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.
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 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.
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.
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 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
This week, Drake ties a historic mark, as he logs his 132nd career Hot 100 entry, as Gucci Mane’s “Both,” on which Drake is featured, debuts at No. 41. With the bow, Drake ties Lil Wayne for the most Hot 100 appearances among soloists in the chart’s 58-year history.
Among all acts, only the Glee Cast boasts more Hot 100 entries than Drake and Lil Wayne: 207. (Billed as the Glee Cast on its releases, the act was a rotating collective with certain members present, although not singing on every song, throughout the show’s six-season run on Fox in 2009-15.)
Here is an updated count of the acts with the most charted Hot 100 entries dating to the ranking’s Aug. 4, 1958, inception (though the chart dated Jan. 7, 2017):
Most Hot 100 Entries All-Time
207, Glee Cast
132, Drake
132, Lil Wayne
108, Elvis Presley
91, James Brown
86, Jay Z
82, Chris Brown
80, Kanye West
75, Ray Charles
73, Aretha Franklin
71, The Beatles
70, Nicki Minaj
70, Taylor Swift
Notably, the Hot 100 originated two years after the 1956 career launch of Elvis Presley. Still, Presley has charted the most entries by a soloist as a lead act, claiming lead billing in all 108 of his visits. James Brown follows among soloists as the lead on all 91 of his.
Here’s a vintage 1983 clip of Mark Hamill talking about the future of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga.
Larry David gives a very Larry David answer to an audience member’s question during a 2015 TimesTalks interview when the young man asks a question on behalf of his sister watching online.
https://youtu.be/rtbicVBMRFA
GQ has shared a video where Hollywood’s most talented everyman Billy Crudup (Eric MacLeish in Spotlight, Russell Hammond in Almost Famous, Will Bloom in Big Fish) gives us a quick tutorial on how to properly juggle. He explains that its good to start off with a little two-ball action and then work your way up to three balls.
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Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
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