ROBBIE ROBERTSON is assembling five-CD box set of the BAND, to hit stores in May 2005. The compilation will include over 100 songs, both old and unreleased. Robertson, himself part-Native American, is currently writing a Native American-themed Broadway musical, tentatively titled Ceremony...The Brit bad boys of OASIS will release the follow-up to 2002's Heathen Chemistry on May 26th...The grand finale of the Vote for Change tour in Washington, D.C., will be broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Performances by BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, PEARL JAM, R.E.M., DAVE MATTHEWS and JAMES TAYLOR will be intercut with backstage segments filmed by renowned American documentary filmmakers Albert Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker...
PAUL WESTERBERG, BOB MOULD, the GEAR DADDIES and members of SOUL ASYLUM are among those who will perform at an October 23rd concert in Minneapolis to benefit Soul Asylum bassist KARL MUELLER, who has learned he has throat cancer...Indie idol STEPHEN MALKMUS is completing his third solo album for release next April or May. In the meantime, the former PAVEMENT frontman will head to Argentina in October to perform in rock festivals in Cordoba and Buenos Aires...After spending the summer on the road with the Vans Warped Tour, California punk band BAD RELIGION will kick off a 24-date US tour on October 14th in Dallas in support of their latest album, The Empire Strikes First...
ALICIA KEYS will perform at the Great Wall of China on Saturday night, along with pop diva CYNDI LAUPER and quirky newcomer NELLIE McKAY. The three will perform Lauper's breakout hit "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" . . . Suif Jackson, a bodyguard for LIL' KIM, was sentenced to twelve years in prison on Wednesday for firing a gun about twenty times while Kim was leaving a Hot 97 radio show in 2001. Kim is awaiting her February trial for charges of repeatedly lying to a grand jury about the incident . . . FRANZ FERDINAND, MISSION OF BURMA, the BLACK KEYS and KEANE are among the 200 bands that will perform at the five-day Pop Montreal festival, kicking off September 29th . . . Bad boy, Sunday painter and actor extraordinaire ROBERT DOWNEY JR. is now adding pop singer to his resume, with the upcoming Sony Classical release of his untitled debut album on November 23rd. In addition to eight original songs, Downey covers YES' "Your Move" . . .
The success of the two-disc compilation Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo has led to the creation of the Alejandro Fund. Like the album, the fund will benefit the fight against Hepatitis C, which Escovedo is battling. A concert to contribute to the fund is set for November 4th in Austin, and will feature LOS LONELY BOYS, JOHN CALE, LENNY KAYE and RUBEN RAMOS. Escovedo himself will play seven dates in October and November . . . The DVD DEAD BOYS -- Live at CBGB's 1977, featuring the punk rockers in their morbid, hard-living prime, is due November 16th . . . The DVD GEORGE THOROGOOD AND THE DESTROYERS -- 30th Anniversary Tour Live, due October 19th, captures the veteran blues rockers on the British leg of their 2003 European tour. Expect "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," "Who Do You Love" and "Bad to the Bone" interspersed with backstage banter and interviews . . .
The BEASTIE BOYS will perform at the first annual Hip-Hop Honors, to take place at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom on October 3rd. Hosted by MOS DEF, the tribute will honor PUBLIC ENEMY, RUN-DMC, KRS-ONE, SUGARHILL GANG, ROCK STEADY CREW, DJ KOOL HERC and TUPAC. Set to air on VH-1 October 12th, other performers include NAS, KID ROCK, MC HAMMER and GRANDMASTER FLASH . . . WYCLEF JEAN will make an appearance at RUSSELL SIMMONS' latest Hip-Hop Summit to help register voters, set for September 23rd in the War Memorial in Trenton, New Jersey. The Summit will be web streaming to 6,000 high schools and colleges in the state . . . New Orleans pianist ELLIS MARSALIS SR., father of trumpeter WYNTON MARSALIS and saxophonist BRANFORD MARSALIS, died Sunday at the age of ninety-six. Marsalis was active in the civil rights movement, and owned a hotel where Martin Luther King Jr., future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. frequently stayed . . . RATDOG, featuring BOB WEIR of the DEAD, will kick off their fall tour with a live show on Berkeley, California, radio station KPFA. The show will also be Web cast live on KPFA.org, KFCF.org and Nugs.net . . .
The DVD Elliott Smith: Olympia, Washington, due November 30th, captures the late singer-songwriter performing a forty-minute solo set on the final night of the 1999 YoYo a Go Go festival. This was one of Smith's last shows without a back-up band . . . SON VOLT will begin recording their fourth album at the end of the month. After a five-year hiatus, JAY FARRAR and the band will hole up in Farrar's St. Louis studio . . . THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS have completed their first children's DVD for Disney Sound, dubbed Here Come the ABCs, set for a winter release. TMBG will also soon begin recording the follow-up to 2002 kids' book for Simon and Schuster, Bed, Bed, Bed . . . RICHIE HAVENS will launch a twenty-two-date American tour on September 23rd in Vermont to promote his latest album, Grace of the Sun, out on his own Stormy Forest label. In the addition to six original tracks on the record (the Brooklynite's twenty-sixth) are covers of BOB DYLAN's "All Along the Watchtower" and JONI MITCHELL's "Woodstock . . .
50 CENT will star in Locked and Loaded, a film from the producers of 8 Mile loosely based on the rapper's life, to hit theaters in 2005 or 2006. In the Paramount movie, 50 will star as a drug dealer who changes his life to pursue a music career . . . WHO frontman ROGER DALTREY and DAVID CROSBY will headline the fourth Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp weekend in Los Angeles from February 17th through the 21st. Other musicians who will offer lessons and daily jam sessions to the participants include the ALLMAN BROTHERS' DICKY BETTS, the E-STREET BAND's NILS LOFGREN and former POISON singer (turned reality TV star) BRET MICHAELS. Meanwhile, WHO guitarist PETE TOWNSHEND is preparing to transform his official Web site into a streaming TV station. "Who TV" will broadcast live musical performances . . .
PAUL McCARTNEY, PEARL JAM, R.E.M., U2, COLDPLAY, BONNIE RAITT, INDIGO GIRLS, AVRIL LAVIGNE, PETER GABRIEL and ERIC CLAPTON are among the artists who have contributed tracks to For the Lady, an album to benefit Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Burmese peace activist who has been under house arrest for fourteen years. The double-CD hits stores October 26th . . . The Dark Horse Years: 1979-1992, a compilation of performance footage, music videos and commentary from GEORGE HARRISON, will be released on November 2nd. The seventy-five-minute DVD features interviews with Harrison about his solo career, and previously unreleased footage of a 1991 concert in Japan with ERIC CLAPTON . . .
R.E.M. have made tracks from their upcoming album, Around the Sun, available for free at the social networking and blogging site MySpace.com. The preview, up for the next two weeks, will also include links to dates for the band's thirty-city North American tour, which kicks off on October 13th in Los Angeles . . . A three-disc set of a 1980 JERRY GARCIA BAND concert at Kean College in Union, New Jersey, will be released on September 28th. After Midnight finds Garcia covering the BEATLES' "Eleanor Rigby," JIMMY CLIFF's "The Harder They Come," BOB DYLAN's "Simple Twist of Fate" (as a seventeen-minute jam) and J.J. CALE's "After Midnight" . . . EVAN DANDO is currently at work writing the next LEMONHEADS album, the revolving-door group's first since 1996's Car Button Cloth. While Dando spent the summer as the frontman for D.K.T./MC5, he made time last month for a Lemonheads gig at Oslo's Oya Fest with SPIRITUALIZED . . .
When famed choreographer Twyla Tharp's Broadway musical featuring BILLY JOEL's songs, Movin' Out, had its opening night in Los Angeles this Sunday, the Piano Man himself decided to take the stage for an encore. Joel, in town for the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, took over the piano and played a rendition of "Only the Good Die Young" . . . The nominees for the Shortlist Music Prize were announced this Monday. The nominees -- chosen by a panel including NORAH JONES, ROBERT SMITH, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE's JOSH HOMME, the ROOTS' ?UESTLOVE and others -- ran the gamut from the godfathers of French ambient sounds AIR, to the little-band-that-could FRANZ FERDINAND and even country legend, LORETTA LYNN. The winner will be announced in Los Angeles in mid-November . . .
Four-time Grammy-winner RANDY TRAVIS will be planting his hands in the cement on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 29th when the country star receives the Walk's 2,264th star . . . CRADLE OF FILTH will headline the third Headbangers Ball Tour with special acts ARCH ENEMY and BLEEDING THROUGH. The tour will launch on November 4th in Sayreville, New Jersey, following the September 28th release of the two-disc, forty-track metal compilation, Headbangers Ball, Vol.2 . . . BLONDE REDHEAD kick off an eight-week tour with the LIARS on October 4th in North Carolina. . .
Having found some downtime in his burgeoning acting career, MOS DEF will release The New Danger, the follow-up to his solo debut Black on Both Sides, on October 12th. It includes the titles "Boogie Man," "Bed Stuy Parade and Funeral March" and "Ghetto Rock" . . . The FUGEES reunited this Saturday for a "block party" in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood organized by comedian DAVE CHAPPELLE. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director MICHEL GONDRY was on hand to shoot the show for a concert film. Former bandmates LAURYN HILL, WYCLEF JEAN and PRAS performed tracks from their second and last album, The Score, including "Fu-Gee-La" and "Killing Me Softly," with HILL also dipping into her solo material with "Lost Ones." Locals MOS DEF, TALIB KWELI, COMMON and ERYKAH BADU were among the other performers to jump onstage . . .
JAY-Z and R. KELLY have announced the title for their latest collaboration, The Best of Both Worlds: Unfinished Business. The album -- which includes the tracks "Big Chip," "The Return" and "Never Let Me Die" -- will hit stores October 26th. Their joint tour kicks off on September 29th in Rosemont, Illinois . . . SEAN PENN will narrate the audiotape version of BOB DYLAN's autobiography, Chronicles, Vol.1, due next January . . . PATTI SMITH and TELEVISION will share a bill for the first time since 1977 on October 2nd at Roseland in New York City . . . SKEETER DAVIS, who sang on the Grand Ole Opry radio show for over four decades, died on Sunday of cancer at the age of seventy-two. She topped the pop charts in 1963 with the single "The End of the World," and toured with ELVIS PRESLEY and the ROLLING STONES . . . DJ SPOOKY is in the studio with SLAYER drummer DAVE LOMBARDO recording under the name DRUMS OF DEATH. MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO's JACK DANGERS is producing the project, due early next year, and guitarist VERNON REID will guest . . . MEGADETH are launching a twenty-two-date tour to kick off October 23rd in Reno in support of their new album, The System Has Failed.
