That’s just music

Guns N’ Roses concert which was planned on March 14 at the Apoteose stadium in Rio De Janeiro was cancelled due to the destruction of the concert stage said Axl Rose in his own Internet blog. Basically, this incident happened because of the extensive rain and winds that were building up in the area all along the last week. Few workers were injured and later all of them had to be evacuated by the firefighting units. Total amount of loss in terms of money and property was not estimated so far as well as the establishment of the new concert date. The worst part about it all is that it’s not the first time when Guns N’ Roses is experiencing these kinds of damaging and nearly deadly problems during the last few days. On March 12 Axl Rose and his legendary band had to perform in one of the clubs in Sao Paulo at the closed concert organised by a well known model Anna Beatrice Barros. She had invited a lot of local celebrities and rich people, and this thing just simply did not happen on that day. Guests were waiting for Guns N’ Roses for many hours, but the band did not get out on the stage, so eventually that respectable public began to crash and smash everything in the club. Twenty four hours later the band went out onto the Estadio do Palmeiras stage in Sao Paulo, but Axl had stopped performing only after two minutes because some fan threw a bottle into the band. Rose began to curse the hooligan fan, but nevertheless continued his performance and things did not get as bad as the day before. South American tour is a part of their world traveling process with the new album “Chinese Democracy” that was released in November, 2008. Axl Rose is quite famous for his extraordinary moves during performances which often end up in hilarious scandals.

The biggest amount of musicians in the UK was born in the city of Bristol according to some recent study done by PRS For Music, said The Daily Telegraph. No other city in Britain gave birth to as many people of music than Bristol. Organization which is dealing with collection of royalties for artists had analyzed sixty five thousand of it’s clients and compared it with the amount of people in each city were they live. Practically, PRS list looks like this: 1. Bristol, 2. Cardiff, 3. Wakefield, 4. Glasgow, 5. Cheltenham, 6. Edinburgh, 7. Manchester, 8. Paisley, 9. Doncaster, 10. Londonderry, 11. Halifax, 12. Sunderland, 13. Swindon, 14. Blackpool, 15. Wigan, 16. Brighton, 17. Leicester, 18. Liverpool, 19. Wolverhampton, 20. Stoke. Actually, Liverpool went number eighteen despite the fact that the most famous British band The Beatles had originated in there. The biggest amount of musicians lives in London, but strangely that city took twenty sixth spot in the list; surely most of them came from the cities and towns listed above. “Cultural atmosphere in the city of Bristol was always good for the development of the electric music”, noted the head of PRS Ellis Rich. Bristol gave birth to such famous groups as Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead and generally speaking it’s considered to be the birthplace of trip-hop which is also called the ’Bristol wave’ or ‘Bristol sound’.

One of the latest shows performed by Metallica in the Colombia’s capital, Bogota ended up in street rioting and massive fights, said Prefix. This legendary band is actually famous for creating huge shows and actually one of them had already ended in something similar way back in 1992 during the bands Montreal accident. Another one happened during their concert in Santiago, Chile. Those fans who didn’t have tickets began to storm the Club Hipico hippodrome, where the show took place, thus one hundred and twenty people became arrested. This time as in the previous one the reason for rioting was caused by some painful difficulty experienced by Metallica’s fans to purchase tickets. Eventually, those people who couldn’t get to the show began to fight with security and police in order to get to the show which took place in the Simon Bolivar park. Possibly the whole thing began to drag others who just wanted to create the scandal. Rioters were throwing rocks and bottles while battling police forces, so the latter had to use gas and water hoses to stop the crowd. Following the information given by Latindex news agency, a few people had minor wounds, one of the fans is in critical condition and one hundred and thirty people got arrested. Practically, Metallica possesses this quite powerful effect on it’s fans, their shows are full of magnificent energy and their fans look more as if they were in the army - Metallica army. Definitely all these things were not created by the band, their message of peace is obvious, but the problem belongs to the show’s organizers and ticket sellers.

British Broadcasting Company had decided to close it’s famous music program “Friday Night Rock Show”, which was hosted by the Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson. As The Guardian says, this show should be knocked out from existence by the end of April this year. “Friday Night Rock Show” was aired on every Friday from BBC 6 Music digital station since 2002, but now it’s organizers have other plans. While hosting the show Dickinson is talking with his colleagues from the music world, tells listeners about studio work and after all puts on his favorite music. Practically, the newspaper notes that Dickinson’s show is going down due to  some steady close up of the BBC 6 Music, so it will get totally closed by the end of 2011. In other words it’s not just Dickinson’s program which is being pressured, but the whole radio station. At the same time, company’s representatives have underlined that heads of the BBC 6 Music are planning to change the music and general song list from heavy metal that was the only dominant style during “Friday Night Rock Show”. However, BBC is not going to get away from heavy metal and hard rock, this music will stay in, but with some limitation. So far there was no reaction on the side of Bruce Dickinson to BBC’s plans on closing of his program. The next airing will take place today with new guests from legendary Nazareth. Surely, Dickinson will not really like the idea of limiting his favorite music, there is absolutely no question about it.

American legendary band The Smashing Pumpkins had begun studio sessions in order to hire a new bassist and keyboardist. As their official website says, bassist Ginger Pooley who was playing with them since 2007 has left the band to concentrate on raising of her daughter and possibly other family issues. Until Corgan and his friends find a replacement, Mark Tulin from The Electric Prunes will be doing Ginger’s work because the guy had previously co-worked with Corgan in their joint project - Spirits In The Sky. Current Pumpkin’s line-up is in the wish to hire a keyboardist who is the follower of John Lord (Deep Purple) and Rick Wakeman (Yes), practically someone who knows how to play prog-rock. Right now in order to visit the band’s hiring sessions it’s necessary to send a resume before March 31, so not only famous musicians from other famous bands have some chances. However, as it’s always happening, no one from the street will actually get to the band as The Smashing Pumpkins. New drummer, a twenty-year old Mike Byrne was taken into the band with the help of similar sessions during the previous year. Right after they finish their search the band will start the world tour. Meanwhile, Billy Corgan himself is working with a free online-album called “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope” and so far he was able to publish three out of forty forty tracks.

Radiohead had denied any facts and rumours about so called plans to release a new album. Recently, such information was vigorously spread all around the Internet and practically did not have any basic proves. The website which started all of this stuff is Tinymixtapes.com. People who run it began to send emails to the band’s fans while faking all sorts of details about Radiohead’s next release. Basically, the album was to be called “Tehrangeles” and had to include eleven tracks with the names of “The Daily Mail”, “Give Up The Ghost”, and “Supercollider”, which were recently performed during the band’s concerts. The official Radiohead representative made a few comments to the New Musical Express by saying that nothing of this kind, except the above mentioned songs is true. The band is not planning to make any releases in the nearest time. However, it’s well known that Radiohead began to work with the new album, which is eighth to be exact, in January this year, and previously it was also said that they’ve spent three weeks at the Los Angeles studio with their producer Nigel Godrich. Meanwhile, Radiohead vocalist Tom Yorke is going to start his new solo project Atoms For Peace with the mini-tour in around the US sometime in April. The last Radiohead album “In Rainbows” was released in October, 2007.

Iron Maiden had announced the release of it’s new studio album. As MusicRadar said, the new material, which is called “The Final Frontier” should be out sometime in summer this year, and may be one of the best in many years. The track list is not known yet, but what is for sure is that the album will be their fifteenth full length studio work. The release is going to be accompanied with the grand tour in around the US and presumably Canada. Heavy metal veterans will be touring together with their colleagues from Dream Theater (pretty cool band by the way) starting with the concert in Dallas on June 9. The last venue takes place in Washington DC on July 20. Practically, their previous album “A Matter of Life and Death” (2006) was not the worst piece of work either; it got pretty high rates from critics and was able to get to number four on the British national chart. Notably, the four years of silence between these two releases was actually the longest in Iron Maiden’s history because before that fans could expect something new every two and a half years. Well, let’s see how “The Final Frontier” will work out, but most likely it should be pretty good and there are a few reasons to that; first the band is not really getting worse and second their last one was quite big. Thus, high expectations and tons of metal.

A 33-years old Colombian singer Shakira was recently awarded with a medal from the well known International Labour Organization, which concentrates on fighting with poverty and unemployment all around the world. A talented singer was given this privilege for founding of the Barefoot Foundation, which provides free food to six thousand Colombian children and collects charities in order to give them education. Seminars for their parents and communities where they live are also taking considerable part in the foundation’s activities. At the same time Shakira is one of the founders of the ALAS Foundation, which is lobbying government activities to help children in Latin America. In 2003 when she was only 26 Shakira was the youngest UNESCO Goodwill ambassador. At the same time she is quite famous for talking to businessmen and politicians in order to bring their attention on the problems of youth poverty in the third world countries. In 2007 due to her activities ALAS Foundation was able to collect forty million dollars from the government of Spain and two hundred millions from the richest man in Mexico Carlos Slim. In February 2010 she met with the US President Barack Obama to discuss all the above issues. Her meetings with the British prime minister Gordon Brown and the World Bank’s president Robert Zoellick were also counted as her best achievements on the road of fighting poverty. Surely, this lady deserves medals and honours; her work is very considerable and could not be unnoticed by ILO.

British musician Peter Gabriel is not going to release the album in which he planned to incorporate the variety of cover songs. Basically, the album “I’ll Scratch Yours” had to cover his original “Scratch My Back” by specifically chosen musicians, noted The Guardian. The main reason for this unsuccessful outcome was caused by other artists who have decided not to participate in the project. Particularly, one of the biggest musicians who will not take his part in this game is David Bowie. As Gabriel said in the recent interview to Rolling Stone magazine, Bowie had lost any interest in music and due to this strange thing his song “Heroes” will be recorded by Brian Eno who was it’s original co-author. Also, if following various rumors, Arcade Fire had withdrawn it’s flag from Peter Gabriel’s recording stash. Pitchfork notices that the band shall not cover Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers”, thus totally failing his idea to make it up in 2010. All of these factors have eventually led to the fact that “I’ll Scratch Yours” will not be  released as one album, but should be divided into singles and only in this way may hit the stores. First two songs from “I’ll Scratch Yours” - “Biko” performed by Paul Simon and “Not One of Us” by The Magnetic Fields are already available at the iTunes. The rest of them including “Wallflower” by Radiohead should come out in the nearest time. Ex-Genesis leader Peter Gabriel had released “Scratch My Back” on February 12, which turned to be his eighth studio album in his solo career. This album consists of numerous and famous covers of Radiohead, Elbow, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Bowie, Neil Young and many others.

Thin Lizzy’s “Live and Dangerous” album is now considered to be the best rock record of all times according to the British radio station Planet Rock, said Gigwise. Definitely, this broadcasting firm did not draw this conclusion from nowhere, they were using their listeners as the main source of such opinion. Thin Lizzy’s album was even able to overdue Deep Purple’s “Made in Japan”, which eventually grabbed number two on their list. Third spot belongs to “Strangers in the Night” by UFO. Fourth and fifth places were conquered by The Who with it’s “Live at Leeds” and “If You Want Blood, You Got It” by AC/DC. Most of these radio polls are naming the best and each of these albums could go to the first place by the way. The only thing is that one day these votes spread in one way and in other days they may look totally different, but practically with the same bands and albums. The first ten list also includes Pink Floyd’s “Pulse” and “Live After Death” by Iron Maiden. The only group which went into Planet Rock’s list with three albums at once was Canadian legend Rush; Led Zeppelin is represented by two albums. It’s all great, but again and again such lists mainly incorporate old bands and old artists, so it would be much better to see someone new. However, all these old bands are surely deserving this kind of respect, new ones will get there later. Thin Lizzy is the Irish hard-rock band that was created in Dublin by a singer and bass guitarist Phil Lynott, drummer Brian Downey and guitarist Eric Bell in 1969. In various times many prominent musicians were taking part in it’s lineup - Gary Moore, Brian Robertson, Snowy White, Darren Wharton and John Sykes.