Damn She's sexy

Janet Jackson...Ms. Jackson is ya nasty is having a concert at MSG on October 16th. She will be having a special guest as well....Lady Love Cool James... Sounds like a great lineup. PRESALE TICKETS go on Sale tomorrow Thursday, Sept 4th from 10am until Friday, Sept 5th 10pm WITH PRESALE CODES from MSG and Live Nation. Regular ticket sales are on Saturday Sept 6th at 10am. Tickets range from $60 to $300. Click HERE for regular sale tickets

If You want to get pre-sale tickets email ADayInThaLifeOf@gmail.com and i will give you the pre-sale codes

 Sous la rubrique « Lapin », Libération du 1/09/08, rend compte du faux bond d’Amy Winehouse au festival Rock-en-Seine. Le deuxième pour le même festival ! Le consternant est la récidive, pas tellement de l’artiste, mais des organisateurs. Quoique l’on pense de ses qualités de chanteuse, ne faut-il pas la laisser tranquille, ne plus s’en occuper ? Ensuite, l’article poursuit sur le bilan du festival et de la difficulté d’arriver à l’équilibre budgétaire. Plus d’entrées, mais hélas « les cachets d’artistes augmentent », « la part artistique passant de 30 à 40% ». En cause, essentiellement, la hausse des rémunérations des têtes d’affiche : on dirait 500.000 euros pour Rage Against the Machine. Une inflation due essentiellement aux pratiques de Live Nation. Mais l’organisateur d’invoquer avoir peu de choix, le nombre de groupes pouvant servir de locomotive à un festival étant réduits. Ces locomotives ne relèvent pas forcément d’un choix artistique, mais d’une nécessité (artificielle) et, de plus, elles déçoivent régulièrement. Il faudrait arrêter d’entretenir ce cercle vicieux : plus de frais pour attirer plus d’entrées, l’augmentation de ces frais dépassant toujours les recettes, il faut augmenter la place et la taille des locomotives, et ainsi de suite. Cercle infernal qui de fil en aiguille nous fait perdre la musique. Plonge la musique dans un manque de soins flagrants et plombe la curiosité, les capacités d’attention. Il faut laisser ces pratiques aux opérateurs privés sponsorisées, que ces musiques très chères apparaissent de plus en plus pour ce qu’elles sont : de la publicité musicale (indépendamment de la qualité musicale ou non) pour une industrie de loisirs sans scrupules, sans vergogne dirait Bernard Stiegler. Bien sûr, on cherche à donner une coloration par des podiums, des activités pour les jeunes etc. Le couple alibi/concessions ne donne rien de bon. Les festivals, les programmes « publics » devraient se tourner résolument vers un autre modèle. Parce qu’il est faut de déclarer, comme s’il s’agissait d’un fait universel, que « les cachets d’artistes sont de plus en plus élevés ». Il y a moyen de construire d’innombrables programmes palpitants, captivants avec des artistes créatifs qui pratiquent de justes prix, accessibles (être bien payé ne signifie pas exiger un argent de poche de star de foot). C’est alors qu’une politique publique ouvrira une autre voie, soutiendra la diversité culturelle, et permettra l’émergence d’une économie culturelle et une économie de l’esprit qui ne sera pas aux mains de sociétés comme Live Nation. C’est en soutenant une telle ligne de conduite, ferme et ambitieuse, que l’on pourra imaginer d’autres modèles économiques, d’autres formes de développement pour les opérateurs culturels non-marchands.

(ph)

John, if you're reading this out there somewhere from cyberspace (because I know you're pretty net savvy and you probably google yourself just like all the rest of us do), I want to commend you on being a brilliant businessman. You come out with great songs that get people singer for no apparent reason, the media loves you and you make money. Then after the second album that was pretty much more of the same, you decided to do whatever the hell you wanted to do. And that was to basically try and be the next SRV. And ya know what? People have eaten that up, too. It's pretty amazing. So, I congratulate you good sir!

But onto my comments about the show. The openers, Onerepublic were actually pretty good. I'm probably the only person in America that hasn't heard that "Too Late to 'Pologize" song. But I'm not surprised about that, either, 'cause like... I don't listen to the radio, so I'm not hip to what the young people listen to these days.

Then came John. Out with his Strat, and he loaded up and started playing by himself (with a VERY nice classic strat tone, by the way) and played some cool licks, and I thought to myself "here we go, this should be awesome!"

Then he played a couple songs, and then I was done. By the time he got done with about the fifth song, I felt like I heard everything I was going to hear that night, and felt a restlessness that I had never felt at a concert before. And that only increased throughout the night as I realized more and more that I just didn't care about what he was playing. *gasp!* Cue the tension music!

I didn't care? Me? I didn't care about a fellow guitar player? I was thinking it was just me, for a while, but my friend that I was with was sort of feeling the same way. So, then this left the question to be... why? Why did I just not care what he played?

This is what I've come up with:
John Mayer is not the greatest guitar player since Charlie Christian as most people would have you believe.
I'm just too freaking picky.
Pentatonic Scales are boring unless you know how to use them effectively.
Etheral 6/8 blues jams are entirely uninteresting to watch.
Please don't solo on every song. Or at least, if there's a solo, let someone else take it occasionally.
The SRV thing: Drop it. It's not cool.
Noise and cacophony are great... Your style of music does not allow for a noise jam... Please do not ever do that again.
The Tom Jackson Method: Use it. Learn how to build a killer show.
Entertain your audience at all points... You should not allow there to be time when someone can even feel like they can sit down, much less go to the bathroom and get a fresh drink.
Please stop soloing until you learn to play more interesting things.
Play more old stuff. Room for Squares was freaking amazing. I know you don't want to have that pop image anymore, but there were some really, really great songs on there. Like Neon. Play Neon. A lot. Matter of fact, play that all day.
Also, when you do play the old stuff, don't just play it straight down like "OK, there's like four people here that remember these songs, so I'll just do halfway versions of them". There's some great progressions on there that'd be awesome to solo over... Oh, but wait, then you can't just wail on the pentatonic for 15 minutes can you? Hmm... what a dilemma. But seriously... Everyone in the Amphitheater was singing along with No Such Thing and Why Georgia. Play more of those.
Did I mention fewer 6/8 blues jams?

Ultimately, I feel kinda disappointed with something that I really was looking forward to enjoying quite a bit. I had fun, though... So that was cool. Also, I'm not saying that I can do better by any stretch. It just felt very amateurish and self-indulgent, and that's not cool for a show that I spent a decent amount of money on.

On the subject of pentatonics, who do you know that can take just a pentatonic and make it totally interesting and awesome to listen to for however long they play for. Eric Johnson tries to, but he's too inconsistent and "meh". Eric Clapton... he does a good job I think, even though he repeats licks a lot. Joe Satch plays the pentatonics a lot, he repeats his licks a lot, too, but it doesn't matter because the material surrounding it makes up for it, I think.

Anyone else you can think of? Do tell.

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No México a parceria se inicia com a realização de apresentações do R.E.M. e no Brasil, Chile e Argentina com a realização da turnê da Madonna.

A Billboard informa ainda que a Live Nation não fez grandes investimentos para a realização do negócio, além de não estar previsto a realização de shows de artistas locais, mantendo o foco apenas em sucessos internacionais.

Jay-Z will bring his game to the Palladium on Oct. 15, backed by a 12-piece band. Tickets will go on sale Sept. 5. The goal of the renovation by facility operator Live Nation is to restore it to the state it was in when it opened Sept. 23, 1940, with a performance by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and that big band’s on–the-rise singer, one Frank Sinatra, who was then about 18 months away from scoring his first chart hit under his own name.

“I’m honored to play such an iconic venue,” Jay-Z said in a statement issued today. "Just as Frank ushered in a golden era, I hope this opening will mark the beginning of a resurgence in generation-defining live music.”

The renovation covers the entire interior and exterior of the venue, with a new dance floor, a new façade replicating the original architecture and other changes made in keeping with the building’s original look, Live Nation officials said.

Among those who have performed at the Palladium in recent decades have been the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Metallica, Public Enemy, the Sex Pistols, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and No Doubt.

Source

I figure all this because Jay Z is going to open up the renovated Hollywood Palladium in September. Originally the place was opened by Frank Sinatra, and the renovated building will be opened by Jig. I Love it! LA shows are always good, because you can get mad guest appearances... Everyone lives in LA! I can see a lot of really big shows here soon, given the roster that Live Nation is putting together.

An article in a recent SocalTech (Benjamin Kuo's long running group devoted to the technology sector here in Southern California) noted that music web site ArtistDirect, which has for a few years been a growing site about the major music industry, is starting a section this fall that will post lyrics to popular songs.

According to ARTISTdirect, it will provide lyrics to popular songs from EMI Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group, which will allow the firm to add a new lyrics section to its site. Financial details of the licenses were not disclosed. The deal with EMI gives ARTISTdirect access to more than one million lyrics for EMI songs; extent of the deal with Universal Music was not given.

Leaving aside the question of just what those "undisclosed financial details" are, this is still an interesting development for the business. [Huge Disclaimer Here: For a number of years, the Internet development company I own did consulting and development for Universal Music Publishing. I actually found everyone there pretty cool and it gave me a great insight into the workings of major company thinking.] For years they have stood by as sites like Lyrics.com, songlyrics.com, and Elyrics, have amassed large quantities of song lyrics in their databases and have become the de facto place where anyone -- fan, researcher, business professional -- can find lyrics to most any major pop song.  Since these music publishing companies' job is to maximize profit for their stockholders, and to earn some money for their songwriters along the way, they've been trying to figure out for years how to earn money off of these lyrics.

When I was at UMPG they started doing things like marketing greeting cards with their lyrics as catch phrases, as well as imprinted tee shirts and coffee mugs. Billy The Bass, the singing fish, was also among the ancillary money-making uses of their songs.

But notice that every single one of these ideas was a brick-and-mortar concept.  No one ever quite knew how to sell music or their other intellectual property on the web, other than licensing songs or downloading recordings.

The surprise with this deal with ArtistDirect is that it took them so long to figure out how to do it, when they had several examples of a business model right in front of their web-directed eyes.

Here's how UMPG announced the deal in a press release:

The licensing partnership opens the vaults of the publisher powerhouse to give ARTISTdirect fans for the first time easy access to legal, accurate song lyrics from top music acts past and present from current chart toppers to beloved classics.

"Universal Music Publishing Group has an amazing catalog of award-winning music and we are privileged to be able to provide the words to songs that have so profoundly impacted our culture," said Dimitri Villard, Interim CEO of ARTISTdirect. "This partnership helps create one of the largest repositories for official lyrics as written by the songwriters."

"Our search for new revenue opportunities for our songwriters and artists continues and this deal marks another positive step in monetizing the legal use of lyrics online," said David Renzer, Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Publishing Group. "We are happy to partner with ARTISTdirect for this new service."

Now I've never noticed any glaring inaccuracies on those web sites and I've used them a ton of times for research, so I'm not sure that I buy this reasoning from the companies.  However, it is true that this will be more legal, now that the companies have decided that the lyrics are intellectual property that has value on the web.

The good news for the music industry in this is not that they'll be able to monetize another peice of IP. No, the real news is that they've figured out a way to do it. The music industry has historically been slow to see where the value of the net is, even down to the ludicrous RIAA lawsuits. They've held onto old business models long after they've made no sense.  I've long said that the big music companies should get out of the business of developing artists -- they're not really great at that. However what they are good at is distribution. With their international reach and their huge capitalization, they can raise the consumers' awareness of a particular artist better than the smaller independents can. The recent deals, such as the one between Madonna and Live Nation, point the way towards a better use of major company resources. If you can package an artist across his or her entire output (concerts, physical or digital product, ancillary, etc.) than you can promote and market it better.

The problem, of course, is that this works a lot better with artists who have already established a marketable name. But, even with that issue to overcome (and it will be overcome, trust me on this), there is no doubt that, once again, when the music industry stops stumbling, it will point a way towards a viable model for the film and television industry.

Someday we'll see the majors, who will (of course) still retain their prominence in the film world because of their sheer size, figure out how to distribute someone else's content ubiquitously. And when they do that, that will be a great world for content creators.

Mary J. Blige will be performing at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, October 2nd along with Robin Thicke. Brought to you by Live Nation the Presale tickets go on sale today Aug 14 at 10am and ends Fri, Aug 15 at 10pm.
Regular sale to the public starts on Saturday at 12pm
For the Nokia Rush Pre-Sale Ticket Password email Jayev3ryday@gmail.com

*Biz: Coolfer asks, is the iTunes music store a huge money-maker or a break-even proposition meant to prop up hardware sales?

*Apocalypse: Greg Gillis of Girl Talk will be playing his final concert (and, indeed, the world's final concert) on December 12, 2012, the day of the apocalypse according to the Mayan calendar. I am not buying tickets, but might try to crash the show.

*The Markets: Live Nation stock bounced 28% after its earnings report last Thursday.

*Consumer insights: Hipster Runoff runs an infographic of what you see when you go to music festivals. I highly recommend that you look at it, as it is colorful, accurate, and easily consumed.

*Things you know: Isaac Hayes died. Then Slate asks: Where do Scientologists go when they die? [spin city]

*Fashion: T-shirts for fake bands. You know what would be a hilarious fake band name? Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. [fimoculous]

*Rumors: Though fans wondered for hours whether Lil Wayne's 8-year-old daughter had died in a car crash, she is fine. Ugh. Scary.

*Dirty: By now most of us have seen Kafka's porn. (Hilarious pornography jokes redacted.)

*The Wikipedia entry for anagram told me this, and it is FUCKED UP:

"Anagrammist Cory Calhoun discovered that the first 3 lines of the 'To Be Or Not To Be' soliloquy from Hamlet ("To be or not to be, that is the question; whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune") anagrammed into the phrase 'In one of the Bard's best thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.'"

ALSO: "Jim Morrison came up with an anagram of his name in the Doors song L.A. Woman, calling himself 'Mr. Mojo Risin'."

COINCIDENCE? [caitlin]

The end of an era has come.  Record companies are losing out on the best rappers because people are switching from C.D.'s to Itunes and other online music.  Concert promoter Live Nation are profiting off this change and have signed the likes of Jay-Z, Madonna, and U-2.  Jay-Z's defection from Def Jam to the concert promoter Live Nation is worth 150 million dollars to Jay.  Live Nation's huge investment in Jay-Z and Madonna's contract of 102 million is a huge change of cash flow.  The young artists will still need record companies as they have great networking capabilities.  I

With CD sales dismal and Internet music sites such as iTunes soaring in popularity, major record labels have been forced to rethink their traditional and once-profitable business plans as they scramble to hold on to a diminishing consumer base and straying A-list artists, all of whom are increasingly turning to new technology for their music fix.

Take Rapper Jay-Z, for example, who is soon to become the third major artist to leave a well-known record company, in his case Def Jam Records, in return for a multimillion dollar deal with concert promoter Live Nation, according to The New York Times.

And before him it was superstars Madonna and U2 who penned deals with Live Nation, which is trying to profit where music label staples have not: They reach fans' pocketbooks not by luring them into outdated record stores but by selling band merchandise, concert tickets and fan club memberships.

Click Here For the Rest of Story

 

From the article:

The final gross puts it only behind the Rolling Stones’ 2005-2007 A Bigger Bang tour ($558 million), and U2’s 2005-2007 Vertigo tour ($389 million), and ahead of the Stones’ 1994-95 Voodoo Lounge tour ($320 million), according to Boxscore.

Bassist/vocalist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland began the proceedings with a surprise cover of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love." Afterward, the New York Police Department band augmented normal set-opener "Message in a Bottle."

There was only an intermittent amount of sentimentality to the show, with Sting at one point telling the crowd, "It's been a huge honor to get back with my good friends. The real triumph of this tour is that we haven't strangled each other -- that doesn't mean it hadn't crossed my mind."

The tour, the band's first live performances since 1986, began May 28, 2007, in Vancouver and sold 3,300,912 tickets from 146 shows, plus five festivals, according to Live Nation.

Here is the set list from the MSG show:

"Sunshine of Your Love"
"Message in a Bottle"
"Walking on the Moon"
"Demolition Man"
"Voices Inside My Head" / "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around"
"Don't Stand So Close to Me"
"Driven To Tears"
"Hole in My Life"
"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"
"Wrapped Around Your Finger"
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"
"Invisible Sun"
"Can't Stand Losing You" / "Reggatta de Blanc"

Encore one:
"Purple Haze"
"Roxanne"
"King of Pain"
"So Lonely"
"Every Breath You Take"

Encore two"
"Next To You"

I never had the opportunity to see The Police live. A major part of that may have been the high ticket prices for this final tour. If only we could go back to the days when you could actually afford to go see your favorite bands play. Thoughts?

Jay-z calls into Shade 45 and speaks on a lot of rumors and topics that are on a lot of people's minds.  Click the link here to listen in full the entire interview.  Jay speaks on blueprint 3 and confirms its existence and his deal with Live Nation NOT falling apart.

LuRocK August 7, 2007 @ 12:17pm

Vayamos por partes y aclarando que no todo lo que viene a continuación es oficial. Madonna fue noticia en octubre por abandonar su discográfica de toda la vida, Warner Bros, para firmar un contrato con una promotora de conciertos, la mastodóntica multinacional Live Nation, que a su vez es propietaria de la española Gamerco de Gay Mercader, viejo promotor de este país. Así, sorprende de entrada que ninguno de los dos conciertos que la artista de Detroit dará en España esté organizado por dicha promotora sino por un ente público valenciano, el de Cheste el 18 de septiembre, obviamente, y por una empresa competidora de Gamerco, Doctor Music, el de Sevilla, dos días antes.

Las primeras noticias que tuvimos de los conciertos españoles de Madonna hablaban de una fecha, el 18 de septiembre, en el Estadi Olímpic de Barcelona (aunque también se dijo que en el Palau Sant Jordi) y que iba a ser producido, lo normal, por Gamerco. Según parece, sin embargo, apareció el ente público valenciano mencionado arriba con más del doble del dinero que vale el caché de la americana. Ante eso, Live Nation, propietaria de los derechos de la artista, cedió amablemente la fecha para que de tocar en Barcelona de Barcelona, nada de nada, y que el circuito de Cheste en Valencia estaba muy bien y muy adecuado para un concierto multitudinario.

Luego, y aquí empieza lo interesante, supimos que Madonna iba a tocar en Madrid dos días antes, el 16 de septiembre, en un concierto organizado por la promotora vasca Last Tour International, responsable de los festivales Electric Getafe Weekend, BBK Live y Kobetasonic y de las giras de Fito y Fitipaldis. Pero al cabo de unos días va y se cancela este concierto también y esta semana nos enteramos que ese día, Madonna no va a estar ni en Barcelona, ni en Madrid, ni en El Ejido, sino en Sevilla, organizándolo todo Doctor Music, la promotora del desafortunadísimo Doctor Loft 05:00.

¿Qué pasó? Pues los que nos cuentan dicen que Gamerco se interpuso entre Live Nation y Last Tour para que los primeros no les vendieran a los segundos la fecha de Madrid con el argumento de que los vascos son sus máximos competidores en España. Live Nation entendió las razones y canceló el negocio, dejando las manos libres a la promotora de Gay Mercader para encontrarle un concierto en esa fecha del 16 de septiembre. Después de todo esto, y viendo que Gamerco ha preferido esta temporada quedarse en segundo plano (se encargaron de la contratación de artistas del Rock in Rio, en la sombra y sin poner un duro) y que Doctor Music tiene que reponerse del pinchazo del Doctor Loft, todo cobra sentido.

For a short while, it is possible to survive only on Red Bull, water and tuna trim.

What a crazy god-damn weekend. It all seems like a blur now. I have been putting off doing this post for the last few days, because every time I think about it, I get tired all over again. Up at seven am, prep til ten, fight through traffic to get to the site, set up, put out canapes for eight hours, clean up, fight through traffic again to get back to Araxi (two hours or more to cover 40 clicks), unload, prep more, have a beer and a bourbon, go to sleep, repeat. It was usually around three when I made it to bed and it seemed like seconds before my cell-phone alarm was waking me up again. That's not to say I didn't have a great time. The monotony of sending out canapes for hours, was offset by moments of pure unadulterated joy. Singing "I won't back down" with forty-thousand of my closest friends; "Please allow me to re-introduce myself, my name is HOV, H to the OV"; making burgers for the Tragically Hip, and so much more. I honestly can't wait til' next year to do it all over again.

Our chariot awaits.

On Thursday, the day before the festival, the Vancouver contingent of the catering team assembled at CinCin on Robson Street (one of Jack Evrensel's other restaurants), where we loaded up the truck with Thierry Busset's desserts and headed up to Whistler. Our first stop would be Araxi, where we would be briefed on what the hell was going on, and then on to the two Pemberton sites. One, a large house looking out at majestic Mount Currie , where the artists and executives could chill out before heading to the festival, and secondly, a tent behind the main stage, where we would hold a cocktail party each day from 3 til late.

When things get ugly, you must be prepared.

Our staging point.

They fed us.

Chef James Walt looking troubled. He knew what was awaiting us. Oh yes....he knew.

Arriving at Araxi, we foundthe kitchen in full swing. As they got ready for a busy night, we loaded up the truck with bar supplies and then sat down for a briefing by Neil Henderson, Top Table projects manager. He handed out the backstage passes (schwing!), and lets us know what would be expected of us over the weekend. Basically, just be professional. I can handle that.  Then it was on to the Pemberton sites to set up our mobile kitchen for the onslaught on Friday.

Organizational mastermind Neil Henderson.

The mansion where the bands and executives would hang out and nibble on canapes.

Richard Luxton, server at West, checks out the fire pit.

Jessica and Mallory inspect the cooking trailer at the festival site.

Risotto for the set-up crew.

Setting up the tent. Check out those log bars. Yeah Jack.

Rock stars.

Paulo Villalobo, a cook at Lolita's, came to help and was a workhorse all weekend.

After the set-up of our mobile kitchen in Pemberton, we headed back to Araxi to finish off the prep for Friday. We worked for a few more hours and then headed off to our respective hotels and condo's that had been set up by Neil. I was staying with my good friend Victor Pulleyblank, raw-bar chef at Araxi. I worked with him at West for a year, where he was on Pastry, while I toiled away on the meat section. Last year he went to work with fellow West Alumni Mike Diamond (yes thats his real name), who was the raw-bar chef at the time. When Mike left, Victor took over. Going from pastry to raw-bar in only a year is quite the transition, but he seems to be handling it really well.

Victor sorts Albion out.

Victor's reminder to himself.

Araxi crew cleans up.

Day one came to a close. The next three would be a test of some peoples mental fortitude. Not everyone would make it........

Continue on to part two.

]]> http://chicagotheaterblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/uptowntheater_auction/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:50:40 +0000 Scotty Zacher http://chicagotheaterblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/uptowntheater_auction/

Finally, finally there seems to be a glimmer of hope for the future of the 80-year old, Rapp and Rapp-designed Uptown Theatre. The Chicago Tribune reports that the projected bids could be anywhere from $1 to 40-million for this celebrated theater, replete with 4300 seats and 3 vast lobbies.  Many bids are expected, including Chicago's Jam Productions (which used the venue in the 70's), California's LiveNation and Madison Square Gardens.  Says Chris Jones on his blog:

It seems counterintuitive, but in many ways the judicial sale is a consequence of renewed interest in the Uptown, flowing from the increasingly competitive marketplace for live entertainment in Chicago and the relative shortage of viable venues.  The fortunes of the long-imperiled, down-at-heel Uptown look brighter now than at any point in the last two decades.

UPDATE: Uptown Theatre has been purchased by Jam Productions for $3.2 million.  Full story here, here and here.

Bonus: Though I posted Ian Sklarsky's beautiful (and heartbreaking) Uptown Theater YouTube video months ago, here it is again:

Top picture courtesy of  www.UptownTheatre.com