rock artist, but he gets animated films), Jennifer Hudson (James Bond tunes) and composer John Williams conducting an orchestra doing his own work.
David Paich, who occasionally rocked as a member of Boz Scaggs' early '70s band before creating Toto, will be the music coordinator.

With no word on what plans Ginger Baker has at the end of February,  Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton will perform Feb. 25, 26 and 28 at Madison Square Garden, their first official concerts together in nearly 39 years.  Tickets are being sold first to American Express cardholders, beginning Nov. 12.
The two musicians worked together in Blind Faith - a "supergroup" featuring two members each of Traffic and Cream - and appeared together at the Chicago Crossroads Guitar Festival in July.
In the decades since Blind Faith's lone release, "Had to Cry Today" has never received its proper due as one of Winwood's finest hours. Meanwhile, the 15 minute "Do What You Like" has moved from horrid space filler to significant jam.
Blind Faith went on one tour. It started July 12, 1969 at Madison Square Garden and ended Aug. 24 in Hawaii.
Winwood and Clapton have not yet discussed the set list for the shows - that will be worked out in upcoming rehearsals.
Winwood's last album was initially recorded for the String Cheese Incident's SCI Fi label and then picked up by Sony Music. His next disc will be released by Sony's Columbia Records  in early 2008.  Clapton recently published his autobiography and a companion CD, "Complete Clapton," was released by Warner Music's Reprise.
Their performance at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago is part of  a 2-disc DVD available Nov. 20 from Rhino Entertainment.

Eddie Vedder gave the first performance of his songs from Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" at a post-screening party Friday on the Paramount lot. Introduced by Penn and the film's star, Emile Hirsch, Vedder played the film's gem of a track, "Guaranteed," and followed with soundtrack tunes "No Ceiling," "Society"  and, on mandolin instead of acoustic guitar, "Rise."
He also offered up "Drifting," a song initially released only to Pearl Jam fan club members, that he said was a "Christopher McCandless kind of song," referring to the film's nomadic lead character.
He closed with a tune he cut for another Penn film, "I am Sam": The Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." 

Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, born in Nigeria and raised in Oakland, was named the winner of this year's Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition Sunday at a tribute concert honoring Herbie Hancock.
Akinmusire studied with Steve Coleman at the Manhattan School of Music and in 2001 began touring and recording with him. He has also toured with Hancock and Wayne Shorter throughout Vietnam and India, and performed and recorded with the late Joe Henderson, Christian McBride, Joshua Redman and the San Francisco Jazz Collective.
Regarded as the most prestigious jazz competition in the world, judges were the trumpeters Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Terence Blanchard, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove.
Akinmusire receives a $20,000 scholarship. Second place winner Jean Caze received a $10,000 scholarship and third place winner Michael Rodriguez received a $5,000 scholarship.

The Roxy, which has been mostly booked inhouse for 34 years, has created an alliance with Live Nation, giving the promoter two homes on the Sunset Strip.
Live Nation will be the exclusive third party promoter of the West Hollywood venue, booking, producing and marketing numerous shows through-out the year.
Roxy owner Nic Adler said, "As we enter into our 35th anniversary, we feel that having a powerhouse like Live Nation in our room gives music fans the best of all worlds."
Megan Jacobs and Scott Reifman are the Roxy's  talent buyers.
Live Nation also owns the House of Blues in  West Hollywood giving it a 500-capacity and a 1,000-capacity venue within a mile of each other.

Heading into Los Angeles,  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are at a baker's dozen moment. Not only have they performed 13 shows since their Oct. 2 kickoff, 13 tunes have made it into every evening's set list. Two songs - "Lonesome Day" and "Girls in their Summer Clothes" - have been given different nights off  to keep their tallies at 12.
From the new album, Springsteen has performed nightly "Radio Nowhere," "Magic," "Livin' in the Future," "Devil's Arcade," "Last to Die" and "Long Walk Home." He has yet to perform "You'll Be Comin' Down," "I'll Work for Your Love" and the hidden track, "Terry's Song." "You're Own Worst Enemy" has been performed three times.
In preparation for Springsteen's two shows at L.A.'s Sports Arena on Monday and Tuesday, here's a breakdown of the shows by the numbers and bit of what to expect.
A musical triptych in the middle of the show featuring "She's the One," "Livin' in the Future" and "The Promised Land" and a closing of the main set with "Last to Die," "Long Walk Home" and "Badlands."
A main set of about 18 songs and a four-song encore that will include "Born to Run" and "American Land."
Springsteen has performed 49 different songs on the tour, 10 of which have been performed once and eight of which have been played only twice. At the last show, Friday in Oakland, Springsteen premiered three tunes: "Two Hearts," "Racing in the Street" and "Working on the Highway."
From the catalog,  Springsteen has played three of the 15 tunes from the last E Street Band album,  "The Rising." The rest:
"Born to Run": 7
"Darkness on the Edge of Town": 7
"Born in the U.S.A.": 5
"The River": 4
"Tunnel of Love": 3
"Greetings From Asbury Park": 2
"Nebraska": 2
"The Wild, the Innocent...": 1
The only cover came in Toronto in which he was joined by Arcade Fire to perform that band's "Keep the Car Running."
Set lists of all Springsteen shows appear on backstreets.com.

And on the fourth night of the six-night run at the Nokia, they did as they had done before, pleasing the Boomers who decades ago got their first kiss with "Peaceful Easy Feeling" playing in the background, debated the SoCal mystique for hours after the release of "Hotel California" and never once wondered what happened to Randy Meisner, Don Felder or Bernie Leadon. Some observations:

1) AEG could not have found a better band to open the venue than the Eagles. They blend the acoustic and the electric, harmonies and solo vocals, and force sound mixers to be on the lookout for inaccuracies in the sound reproduction. Eagles set was balanced from the start; a few tweaks were seemingly made during the Dixie Chicks' set. It's almost a given that every patron has gone home saying what a wonderful sounding hall it is.   

2) It may have a band's name on the marquee but the stars of the Eagles are Joe Walsh - personality, guitar playing and compositions - and the voice of Don Henley. Steuart Smith's job is to make sure every song is re-created note-for-note perfect from the records; this is a crowd that likes what it knows.

3) Given just an hour to display their talents, the Dixie Chicks strike an impressive balance between the old and the new, the pop-rock material and the country tunes. They display their bluegrass chops and vocal harmonies - and they look like they're having fun. They have a welcoming presence yet are still clearly superstars, even if Natalie Maines risked alienating the Eagles fans by telling them they were rich.

For one night only, architect Frank Gehry is going to make changes to the L.A. building he designed,  Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Sunday night, black carpet will cover the entire stage except the well, which will be red carpet. Red material will drape from the ceiling and over the organ, and there will be a red backdrop around the stage.
And some concert-goers will be seated on an elaborately decorated stage, getting a closeup view of  Portuguese fado star Mariza.
"I love it - I'm having my own taberna," Mariza said during a recent promotional visit to Los Angeles. Mariza is at the tail end of a North American tour ostensibly in support of her CD-DVD release "Concerto em Lisboa."
Disney Concert Hall, come Sunday, would well be the largest taberna in the world; tabernas, in which the mournful fado music is sung, more often than not by men, in Portugal might accommodate 50 or 60 people.
But Mariza is no simple saloon singer. She has been opening the world to the style that has rarely traveled beyond European borders, and even then, its audience has generally been limited to France, Spain and Portugal.

Can you still scream "Tin Roof"? How about lowering your body to the floor during the "down, down, down" portion of "Rock Lobster"? Remember when "Private Idaho" referenced only a song and a state of mind and not a crappy movie?
Those days good old days, which actually span from the late '70s to well into the '90s,  are abut to return.
The B-52's will perform material being recorded for their first album in 16 years at a show Nov. 16 at the Roxy in Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale Thursday. 

Richard Thompson has long been one of the few musicians who actually attempts to listen to and chat with his audience during shows. He has been known to actually perform songs requested by audience members who think its still 1971 and they're shouting "Whipping Post" at the Allman Brothers. Gotta get on that live album! Shout too much, though, and out comes the biting humor - that's the fun part for those of us who stay quiet.
All bets are off, though, when he returns to Bay Area to play the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga from Dec. 6 to 8 and give his fans free rein when it comes to the set list.
"As you come in, you get a little form and fill in your request, and we pick them at random out of the bucket. It poses tremendous problems for the artist, and may afford some amusement and confusion for the audience," Thompson, who will perform solo, writes at his website.
According to his schedule, he's not trying this at any other venue

Garth Brooks pledged to do a single show in Kansas City, Mo., as a thank you to Wal-Mart for lining his coffers   with the repackaging of his catalog. Show, at KC's  brand new Sprint Center where a Miley Cyrus concert on-sale turned into political grandstanding, went on sale Saturday. One hour, 58 minutes later, Brooks had sold out nine shows. Tickets were $32.50.
The immediate aftermarket reveals only 147 tickets being posted on Stubhub with one clown believing a pair on the floor is worth $10,000. Another site has ducats running from $101 up to a little over a grand. The same site has 254 listings of between two and seven tickets for the Cyrus show, most of them priced right about $200 apiece. Show at Staples Center in Los Angeles has some ridiculous offers, including a single seat in a third-level suite for nearly 10 grand.

Spain will join the growing collection of acts reaching back into the catalog to devote an entire night to a single album. Uniquely, Spain will be performing their 1995 classic, "The Blue Moods Of Spain," in its entirety only in Spain and their hometown of Los Angeles.
The first shows in six years from Josh Haden, Tom Gladders, Randy Kirk and Matt Mayhall will take place  Nov. 1 in Castellón, Spain at the Tanned Tin Festival and Nov. 29 in L.A. at the Echoplex.

The opening of AEG’s $100 million Nokia Theater is 2½ weeks away and a recent tour of the downtown L.A. venue revealed an impressive building that could take business away from the Gibson Amphitheater, the Kodak and certainly doom the Shrine.
The Nokia has some rather smart design elements working for it, beginning with the full service lobbies — that means bars, food and restrooms — on each floor, much like the Kodak Theater and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The orchestra level is practically a hall unto itself: 4,340 of the venue’s 7,100 seats are in the the lower level and it actually looks like several hundred more. The upper reaches of the hall can be blocked by curtains to make the room feel like a small theater and not an undersold venue. The back of the balcony, which has only eight rows, is 210 feet from the lip of the stage.
That sort of versatility is key in this day and age: the Nokia is larger than the Greek (5,700 seats) and Gibson (6,200), but by eliminating the balcony, acts that could quickly sell out the Wiltern (2,200) or Kodak (3,100) or not quite fill the Greek have an  option. AEG is anticipating a schedule of 120 concerts per year.
The orchestra level seating area is wide, but does not fan out as much as the Gibson (formerly the Universal) Amphitheater and feels more directed toward the stage, similar to the Greek. Patrons, or at least 90% of them, will be viewing a performer straight on. And no crazy colors like some other venues – this is all dark blue seats.
Stage’s length (180 feet) and width (80 feet) are staggeringly large and an extensive catwalk system will make it possible for a band to stage a full-on arena-size show in the venue. To get that catwalk system in place, though, means an extraordinary amount of air space between the floor and the ceiling.
Sides of the venue are dedicated to large opera-box like spaces. There are six on each side, three stacked on top of three; the view from the unfinished box, looking out at a sea of seats and the stage, makes the place look enormous. Two 16- X 29-foot LED screens will flank the stage.
Backstage has a dozen dressing rooms and a good-sized hospitality suite. Combined, the hospitality and VIP suites total 12,000 square feet.
A double bill of the Eagles and Dixie Chicks will open the building Oct. 18. They load in on Oct. 15 and knowing the Eagles fastidious attitude toward sound reproduction, the room should be pretty well tuned early during their run. (The two bands perform Oct. 20, 21, 24, 26 and 27). To get the hall off to a decent start, every wall is covered with a soft absorbent material, even the walls in hallways near the concert hall.
Sugarland, Little Big Town and Jake Owen follow on Oct. 28, Queens of the Stone Age perform on the 29th; and Oct. 30 welcomes Neil Young. Concerts will have start times of 8:15 while sporting events at Staples Center across the street begin at 7 or 7:30.
The first awards show booked for the Nokia is the American Music Awards on Nov. 18. Company has about 20 other kudosfests targeted for the venue including the Emmys; about the only ones that are off-limits are the Oscars and the Tonys.
Aretha Franklin will perform at the Nokia six days after she is honored as MusiCares Person of the Year at the Recording Academy gala, which has been held recently at the neighboring L.A. Convention Center.
AEG, which is overseeing and will run the L.A. Live complex, will be asking a lot of concert-goers to park east of Figueroa and, more than likely, south of Pico. Other L.A. Live tenants — hotels, restaurants, etc. — will likely offer their own valet parking services.
A year from now, AEG plans to open the 2,300-capacity Club Nokia, which is slated to do 150 events per year, including concerts and private parties.
The concert calendar for Nokia Theater to date:
Video Games Live, Oct. 19
Anita Baker, Nov. 3
So You Think You Can Dance, Nov. 21
John Fogerty, Nov. 23
La Quinta Estacion, Nov. 24
Enrique Iglesias, Dec. 7
Michael W. Smith, Dec. 9
Tori Amos, Dec. 16
George Lopez, Dec.. 26, 27, 31
Chinese New Year Spectacular, Jan. 18-20
Aretha Franklin, Feb. 14
Russell Peters, Feb. 16
Larry the Cable Guy, March 1

A day after witnessing Ornette Coleman’s sumptuous concert at UCLA’s Royce Hall, I am still taken aback but how gracefully this 77-year-old saxophonist performed so rigorously and with such intensity.
Nearly every moment of the 85-minute show found him performing, primarily on alto sax but also sawing away on the violin and using the trumpet for bullhorn blasts, never resting while his three bassists or drummer solo. Song after among was a group effort, tribute to him sticking to his guns and insisting the musical form he birthed  nearly 50 years ago continues to resonate artistically.
This was one of those concerts in which a review doesn’t seem to be enough. Rebel music delivered in a stately fashion by musicians comfortable in their harmolodic skin. They know where to start and stop; the rests after a handful of bars of music are plentiful and shocking. That several of the songs from his “Sound Grammar” sounded richer in Royce than on the recording only drove home the idea that this music continues to grow after it is set on tape. (A concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in '04 yielded a similar response).
Sure Coleman was known as wild man in the 1960s, one of the guys the Jazz Police decided was out to ruin jazz as if he, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler and Sam Rivers had conspired to make nothing but noise. If the music had no validity it would not have been recorded, right? Not only was it recorded, it was issued by Atlantic  Records where he was a labelmate of Charles Mingus, John Coltrane and the Rascals.
His slowdown over the last two decades has often worried those who want to hear new recordings or hope that one of his rare appearances will occur in their town. He has a performance Oct. 28 in San Francisco and gigs in Croatia, Spain and Hong Kong next year; earlier this year he performed at the Bonnaroo Fetsival. He continues to compose.
Last year, the hoopla afforded his fine album “Sound Grammar” overshadowed the divine reissue of some early recordings issued by the fine Bay Area reissue label Water. That album of superb recordings from 1959 and ‘60, “To Whom Who Keeps a Record,” sounds “startling and fresh” according to NPR critic David Was. The band was his classic lineup: Don Cherry on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass, and either Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins on drums. One fabulous record store labels it essential.
The reissue only exists because Filippo Salvadori, a native of Naples who founded the Water label in the Bay Area, was a fan. Atlantic had issued the LP overseas in 1975, but never in the U.S..
Having struck up a relationship with Warner Music, which owns Atlantic, to reissue Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding albums on vinyl, he approached them to do the Coleman reissue.
“I was trying for that one for a long time,” he says. “Right now, it’s easier to sell ‘70s folksinger-songwriters but years ago it was different – a lot more jazz.. And that’s one of the things you have to take into consideration when you decide what to reissue – you can’t afford to make mistakes.”
By the time WEA gave the OK to the Coleman tapes it didn’t matter: The album was too important. Besides, there is always a thirst for Ornette Coleman recordings.
For the record, Coleman and his band performed the following songs at Royce Hall on Sept. 26, 2007:
Following the Sound / Sleep Talking / Jordan / 911 / Call to Duty / Turn Around / Out of Order / Bach / Those That Know Before It Happens / Taking the Cure / Dancing In Your Head / Song World / Song X / Lonely Woman

On Sale Today
Social Distortion House Of Blues Sunset Strip, Dec. 28, 29, 30

On Sale Saturday
Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band, Los Angeles Sports Arena, Oct. 29
Velvet Revolver /  Alice In Chains, Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Oct. 26
Paramore / The Starting Line / The Almost, Wiltern, Nov.14
M.I.A.,  Wiltern, Nov. 9

Cafe Tacvba has booked a 20-city tour of the U.S. in support of their Oct. 9 release "Sino." Their first studio release in four years was co-produced by Tony Peluso and Gustavo Santaolalla. First single is "Volver a Comenzar" (To Begin Again), the video for which premieres today worldwide.
Tickets for most shows go on sale Friday.

Fri-Nov-16      Charlotte, NC - Neighborhood Theatre
Sat-Nov-17     Washington, DC - 9:30 Club                  
Sun-Nov-18     Boston – Roxy                              
Tue-Nov-20     New York–Hammerstein Ballroom
Thu-Nov-22     Detroit - St. Andrews Hall               
Fri-Nov-23      Chicago – Aragon                           
Sat-Nov-24     Kansas City, Mo. - Beaumont Club       
Sun-Nov-25     Denver - Gothic Theatre                
Mon-Nov-26   Lehi, Utah - Thanksgiving Point Amp.      
Wed-Nov-28   San Francisco - The Warfield         
Thu-Nov-29     Los Angeles – The Gibson Amp.    
Sat-Dec-01      San Diego - 4th & B
Sun-Dec-02     Phoenix, Ariz. - Celebrity Theatre
Tue-Dec-04     El Paso, Tex. - Club 101
Thu-Dec-06     Austin – La Zona Rosa
Fri-Dec-07       McAllen, Tex. - McAllen Civic Center
Sun-Dec-09     Houston - Warehouse         
Mon-Dec-10    Dallas - House of Blues      
Tue-Dec-11     New Orleans - House of Blues
Thu-Dec-13     Atlanta - Arena Palladium
Fri-Dec-14       W. Palm Beach, Fla. - Jimmy's Nightclub
Sun-Dec-16     Miami - Gusman Center