blog.mp3adrenalin.com

After a whirlwind trip “back home” this weekend, the electricity going off at midnight last night until 4:30am with sub-freezing temperatures, we settled into a couple of warm cups of coffee this morning while Mini-DD scurried around getting ready for his first round of final exams. While I’m checking email, Mr. D peruses the newspaper providing any relevant or interesting information. This morning, he declared the sad headline, “Dan Fogelberg, Dead at 56″. I was stunned. Dan Fogelberg succumbed to an aggressive form of prostate cancer near dawn on Sunday morning, leaving this world as one of the great acoustical folk musician/singers of this generation.

Dan Fogelberg was another of those artists that my brother exposed me to when he was in college and I was just starting high school. Along with James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett and Carole King, Fogelberg was one of those great singer songwriters of the day and I was totally enamored by his free-spirit and natural vibe.

In 1971, Fogelberg signed with Clive Davis at Columbia Records joining artists Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel as emerging artists from Clive’s “stable”. He had recently dropped out of college and with the reluctant support of his father, and traveled cross country from Illinois to Calfornia to pursue his musical dreams. His father, Lawrence, had been a big band leader and what Dan referred to as a “legitimate musician” and no doubt, understood his youngest child’s passion for music.

Probably the song that Fogelberg “kun-NECK-ted” best with listeners was Auld Lang Syne. Many people identify with the “lost love” story and the song ended up in the top 10 in 1981. I vividly remember this song and relating so strongly to this song. That’s what good songs (and good songwriters) do. They relate. They kun-NECK.

Dan Fogelberg was truly a gentle, sensitive soul who helped shape the music of the seventies with great musicianship and wonderful songwriting. He will be missed and always remembered as one of the great singer-songwriters in the great proliferation of them from that decade.

I’m always amazed how even though a great talent and warm soul leaves this earth, it still keeps spinning. Even though “the world stops for no man”, it would seem that when somebody like Dan Fogelberg passes on, the world just might skip at least one beat.

Showbiz, a film to be released in 2008, is a story about the glitter and litter, shine and sleaze and lure and allure underneath the glamour industry. The films stars Tushar Jalota and Mrinalini Sharma in the lead roles and Gulshan Grover in a significant role and is produced by Mukesh Bhatt. The Bhatt hut is known to be the runway for many newbies, like the yester Aftab Shivdasani, latest Emran Hashmi and Kangna Ranaut, so on. All of them have rooted themselves very quickly and found their own place in the glitzville. Lets hope it works for Tushar Jalota too.

The music is composed by Lalit Pandit, the branch from Jatin-Lalit duo. The style seems appropriate, it is set out to mushroom rockstars. After all, it is Showbiz, a plot about a drummer and a singer, who becomes a fever and icon to the youth overnight. It is a take on media, how media creates and destroys, thrives on a soaring star’s plight. Keeping the plot in mind, some songs sound very fit into the movie, while others beat us to death.

Tu mujhse jab se mila (Shukriya)
Sung by KK. Lalit adapts himself to the signature Pritam style, that you will go back to the album once more to check the credits to be sure. The digital madness and the sheer electro pulse in the track stand out in your senses. Sultry guitar work boasts, screeches and shimmers throughout the song. KK renders passion, frame by frame, or I should say note by note. The rap version by Earl is promising too.

Mere falak ka tu hai sitara
Sung by KK. Here is a treat for our drummer dude. If this is his performance on stage, I hope Tushar Jalota knows how to act while playing drums on the screen. Have you noticed how our actors play guitar in the songs. When a serious lead is playing in the song, our actors stand with their left hand at the top of the guitar, just swinging their body. I always wished, they put some research into where your hand should be for rhythm and lead, if not the exact fret. The song shovels oodles of rock on you and heart thumping drum interlude.

The unplugged version borrows very sweet pings from guitar, piano and of course, flute. Stretch your ear for the flute interlude, it is lovely. The unplugged version was the winner for me and proves KK’s strength, demanding an encore.

Kaash ek din aisa bhi aaye
Sung by my favorite Shaan and Shreya Ghosal. Lalit slips back into his backyard quietly and digs out a beaten tune and wastes ‘apna Shaan’. I am mad, no furious! Though the pair delivers on vocals, the song falls short of emotion.

Duniya ne dil toda
Sung by KK. A strike straight on ‘Deewana deewana ho jaaye’ from Rishtey composed by Sanjeev Darshan, you have ‘Duniya ne dil toda’, ‘nuf said!. ‘Deewana deewana ho jaaye’ was a lovely song, albeit made a bad movie choice. Rishtey sank but, the song was remembered for the lovely Sunidhi Chauhaan and oh-so-beautiful, Shilpa Shetty. The song does not sound Indian as much and I am sure it must have been a strike on something else, but we are innocent until proven guilty, in Showbiz.

Meri ibtida
Sung by Shreya Ghosal. The lyrics are very mediocre, but the short song is mellow and sweet.

Lalit Pandit has had many hits and misses. One of the good composers around, we would expect to see many more good albums from him, although this one falls short in a few songs. When the music is so-so, the movie should pull through for the rest, but looking at the lead pair in the shot above, I have my doubts.

Radiohead’s previous albums have incited bootlegs and remixes far and wide. In the spirit of the band’s recent pay-what-you-want formula for their latest album, ‘In Rainbows,’ the band will be unofficially sanctioning eight select remixes free of charge, called ‘Rainydayz Remixes.’

The collection features tweaked-out trip-hop mixes by Oakland producer Amplive, including guest appearances from the likes of Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Too Short and Zion. The full tracklist and roster for ‘Rainydayz Remixes’ will be announced on January 4, with the downloading mayhem to commence the following week.

For those rock ‘n’ roll fans on your gift list this holiday season, there are plenty of new offerings to keep their heads bopping along happily into the new year.

There are fresh sounds from Eric Clapton, Sting, Genesis, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash and Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx.

There’s just one twist: none are on CD racks.

All are on bookshelves – part of an unusual flurry of autobiographies out this winter by aging rockers with some hair-raising stories.

Clapton’s self-titled autobiography is already a hit, having sold 525,000 copies. Joining him on bestseller lists is “Slash,” “Ronnie” and Sixx’s “The Heroin Diaries.”

Why would rockers – those near-mythical gods of sex, drugs and general excess – turn to that most stodgy of storytelling modes, the written word?

“I think there are a couple of motivations: one, they’ve lived their lives and it’s time to look back on them – the lived life is worth examining,” says Broadway Books executive editor Charlie Conrad, who worked on Clapton’s book.

“And also, from the standpoint of the public, rock figures are out there on the cutting edge – the knife edge. They live life to its extreme. And if they survived, they have a good story to tell.”

Those stories include tales of love, loss and friendship, but also nasty bouts with venereal diseases, scary strippers and mountains of controlled substances.

Clapton, who pushed aside a ghost writer in favour of penning his own book, discusses the death of his son Conor, his various addictions, and his love triangle with Pattie Boyd and George Harrison, a topic already broached in Boyd’s recent tell-all “Wonderful Tonight.”

Wood, who offers his own night bedding Boyd, also delves into his years freebasing cocaine and the time he had an armed face-off with Keith Richards, with both pointing guns at each other.

The original lineup of Genesis – including Peter Gabriel – collaborated for the first time in over 20 years for “Genesis: Chapter and Verse,” which offers polite first-person account and photos.

Sixx’s diary is a tad darker – an unvarnished look at his life on the road in 1987, when he struggled with addictions and depression. There’s the time he woke up during an earthquake and ran outside, naked and clutching a crack pipe. In another entry, he writes: “This morning I woke up with my shotgun in bed with me.”

Not to be outdone, Slash, a founding member of Guns N’ Roses who makes several wicked cameos in Sixx’s book, has his own accounts of debauchery, delivered in a straightforward, often amusing way.

He tells of one night being kicked out of a Canadian hotel, drunk and soaked in his own urine. But to his surprise, he’s not as frozen as he feared: “That’s a wonderful side effect of leather pants: when you pee yourself in them, they’re more forgiving than jeans,” he writes.

Publishers say the warts-and-all profiles that emerge from these books are crucial for their success. In an Internet-fed and reality-TV soaked world, book buyers already consider themselves insiders, and successful authors can’t just phone it in.

“I’m sure they’re not telling every single crevice of their darkest soul, but they are giving you some real stuff. I think that’s a real difference,” says Elizabeth Beier, executive editor of St. Martin’s Press, which published the Wood and Genesis books.

For the less squeamish reader, there’s always “Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far” by Amy Grant, which includes the singer’s lyrics, poetry and vignettes – all of a decidedly uplifting variety.

And Sting has published a book of his lyrics, complete with his more highbrow observations. Of the song “Synchronicity II,” he writes: “I was trying to dramatize Jung’s theory of meaningful coincidence.”

Publishers say the current crop of rock tell-alls owes much to the success of Bob Dylan’s 2004 autobiography “Chronicles: Volume One,” which sold 425,000 hardcover copies.

“The Dylan book coming out and being so well received kind of showed people, ‘Your regular recording and performing career doesn’t have to be over for you to do your memoir. You don’t have to wait until the whole story is utterly completed and you’re in your dotage,”‘ says Beier.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/12/12/rock-memoirs-on-the-racks/

This album comes out of the mind of Phil Pearlman. Pearlman is a veteran of the American 60’s rock scene, being the brains behind such epic psych albums Beat of the Earth and the great Electronic Hole. Relatively Clean Rivers’ only album was released in 1975/76 though it sounds straight out of 1969. This album is extremely rare and has proven to be quite a controversial privately financed release.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/08/24/phil-pearlman-relatively-clean-rivers/

A side effect of today’s fractured, tumultuous music industry is the fluctuating meaning of the greatest-hits album.

On one hand, it remains a giant moneymaker for labels, which are urging their artists to make best-of compilations increasingly earlier in their careers. On the other, iTunes has made it redundant. If you want an act’s highlights, you can assemble them yourself.

This dichotomy has, for some bands, made the decision to make a best-of album an increasingly difficult, sometimes contentious one. Some view greatest-hits albums as a blatant money grab that disrespects the integrity of the album. Pressure from labels can also come sooner than expected.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/08/20/greatest-hits-isnt-the-greatest-move/

In the annals of rock n’ roll no other rock band has a more checkered or colored existence other than Kiss. Whether you love them or hate them, Kiss is undeniably one of the most influential rock bands on the planet. It’s funny to think that if not for a double live album, they may have potentially disappeared into obscurity. In 1975 on the heels of three poorly selling studio albums, the band and their record label, Casablanca, made the gutsy decision to release a double live album. It was not only a wise choice but to this day “Alive!” is viewed as the essential Kiss album and the one by which all others are judged.

Universal Music recently released a 4-disc live box set entitled ‘Alive 1975-2000′. Housed inside this package are the first three ‘Alive’ albums and an unreleased one from their 1999/2000 Millennium show. This fourth album was to have been ‘Alive IV’ and put out in support of the band’s farewell tour in 2000, however, it never saw the light of day until now. If one were to buy this box it would most likely be a double dip for most fans, so I’m here to break down the contents for you so you can make a decision.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/08/10/kizz-new-fan-oriented-albom/

Which is in itself surprising. After all, the 64-year-old guitarist for the Police is a well-traveled rocker. He gigged with psychedelic pioneers Soft Machine in the ’60s. He spent a decade in the Police rocking arenas and stadiums and making platinum records. He even played Carnegie Hall as a solo artist.

But the mad fervor surrounding the Police’s reunion tour - which makes a two-night stop at a sold-out Fenway Park on Saturday and Sunday - is unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/27/police-reunited-rockers-ready-to-burn/

The Meat Puppets are back, and the Kirkwood brothers are talking again.

To anyone familiar with the tragic tailspin that bassist Cris Kirkwood’s life became in the mid-’90s, that’s no small wonder.

His heroin habit sabotaged the Meat Puppets just as they were solidifying their status as one of the most important rock acts to come out of the Valley since Alice Cooper.

“I cost us everything,” he said.

His descent put the brakes on the national success he, his guitarist brother, Curt, and drummer Derrick Bostrom were enjoying: A radio hit with 1994’s Backwater, healthy rotation on MTV, concert bills with Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and hefty royalty checks.

Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/20/meat-puppets-reunated-and-back-to-stage/