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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 4/26: With a jury comprised of six men and six women that was seated on Apr. 22, and six alternate jurors chosen the next day, the civil trial over the death of Michael Jackson is scheduled to formally begin on Apr. 29 in Los Angeles. An emotional, three-month trial in L.A. Superior Court is expected as the jurors weigh arguments between attorneys representing Jackson's 82-year-old mother Katherine Jackson and concert promoters AEG Live, the company behind Jackson's ill-fated series of comeback "This Is It" concerts in London in 2009. Jackson's $40 billion lawsuit alleges AEG Live was negligent in hiring Dr. Conrad Murray to care for the singer while he rehearsed for a series of 50 shows. AEG contends that it did not hire or supervise Murray and that Jackson was addicted to prescription drugs for years before he agreed to do the concerts. Jackson, 50, died in Los Angeles on June 25, 2009, from a lethal dose of the surgical anesthetic propofol that Dr. Murray was administering for sleep problems. Murray, who is not being sued, filed an appeal against his criminal conviction on Apr. 22. - Reuters...... A limited-edition commemorative set of the now legendary U.K. 1970 Bath Festival of Blues featuring such acts as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and the Mothers, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, Steppenwolf and Santana is now available at the Rockmusicmemorabilia.com website. The Bath Festivals of Blues Commemorative Set also includes the 1969 and 1970 programmes, tickets and flyers, a 330-page book dealing with all the backstage hassles, 15 photographs, two concert posters, a T-shirt from the 1970 Bath festival. Promoted by Freddy Bannister, the 1970 Bath Festival was probably the most famous of the concerts and was unique among European festivals as it was the very first outdoor event Led Zeppelin played. Appearing fourth on the bill, Zeppelin simply tore the place apart and received a standing ovation from the 30,000-strong crowd....... Bob Dylan has announced he'll kick off a 26-date North American tour on June 26 in West Palm Beach, Fla. Billed as "Bob Dylan and His Band," the rock bard will also visit Tampa (6/26), Atlanta (6/29), and Nashville (6/30) in June, then hit cities including Memphis (7/2), Cincinnati (7/6), Columbus, Oh. (7/7), Chicago (7/12), Toronto (7/15), Washington, D.C. (7/23), and Denver (7/31) in July. In August, he'll play Salt Lake City (8/1) and Irvine, Calif. (8/3) before wrapping at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in Mountain View, Calif. Openers Wilco and My Morning Jacket will accompany Dylan on the tour, and Ryan Bingham and Richard Thompson will perform on select dates. - USA Today...... In an interview with the syndicated celebrity gossip show Extra on Apr. 25, Elton John and his partner David Furnish revealed they've asked Lady Gaga to become the godmother of their 2-year-old son, Zachary. "She's a great role model. She's young. She's been a great godmother to Zachary. We're all bonkers in this business, but we're human beings at the same time," said John of the 27-year-old pop superstar. Elton, who became a dad late in life, also reflected on his new role and says he sees no downside. "I love getting up in the morning and having breakfast with Zachary. Everything I thought I would find annoying about having children, like screaming and shouting and tantrum... I don't find any of it annoying. I find it all enchanting," he added. Lady Gaga was recently named Time magazine's second most influential icon of the past decade. - Yahoo News...... The reunited Black Sabbath has added 16 more shows to their summer tour of North America after announcing four initial tour dates earlier in April. Touring behind their upcoming album 13, Sabbath will kick off the trek in Houston on July 25, then hit markets including Austin, Tex. (7/27), W. Palm Beach, Fla. (7/31), Detroit (8/6), Philadelphia (8/10), Boston (8/12), Indianapolis (8/18), Vancouver, B.C. (8/22), Seattle (8/24), San Francisco (8/26), Phoenix (8/30) and Las Vegas (9/1) before wrapping in Los Angeles on Sept. 3. The band is currently touring Australia in advance of 13, which is due via Vertigo/Republic Records on June 11. In other Sabbath-related news, frontman Ozzy Osbourne's wife Sharon Osbourne put to rest rumours that the famous celebrity couple are divorcing on the Apr. 23 edition of the CBS chat show The Talk. "Everything that was printed in the tabloids has been distorted," said Sharon, adding the couple is dealing with Ozzy's recent relapse into drug and alcohol abuse. "Am I upset? Yes. I am. I'm devastated right now. It's a disease that not only hurts the person that has the disease but it hurts the family, it hurt people who love you," Sharon said. - Billboard...... Neil Diamond has announced he'll donate royalties from his song "Sweet Caroline" to the charity supporting victims of the Apr. 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Posting on Twitter on Apr. 25, Diamond retweeted a message from Nielsen SoundScan that noted "Sweet Caroline" sales were up by 597% percent after the bombings, selling 19,000 copies, and added his own line: "Donating these royalties to #OneFund!." "Sweet Caroline" has been adopted as the Red Sox's anthem and played during the 8th inning of every home game since 2002, and on Apr. 20 the veteran crooner made an impromptu visit to Boston's Fenway Park to lead a sing-along of the song to a wildly enthusiastic crowd. The One Fund Boston, formed to "help the people most affected by the tragic events that occurred in Boston on April 15, 2013" according to its website, has raised more than $23 million to benefit the victims so far. Meanwhile, Diamond has told Rolling Stone magazine that he's been moved to write a new song about the Boston tragedy, which killed three people and injured approximately 180. "I'm writing now and obviously affected by this situation in Boston, so I'm writing about it just to express myself," he told the magazine on Apr. 22. While a release date has not been announced, Diamond says the song is on a fast track. "I spent the whole day recording it and I will spend tomorrow recording it. With a little bit of help from the man upstairs, I'll have it finished by the weekend," he said. - Billboard/Rolling Stone...... Queen guitarist Brian May has announced plans to release his new animal rights song, "The Badger Song," in protest as the British goverment plans to allow the culling of badgers beginning on June 1 in a bid to to reduce tuberculosis in cattle. "It's a kind of parody of 'Flash (Gordon)', as you'll see," May said during a public meeting on the issue in Taunton, Somerset on Apr. 20. Badgers are currently under threat after farmers in England were given a licence to shoot them in a bid to reduce tuberculosis in cattle for the first time in Gloucestershire. "The disease comes from cows, it doesn't come from badgers," May has previously explained. "It's a very unfair situation. Badgers have been the scapegoat for years and years and farmers have been killing badgers for many, many years now." A recent scourge of TB in cattle in the UK led to 26,000 cows being slaughtered in 2011. - New Musical Express...... A spokesperson for ailing country/pop star Glen Campbell announced on Apr. 23 that he's planning a new album, See You There, that will feature "haunting" reimaginations of some of his biggest hits. Campbell, who turned 77 on Apr. 22, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease back in 2011, and his condition has reportedly worsened recently. His publicist, Sandy Brokaw, says Campbell will never grace the stage again to perform after a farewell tour in 2012. "He's done touring. He went on the good-bye tour and wanted to see how it was with his health. After Christmas they put a big bow on (touring) and wrapped it up," Brokaw said. The "Rhinestone Cowboy" singer, who released a studio album entitled Ghost on the Canvas in 2011, was forced to scrap planned dates in New Zealand and Australia on the tour when his condition worsened. On Apr. 22, Campbell and his daughter, Ashley Campbell, testified before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Alzheimer's research, and also visited the U.S. Senate. - WENN.com......Barbra Streisand was honored by a crowd of famous friends including Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michael Douglas, George Segal, Ben Stiller, Pierce Brosnan and Kris Kristofferson at the 40th annual Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in Washington, D.C., on Apr. 22. Accepting the award for her career in film, Streisand said: "Ever since I can remember, people have been calling me bossy and opinionated. Maybe that's because I am. Three cheers for bossy women!" Streisand, who turned 71 on Apr. 24, is one of the few entertainers to have won Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony awards. The Chaplin awards gala has raised $2 million for the film society. - AP...... Co-founding Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir became ill and fell onstage during a concert with his band Furthur at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y., on Apr. 25 and was unable to finish the show. After being helped back up by crew members, Weir's bandmate Phil Lesh told the crowd that Weir was suffering from a strained shoulder and that the set would go on without him. Before Further's set, it was announced that the Capitol Theatre's lobby bar would be named Garcia's in honor of Weir and Lesh's late Grateful Dead bandmate Jerry Garcia, for whom the venue was a favorite. - Rolling Stone...... Although David Bowie has made no public statement, yet alone appearance, in the four months since his acclaimed new album The Next Day was released, the rocker responded to a request for a "work flow diagram" of the new album by DailyBeast.com writer Rick Moody with 42 separate words. The words, including "Effigies," "Indulgences," "Anarchist," "Violence," "Isolation," "Revenge," "Urban," "Comeuppance" and "Tragic," were used by Moody to break down the new album, which he described as "the unlikeliest masterpiece of the recent popular song, the best album by an otherwise retired classic rock artist in many, many years." - Rolling Stone...... Legendary New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen and legendary American folk singer Pete Seeger are among 198 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences' class of 2013. Each year the AAAS inducts the most accomplished individuals from a wide range of fields, including mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, philanthropy, the humanities, business, government, public affairs and the arts. Springsteen, who is currently in the middle of the European leg of his Wrecking Ball tour, also appeared on Seeger's latest effort, A More Perfect Union, released last fall. In 2006, Springsteen released a tribute to Seeger, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. In other Springsteen-related news, E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt has just announced that his Rock & Roll Forever Foundation will partner with the Grammy Museum to launch "Rock & Roll: An American Story (RRAAS)," a music education curriculum that will enable middle and high school students to learn about the societal influence of rock music. Van Zandt unveiled the news on Apr. 24 at New York University, where he led a panel of representatives from the Grammy Museum, the Rock & Roll Forever Foundation and the school. RRAAS is scheduled to launch in the fall, and within three years' time, organizers hope it will reach major target cities. - Rolling Stone...... Punk pioneer Richard Hell's new memoir, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, spares nobody -- including Hell himself. "I mean, I have a huge ego -- I don't hide that. But I tend to err on the side of self-criticism," says the author, who co-founded Television with Tom Velaine and later fronted the Voidoids. The book details Hell's evolution from a poetry-obsessed young provocateur (born Richard Meyers) into one of punk's celebrated figures whose self-created style -- short, spiky hair, ripped clothes held together with saftey pins -- become the genre's defining visual signifiers. "The impact punk had does amaze me," says Hell. "It has so permeated the culture that you don't even notice it half the time." - Rolling Stone...... Billy Joel performed his first full concert in over three years on Apr. 21 at the Stone Music Festival in Sydney, Australia. The Piano Man stuck largely to his hits throughout his 19-song set, though he did treat the audience to such lesser-known album cuts as ""The Entertainer," "Zanzibar" and "Don't Ask Me Why." Joel says he's considering shows in Philadelphia, New York, Washington D.C., Detroit and Chicago this summer in addition to a previously announced gig at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Apr. 27 where he'll likely feature some of his more obscure tracks. "I got tired of doing the greatest hits set. It was boring playing the same songs over and over. There are a lot of songs the longtime fans want to hear," he said. - Rolling Stone...... Founding The O'Jays members Eddie Levert and Walter Williams have filed a lawsuit against spirits maker Crown Royal Whiskey over what they describe as a "humiliating" new TV ad. Levert and Williams claim Crown Royal ripped off their 1974 song, "For the Love of Money," for a quirky new commercial without asking for permission. They claim the background track to the ad is "humiliating and demeaning" and reduces them to "background singers." The pair are asking for more than $1 million in damages over the unauthorized use of "For the Love of Money," which was a Top 10 U.S. hit for their Ohio-based R&B group in May 1974. - WENN.com...... Olivia Newton-John has announced she's calling off her upcoming Las Vegas residency at the city's Flamingo hotel to spend more time with her older sister Rona, who is battling brain cancer. Newton-John was to begin a series of shows this summer at the Flamingo, but issued a statement saying in light of the news of Rona Newton-John's diagnosis, "I have decided to postpone my forthcoming Las Vegas residency to spend time with her and our family." "As a cancer 'thriver' myself, as many people are, I am very aware of the importance of love, support and family during this journey she is about to begin. I want to thank everyone in advance for respecting our privacy during this difficult time," the 64-year-old Olivia added. The singer/actress was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 1990s, but she beat the disease after undergoing chemotherapy treatment and a mastectomy. Rona Newton-John was once married to actor Jeff Conaway, who co-starred with Olivia in the 1978 hit film Grease. - WENN.com...... Peter Frampton has announced he'll play a rare U.K. concert at the London Camden Roundhouse on Nov. 5. The special one-off UK concert will see the Grammy-winning guitarist and songwriter performing songs from his extensive catalog. Frampton latest album is the critically acclaimed Thank You Mr. Churchill, and in 2012 he completed a successful 35th anniversary tour of his multi-platinum selling live album, Frampton Comes Alive! FCA! 35: An Evening with Peter Frampton, a live 2DVD, Blu-ray and 3CD set of the tour, was released last November by Eagle Rock Entertainment. - Noble PR...... An Elvis Presley impersonator arrested on Apr. 18 for allegedly sending a letter laced with poison to Pres. Barack Obama was released from jail on Apr. 22 after it was determined he had nothing to do with the threat to the president. Paul Kevin Curtis, a resident of Mississippi, was released from custody by the U.S. Marshalls Service, who did not say if there were any conditions accompanying Curtis' release. - AP...... Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert married Thirtysomething actor Timothy Busfield on Apr. 24 during a ceremony at the exclusive San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, Calif. The 48-year-old Gilbert, best known for her role as Laura Ingalls Wilder on Little House on the Prairie and who more recently appeared on Season 14 of Dancing With the Stars, says she's known the 55-year-old Busfield "for more than two decades" and the couple became engaged over the holidays Gilbert and Busfield have each been married twice before, and have five children between them -- two for her, three for him. - Yahoo News...... Actor Allan Arbus, best known for portraying psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman on the hit '70s/early '80s television series M*A*S*H, passed away on Apr. 19 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95. Mr. Arbus appeared in films like Coffy and Crossroads and was a TV regular during the 1970s and 80s, appearing on Taxi, Starsky & Hutch, Matlock and other shows. But his best-known role was Major Freedman, the liberal psychiatrist who appeared in a dozen episodes of M*A*S*H. As Sidney Freedman, he treated wounds of the psyche much as Capt. Hawkeye Pierce treated surgery patients: with a never-ending string of zingers. "I was so convinced that he was a psychiatrist I used to sit and talk with him between scenes," M*A*S*H star Alan Alda once said in an interview with the Archive of American Television. "After a couple months of that I noticed he was giving me these strange looks, like 'How would I know the answer to that?'" Mr. Arbus's last television role was on the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2000. - New York Times...... Influential country music singer George Jones, whose career spanned more than six decades and included hits such as "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "Window Up Above," died on the morning of Apr. 26 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. He was 81. Born in Saratoga, Tex., on Sept. 12, 1931, Mr. Jones first began performing for spare change as a boy on the streets of nearby Beaumont. Under the influence of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell, he graduated to the rough roadhouses of East Texas. Mr. Jones had an early marriage, a divorce and a stint in the Marines before his first hit, "Why Baby Why" in 1955. His first No. 1 song, "White Lightning," came in 1959, followed by "Tender Years" in 1961. The next two decades brought a string of top 10 songs -- "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)," "Window Up Above," "She Thinks I Still Care," "Good Year for the Roses, "The Race Is On" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which Jones said was his favorite. He also had a successful run of duets with Melba Montgomery. Mr. Jones, who was known as "The Possum," divorced his second wife in 1968 and the next year married one of country's most popular singers, Tammy Wynette. The pairing was an enormous professional success for both as they recorded and toured together and Jones also began working with Billy Sherrill, Wynette's producer. The marriage to Wynette went bad as Jones' addiction problem escalated and Wynette claimed he once came at her with a gun. They divorced in 1975 but later resumed recording together. Mr. Jones continued to put out hit songs in the early 1980s, even as cocaine compounded his personal tumult. Amid a string of hospitalizations and arrests, he disappeared for days at a time, missed shows and recording sessions and once took police on a drunken chase through Nashville. Mr. Jones credited fourth wife Nancy, who he married in 1983, with helping him clean up. But in 1999 he was seriously injured after driving drunk and crashing into a bridge, leading to another stay in rehab. Mr. Jones became a sought-after duet partner, and won a Grammy for the song "Choices" in 1999. He also won a Grammy for best country performance in 1980 for "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Mr. Jones was still touring last year, although an upper respiratory infection and other health problems forced him to postpone shows. He had been hospitalized since April 18 with fever and irregular blood pressure, according to his spokesman. - Reuters...... Cordell 'Boogie' Mosson, a former bassist for George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective, died on Apr. 18 of undisclosed causes. He was 60. Mosson played on P-M's classic '70s albums, including 1975's Mothership Connection, 1976's The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein and 1978's One Nation Under a Groove. He became the main touring bassist for Funkadelic, and when Parliament bassist Bootsy Collins turned his focus on his solo career, Mosson took over on bass for that group as well. Though Clinton disbanded Parliament and Funkadelic in the early '80s, the reunited groups have continued to tour under slightly different names. Mosson performed with the P-Funk All-Stars just last year, adding rhythm guitar to his usual bass duties. Mosson and 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. - Rolling Stone
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