Fri 05.09.08
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed a special fundraiser on Wednesday night (May 7th) at Red Bank, New Jersey's Count Basie Theatre and for the first time performed Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town and 1975's Born To Run back-to-back and in their entirety, according to backstreets.com.
Proceeds from the fundraiser went to the refurbishing of the 82-year-old theater. Springsteen's wife Patti Scialfa currently serves on the Board of the Basie Foundation.
The band was introduced by NBC news anchor -- and longtime Springsteen fan -- Brian Williams who touched upon the recent death of E Street Band keyboardist Danny Federici by saying, "Great families endure. And great, great bands endure. The netting is just to keep the larger pieces of debris from falling down, and if there's an entity that could cause the big ones to fall, it's this group here... Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band!"
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's setlist: Darkness On The Edge Of Town -- "Badlands," "Adam Raised A Cain," "Something In The Night," "Candy's Room," "Racing In The Street," "The Promised Land," "Factory," "Streets Of Fire," "Prove It All Night," and "Darkness On The Edge Of Town."
After an intermission the band returned to perform Born To Run with the periodic help of a horn section Springsteen called the Mighty Max Horns featuring Mark Pender on trumpet, LaBamba on trombone, Jerry Vivino and Ed Manion on saxes. Born To Run -- "Thunder Road," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "Night," "Backstreets," "Born To Run," "She's The One," "Meeting Across The River," and "Jungleland." The show's encores included the Darkness On The Edge Of Town outtake "So Young And In Love, "Kitty's Back," "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)," and a cover of Eddie Floyd's Raise Your Hand."
The benefit raised money for the theater's renovation, which will begin this summer. Money raised at the show will also go towards various other programs though the theatre, including the Cool School which includes "workshops with seasoned professionals for aspiring actors, musicians and dancers of all ages."
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kick off their European tour on May 22nd in Dublin, Ireland. The band will be back in the U.S. on July 27th to kick off a three-night stand at New Jersey's Giants Stadium.

Fri 05.09.08
An enterprising and talented fan has created a virtual Beatles reunion album and posted his results on youtube.com, according to the Beatles fan website Abbey Road Best (abbeyrd.best.vwh.net).
A man identified as Octavio has taken rare Beatles and solo demo tracks and added appropriate "Beatlesque" sounding instrumentation to essentially create the album that never was. One of Octavio's "outfakes" of the third unfinished mid-'90s Beatles reunion track "Now And then" recently duped some longtime fans into thinking that they were actually hearing an unreleased Beatles reunion performance.
Among the demos that have been overdubbed are such rarities as Paul McCartney's 1968 version of "Goodbye" which morphs his 1968 demo with Mary Hopkin's 1969 version; George Harrison's All Things Must Pass-era demos of "Nowhere To Go" and "I Don't Wanna Do It"; John Lennon's late '70s and 1980 demos of "India," "You Saved My Soul," "Help Me To Help Myself," "Grow Old With Me," and others.
All of the tracks are created to sound very much like the Beatles' Anthology reunion tracks "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love," which were produced by ELO's Jeff Lynne.
Octavio has started his own blog virtualbeatles.blogspot.com which provides the audio to the tracks. The videos, which mainly consist of photo montages, can be accessed by logging on to youtube.com/user/gaius476.

Fri 05.09.08
Adult film company Vivid Entertainment has issued a challenge to Jimi Hendrix's estate to prove its claim that Vivid's just-released sex video featuring the late rock icon is a fake. According to Undercover News, Jimi Hendrix The Sex Tape allegedly features Hendrix and two women having sex more than 40 years ago. After the tape was released, Experience Hendrix, the family company controlling the Hendrix estate run by Jimi's sister Janie, immediately said it as fake. On Thursday (May 8th), Vivid has offered Experience Hendrix $100,000 if they can prove that claim.
Vivid co-chairman Steven Hirsch says, "Vivid took considerable time and spent a substantial sum of money to authenticate the footage and we are very comfortable that this is the real thing. We believe that those who say otherwise are relying on their emotions to make unsubstantiated claims. If Experience Hendrix can prove definitively that it's not Jimi Hendrix on this footage then we will pay them $100,000."
Experience Hendrix has not responded to the challenge yet, but the rocker's former tour manager, Neville Chesters, says he's "positive" it's Jimi in the eight-millimeter footage. He also speculated that the film was probably developed in Germany because it would've been difficult to get sexually explicit film, especially a bi-racial sex act, commercially developed in the U.S. back then.
Hendrix's girlfriend Kathy Etchingham has said she didn't think the footage was authentic, although she reportedly has only seen still images, not the film itself. But in her 1973 book, An Intimate Biography of Jimi Hendrix, Etchingham said, "He went really crazy about cinefilming. He would also get friends of his to film naked women running around his room."

Fri 05.09.08
Bon Jovi has a documentary in the works to coincide with its 25 year anniversary. The band has recently brought a film crew out on the road to shoot interviews and other footage. Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple is behind the new film. Singer Jon Bon Jovi says he hopes to dig up some archived footage as well, but tells us he doesn't know exactly what to expect from the film: "I'm not sure. And I think that's partly the beauty of it and the fear that's driving it. I was interested because people have been offering us boatloads of money to write a memoir. And I'm not ready to write a biography yet because it's too soon. This story is half told. I'd like to catch the moments while the moments are happening. And look back on the 25 years while the moments are fresh. With this because I'm making it and it's either going to tell the truth or it's not coming out."
There's no word on when the DVD will come out. Bon Jovi plans to announce a show at Central Park this summer.
Bon Jovi will tour Europe in May and June and then return from some U.S. dates in July.

Fri 05.09.08
Bryan Adams recently kicked off a solo acoustic tour, which stops in Albany, New York tonight (Friday, May 9th). He's playing a mixture of hits and tracks off his upcoming album, called 11. During the brief tour, Adams tells us he's stripping down the tunes and playing them acoustically: "They all work acoustically because they were all written on an acoustic guitar. The album started out as an acoustic record and we halfway through I sort of switched gears and decided to make sort of an acoustic rock record. When I play the songs live, it actually sort of led me into the path into this next tour -- my first North American acoustic tour. And I feel confident enough with these songs -- and songs in the past -- that the show is going to be more interesting. Just hearing the songs stripped down completely myself and the guitar."
Adams' new album will come out next Tuesday (May 13th). The set will be available exclusively at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores nationwide and on WalMart.com in CD and MP3 format. Adams recorded 11 -- named for its chronological order among his releases, as well as for the number of tracks it has -- in hotel rooms and backstage concert venues throughout Europe over the past two years.

Fri 05.09.08
Tina Turner announced her first tour in eight years yesterday (May 8th). The Tina Turner Live North American Tour kicks off on October 1st in Kansas City, Missouri and will hit 17 cities before wrapping on December 8th in Montreal.
Turner said in a prepared statement that her appearance at the Grammy Awards earlier this year played a big part in deciding to return to the road: "After performing with Beyonce at the Grammy Awards, the response was overwhelming. Everywhere I went people were asking me when I was going back on tour. So after a lot of thought and planning, I can answer the only way I know how -- See you in Kansas City where we'll kick the tour off!"

Tina Turner North American tour dates (subject to change):
October 1 - Kansas City, MO - Sprint Center
October 3 - Chicago, IL - United Center
October 6 - Chicago, IL - Allstate Arena
October 13 - Los Angeles, CA - Staples Center
October 14 - Anaheim, CA - Honda Center
October 19 - San Jose, CA - HP Pavilion
October 22 - Sacramento, CA - Arco Arena
October 24 - Phoenix, AZ - Jobing.com Arena
October 30 - Miami, FL - American Airlines Arena
November 2 - Fort Lauderdale - Bank Atlantic Center
November 5 - Orlando, FL - Amway Arena
November 9 - Atlanta, GA - Philips Arena
November 13 Toronto, ON - Air Canada Centre
November 16 - Boston, MA - TD Banknorth Garden
November 23 - Washington, DC - Verizon Center
November 26 - Newark, NJ - Prudential Center
December 3 - Uniondale, NY - Nassau Coliseum
December 8 - Montreal, QB - Bell Centre
Turner's last world tour which she had said was her last, dubbed Twenty Four Seven, was rated Pollstar's most successful tour of 2000

Thu 05.08.08
Producer T-Bone Burnett who's signed on to produce the Who's upcoming covers album says that the project will pick up where the band's pre-fame R&B group the High Numbers left off.
Burnett, who produced Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' recent Grammy Award-winning Raising Sand album and is touring with the duo, says that Roger Daltrey is keen on selecting hardcore R&B cuts for the still unnamed project: "I've been a High Numbers fan for some time because I love that 'I'm The Face (If You Want It, Babe)' And Roger is a really great singer and we started going through material. And it's very interesting, the songs he... You start realizing, 'Oh yeah, that's where he's coming from.' You know you can discover more about him going through this old stuff. We're essentially going to be creating a past that never existed, you know? We've picked out about five or six where we've said, 'Yeah, let's do these' and we'll probably do about 15."
There's been no word as to when the album will begin production. Several weeks ago Pete Townshend posted a long message on the band's official website thewho.com claiming that he would be taking an hiatus from Who activities for the near future and was pulling out of a planned tour and recording sessions with the band set for this fall. As of now all future Who plans are in limbo.
On June 15th Roger Daltrey perform with Peter Frampton and others as part of the charity super group playing the London International Music Show at ExCel London. Part of the proceeds from the show by the band dubbed the RD Crusaders will go to Daltrey's patron charity, Britain's Teenage Cancer Trust.
The Who's only scheduled appearance of the years is set for July 12th in Los Angeles when the band receives the only award at the 2008 VH1 Rock Honors. The show will be broadcast on VH1 on July 17th.

Thu 05.08.08
Pink Floyd's David Gilmour has a new live set on the way. In September, he'll release Live In Gdansk, the last show of his 2006 summer tour. The gig, which was recorded in front of 50,000 people at the shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, find Gilmore backed by the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra featuring a 40-strong string section. Highlights include the performance of "A Great Day for Freedom" with the orchestral arrangement of the late Michael Kamen, and a guest appearance by prominent Polish pianist Leszek Mozdzer, who reprised his piano part from On an Island's "A Pocketful Of Stones."
Last fall, Gilmour released a DVD called Remember That Night - Live From The Royal Albert Hall.
Glimour's most recent solo album, On an Island, came out in 2006.

Thu 05.08.08
Def Leppard's new album, Songs From the Sparkle Lounge, debuted at Number Five this week, marking the band's 11th consecutive Top 20 album. It has been catching some buzz thanks to the single "Nine Lives," featuring country singer Tim McGraw. The set was recorded last year at vocalist Joe Elliot's Dublin studio. But the material was mostly written in 2006 while Def Leppard was on tour and dubbed their backstage area "The Sparkle Lounge." Elliot tells us how the most recent tracks came about: "What we tend to do with in this one is like 'Alright, let's sit down and try write some songs.' If we were out buying records these are kind of songs we want to buy. We just sat down and wrote songs that we thought were meaningful songs. That's why there are songs on the album that are individually written by people because they just took the song and rolled with it, which we've never really done much in the past."
Def Leppard kicks off a U.S. summer tour August 1st in Nashville.

Thu 05.08.08
Paul McCartney will be giving away his most recent album with copies of the May 18th edition of London's Mail On Sunday.
Uncut.co..uk reported that Memory Almost Full which was released last June, is expected to now reach up to 2 million homes through the giveaway. The album peaked at Number Three in the U.S. and Number Five in the UK and has sold over $1.5 million copies world wide. The album was McCartney's first for the Starbucks co-owned record label Hear Music and benefited greatly at having the album sold at the Starbucks Coffee stores.
The Mail On Sunday's managing director Stephen Miron told Music Week, "If you look at how he came to do the Starbucks' album deal, it was a result of feeling unhappy with the music industry and looking at alternative ways of distribution. I can't think of anyone else who has come up with the right alternative distribution than us."
Previous album artists who have participated in giveaways through The Mail On Sunday include Prince, Simply Red, and UB40. Kinks cofounder Ray Davies participated in a similar giveaway with his last album with The London Times.
Paul McCartney has two live dates planned for next month; he'll next perform on June 1st in Liverpool, England at the FC Anfield Stadium and in the Ukraine on June 14th in Kiev's Independence Square, in a show called the Independence Concert. The Liverpool and Kiev shows are so far his only scheduled dates of the year.
In other Beatles-related news:

George Harrison's son, 29 year old Dhani (pronounced Danny) Harrison is planning on hitting the road in the U.S. this fall according to Britain's Daily Express.
Dhani, who co-produced his dad's 2002 posthumous album Brainwashed, has been releasing songs online by his band Thenewno2 (pronounced The New Number Two) over the past couple of years.
A source told the paper, "Dhani isn't a big attention seeker but it's understood he hopes to go on the road in the autumn. Dhani will be keen to keep things low key and they'll be playing small venues, but there's bound to be a lot of interest."
Dhani's most high profile gig so far was the 2002 Concert For George at London's Royal Albert Hall in which he was part of the backing band playing behind Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, among others.