Entries from April 2008
April 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I’ve just been checking out Steve Winwood’s newest offering, Nine Lives, released by Columbia Records on April 29. I’m working on a forthcoming review for Vintage Rock, but I’ll be watching the singer this week when he appears on Good Morning America on Friday, May 2, Today Show Weekend on Saturday, May 3, Late Show With David Letterman on May 6 and The View on May 7.
Songs on Nine Lives include “I’m Not Drowning,” “Fly,” “Raging Sea,” “Dirty City,” “We’re All Looking,” “Hungry Man,” “Secrets,” “At Times We Do Forget,” and “Other Shore.” Winwood even got his pal Eric Clapton, whom he appeared with at Madison Square Garden in February, to play guitar on “Dirty City.”
It just so happens that I have an MP3 audio clip of “Dirt City.” Click on the link below to listen.
Dirty City MP3
Tags: classic rock
Hollywood, California – April 29, 2008 – The acclaimed British progressive rock group ASIA has announced an historic, first-time-ever live performance of the band’s multiplatinum self-titled 1982 debut album to take place at the band’s U.S tour-closing May 5 concert at San Francisco’s Grand Ballroom at The Regency Center. ASIA is touring to more than 20 cities across the U.S. this spring to support the April 15 release of Phoenix, the band’s first studio album since 1983 with its original ‘supergroup’ line-up, which debuted at #73 last week on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart.
The San Francisco concert’s first set will include classic tracks from ELP, The Buggles, King Crimson and Yes, plus a selection of acoustic tracks and songs from ASIA’s 1983 album, Alpha, and from Phoenix. The second set will present ASIA’s first album, 1982’s ASIA, from beginning to end, the first time the band has ever performed the album live in its entirety. ASIA was the world’s best-selling album in 1982, and it is further distinguished as one of only four albums that have spent nine or more weeks in the coveted #1 position on Billboard’s chart.Next week, QuickTime will launch an exclusive ‘Make Your Own ASIA Video’ contest at www.quicktime.com. Custom ASIA art elements are provided to participants at the site to produce their own music videos for “An Extraordinary Life,” a new track from Phoenix.
One grand prize winner will receive a Steve Howe Edition Gibson ES-175 guitar and an Apple MacBook Air, custom laser etched with Roger Dean artwork.
On May 19, XM Satellite Radio will premiere its new “ASIA: Artist Confidential” special. The exclusive performance and interview special is scheduled to air throughout the day (repeats back-to-back) on XMX (Channel 2), XM’s Exclusive Music Series and Originals channel, and at 10pm ET/7pm PT on Fine Tuning (Channel 76).
Released on CD and digitally by EMI America Records in North America and by Frontiers Records internationally, Phoenix’s debut has been accompanied by several high-profile online, radio and retail initiatives with partners including Amazon.com, J&R Music World, Jones Radio Networks, QuickTime, SyncLive.com, VH1Classic.com, and XM Satellite Radio. The album’s #73 debut is ASIA’s highest Billboard chart position in the SoundScan era, and in a recent review of the new album, The Associated Press raved “ASIA is back and better than ever.” Formed at the dawn of the MTV era, ASIA was the first ‘supergroup’ of the 1980s, featuring members from Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson and The Buggles. Videos made for the band’s first two albums, ASIA and Alpha, were staples of the historic music channel’s initial programming.
ASIA’s four original members reunited in 2006, 23 years after all four had last played together. The much publicized reunion resulted in two highly successful world tours in 2006 and 2007; an acclaimed double live LP and DVD (Fantasia: Live In Tokyo); and an overwhelming response from fans and the media, which continues today. ASIA has sold more than 15 million albums around the world, and this will be the third world tour for the four accomplished musicians, whose debut album, ASIA, was released 26 years ago in 1982 and remains one of only four albums in history to hold the #1 Billboard album chart position for a staggering nine weeks.
Phoenix marks a return to the band’s classic sound, with some surprising contemporary twists. “Everything that was there 25 years ago is still there, and quite simply, if you liked it then, you’ll love it now,” says ASIA’s singer and bassist John Wetton. “It does exactly what it says on the tin.” Adds guitarist Steve Howe, “I believe we’ve all found the teamwork creatively rewarding and we also look forward to playing some new songs onstage.”
Phoenix is a collection of songs that speak to the millions of core ASIA fans who, like the group, have come a long way since the dawn of the MTV age in 1982. “We’re older now, and our audience has grown up with us,” says drummer Carl Palmer. “I think the lyrical themes on this record are some of the best John has ever developed.”
Phoenix has a very poignant underlying theme placed at the intersection of love, discovery and reflection, no doubt due, at least partly, to Wetton’s unexpected serious health issues (which included open heart surgery), and forced the cancellation of ASIA’s 2007 West Coast North American tour and a sold-out tour of the UK. Fortunately, Wetton has recovered fully and his band mates say he is singing and playing better than ever.
“John is a survivor,” says ASIA keyboardist Geoff Downes. “He has proved that a few times now. There was never any doubt in our minds that he would recover and be better than ever. We all look forward to hitting the road once again.”
For more information, visit ASIA’s official Website: www.originalasia.com.
Tags: press releases
The Electric Prunes (remember them?) circa 1960 something…
Tags: classic rock
The more I read about the music biz, the more I realize its continued existence depends entirely on technology. Granted that’s a fairly general way of looking at it when you consider that virtually everything in music — from the instruments to the recording process to the pressing and playing of CDs — relies on technology; however, I’m talking about the “new” technology that is transforming the way consumers purchase, access, organize and listen to music. And it all starts on the Internet.
Good old classic rock is bobbing comfortably in the little river jetty that flows out onto the guteral folly of the web. Most classic rock artists have their own web sites, if there’s a need. There are tribute sites for bands left to history. The accoutrements are in and accounted for — the MySpace page, the YouTube videos, the iTune downloads. And sweeping up the mess is a vast range of classic-rock-themed web sites, reviewing releases and concerts, and even snagging interviews with guys who only talked to Circus, Creem and Rolling Stone during their prime. This is what happened to me when I wrote to About.com, and it continues today with Vintage Rock.
But classic rock sites are no match for some of the other music sites making waves and generating profits. Most of those sites are not only writing and reporting about music; they’re distributing it in one form or another. Go to pitchfork, and you get about zillion reviews of independent bands and a bunch of videos to go along with them. Seems the Internet is becoming more like TV with each passing fad. Who knows, you might see your television set on the scrap heap alongside the compact disc en route to Obsolete Island.
Tags: classic rock
OK…here we go…my first classic rock blog for today.com. I have to tell you here and now that the classic rock label is an incommodious term in more ways than I care to imagine. I’m told it was actually coined in the 80s by some clever radio station programmer looking for a way to differentiate between music from the 60s and 70s, previously given the Neanderthalian “old” rock tag, and “newer” music covering a wide cross-section of new wave, punk, ska, hair metal, etc. Today, much of the music from the 80s has fallen into the classic rock well, making the label completely and utterly worthless. Does this mean Dylan and Devo are both classic rock artists? Preposterous! What’s going to happen to grunge and hip hop in 10 years? Will these too become part of the classic rock conglomerate? When will the madness stop?
As far as I’m concerned, the term vintage rock is more appropriate for two simple reasons:
1) It sounds so much cooler than classic rock, doesn’t it?
2) I run a web site called vintage rock
One thing that I do for vintage rock is write reviews of CDs and DVDs. This year started off slowly, but in the last few weeks there’s been lots of good stuff coming to my mailbox. Everyone from Whitesnake to Neil Diamond is making a new album. Yeah, they’re all flying under the same banner these days. And then there are those sweet reissues, bulging with extras. I don’t know where to start. Some times, you have to immerse yourself in the process. And even though you begin to wonder if giving up this much time for something like the new Asia album is really worth it, you start to realize that someone might be wondering the same damn thing.
We’ll see how this train runs tomorrow.
Tags: classic rock
