That’s just music

Legendary British band Depeche Mode had announced the track list from their upcoming album “Sounds Of The Universe”, said Billboard. This disc is going to include thirteen songs written by Martin Gore and Dave Gahan. Gore is traditionally the major guy behind song and music writing in Depeche Mode since the beginning of this band, so it seems that the rest of musicians is on the level of “quite advisors”. Basically, it all means that Gahan who previously did not really participate in the process of songwriting, now was built into the process. Previously he wrote a few songs for the album “Playing The Angel” and released two solo discs. Now it’s interesting wheather his artistic qualities will influence Depeche Mode and particularly it’s new album.

“Sounds Of The Universe” is going to be their twelfth studio album, which should be released by Mute Records on April 20. A lot of rumours keep on roaring that the first single will be a third track called “Wrong”, and it’s release is planned for April 6. Ben Heller who has produced their previous album, and co-worked with Blur, Elbow and Doves turned to be Depeche Mode’s producer/sound director again. In May Depeche Mode shall start the world tour in support of this new release. Here is the full track list: 

“In Chains”
“Hole To Feed”
“Wrong”
“Fragile Tension”
“Little Soul”
“In Sympathy”
“Peace”
“Come Back”
“Spacewalker”
“Perfect”
“Miles Away” / “The Truth Is”
“Jezebel”
“Corrupt”

Popular actress and since the recent times a singer Scarlett Johansson had recorded a cover version of Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye”. This song is going to be included as a soundtrack into her new movie “He’s Just Not That Into You”, which is about to be released in April this year. A song is available on Stereogum.com. Besides Johansson’s song, a soundtrack shall incorporate a lot more music written by The Cure, R.E.M., Talking Heads, My Morning Jacket, Wilco and The Replacements. “Last Goodbye” was recorded by Buckley in 1994 for the album “Grace”. Three years later he had drowned in the Mississippi river. The whole tragedy of his end made an impact on the rest of his art while reflecting all of it onto this song. 

Scarlett Johansson’s music debut began in May 2008 when she released the album with many cover versions of Tom Waits’ song “Anywhere I Lay My Head”. Soon Scarlett recorded the concert mini-album, were she covered The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”. Actresses often become singers and vice versa, but in this case it would be very interesting if a girl like her will join some hard rock band or even something more powerful like Metallica. In the future Johansson is planning to write and produce her own songs.

Mick Jagger’s daughter Jade has made her first public performance as a DJ on January 22, said ContactMusic. This awesome event took place in Barcelona. It’s totally new for her, and literally unbelievable, especially if taking into consideration the style of her sound. Currently, a 37–years old Jade had left her previous jewellery designer’s work and created a personal company called Jezebel, which is going to organise concerts and design clothing with various things of art. In other words, her artistic talent is now exploding in every direction anyone can imagine, so music is just one of them. She is planning to use Jezebel as the driving force behind her music career. Right after this company was set up, she had already made some contacts with the British singer Lily Allen and a rapper Estelle. If Jade will start rapping it may be quite expected, hence it turns out that she can do everything. Mick Jagger had definitely left a lot of qualities to his daughter.

The Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger had seven children with four women. Jade became his second and the only child with his first official wife Bjanka whom he divorced in 1979. Jade’s full name is Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger.

Legendary British rock musician David Bowie has denied rumours about his wish to reappear with an image of Ziggy Stardust on Coachella music festival in America, said AFP. As Bowie noted, he even has no plans to perform at this event, which is going to take place this year in California. Recently, various publications have issued numerous articles on Bowie’s plans to fully perform his 1972 conceptual album “The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars”. In 2008 Coachella managers have already asked him to make it happen, but he rejected their offering and right now this story keeps on repeating itself. The last time when David Bowie had performed ‘Ziggy’ was way back on July 3, 1973 at Hammersmith Odeon. Right before the last song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” he said that he will never repeat similar shows again and kept these words true. Wheather all these rumours about the return of ‘Ziggy’ were supported by his real words cannot be proved, simply because Bowie didn’t say it openly in any publication or an interview.

The last Bowie’s album “Reality” came out in 2003. Lately Twiiter blog posted an information under the nickname “David Bowie”, which said that he is currently working with the new album in Berlin. However, label’s representatives didn’t say anything to support or deny it.

More than one hundred visitors who have participated at the Sydney Big Day Out music festival, which takes place annually in Australia, were caught by police due to an excessive drug use, said AAP. Police representatives have announced that out of 258 suspects, 107 had controlled substances with them. Most of these people possessed ‘traditional music drug’ marijuana, and it looks quite the same practically on every major festival of this kind. The last year’s Big Day Out was noted with eighty six drug related arrests, and of course weed stood on the first place. Dutch experience in handling of such things is definitely not working with almost every authority in the world, even though their experience is probably the most successful. Heavy drug abusers should be monitored and given all kinds of necessary help, marijuana smokers must be controlled like alcohol drinkers. This year’s Big Day Out sold fifty five thousand tickets, and in order to limit drug related crimes the New South Wales police sent numerous undercover agents. Security matters a lot, especially on such events, but when following marijuana they often miss heavy drugs, and they’re the top priority.

Traditionally, Big Day Out goes on by the end of January, and it is considered to be one of the biggest music events in Australia/New Zealand. 2009’s festival includes Neil Young, Arctic Monkeys, The Prodigy, TV On The Radio, Serge Tankian, Hot Chip, My Morning Jacket, and many others.

Starbucks Entertainment record label which belongs to the infamous coffee shop network is about to release the album full of cover songs dedicated to the Valentine’s Day. This album will be incorporating all kinds of indie artists who decided to participate in the project and sing a lot of love songs. “Sweetheart: Our Favorite Artists Sing Their Favorite Love Songs” will be out on January 30 (the US release), said New Musical Express. Among many bands who are participating in the project one of the most popular is Death Cab For Cutie. This group shall cover The Cure’s “Love Song” (1989) and it will be the first track on the album. Department of Eagles had covered Elvis Presley’s “Love Me”, and The New Pornographers leader A.C. Newman took A-ha’s “Take On Me”.

This is the second compilation of this sort made by Starbucks. The last one was released in 2005. Here is the full track list of an upcoming album:

Death Cab for Cutie - ‘Love Song’ (Cure cover)
Katy Perry - ‘Black and Gold’ (Sam Sparro cover)
DeVotchKa - ‘Hot Burrito #1 (I’m Your Toy)’ (Flying Burrito Brothers cover)
Department of Eagles - ‘Love Me’ (Elvis Presley cover)
Jessica Lea Mayfield - ‘Words of Love’ (Buddy Holly cover)
Ben Bridwell - ‘Your Love Is Forever’ (George Harrison cover)
Kate Tucker - ‘I’m on Fire’ (Bruce Springsteen cover)
Rogue Wave - ‘Maps’ (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)
A.C. Newman - ‘Take on Me’ (a-ha cover)
Jem - ‘Yellow’ (Coldplay cover)
Richard Hawley - ‘Early Morning Rain’ (Gordon Lightfoot cover)
Daniel Martin Moore - ‘I Hear Music’ (Billie Holiday cover)
She & Him - ‘I Put a Spell on You’ (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cover)
Lila Downs - ‘My One and Only Love’ (Frank Sinatra cover)

Love Parade which is considered to be one of the biggest rave – electronic – techno music festivals in the world is not going to take place this year, said DPA. An event had to occur in the German city of Bochum (located in the industrial Ruhr region), but was cancelled due to the fact that this place is not big enough for it. Bochum authorities have announced their total incapability to sustain and maintain so many people that are going to visit their city during the festival. Another reason is that there is some unexpected difficulty with the railway tracks, which are located somewhere near the city, and there is no way the city authorities will be able to fix them before the festival. Love Parade’s organizers have noted that during the recent years more and more people are trying to go to this event. In 2008 1,6 million people have visited the festival, in 1998 it absorbed nearly 800,000 visitors. Certainly, Bochum cannot sustain so many rave fans, even though some people may accuse local conservatives in halting an event.

The first Love Parade took place on July 14, 1989 in Berlin collecting only one hundred and fifty people. The late 80’s was just the beginning of the rave movement and these numbers show how everything changed since that time.

Major toy producer Lego will start making mp3 players together with Digital Blue, said Gigwise. The design of a brand new product will replicate the traditional Lego ‘brick’ meccano style. It will definitely trigger some subconscious memories in many people, even though this particular thing shall be made particularly for children. Lego representatives say that a major idea behind all of this is to restore their popularity among the numerous fans all around the world. Popularity was always somewhere with them, but music can never make it worse for any company including Lego. Practically, they would like to make children follow this new brand, and therefore move the whole company upwards because the future belongs to kids. However, some older people may definitely pay attention to it as well, hence that subconscious factor always stays with people. Digital Blue spokesman told the press that his company is very happy about cooperating with Lego, “We’re extremely proud to team up with Lego, a highly regarded brand among generations of parents and kids throughout the world.”

Besides mp3 players the new line of digital products will incorporate cameras, portable radio transmitters, and alarm clocks. All these electronic gadgets will most likely go for 20 to 60 dollars a piece.

Ex-members of the British pop group Beautiful South, which fell apart in 2007 told the press about their wish to reunite, said New Musical Express. However, vocalist Paul Heaton, guitarist David Rotheray and bassist Sean Welch are not planning to share the same wish with the rest of them. Practically, another half and maybe the most influential half shall not be there again. The band should now be called The New Beautiful South and will include singers Alison Wheeler and David Hemingway, plus  drummer David Stead. Their first concert is going to take place in Hull, (Yorkshire, England) on March 29. Following various remarks given by them it’s easy to understand that their track list will incorporate not only the old hits. Also, it seems that this band had never really fell apart, “We never really split up – all that happened was Paul made the decision to leave,” added Stead. So, this band seems to roll on again.

Beautiful South was created in Hull back in 1989 and since then they’ve released ten albums which smoothly “paraglide” into the 90’s music scene. Their last release “Superbi” came out in 2006 counquering number six on the British charts. The most successful ones are “Blue Is the Colour” (1996) and “Quench” (1998).

System Of A Down leader Serge Tankian said that he is planning to organize a live performance together with the symphony orchestra, notes Blabbermouth. In an open letter Tankian wrote to his fans that this event is going to be made up with the Auckland symphony orchestra on March 16, 2009 in New Zealand. Musician is planning to perform many songs from his solo album “Elect The Dead” including a lot of previously unreleased tracks. The stage will be occupied exclusively by him and the orchestra, anyone else shall not be presented, even the band which helped him to record “Elect The Dead” F.C.C. will not be there.  All the music arrangements were written by a composer from New Zealand John Psathas, who basically turned the album into something completely different, and surprisingly Tankian supports such changes. The whole album will be most likely released on DVD quite soon in order to expose it’s innovations.

Besides that Serge Tankian will also take a part in the Big Day Out festival which started in Auckland on January 16 and shall end on February 1 in Perth. The last System Of A Down concert took place in August 2006 and since then each member of the band is involved in the variety of solo projects.