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Bringing you the Web's best '70s music & culture news twice-weekly since 1997!
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Updated 5/7 @ 9:25 PM EDT '70s SOUNDBYTES - 5/7: A group of artists in Lithuania is offering to present the US city of Baltimore with a bronze bust of late eccentric rocker Frank Zappa, after already having erected a Zappa bust in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius. Zappa, who was born in Baltimore in 1940, became popular among Lithuania's avant-garde in the aftermath of the country's independence in 1990 from the Soviet Union, and Lithuanian Zappa Fan Club president Saulius Paukstys was in Baltimore on May 7 to pitch the idea to the city's public art commission. A spokesman for Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon said the mayor had no objection to the bust but would defer to the judgment of the city's public art commission. The bust was created by a respected sculptor named Konstantinas Bogdanas, who cast many portraits of Soviet leaders in the former USSR, and Paukstys says the project has the blessing of Zappa's widow, Gail. Zappa died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52. - AP...... Bruce Springsteen was on hand to accept his induction into the inaugural class of the New Jersey Hall of Fame at Newark's Performing Arts Center on May 3. "Rise up, my fellow New Jerseyans. We are all members of a confused but noble race," Springsteen quipped to the audience. Other inductees include Frank Sinatra, baseball great Yogi Berra and novelist Toni Morrison. The NJHOF exists only as a website currently, however funds are being raised to construct an actual museum. - Rolling Stone...... |
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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 5/2: Country musician/comedian Jim Hager, one of the Hager Twins duo who rose to national fame in 1969 with their regular appearances on the hit CBS-TV country-flavored humor series Hee Haw, died in Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center on May 2 after collapsing earlier in a local coffee shop. He was 66. Jim Hager, along with his twin brother Jon Hager, were guitarists and drummers who had worked with country star Buck Owens and used his connection as one of Hee Haw's co-hosts to join the show. The Hagers, who hailed from the Chicago area, left the program in the mid-'80s and continued to perform shows together. No details of Hager's death have yet been released. - AP...... In related news, Emmylou Harris was among the 2008 inductees of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville on Apr. 27. Kyle Young, CMA Hall of Fame and Museum director, lauded Harris for helping "establish country music's cultural importance" by taking and interpreting it to audiences who might otherwise have never heard it. Young also noted that Harris has also been active in social causes, ranging from land mine removal to the humane treatment of animals. "I don't deserve it, but I'll take it," a humble Harris told the audience. "I feel like that guy in the Verizon commercial with that sea of people behind him." - CMT News...... |
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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 4/27: Robert Plant and his recent collaborator Alison Krauss helped kick off the first day of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on Apr. 25, playing an hour-long set that included selections from their recent Raising Sand duet album as well as samples from their respective catalogs. Plant turned "Black Dog" into a steamy, haunted ballad, and dubbed his pairing with Krauss "new, fantastic and stimulating." On day two, Billy Joel's closing set was shut down a half hour early due to inclimate weather, just before he encored with "Piano Man" as the crowd sang along. - USA Today...... Keith Richards has aired his dirty underwear, so to speak, in a recent interview with the London Times. The 64-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist told the paper that he never wears underwear, doesn't bother washing his clothes and has little regard for the fashion world -- despite often being hailed as a style innovator. Richards says the Stones threw out their early '60s "uniforms," which were suggested by the Beatles' tailor Andrew Oldham, "within a week" after they got them. He added he wouldn't know whether his current clothes stink because "I throw them away." - Soundgenerator.com...... |
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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 4/22: Preliminary hearings in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by World Wide Video, a Massachusetts-based consortium of Beatles collectors, against John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono are set to begin in U.S. District Court in Boston on Apr. 30. At issue is a rare black-and-white, two-hour film titled "3 days in the life" of John Lennon, which reportedly shows the late former Beatle smoking pot, writing songs and discussing putting the hallucinogenic drug LSD in Pres. Richard Nixon's tea. World Wide Video says they paid more than $1 million for the footage, which filmed just weeks before the Beatles broke up in Apr. 1970, and they were set to premiere it in 2007 at Maine's Berwick Academy but abruptly cancelled the screening after the academy received a stop order from Ono's lawyers, who assert copyright ownership of the videotapes. The original videotapes are now held by Ono, whose lawyers claim in a countersuit that she purchased them legally from World Wide through a Florida man, who has been named as a defendant in the Massachusetts company's suit. - Reuters...... In other Beatles-related news, Sir Paul McCartney will be among the contributors to an upcoming album that will pay tribute to the Fab Four's hometown of Liverpool, England. McCartney, who recently announced he will launch a world tour later in 2008, will play mandolin on the album, which will be released before the end of the year. - The Sun/NME...... |
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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 4/17: Neil Diamond has announced he'll kick off a 37-city tour of North America on July 19 in St. Paul, Minn., behind his behind his upcoming studio album, Home Before Dark. Diamond, who will perform several dates in Europe beginning May 24 in Rotterdam before the US trek, has just completed several weeks of rehearsal with his touring band. The 67-year-old singer/songwriter is promising to
"include songs I haven't done in the show in awhile" in the tour, which will wrap Oct. 30 in Jacksonville, Fla. Home Before Dark is Diamond's second collaboration with producer Rick Rubin and is the follow-up to 2005's 12 Songs. His 12 Songs Tour from that year grossed nearly $80 million from 86 shows and drew 1.2 million people. - Billboard...... |
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'70s SOUNDBYTES - 4/12: Representatives for Paul McCartney are finalizing details of a huge world tour to be launched by Sir Paul in the fall. McCartney's tour director recently met with Canadian promoter Harold MacKay in Nova Scotia, where they discussed a possible date at the 50,000 capacity Halifax Common venue, where the Rolling Stones performed in 2006. Macca will debut tracks from a new album he plans on releasing later in 2007. The world tour dates, which also include shows in the UK, the US and Australia, are set to be finalized in May. - The Daily Mirror/New Musical Express...... Meanwhile, Paul's ex Heather Mills told Britain's GMTV on Apr. 11 that she snapped on the final day of their divorce settlement hearing in March when McCartney's lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, requested that full details of the case, including some related to the couple's 4-year-old daughter, Beatrice, should be disclosed. "Mrs. Shackleton said something under her breath so I cleansed and baptized her," Mills said. "I thought she looked fantastic -- I thought it did her the world of good." When asked about Paul's current girlfriend Nancy Shevell, Mills said, "I think he's got three different girlfriends so I wish all the girls the best of luck." Mills was interviewed in Las Vegas, where she was one of the judges of the Miss USA pageant. - Associated Press...... In other Beatles-related news, a floral tribute of the Beatles in their hometown of Liverpool was attacked by vandals on Apr. 8, with Ringo Starr "beheaded," but the other three members left intact. It was speculated the vandalism could have been prompted by Ringo's recent comments that he "missed nothing about the city" after the opening ceremonies of the European Capital Of Culture events, of which Liverpool was one of the selected cities this year. - New Musical Express...... In still more Fab Four news, Yoko Ono, Beatles producer George Martin, Paul McCartney's daughter Stella McCartney, Ringo Starr's wife Barbara Bach and original Beatles member Pete Best were among those in attendance at the funeral of late Beatles confidante and producer/record executive Neil Aspinall at the Church of St Mary The Virgin in west London on Apr. 8. Also attending was Pete Townshend of the Who, who paid tribute to Aspinall by strumming along to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord." - NME......
News items appearing in Super Seventies RockSite!'s "Favorite Seventies Artists In The News" are compiled from numerous printed sources, including Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, Newsweek and USA Today; and numerous online sources, including Associated Press, Billboard, CMT.com, E! Online, LiveDaily.com, MTV News, New Musical Express, Rolling Stone, Reuters, SoundGenerator.com, Undercover, and USA Today. |
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