The world is tuning into the feats of athleticism happening in Rio de Janeiro this week during the Summer Olympics. It all kicked off with Friday’s Opening Ceremony, which contained a surprising, musical win. A performance of “The Girl From Ipanema,” the classic bossa nova tune by Antonio Carlos Jobim, was a highlight moment of the ceremony. As we so often see with this moments of cultural zeitgeist, the song saw an immediate spike in online listens.
https://youtu.be/UJkxFhFRFDA
According to Spotify, the song was streamed more than 40,000 times a day after the ceremony. That’s an increase of 1,200% in plays for the tune, which was clocking in about 3,000 plays a day prior to the games’ start.
Shazam has not been quiet about its plans for business growth beyond audio, but today it revealed an unexpected turn in those plans. Shazam will be at the center of a new television game show on Fox and Shazam Entertainment Limited will be a partner on the series. Beat Shazam will task competitors with identifying songs, which is the core user feature for the app. No premiere date has been shared yet.
Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra, the first-ever classical work composed and performed by R.E.M. bassist and songwriter Mike Mills, is set for its recorded release October 14 on Orange Mountain Music.
Mills composed the piece for his longtime friend and new musical collaborator, critically acclaimed violinist Robert McDuffie, with whom Mills has been close since the two grew up up together in Macon, GA. The pair is joined on the recording by the McDuffie Center for Strings Ensemble conducted by Ward Stare, made up of students from the award-winning Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University.
About the piece Mills says, “It is a pleasure and an honor to have composed and to perform this amazing project alongside my old friend Bobby, whose imagination and encouragement got the whole thing off the ground in the first place. I can’t wait to see where it takes us.”
“Mike has created a beautiful and joyful concerto,” McDuffie adds. “It’s a work that goes straight to your heart, and by the end you’ll want to dance and move to the South. I’m delighted and honored (and a bit nervous!) to be making music and sharing the stage with Mike and his amazing colleagues. It’s going to be an awesome ride.”
Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra received its world premiere in June, performed by Mills and McDuffie alongside the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The pair also performed the piece in Rome, and on August 11 Mills will make his first ever appearance at theAspen Music Festival while McDuffie makes his 40th to perform the Concerto. Mills and McDuffie will then be joined by Chicago’s critically hailed innovative chamber orchestra Fifth House Ensemble (15 strings) for a U.S. tour of the piece beginning on October 20 in Miami, produced by Columbia Artists Management LLC (CAMI). See below for a complete list of upcoming dates.
The Concerto, with orchestration and additional music by David Mallamud, features McDuffie performing on violin; a four-member rock band led by Mills (performing on bass and keyboard) with two electric guitarists and a drummer; and a string orchestra. The Toronto Star hailed the piece’s world debut as “a winning way to introduce symphony to a new generation.”
Mills-the son of a tenor who sang on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and in the Naval Aviation Choir-is a founding member of ground-breaking alternative rock group R.E.M. and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He first crossed paths with McDuffie when the pair were growing up in Macon, where Mills’ parents were in the choir of the First Presbyterian Church and McDuffie’s mother was the music director.
Nearly 20 years ago, Led Zeppelin introduced BBC Sessions, an acclaimed two-disc set of live recordings selected from the band’s appearances on BBC radio between 1969 and 1971. On September 16, the band will unveil THE COMPLETE BBC SESSIONS, an updated version of the collection that’s been newly remastered with supervision by Jimmy Page and expanded with eight unreleased BBC recordings, including three rescued from a previously “lost” session from 1969.
BBC Sessions was originally released in 1997 and has been certified double platinum by the RIAA. THE COMPLETE BBC SESSIONS builds on that collection with a third disc that boasts eight unreleased performances. In addition, the set includes extensive session-by-session liner notes written by Dave Lewis. For the first time ever, it provides accurate details and notes about all of the band’s BBC sessions.
Musical highlights on this new collection include the debut of a long-lost radio session that has achieved near-mythic status among fans. Originally broadcast in April 1969, the session included three songs: “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” “You Shook Me,” and the only recorded performance of “Sunshine Woman.”
Also included are two unreleased versions of both “Communication Breakdown” and “What Is And What Should Never Be.” Separated by two years, the performances vividly demonstrate the young band’s rapid evolution over a short period of time.
This year, for the first time ever, all mono studio recordings released by The Rolling Stones in the 1960s will be available in one unique historic collection. On September 30 ABKCO Records will make available world wide the vinyl and CD box sets of The Rolling Stones in Mono as well as Standard Digital, Mastered for iTunes and True HD (96k/24 bit, 192k/24 bit and DSD). The collection will contain a total of 186 tracks, 56 of which have never before been heard in mono since the advent of the digital age.
Spanning the era between 1963 and 1969, The Rolling Stones in Mono covers the formative years of “The Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World.” During this era, most rock and pop recordings were originally recorded in mono, with stereo often an afterthought, dealt with only following the completion of the original (mono) version of a given track. In short, mono reigned and this was, indeed, the case for the Rolling Stones during the period. While typical playback systems of the time were less than sophisticated, the original mono recordings, especially as heard through quality components, were of the highest audio quality and had a powerful and very direct impact. “You felt you were in the room . . . listening to exactly what went down in the studio, no frills, no nothing,” Keith Richards wrote in his autobiography, Life. “Rock was a completely new musical form,” Mick Jagger explained in a 1995 Rolling Stone interview. “It hadn’t been around for ten years when we started doing it . . . You felt like one of the chosen few, one of the only ones in the world who would get to play with this new toy. We had evangelical fervor.” Late recording engineer Dave Hassinger explained how he mixed his ’64-’66 work for the Stones in mono, “They always played together at the same time,” Hassinger said. “They would run the parts down, work out the changes here and there, nail it down, then start recording.”
Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke, in his 5,000-word essay that accompanies the set, writes, “The Rolling Stones in Mono is the full studio account of that first decade of history and mayhem, newly remastered with unprecedented fidelity and revelatory detail.” His commentaries are included with the vinyl and CD box sets as part of a 4-color deluxe 48 page lie flat book that features numerous rare photos by renowned photographer Terry O’Neill. The 16 LPs or 15 CDs are housed in the original full color album jackets that fit along with the book into a one piece specially crafted box.
The Rolling Stones in Mono was mastered by acclaimed GRAMMY® award winning engineer Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. For the project he utilized Direct Stream Digital (DSD) transfers from the original master recordings, with a sampling rate of 2,822,400. Lacquer cutting for vinyl was performed at Abbey Road Studios by Alex Wharton and Sean Magee. All vinyl box sets will be numbered and pressed on 180-gram vinyl. The Rolling Stones in Mono project has been overseen by Teri Landi, ABKCO’s Grammy award winning Chief Audio Engineer.
The Rolling Stones In Mono [16 LP vinyl box set; 15 CD box set] (all tracks also available digitally)
1) The Rolling Stones (UK, 1964)
2) 12 X 5 (1964)
3) The Rolling Stones No. 2 (UK, 1965)
4) The Rolling Stones Now! (1965)
5) Out of Our Heads (US, 1965)
6) Out of Our Heads (UK, 1965)
7) December’s Children (And Everybody’s) (1965)
8) Aftermath (UK, 1966)
9) Aftermath (US, 1966)
10) Between the Buttons (UK, 1967)
11) Flowers (1967)
12) Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)
13) Beggar’s Banquet (1968)
14) Let it Bleed (1969)
15) Stray Cats (a new collection of single A & B sides plus E.P. tracks)
The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America will have its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which runs from September 8 – 18.
Directed by Paul Dugdale, the film follows the band’s recent América Latina Olé tour, which culminated with a historic free gig in Havana, Cuba. This was the first time the band had played in Cuba so there were a few logistical issues to sort through. In the end, the band played a triumphant show to 1.2 million adoring fans.
Jack White has announced the release of JACK WHITE ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS 1998-2016, the 26-track double-LP and double-CD released physically and digitally worldwide on September 9th. Featuring alternate versions, mixes and previously unreleased recordings from The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and solo material all completely remastered, this is the essential Jack White songwriting collection. Find out more and preview the record below.
JACK WHITE ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS 1998-2016 is available for pre-order physically and digitally now. All digital pre-orders will receive an instant grat download of the spellbinding previously unreleased White Stripes track “City Lights” starting Friday, August 12th.
“City Lights” was written for The White Stripes’ GET BEHIND ME SATAN but then forgotten until White revisited the 2005 album for Third Man’s Record Store Day 2015 vinyl reissue and finished the recording in 2016. The track is the first new, worldwide commercially released White Stripes song since 2008.
“This, like (Son House’s) ‘Grinnin’ In Your Face,’ is mirror-music,” writes renowned music journalist Greil Marcus of “City Lights” in the album’s exclusive liner notes, “the singer talking to himself, trying to tell himself the truth, which he’s going to need if he’s going to step out of his door, walk into the world, and fool himself, for just a second, that he’s ready to take it on. As you listen, it’s no surprise at all that it took most of White’s music-making life to bring the song home.”
JACK WHITE ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS 1998-2016 collects 26 acoustic songs from throughout White’s wide-ranging musical career, spanning album tracks, B-sides, remixes, alternate versions, and previously unreleased tracks. The album, arranged in chronological order, includes acoustic songs made famous by The White Stripes, beginning with “Sugar Never Tasted So Good” (originally found on The White Stripes’ second-ever 7-inch single) and then lighting upon favorites like “Apple Blossom” and “I’m Bound To Pack It Up” (remixed here from the original recordings on 2000’s DE STIJL), “Hotel Yorba” and “We’re Going To Be Friends” (from 2001’s WHITE BLOOD CELLS), “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket” and “Well It’s True That We Love One Another” (from 2003’s GRAMMY® Award-winning ELEPHANT), “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me),” “White Moon” and “As Ugly As I Seem” (from 2005’s GET BEHIND ME SATAN) “Effect & Cause” (from 2007’s ICKY THUMP), and the Beck-produced “Honey, We Can’t Afford To Look This Cheap,” first found on the B-side to The White Stripes’ final single, 2007’s “Conquest.”
Also featured are “Never Far Away” (recorded for 2003’s COLD MOUNTAIN: MUSIC FROM THE MIRAMAX MOTION PICTURE) and “Love Is The Truth” (written and recorded for Coca-Cola’s 2006 What Goes Around campaign) as well as the Bluegrass Version of “Top Yourself” and an acoustic mix of the epic murder ballad, “Carolina Drama,” both written by White and Brendan Benson for The Raconteurs’ GRAMMY® Award-winning 2008 album, CONSOLERS OF THE LONELY. White’s two chart-topping solo albums, 2012’s BLUNDERBUSS and 2014’s LAZARETTO, are represented by a remarkably diverse range of material including “Love Interruption,” “On And On And On,” “Blunderbuss,” “Entitlement,” “Want And Able,” and alternative mixes of “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy,” “Just One Drink,” “I Guess I Should Go To Sleep,” and B-side, “Machine Gun Silhouette.”
The 26 tracks featured on JACK WHITE ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS 1998-2016 were remastered earlier this year by Andrew Mendelson at Nashville, TN’s Georgetown Masters. All songs were written and produced exclusively by Jack White, except “Never Far Away” (produced by T Bone Burnett), “Honey, We Can’t Afford To Look This Cheap” (produced by Beck), “Top Yourself (Bluegrass Version)” and “Carolina Drama” (written & produced by White & Brendan Benson), and “Machine Gun Silhouette” (written by White & Rob Jones). The complete track listing is below.
SIDE A
Sugar Never Tasted So Good
Apple Blossom (Remixed)
I’m Bound To Pack It Up (Remixed)
Hotel Yorba
We’re Going To Be Friends
You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket
Well It’s True That We Love One Another
Never Far Away
SIDE B
Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)
White Moon
As Ugly As I Seem
City Lights (Previously Unreleased White Stripes Track)
Honey, We Can’t Afford To Look This Cheap
Effect & Cause
SIDE C
Love Is The Truth (Acoustic Mix)
Top Yourself (Bluegrass Version)
Carolina Drama (Acoustic Mix)
Love Interruption
On And On And On
Machine Gun Silhouette (Acoustic Mix)
SIDE D
Blunderbuss
Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy (Alternate Mix)
I Guess I Should Go To Sleep (Alternate Mix)
Just One Drink (Acoustic Mix)
Entitlement
Want And Able
SiriusXM Canada has made a majority vote in favor of receiving solely cash consideration in the pending recapitalization of the company—essentially, approving its efforts to go private. Its parent company announced Thursday that large shareholders Slaight Communications and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. are giving the pact a thumbs-up at an upcoming special shareholders meeting.
Slaight and CBC collectively own 22.5% of SiriusXM Canada’s outstanding shares.
The Canadian company said Thursday that as a result of the cash election, the total transaction consideration that may be paid, with the approval of shareholders, will increase to about 74% from about 50%. This would represent a current value of approximately C$4.83 per Class A Share, based on Wednesday’s closing, if all remaining shareholders elect the maximum SIRI share consideration—approximately 74% in SIRI share consideration and approximately 26% in cash consideration.
Nike celebrates the strength of unity and power of team with “Unlimited Together,” a moving film featuring original lyrics from Chicago-born artist Chance the Rapper.
