That’s just music

Johnny Marr had decided to leave The Cribs after three years of vigorous co-operation, noted New Musical Express. His official press release states that he is about to start a solo career, writing soundtracks and some other things that may truly fulfill numerous artistic ambitions. Also, according to Marr’s ideas he is planning to release two albums in about a year, so it’s definite that the guy will not sit still and waste time as some other musicians may do once in a while. He surely enjoyed staying with The Cribs while every member of the band became his best friend, possibly he even feels a little bit sad about leaving them right now. At the same time three of his friends from The Cribs had written that due to Johnny’s leave they shall not experience any sort of tragedy. According to their opinions, recently Marr used to spend most of the time apart from the rest of them, and eventually it turned out that it’s the right moment for him to leave and start doing something else. Currently, The Cribs are writing new songs, and to do that they have everything they need, in other words, the band is not planning to put it’s hands down without Marr. Practically, the latter had joined them only in 2008, when the group itself had existed since 2001, he was the first one to get in, and as it appears today, the first one to get out.  

The current U2 world tour is now considered to be the most profitable of all times, said Billboard. Well, U2 was always quite famous for it’s truly giant performances, their gains were enormous, and now they just simply do their best. Until the most recent moment the only band which was on top of financial gains was The Rolling Stones, however, the Irish guys had changed the whole thing on April 10. At that day (or actually evening) they’ve been performing in Sao Paulo, and after that show it became apparent that the tour’s profit rose higher than 558 million dollars; this was the exact gain on the side of The Rolling Stones right after the end of their “A Bigger Bang” tour, but now they were left behind by another grandiose “bang”. Right now U2 is traveling the world in support of “No Line on the Horizon” album (2009), and it all will last until July this year, so according to many opinions the band may totally gain 700 million dollars or even more. At the same time this grand tour will top the amount of sold out tickets - the band is going to carry out 110 concerts and should sell seven million tickets, something what was also in the hands of The Rolling Stones. Nobody could beat the latter, but now the rock n’ roll music industry’s Olympia is in the hands of U2. According to many opinions this is not something very important in the art of music, the whole business part is just nothing special and should be considered as arrogance.

American New Wave band Blondie had finished working on it’s ninth studio album. A CD which is their first in eight years had received the title “Panic of Girls”, and as their official website noted, it should hit the stores on June 1 exclusively in Britain and in it’s “fan” version; the whole thing is already available for pre-orders, and the price of it all is fifteen pounds. Practically, this band is not really hoping to sell a lot of copies, or at least it seems that way because why they are planning to ‘push it through’ merely in Britain? Nevertheless, some bands just have their own marketing plans, so they can be hardly understood by the larger crowds of fans or music critics. Blondie is an old group and by now had developed it’s unique way of doing things, thus no matter what they surely know how to spread music among their loyal fans or just those who are somehow got interested in them. The “fan” version should include a large booklet (approximately 132 pages) with photos and interviews, plus two bonus tracks, “Horizontal Twist” and “Mirame”, these two will not be incorporated into the regular version of “Panic of Girls”. The main CD shall be out just a few weeks after the release of the “fan” version, and most likely it will not be only the British territory.

American Academy of Recording Arts had decided to remove thirty one categories from the list of Grammy nominations, noted Reuters. As the result, the next year will be filled merely by seventy eight awards instead of one hundred and nine if comparing to the current year. Nevertheless, during the latest ceremony the whole available list of categories was not used, only ten were available, so this move on the academy’s side seems to be very practical. Many of those eliminated categories shall not be taken away, they will be blended, thus a lot of musicians out there should not start panicking, their talents are not going to be unnoticed. For example, “the best vocalist in pop music” will be re-named into “the best solo-vocalist in pop music” and so on so forth. Besides, starting the following year hard rockers and heavy metal performers will be united under one award (till this day they were classified as two different things). R&B will be lowered from eight to four categories, Jazz shall possess four categories instead of six. Classical music is also going down from thirteen to nine positions within the academy’s scale. Practically, they’re not eliminating anyone or anything, the academy is just trying to formally organize the whole agenda in order to make it look more simple. Practically nothing is going to be changed or extradited from the musically oriented creative process.

Ex-Oasis guitarist and a songwriter Noel Gallagher is planning to get married to his current girlfriend, Scottish publicist Sarah McDonald. A ceremony should take place sometime during an upcoming summer, noted The Sun. This guy is part of those people who don’t seek for the family issues very fast, they can’t settle down as some others, so this time he is up to something quite peculiar. Sources close to a couple say that Gallagher had proposed to Sarah way back in 2010, however, everything was kept in secret until today, things were measured and weighted before becoming solid enough to go public. Interestingly, Sarah and Noel are living together for ten years so far, but for some reason didn’t approach any official recognition of their relationship; many people and especially musicians do it all the time today. Gallagher and McDonald have common children, sons Donovan and Sonny, but again even this didn’t make them sign up for the marriage. Nevertheless, marriage is sometimes another way to classify oneself within certain class of people, and it’s not always working at all, another stamp in the passport just can’t built up families, especially if these people are liberal and free from any kind of social agendas. Reality is unpredictable and not everything can be organized by the traditional and often odd rules, thus artistic people constantly try not to notice these rules in order to live their own lives.

One of the biggest record labels in the world EMI had decided to begin the charity auction to help Japan which is going through one of the most troublesome times in it’s history. Sales will include all sorts of personal things that once upon a time were possessed by famous musicians, who somehow dealt with the company in the past. The auction itself is taking place within the frames of eBay website and shall be divided into two parts that should last until April 21, so those who are interested must start looking right now. All financial gains will be given to the Red Cross, the organization which is fitting the best into what is going on in the shattered Japan. Among many curious things that will be auctioned, fans may purchase lots from Norah Jones, Jane Birkin, Rosanna Cash, The Beach Boys, Iron Maiden, The Chemical Brothers, Depeche Mode, 30 Seconds To Mars, Daft Punk, Good Charlotte and many more. For example, the first part of the auction will sell such things as two vintage microphones once used at the Abbey Road studio, Chris Martin’s jacket, The Beastie Boys’ award, which was given to them by the Japanese MTV, and some rare Depeche Mode poster. The second part will include 1987 Ferrari 412, which belonged to Daft Punk, David Guetta’s laptop, guitars from Norah Jones and Gorillaz poster signed by Damon Albarn. The whole collection may also incorporate a lot of CDs signed by Robbie Williams, John Lennon, David Bowie, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Band, Jane’s Addiction and others.

David Bowie had announced two new releases, which for some curious reason got connected to his long forgotten single “Golden Years” (1975). As his official website had noted, on June 6 EMI record label is planning to release the mini album “The Golden Years David Bowie Vs KCRW EP”, it will include the single itself (it went through a lot of serious digital re-mastering stages), and four remixed versions of it. These remixes were created within the frames of the last year’s contest at the Los Angeles KCRW radio-station, and the whole thing was particularly dedicated to the re-release of his “Station to Station” album. Notably, David Bowie is not producing or writing music for many years so far, and according to him, the only reason why he is acting this way is his total lack of interest, thus, fans may absolutely forget about waiting for anything new from him. All the previous releases are more or less tied to his previous material, and nothing but remixes can be seen on the horizon. The last album called “Reality” came out in 2003, and by the end of March this year Internet pirates began to spread his unreleased album “Toy”, which had to come out in 2001, but due to Bowie’s hesitation stayed in shadows. Possibly one day he may change his mind and people will see something, however, hopes should be hidden somewhere deep because most likely nothing will happen anyway.

Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor had recorded a few tracks together with Velvet Revolver, noted Gigwise. Information about the fact that Taylor is going to co-work with Velvet Revolver began to circulate way back in time, however, officially everything was confirmed only recently, and everyone can be fully convinced of this without any suspicion. Revolver’s bass guitarist Duff McKagan said that all his band’s musicians had already enough time to record a few songs, and besides that, the latter had called Taylor “the best voice of the new generation”, noting his personal pride while working together with such a person. At the same time he had underlined that Velvet Revolver is not going to produce any new records or make concert performances any earlier than the upcoming autumn, so it merely means that they’re just working pretty hard to create something what will last. After all there are too many bands that just wish to portray themselves without any actual work behind what they produce, but these guys are simply taking their time. It can also be explained by their joint involvement in other projects that are not less important than the Velvet Revolver itself; this is the main reason why the band is often called the ’super-group”, it consists of many guys from many different bands right now. Velvet Revolver was formed in 2002 by three ex-Guns N’ Roses musicians (McKagan, Slash and Matt Sorum), Dave Kushner from Wasted Youth and Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland. This line-up was able to release two great albums, but in 2009 Weiland had decided to leave the band, so until today they didn’t make any serious studio releases.

Popular British music oriented TV show “Top of the Pops” (TOTP), which was aired on BBC from 1964 until 2006 is going to come back, noted The Daily Telegraph. However, those will be archival footages, and nothing new is about to be produced, sad but true to many viewers who would like to take it back on the full scale. First BBC is planning to show episodes from 1976, practically right during that time the channel began to make an archive of everything they’ve made, so it may include even some things that were not seen before; anything what happened before the mentioned above year didn’t last at all. 1976 is signified with the presence of ABBA with their “Dancing Queen” hit, The Wurzels with “Combine Harvester”, Tina Charles and Bryan Ferry; during that time they’ve seen their first big exposures to the wide public. Today the BBC channel is going to air a documentary about this show, it’s history, particularly those events that took place in music in 1976. As the project’s organizers say, if they will be able to gather enough people to view it, then they have enough material until 2040. This show was viewable in many countries, but it had ceased to exist on July 30, 2006 due to the lack of audience, people just did want it anymore. Nevertheless, it’s getting resurrected during every Christmas, and people seem to watch it, even though the whole process of rebirth is not going to happen in the near future.