105 degree Friday Updates

• This type of weather is why I attend very few concerts at Starplex anymore.
• The Cult is releasing "Peace" the shelved followup to "Love". Oddly enough they are releasing it as a dual package with "Electric". Some of the songs saw the light of day eventually but not as a collection.
• You can buy Dave Grohl's beach house! For a mere 3.25 million......
• Pandora claims they are not asking for an 85% cut in royalties, we will see where this leads.

 

  

• The set above is from the Stones Steel Wheel's tour, which I got to see at the Cotton Bowl. I remember they had a friggin' elevator in it to get up to the top. Mark Fisher was responsbilbe for this and the original The Wall set for Pink Floyd (among others) and has passed on to The Great Gig in the Sky.
• Chet Flippo, Fort Worth native and fellow alumn of Amon Carter Riverside High School, has passed on as well. Chet was a well respected music journalist and author and worked for Rolling Stone and CMT among others. Thanks to Zepp69 for the heads up....
• I tried like hell to get the video to start at a certain point but my web saviness (and google) is not up to par. Go to the 4:40 mark for Alex Lifeson's Blah Blah Blah Rock & Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech. That is some funny shit.

There is a Pandora war brewing

And Pink Floyd is leading the charge for the musicians side. According to Pandora they pay too much in royalties to make a profit and would like to reduce royalities by 85% even going so far as to ask artists to support this (in an apparently "deceptive" move). According to the artist they aren't making shit anyways. The crux of the argument is pretty much summed up in the statement below.

"We've heard Pandora complain it pays too much in royalties to make a profit," adds the members of Pink Floyd. "(Of course, we also watched Pandora raise $235 million in its IPO and double its listeners in the last two years.) But a business that exists to deliver music can't really complain that its biggest cost is music.You don't hear grocery stores complain they have to pay for the food they sell.

More info below:

Pink Floyd vs. Pandora 

Deceptive 

One Million Plays for $16.98 

Megadeth Wearhouse from Dave Mustaine     

• For some reason major tours, including The Stones and NIN are skipping the DFW area. I know I have seen a few other acts without a Dallas slot on the bill. It's not like we have a shortage of acts that come to town, and there is plenty of local music as well. And then there are acts that never make it here and tour exclusively on the West Coast and the North/Northeast areas of the country. I am sure we have the same situation here where bands come through all the time and never make it to other places as well. I sometimes think there are too many shows to choose from, which in turn leads to half full venues, which in turn leads to bands rethinking booking here. Throw in the fact that we have all four of the major sports teams in the area there is more entertainment than one could possibly absorb. 
• That Metal Show's premiere was VH1 Classic's highest rated debut for the year. And you can hear Florentine's Metal Midgets show on Thursday's on XM Radio's Ozzy's Boneyard.
• Slim Whitman passed away this week, Coverdale would like to end the "feud" with Plant and Kim Deal has left the Pixies. 
• I never got to see the Pixies and Robert Plant's show last night at The Palladium was the first time I skipped him in a decade (or more).
• In the most unimportant music news of the week Carly Rae Jepsen believes in Justin Bieber. I am sure she does holding the opening slot of his tour(s).

 

 

Friday Updates

• According to a Baltimore ordinance anything charged above .50 cents over the face value of a ticket is considered scalping (which I guess is illegal in Baltimore?). Guess where that puts Ticketmaster at. Baltimore Law Condemned.
• I understand the "Ticketmaster is a monopoly" situation and they probably charge too much for service fees etc. however we live in a free enterprise system and they cannot provide a service for free. Do you understand how easy it is to now buy tickets at a one stop shop? I think the bigger issues at hand are the initial price of the ticket to begin with and the right to resell tickets. Couple that with the fact that the artists themselves resell their own tickets and you cannot even sniff the front row tickets on Ticketmaster due to the fact that these tickets are distributed by other means and these are the issues that need to be resolved. Perfect example is the current Kid Rock tour where all seats are $20 (plus service fees of course). That is all seats except the Platinum packages that Live Nation was offering for the "good seats" which could run up to $300 each.
• Scott Weiland has of course counter sued Stone Temple Pilots-And he is citing the the same partnership agreement that the band is in their suit.
• After a farewell tour 13 YEARS AGO, and a statement that KISS could continue forever, even without Paul and Gene, Gene now says KISS will be gone in 5-10 years.
• If you missed it the Led Zeppelin Kennedy Center Honors presentation is below.

Random On This Day in Music History Update

As I have mentioned before I tried an RSS feed for this site but it doesn't work very well. Nevertheless I try to read it daily and the history on certain days can be astounding - This Day in Music.

• Robert Zimmerman graduated high school.
• The Stones played their first ever US date.
• Jim Hodder (Steely Dan, Sammy Hagar), Conway Twitty, Ronnie Lane, Dee Dee Ramone & Mel Torme all killed by death.

And this little tidbit:

"1975, During recording sessions for Wish You Were Here at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, Syd Barrett turned up out of the blue as Pink Floyd were listening to playbacks of Shine On You Crazy Diamond — a song that happened to be about Barrett. By that time, the 29-year-old Barrett had shaved off all of his hair (including his eyebrows), become overweight, and his ex-bandmates did not at first recognize him. Barrett eventually left without saying goodbye, and none of the band members ever saw him again."