That’s just music

Organizers of the jazz festival in the Swiss town of Montreaux have announced the list of musicians that are going to participate at the event. This year’s concert marathon will be taking place for the 44th time and should last for seventeen days (July 1-17) Opening act belongs to Genesis vocalist and drummer Phil Collins who will perform with his solo program based on cover versions of the classic soul and R&B tracks that were produced by the Motown label. This guy is legendary and his participation is not going to be the last thing during the festival. The following day will burst with another powerful talent of the reunited Roxy Music which was the starting project for Brian Ferry, Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno. Among many other headliners are going to be the numerous indie-bands and solo performers such as Air, Beach House, Vampire Weekend and The Strokes vocalist Julian Casablancas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Regina Spektor, Tori Amos, Erica Badu, Phoenix and Broken Bells. On July 8 Montreaux festival will be enlightened by the legendary trip-hop band Massive Attack together with a singer Martina Topley Bird. In other words, it’s going to be something pretty strong, and anyone who likes this kind of music should visit Montreaux. The music they’re going to perform is not astonishingly popular in the world today, but maybe that’s the way it should be, the best is only for the best.

Infamous Sotheby’s auction house had placed the text of a song “A Day In The Life” written by John Lennon himself; particularly it was done by him way back in 1967. Bloomberg says that the whole process of sales will take place on June 18, in New York. Until 1992 the handwritten text belonged to the administrator and a close friend of The Beatles Mel Evans, but since then it was auctioned for a few times. Now auction organizers are planning to squeeze seven hundred thousand dollars out of it, and it’s very possible that the price may go even higher. Selling out precious items as this one is quite big these days, lot’s of people are making huge money, and the whole commercial agenda behind it twists music into museum business. Items that have something to do with The Beatles possess huge popularity among those who collect precious things, in 2005 the original text of “All You Need Is Love” had produced one million dollars. In the meantime, the next grandiose auction house Christie’s will take care of another big ’sell out, hang out’ on June 24 in London, and it shall incorporate some things that are related to The Beatles as well. The top lots may include George Harrison’s acoustic guitar Yamaha FG-340, Paul McCartney’s college term paper with his own hand drawn stuff, and a copy of the 1963 album “With The Beatles” signed by all four musicians.

Founders of the British band Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher have joined the dog fight for the ex-members of their fallen apart band, notes ContactMusic. Oasis was officially ended in 2009 and it all seems that there will be no continuation, at least Gallagher brothers believe it to be so. Currently, they’re trying to literally divide two musicians between each other, ex-Oasis bassist Andy Bell and another ex-band member guitarist Gem Archer. The older brother Noel needs his Oasis colleagues in order to record his new solo album, and Liam who had formed his own band needs a bassist for the upcoming tour. “It’s a tricky situation for Gem and Andy. They are working with both Liam and Noel. Liam’s begun rehearsing tracks for this new project, while Noel has been doing demos of songs as well”, said the unknown source closely related to both brothers. Archer and Bell did not comment this complicated puzzle which makes them quite popular and divided between two friends at the same time. Information about the fact that Liam Gallagher had found the new band became known just a few months ago; the guy has told the press that he is co-working with the ex-Oasis members to produce new material. Noel Gallagher on the other hand did not start working at the studio so far and his new release may be delayed for a while.

The Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan had recently criticized his well known friend, a singer and actress Courtney Love. Musician had posted a number of posts at his Twitter micro-blog, which obviously included some very bitter phrases. Thus, Corgan wrote that Love still continues to live with the help of her dead husband’s money, Nirvana frontman Curt Cobain. Besides that he noted Love’s inability to write her own songs, so she keeps on living off other people’s talents, of course including Cobain’s magnificence. Before, it seemed that these two musicians were in good relations, but his comments obviously destroy this nearly romantic picturesque within the music world of grunge and rock. Also, Corgan is now very angry at the fact that Courtney Love had lost the guardianship over her 17-years old daughter, - “Only you could abandon such a beautiful, incredible child who is smarter than you, cooler than you, and better than you”, underlined Corgan with the incredible anger on his side. Honestly saying, the guy is right, Love is a problematic person without any breaks sometimes, capable of doing anything without any shame or fear. The conflict between them is continuing for a few years so far, once in a while they ’sign a truce’, but then again start this bitter war. Despite all these things, The Smashing Pumpkins frontman is regularly co-operating with a Hole vocalist, and her upcoming album “Nobody’s Daughter” is full of his works.

Canadian singer Joni Mitchell had criticized her old American colleague Bob Dylan by accusing him of plagiarism. This quite shocking information came out of her recent interview to The Los Angeles Times. Mitchell’s angry words were particularly related to journalist’s question/opinion about the folk scene of 1960’s/1970’s when the stage was full of musicians with the nicknames (for example, Mitchell’s real name is Roberta Joan Anderson, and Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman). “Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I”, she noted. She believes that his name is totally fake and hers is real. “As for my name, my parents wanted a boy, so they called me Robert John; when I came out a girl, they just added two letter A’s to that. Then I married Chuck Mitchell; I wanted to keep my maiden name - I had a bit of a following as Joni Anderson - but he wouldn’t let me”. In other words, she believes that the guy is absolutely not real in comparison to her, including the name and art. However, she did not bring any examples of the acts of plagiarism on the side of Dylan, his music, poetry or anything else he could do in the world of artistic creativity. Surely, Mitchell had quite exaggerated her or Dylan’s roles and lot’s of fans or just people of music would never agree with her radical opinion. It’s very possible that something went wrong between them two, and now she seems to be angry or jealous.   

Courtney Love’s official representative had recently said that Kurt Cobain’s widow has decided not to change her stage/artistic name, noted The Guardian. Well, this girl is very famous for her extraordinary behavior, and surely this time her wishes to get rid of the name “Courtney Love” was another such example. Previously, she told New Musical Express that her real name is Courtney Michelle Harrison and, - “Courtney Love is dead”; she also noted the fact that with this name she has gained the world fame and now it’s too heavy for her. She insisted on calling her Courtney Michelle. As the representative underlined, NME just ripped her phrase out of context and she did not have plans of leaving her famous name. However if looking at the commercial trailer of her interview to NME she literally says, “The name Courtney Love feels like I’ve outgrown it. It was really, really fun to be Courtney Love for a long time, and then it became an ass-pain.” Possibly, it was Courtney’s way to portray herself once again, get noticed and squeeze news articles all over the place about what she did this time. On April 27 Courtney Love is going to release an album “Nobody’s Daughter” together with Hole; the band was in silence for a long time. Thus, it will be their first album in six years.

A singer from Iceland, Eliza Geirsdottir Newman has written a song about the recent Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption, and interestingly the main reason for it turned to be her wish to tell people the right pronunciation of this extremely difficult word, said The Daily Telegraph. Her song about volcano, which had literally caused an unprecedented paralysis of the European airspace was aired by the Al Jazeera satellite television network. Practically, her song looks like this, - Eyjafjallajokull is a long, long name/For such a small glacier, with such notorious fame/And Eyjafjallajokull has caused quite a stir/And no-one can fly anywhere except the birds/Please stop it Eyjafjallajokull. It’s interesting to note than only 320 thousand people are able to pronounce the volcano’s name correctly, notes UPI. Probably these men live exclusively in Iceland… Actually, it’s hard to tell if her song did slow down the volcano, but it’s really moving on slower than before, and airspace is seriously getting better. Basically this performance is available on YouTube for anyone who wishes to hear the right pronunciation of a word ‘Eyjafjallajokull’. Volcano’s activity did influence many musicians who had to cancel their visits, thus a lot of British ones could not move onto US to participate at one of the biggest music festivals - Coachella.

Twice as legendary ex-The Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney had announced the plan to re-release all his solo discography along with all the albums of the band Wings on the independent record label Concord Music Group, said Reuters. Wings is McCartney’s co-project which made the joint records with him and was pretty successful; not as The Beatles or his fully solo music, but good enough primarily due to Sir Paul’s talent. Musician began to think about re-releasing of his solo works right after another record label EMI did not prolong it’s contract with him. In other words, he was left without the label, and this turned to be the only reason why McCartney shall do everything once again. Also, the date of his announcement fell on the day of the 40th anniversary of his first solo work - the album “McCartney”, which included such hits as “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Junk”, and “Every Night” came out on April 17, 1970 and had practically signified the break up of The Beatles. Curiously, founded by Norman Lear the Concord Music Group had already co-operated with McCartney, but before the ex-Beatle it was specializing on soul and jazz, he has slightly changed them. Group’s ’sister’ label Hear Music together with  the Starbucks was releasing Paul’s studio and concert records “Memory Almost Full” (2007), and “Good Evening New York” (2009). If relating all of this to The Beatles’ records as a whole, EMI still owns the copyright and it’s business was not going too bad. During the previous year this company had re-released the band’s full catalogue and sold more than thirteen million copies.

Infamous Soundgarden, which had experienced it’s rebirth in the beginning of 2010 gave the first concert since 1997. Definitely, this is a huge breakthrough for the band, if not saying - they’re surely trying to reinvent the wheel of the 90’s. As the Blabbermouth.net noticed, the secret performance took place on April 16 in their beloved Seattle at the “Showbox at the Market” club. Tickets were spread around only at certain time during the last Friday; in order to find out where to find and when to attain them, fans had to figure out a small quest at the Soundgarden’s Twitter blog. During this first concert since the band’s reunion, vocalist Chris Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil, bassist Ben Shepherd and a drummer Matt Cameron were performing under the name of Nudedragons, the anagram of a word Soundgarden - quite inventive. Totally, the band had performed fifteen songs and three additional ones when following the crowd’s last requests. The set-list did include such hits as “Spoonman”, “Fell on Black Days”, “Blow Up the Outside World”, “Pretty Noose” and many others. Eventually, the last song was a cover version of The Doors’ “Waiting For The Sun”. The first truly big performance will occur at the Lollapalooza festival which is going to take place in Chicago on 6-8 of August this year.

American rock band Faith No More had reunited with it’s original vocalist Chuck Mosley, in order to perform at only one single concert, said ContactMusic.com. This group did not work with him for twenty two years and finally he came back to be with them on April 14 at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. A singer had surprisingly replaced a current frontman Mike Patton during the concert, and sang four legendary songs, “As the Worm Turns”, “Death March”, “We Care A Lot” and “Mark Bowen”. During the final track “Introduce Yourself” Mosley and Patton have performed in duet. Surely, the public had welcomed Mosley’s presence as something absolutely incredible and definitely it was incredible because more than two decades is a lot of time. Chuck was the band’s vocalist from 1983 to 1988 and had participated in the recording of their most famous albums, “We Care a Lot” (1985), and “Introduce Yourself” (1987). In 1988 Patton had replaced Mosley to stay in the band for another ten years; in 1998 Faith No More fell apart. During the previous year this band came back together for a big concert tour, but that time Mosley did not participate in it. It’s always very cool to see old musicians arrive from the past and sort of remind people of the old days when grass was more green and the sky was more blue.