Marilyn Monroe attending the Royal Command Film Performance at the Empire Theater in London on October 29,1956. The film screening was The Battle Of The River Plate.
Led Zeppelin’s First Live TV Appearance, 1969
Recorded at the Danmarks Radio Studios, Denmark for TV Byen/Denmark Broadcasting Corporation on March 17, 1969, Led Zeppelin ripped through a stunning setlist of their early favorites: “Communication Breakdown,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” and “How Many More Times.”
https://youtu.be/HJZHh-FiRz0
Midge Ure Starts Leg Two Of North American Tour Tonight
Grammy and Brit Award winning musician Midge Ure returns to North America for leg two of the ‘Live and Electric’ Tour tonight. He’s playing with a full band for the first time since the Retro Futura Tour in 2014: with former Right the Stars drummer BC Taylor and L.A. based keyboard player Tony Solis “I have been fortunate enough to meet up with some brilliant American musicians over the last few years and will be working with a couple of them on this tour. Both are multi instrumentalists and will cover drums, bass and electronics”
This run of dates will be mosty West Coast then crossing into Texas and ultimately Nashville, TN. Last year saw Ure playing mostly East Coast dates and the year prior he toured solo acoustic on the Fragile Troubadour Tour not only playing but traveling completely solo and recording the whole experience himself for a documentary released late last year. The film highlights the realities facing the modern touring musician. Ure explains how the idea came to be: “After I was asked to do a masterclass at Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts I realised that talking about multi album record deals and world tours would be something most of the students would never experience so I set about doing the six week tour completely alone. No crew. No tour manager. No musicians. I wanted to show the reality of what they might face, if they pursue a career in the current music industry.”
Midge Ure:Fragile Troubadour from midge ure on Vimeo.
Midge will be performing Ultravox, Visage and solo material as well as playing songs from his highly acclaimed album Fragile, released in 2014. Listen here via Billboard Magazine. Very much plugged in, this tour features Ure on electric guitar and synthesizer recalling the groundbreaking, innovative sound he is known for.
Ure is constantly in the studio when breaks in touring allows working on new material with hopes for a new full-length album to be done by late next year. He has also contributed a song for the accompanying album to the movie ‘Fly’ about the Olympic ski underdog Eddie the Eagle released in the UK and US in 2016. The song Touching Hearts and Skies while contemporary is steeped in the essence of the early 80’s Ultravox/Visage sound.
Midge has also just appeared in a new highly acclaimed BBC TV show looking for ‘part time’ bands, exploring unsigned bands who perform just for the she joy of it. He travelled across Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales with a film crew choosing artists to perform at a concert in Manchester where the audience would select their favorite band. New Order’s Peter Hook and Soul to Soul’s Jazzy B covered other parts of the UK. Unlike other ‘talent shows’ there is no record deal, music equipment or blank cheques awarded. The prize is appearing on the show and the platform it gives them.
Another recent UK happening saw Midge reunite with some old friends…After meeting up with old Rich Kids bandmate ex Sex Pistol Glen Matlock at the prestigious Q Awards the pair decided to get together with drummer Rusty Egan and do a ‘one off’ show to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the birth of UK punk. The band performed the London show with Spandau Ballets Gary Kemp helping out on guitar.
Midge Ure Tour Dates:
January 5 – Vancouver, BC – Rickshaw
January 6 – Seattle, WA – Triple Door
January 7 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir
January 9 – Sacramento, CA – Harlow’s
January 10 – Petaluma, CA – Mystic Theater
January 11 – San Francisco, CA – Social Hall
January 12 – Orange County, CA – Coach House
January 13 – Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy
January 14 – San Diego, CA – The Roxy
January 16 – Salt Lake City, UT – Grand at The Complex
January 18 – Denver, CO – Soiled Dove
January 20 – Austin, TX – 3Ten
January 21 – Denton, TX – Dan’s Silver Leaf
January 23 – Nashville, TN – City Winery
The Doors Announce 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of Debut Album
50 years ago today in 1967, The Doors broke through to the other side for the first time with its eponymous debut on Elektra Records. The Doors would go on to sell millions of copies and made stars of John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and Jim Morrison. Today, the album is widely considered to be one of the all-time-classic rock and roll debuts.
To celebrate this landmark recording’s 50th anniversary, the band will release THE DOORS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION. This 3CD/LP set will be available on March 31. In addition, the music will also be available digitally.
To coincide with this, today will be declared “Day Of The Doors” in the city of Los Angeles. The proclamation will be made this afternoon by Councilmember Mike Bonin during a public event at the intersection of Pacific and Windward Avenues, the location of the iconic “Venice” sign. Founding Doors members John Densmore and Robby Krieger will be on hand at the event as will family members of the late Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison.
Packaged in a 12 x 12 hardcover book, THE DOORS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION includes a remastered version of the album’s original stereo mix, available on CD for the first time in a decade and remastered for the first time in nearly 30 years. The album’s original mono mix was also remastered for this set and is making its CD debut here. An LP-version of the mono mix is also included. The third disc features live performance from The Matrix in San Francisco recorded just weeks after The Doors was released. Music journalist David Fricke provides detailed liner notes for the set, which includes a selection of rare and previously unseen photographs.
THE DOORS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION offers a rare opportunity to hear the band on the verge of superstardom with live performances recorded during a March 7, 1967 show at the Matrix in San Francisco. The Matrix recordings heard on this deluxe edition were sourced from the recently discovered, original tapes, previously thought to be lost. The Matrix recordings originally released in 2008 were from a third-generation source, so the sound quality of the versions debuting here is second to none.
Packed with electrifying performance, the disc contains live versions of eight tracks on The Doors, including “Twentieth Century Fox,” “The Crystal Ship” and “Back Door Man.”
THE DOORS (50TH ANNIVESARY DELUXE EDITION)
Track Listing
Disc One (Original Stereo Mix)
Disc Two (Original Mono Mix)
- “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”
- “Soul Kitchen”
- “The Crystal Ship”
- “Twentieth Century Fox”
- “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)”
- “Light My Fire”
- “Back Door Man”
- “I Looked At You”
- “End Of The Night”
- “Take It As It Comes”
- “The End”
Disc Three: Live At The Matrix, March 7, 1967
- “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”
- “Soul Kitchen”
- “The Crystal Ship”
- “Twentieth Century Fox”
- “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)”
- “Light My Fire”
- “Back Door Man”
- “The End”
LP (Original Mono Mix)
Side One
- “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”
- “Soul Kitchen”
- “The Crystal Ship”
- “Twentieth Century Fox”
- “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)”
- “Light My Fire”
Side Two
- “Back Door Man”
- “I Looked At You”
- “End Of The Night”
- “Take It As It Comes”
- “The End”
WATCH: Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds’ Bond Explored in First Trailer for Their HBO Documentary
The trailer for HBO’s highly anticipated documentary about the relationship between the late Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is here — and PEOPLE has a first look. Fisher, 60, was aboard an 11-hour flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday when she went into cardiac arrest. She died Tuesday in the hospital.
Reynolds died a day later at the age of 84.
Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds will debut Jan. 7 (at 8 p.m. EST) on HBO.
Chicago and the Doobie Brothers Announce Co-Headlining Tour
Two of the most successful and critically-acclaimed rock bands Chicago and The Doobie Brothers – who have sold more than 150 million records combined – announced today their co-headline North American summer tour kicking off June 7, 2017 in Concord, CA. The 30+ date tour, promoted by Live Nation, will take the Grammy Award-winning and multi-platinum selling groups through amphitheatres in major cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Toronto, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Washington, DC for a night of unforgettable live music. The tour will conclude July 30, 2017 in Virginia Beach, VA.
Tickets for the tour go on sale starting Monday, January 9 at 10 a.m. in select cities on www.livenation.com. A limited number of VIP Packages will be available including premium seating, meet & greet, exclusive merch and more. Please see below for full tour itinerary and details.
“The perfect summer line-up, playing dozens of the best-loved rockin’ pop classics. I’m happy to be hangin’ out with our ‘Doobie’ friends… a great band,” said Robert Lamm of Chicago. “We’re excited to be touring with the Doobies again. I know we’ll have lots of fun,” adds Lee Loughnane. “Come see us in a city near you.”
“We are so excited to once again be sharing the stage with our wonderful friends Chicago! They’re a great band, and musically we fit together very well,” said Tom Johnston of The Doobie Brothers. “We know from past experience what a great show this is going to be for the audience. I’m sure there will be some fun musical surprises along the way too. It’s going to be a great summer,” adds Patrick Simmons.
Chicago & The Doobie Brothers – 2017 North American Co-Headline Tour
All dates, venues and cities below subject to change.
6/7/2017 – Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion
6/9/2017 – Las Vegas, NV @ Park Theater at the Monte Carlo
6/10/2017 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
6/11/2017 – Phoenix, AZ @ AK-Chin Pavilion
6/13/2017 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
6/16/2017 – Dallas, TX @ Gexa Energy Pavilion
6/17/2017 – Austin, TX @ Austin360 Amphitheatre
6/18/2017 – Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
6/20/2017 – Kansas City, MO @ Starlight Theatre
6/21/2017 – St Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
6/23/2017 – Alpharetta, GA @ Verizon Amphitheater
6/24/2017 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
6/25/2017 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
6/27/2017 – Nashville, TN @ Ascend Amphitheater
6/29/2017 – Tampa, FL @ MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
6/30/2017 – West Palm Beach, FL @ Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre
7/12/2017 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
7/14/2017 – Noblesville, IN @ Klipsch Music Center
7/15/2017 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
7/16/2017 – Clarkston, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theatre
7/18/2017 – Darien Center, NY @ Darien Lake Performing Arts Center
7/19/2017 – Toronto, ON @ Molson Canadian Amphitheatre
7/21/2017 – Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
7/22/2017 – Bethel, NY @ Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
7/23/2017 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
7/25/2017 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
7/26/2017 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
7/28/2017 – Wantagh, NY @ Nikon At Jones Beach Theater
7/29/2017 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
7/30/2017 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
Thomas Dolby on Working With Foreigner And Their Massive “Waiting For A Girl Like You” Hit
Thomas Morgan Robertson, known by the stage name Thomas Dolby, is an English producer, and one of the most influential musicians of our era. His hit singles include “She Blinded Me with Science” from 1982, and 1984 single “Hyperactive!”. He has also worked in production and as a session musician, as a technology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and as the Music Director for the TED Conference, and is now a Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University.
Tell me about working with Mutt Lange and Foreigner on the 4 album. You spent a month with them, which had to be quite an interesting experience, spending that length of time in the trenches with one of the bands that was really at the top of the “corporate rock” heap at that point.
Thomas Dolby: Up until that point, I’d never spent more than about 10 hours at a stretch in a professional recording studio, and then I was watching the clock because I was paying for it. So to have the luxury of being up all night at Electric Lady most nights of the week with any keyboard that I chose to hire from S.I.R., that was certainly a real thrill. I think especially the band themselves didn’t really know what I was putting on their records. During the day, they were doing vocals with Lou Gramm, and they would leave me at night or put me in the other studio working on my own with a relief engineer. And then they would come in and they would say yay or nay to the stuff that I’d done. I remember specifically, when I created the intro to “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” I’d done it with a technique that I’d long been hoping to try out, which was basically just to sort of build yourself a Mellotron by recording a sustained note on each track of the multi-track and manipulating them in a wave to create combinations of harmonies. I’d been longing to do that for years, and I actually got to do that one night at Electric Lady and put it on the intro of “Waiting for a Girl Like You.” The band came in in the morning and I played it for them, and there was sort of a silence and then the bass player said, “It’s a bit like massage music, isn’t it?” [Laughs] But to their credit, Mutt Lange and Mick Jones got it and it was very un-Foreigner-like in a certain way. It was certainly unlike anything Foreigner were famous for up to that point. I got a big thrill when, six months later, I’d be driving and there’d be an AOR radio station and on would come my “massage music,” 15 seconds of it before the groove kicked in.
How An SNL Set Is Dismantled During The Show
Saturday Night Live posted a video showing how a set is dismantled during the opening credits. They should do a whole show on how this is done throughout the program.
Glenn Campbell Shreds Boots Randolph’s “Yackety Sax”
In a 1969 episode of Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, the great country artist ended the concert section of his show with the Chet Atkins guitar adaptation of Boots Randolph‘s song “Yackety Sax“, affectionately entitled “Yackety Axe“. Campbell impressively shredded the song at lightning speed without missing a single note.
“We usually end the concert section with a banjo tune, but tonight we’re gonna play one of Chet Atkins’ and Boots Randolph’s favorites called “Yackety Sax”.”
BuzzAngle Music: Overall Music Consumption Up 4.2%; Subscription Streaming Up 124%
BuzzAngle Music just released their first-ever yearly report, on 2016 U.S. music consumption. 2016 was another successful year in music, with overall consumption rising 4.2% over 2015, marking the second year in a row with solid growth.The continued explosion of audio stream consumption, which increased 82.6% to 250B streams, fueled this increase.
Both album sales and song sales continued to decline but the transition to these new access methods has shown to provide overall growth and a sustainable business model for the future. Breaking down the tremendous streaming growth shows what is perhaps the most important stat of the year: the percentage of subscription streams rose from 62% of the total in 2015 to 76% of the total in 2016.
The number of 2016 subscription streams grew over 2.25x the 2015 subscription streams amount.In addition to providing the industry with a great business model, streaming services offer music lovers a much wider selection of music at their fingertips. In 2016, there were over 28M unique songs played via a streaming service compared to 7M songs that were purchased. An average day’s audio-streaming volume in 2016 (1.2B) was much larger than the entire year’s volume of song sales (734M).
Audio streams hit a record high of 250.7 billion, which is over 80% more than the previous year. For the first time, two songs reached over 700 million streams including “Panda” by Desiigner (736.8m) and Rihanna’s “Work” (716.6m).
While streaming and overall consumption are up, music sales have continued to take a hit in almost every category. With a daily average of 1.2 billion, there were more streams per day than song downloads for the entire year (734 million). Album sales are also down 15.6% and song sales dropped 24.8%. The only category of album sales to increase was vinyl, which saw sales rise by 25.9%. Unfortunately for overall physical album sales, vinyl only accounts for 8%.
BuzzAngle’s analysis by genre showed that Hip Hop/Rap continues to be the most popular genre in terms of total song consumption and accounts for 30% of all streams, while Rock continues to lead in sales. They also pointed out that in 2016 approximately 50% of all music consumed were ‘Deep Catalog” titles, meaning they were released over three years ago.
Still, even with a drop of over 4%, Pop music held onto its lead in album consumption at 14.6% with Hip Hop/Rap coming in second with 14.4%. Hip Hip/Rap saw album consumption rise 24.8% and took the top spot for song consumption. Drake was named BuzzAngle’s Artist of the Year with his album “Views” and song “One Dance” leading in consumption units.
EDM saw a 35% increase in album consumption and 72.% in songs, clocking in as the largest genre growth of the year.
The Rock genre which includes rock, alternative, metal, indie rock, punk, and folk had the most album sales, accounting for 63% of all vinyl sales.
Adele sold the most albums in 2016 with her 2015 release “25” with 1,550,584 album sales, beating Drake’s “Views” by less than 40,000 units.
The BuzzAngle 2016 U.S. music report is filled with stats on consumption, top artists, albums and songs, as well as a number of interesting and fun highlights. Download the full report – BuzzAngle Music 2016 U.S. Report