That’s just music

Actress Marion Cotillard is planning to start the first concert tour in her life together with a singer named Yodelice, said ContactMusic. This woman is pouring with talent and definitely couldn’t stay without music, her ambitions kept on asking for more actions. As she said, during the first half of this year she sang in duet with Yodelice and began to enjoy the whole process. Concerts took place in Belgium and France; Marion was primarily participating as a vocalist, but also used bass guitar, piano and drums. Curiously, her new stage name is “Simone” because it was Marion’s grandmother’s name, and most likely a girl will keep on using it for the following music business activities. She has noted that film production was constantly taking her away from the music business, and clearly there was no time to get absorbed with this new thing. “I love being Simone. I’m waiting for my schedule to open up in a month or two so I can pick up with the band and be a musician again”. Notably, in the past Cotillard was co-working with the British band Franz Ferdinand; she had recorded vocals for a song “The Eyes of Mars”, and was clearly sighted by some of the band’s fans.

The Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood had denied provocative information regarding rumors about the fact that the band’s career is going to be over after 2011-2012 tour, said ThirdAge. Recently, a lot of fans and critics kept on saying some strange things about The Rolling Stones, but no prove or actual supportive information came up. It seems that finally Wood has decided to bring it to the world and clear these things for everyone; after all musicians don’t like if somebody is putting their music lives down in such a way. In this particular case, British tabloid The Sun became another source of rumors. They’ve written that The Rolling Stones’ guys are over sixty and they simply can’t perform any longer, so presumably the upcoming tour will be their last one. In 2012 the band will mark its fiftieth anniversary, and surely they’ve tried to quit for numerous times before, but no matter what happened they just kept on working on and on. For example, they did not tour from 1982 till 1989, but continued to release new albums. A lot of bands are not enjoying tours or just can’t handle this sort of activity for a long period of time,  some rest is needed. The most recent album released by The Rolling Stones was “A Bigger Bang” (2005), thus two year’s of touring followed in 2005-2007.

Terry Gilliam will become a director of the Internet-broadcasted concert of the Canadian band Arcade Fire, said Associated Press. This concert will take place in the Madison Square Garden in New York on August 5, and should be one of the biggest events in the history of Arcade Fire. The whole performance will be available live on the YouTube service, so those who wish to see everything should see everything. Particularly this venue will turn into their first “Unstaged” concerts, thus three more online performances are due; it’s already known that The Roots (and possibly many others) will participate in the program. Some bands are beginning to enjoy various new ways of performing live because nowadays this is the best way to gain fame and money. CD sales went down tremendously during the last ten years, and there is absolutely no other way, but to perform live. Madison Square Garden concert was organized in support of the band’s new album – “The Suburbs”, which is about to be released on August 2. Arcade Fire is very talented and they surely fit into something quite unique within the music business. The latest movie released by Gilliam was “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” (2009), and currently he is working with many various projects.

Legendary U2 is not considered to be the richest band in the world. From June 2009 until June 2010 they were able to gain 130 million dollars and took the first place among the most “luxurious” bands in the music business. Traditionally, this survey was taken by the Forbes magazine. U2 is obviously very popular and surely they can pull off millions all over the world, life is truly shining for them. The second spot went to a hard rock ‘power house’ AC/DC, they’ve made it to 114 million dollars, and number three goes to Beyonce with her 87 million dollars. This shows some cool things about rock music in general, U2 and AC/DC are leading the scene and popularity follows the whole thing because without it they would never get so rich. The other artists go as follows, Bruce Springsteen (70 million dollars), Britney Spears (64 million dollars), she has really succeeded during the last year, Jay-Z (63 million dollars), Lady Gaga (62 millions), Madonna (58 millions), and country singer Kenny Chesney (50 millions).  Black Eyed Peas and Coldplay are sharing the same amount – 48 millions. As Forbes noted, the half of its list began their music careers way back in the 1980’s, thus showing how many changes took place during the last decade. Today not too many young fans are ready to pay for music, which is available for free.

Lady Gaga had caused some bitter dissatisfaction on the side of John Lennon’s fans by performing on his legendary white piano, said New York Post. This instrument was given to Yoko Ono as a gift from Lennon on her birthday way back in the 1970’s. Lady Gaga had used the instrument while visiting Yoko as a friend.  Lennon’s son did not miss a moment and took a picture of her, and later published it on his Twitter-blog, so surely Lady Gaga is now part of the legendary music world. However, this picture had caused some anger from Lennon’s and The Beatles admirers, particularly, bloggers did not like the fact that Sean Lennon and Yoko had allowed Lady Gaga get so close to that ‘mysterious’ piano. Most likely these people don’t understand Lady Gaga and strongly believe that such a musician simply can’t use Lennon’s instruments, for them it’s a taboo. Basically, it’s another very good example of the war between pop and rock n’ roll, but Lady Gaga is also not a simple pop singer, she definitely belongs to some very unique stash too and must deserve to stay near such people as Yoko Ono, her son and John Lennon’s piano. On the other hand, Sean had removed that picture from his blog almost right away, but wrote some complaints.

Frontman of the British rock band Arctic Monkeys Alex Turner has debuted as a solo artist and author of the music for movies. As ContactMusic.com said, a twenty four years old musician had written the soundtrack for the new movie called “Submarine”, which is now filmed by Richard Ayoade. Previously, he had produced a documentary about Arctic Monkeys – “At The Apollo”; it was totally the concert oriented film about their performances in the various places. Besides that, Ayoade is famous for participating in such series productions as “The Mighty Boosh” and The IT Crowd” and as the director of the music videos for Vampire Weekend. This talented actor and producer is most likely working with something pretty cool for Alex Turner, and surely he will make some kind of work which may not leave Turner’s fans unsatisfied. The soundtrack production (technical side) is lead by James Ford who was already co-operating with Arctic Monkey and Klaxons. The last studio album by Arctic Monkeys was released in August, 2009, and since then the band did not make anything creative, possibly because every member is planning his own solo career right now. Before 2009 Alex Turner was participating in The Last Shadow Puppets project together with The Rascals vocalist Miles Kane, in 2008 they’ve released a successful album “The Age of the Understatement”, but as Turner said, no more albums will be released in the near future.

Amy Winehouse had created the new band, which is going to include ?uestlove, a drummer from the American hip-hop group The Roots, said Gigwise. Winehouse is constantly trying to move around and create something cool despite her partying life style; her new project is still staying without the name though. Another member of Amy’s new thing will be Raphael Saadiq, multi-instrumentalist, producer and a singer. Both of her new followers are considered to be very talented and innovative, so most likely Winehouse’s fans will be surprised with another album, and hopefully it will happen as soon as possible. So far, Winehouse and ?uestlove were keeping in touch through the Skype only because a British singer could not get the US visa due to her scandalaous behaviour. “The closest US territory to which she can get to is Jamaica”, noted ?uestlove. Soon a drummer will visit France and hopes to personally meet with Winehouse. As the guy also said, he is too tired of communicating with her exclusively online. Currently, “Back to Black” is Amy’s second and most recent album, it was released in 2006 by the Island record label and nothing new was in sight so far. In March 2010 some news agencies began to spread rumors about her plans to make another release. Mitch Winehouse (her father) had shown hopes that the work will be over closer to the end of this year.

British musician David Bowie had announced the re-releasing of his tenth studio album “Station to Station”, said New Musical Express. For the first time it came out way back in January, 1976, and is considered to be one of the most influential of Bowie’s works, back then it went onto fifth place on the British hits chart, and third on the Billboard chart. This re-release will be produced by the EMI record label on September 20 in two formats; the first will include three CDs and besides the original tape version it must incorporate Bowie’s “Live Nassau Coliseum” performance recorded in 1976 in New York. The second version is aimed at music fans; it should include three CDs and the mini-album with an edited and shortened tape version, DVD with four different stereo versions and three vinyl records. Surely, regular lover of his music may not purchase this second part, but for some it will be the real gift, which they’ve never seen before while dealing with Bowie’s collections in the music stores. Additionally, both re-release versions will include a booklet with Cameron Crow’s comments (while working for the Rolling Stone in 1970’s this guy used to interview Bowie) and posters/photographs. A lot of musicians these days are interested in re-producing things again and again, many of them wish to leave a lot of musical inheritance, and it’s absolutely right.

Legendary Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has become an author of the soundtrack for the newest David Fincher’s movie “The Social Network” dedicated to the Facebook’s creator Mark Zuckerberg. All this curious information can be found on the Nine Inch Nails official website. Reznor notes that working on the music is almost over, and now he should find the best racks, which may fulfill two studio albums – not more, not less. “The Social Network” will be premiered on October 1, 2010, but Reznor believes that his album shall come out on two weeks earlier, so fans and admirers may hear another creation of a genius. Previously, Trent has mentioned that this year is for the artistic rest on his side; however when he saw Fincher’s screenplay the whole plan had suddenly changed, he began to work continuously just to make the whole work getting done on time. Nowadays, Trent Reznor is quite busy with his new side project – How to Destroy Angels, which is taking most of his working time during this year. The band includes Trent’s wife Maryqueen Maandig (vocals) and Atticus Ross (his NIN colleague). Ross was also participating in the production of the above mentioned soundtracks. Nine Inch Nails leader is famous for writing soundtracks not just for movies, but even for computer games; today his music is often associated with the conceptual visual arts.

Founder of The Beach Boys Brian Wilson is about to release the cover album on George Gershwin’s music, said Pitchfork. Gershwin is the legend of the classical music and if a guy as Wilson is contemplating on re-producing this unique heritage, then surely he will outstand before his rock n’ roll counterparts. The album should be called “Brian Wilson Reimagines George Gershwin” and will be in stores during the second half of August. Usually modern musicians tend to forget the old stuff, even if that old stuff is ten times greater than their own new song writing ingenuity. Wilson’s position is somewhat different, the album shall consist of fourteen tracks, including such songs as “Summertime”, “I Loves You Porgy”, “I Got Rhythm” and “Someone to Watch Over Me”. Besides that, it should include two songs written by Wilson based on the unfinished Gershwin’s works - “The Like in I Love You” and “Nothing But Love”, the first one can be heard on Brian’s official website. It’s interesting to note that Wilson’s plans on “co-working” with Gershwin began to pulse within the press way back in 2009, right when Gershwin’s heritage possessors gave him the green light to use his material, especially those unfinished works. So far the most recent album -“That Lucky Old Sun” was released in September of 2008, and now Wilson will kick once more.