Howard Cohen has been writing about pop music for The Miami Herald since 1991, and has written the Idol Watch column since 2005. His weekly critique of American Idol and its contestants runs throughout the popular series. In addition to his music duties, this former competitive swimmer covers health and fitness for the pages of The Miami Herald.
After a Wednesday night of American Idol corporate karaoke at the Idols Live Tour, it felt oh-so-good to enjoy expertly crafted classic rock music from the band Boston at the Hard Rock Live venue.
Sheryl Crow has launched her own Rock the Vote campaign this fall. Get three of your friends to register to vote in the coming presidential election and she'll let you download a copy of her current album, Detours, for free, according to Billboard.Com. Read more about it here.
That's an incentive? Isn't the point to get people to register to vote? Who wants that boring album -- even for free?!
In any case, good work Sheryl. People should vote. And contrary to what Idol Chris Daughtry foolishly told Rolling Stone in his bid to get people to the polls, it's not just about voting -- it DOES matter who you vote for!
Chris Daughtry is using his new cover of Foreigner's Feels Like the First Time as part of a campaign to lure first-time voters to the polls come the Nov. 4 presidential election. “We strongly believe that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, as long as you vote,” Daughtry told Rolling Stone.
Judging by his facial reaction when he received the fewest votes on American Idol two years ago to wind up in fourth place I bet he wouldn't have said something like that then. (Nevertheless, Daughtry is the most successful non-Idol winner to date).
CNN plans to use the new Feels Like the First Time as a soundtrack to its election coverage and the track will appear on an expanded version of the Daughtry's group's debut album when it's re-released Sept. 9.
Happen to catch the song NBC used over the closing credits of Friday night's 4.5-hour telecast of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics? American Idol fans will happily note it was winner David Cook's single, The Time of My Life.
Photo: AP
Read my review of Thursday night's Mark Knopfler concert at The Fillmore Miami Beach. One of the best -- if not the best -- musical events I've seen at that venue dating back to its original guise, the Jackie Gleason.
Sorry Amy Winehouse: Alicia Keys and Jack White have officially been selected to record Another Way to Die, the theme song for the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It's the first time that the theme will be a duet. And, not surprisingly given the clunky film title, it will be the fourth time the song title won't match the film's. (Previously, Nobody Does it Better served as the theme from 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me -- though the film's title was featured in the lyric -- and All Time High served as the theme song for 1983's Octopussy and You Know My Name was the rocking theme from the last 007 flick, Casino Royale).
Another Way to Die, was written by White who is one-half of the rock duo, the White Stripes. The Quantum of Solace soundtrack will be out Oct. 28, just ahead of the movie's release.
Looking to hear some great classic music played to perfection tonight or this weekend (or any following weekend thru October)? Check out my story on Classic Albums Live, a concert series at Paradise Live at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
But don't make the same mistake a reader made and think you are getting the REAL group. A reader called to complain that they bought multiple tickets to see Fleetwood Mac's Rumours concert for $20 and were shocked to find out it wasn't the real Fleetwood Mac. They are furious at Ticketmaster, Paradise and us for false advertising. The tickets clearly read: "Classic Albums Live Presents Fleetwood Mac's Rumours."
As I tried to explain, the real Fleetwood Mac would NOT be doing a concert of one of rock music's most popular albums in a 600-capacity venue for $20 in the year 2008!!! The last time the actual Fleetwood Mac did a concert for under $20 Ronald Reagan was in office and Dynasty and Dallas were television's most popular programs (and even then, mega groups performed in arenas and FM still is).
It should be more than obvious. Or at least it should prompt a consumer to ask a simple question -- "Is this the real group?" -- before parting with their money and driving all those miles.
Upcoming Classic Albums Live shows, all availabe via Ticketmaster, include classic albums by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and the Beatles. If anyone believes the actual Beatles and Janis, Jimi and the Doors' Jim Morrison will be coming to Paradise Live, too, well, I've got some disappointing news for you .... most of these musicians are dead. And the Eagles, whose Hotel California hits Paradise in Oct., would never consider charging $20 to hear them. The Eagles, after all, started this whole $100 and up price point for concert tickets on their 1994 Hell Freezes Over reunion tour.
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Meantime, the Rumours show was great. The musicians perform the entirety of the 39-minute album and then, in a set they call "outros," they perform half of the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album (1975) including Rhiannon and Landslide, two singles from Tusk (the title track and Sisters of the Moon) and The Dance version of Silver Springs. They pay so much attention to detail, the group's Leslea Keurvorst even utters Lindsey Buckingham's hushed expletive barely heard on the intro of the original recording of The Chain. If you have headphones, play the beginning of the song and you'll hear what I mean.
"That's my favorite part of the song,'' Keurvorst said in our interview. "That song is so angst ridden. I'm not thinking he might have f----- up. I'm thinking, This is a hard song for him to sing. God knows I've been in that situation -- a song I wrote about my boyfriend leaving me and they are all staring at me and this is gonna be hard having to sing this song. Angst ridden. We are music geeks. The attention to detail is very important and that's the thing that takes us to the next level."
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The most difficult album to pull off, thus far, was the Eagles' Hotel California, Classic Albums Live founder Craig Martin said. "We thought, Eagles, campfire songs, but then I said, "Watch out, [on Hotel California] you've got Wasted Time. The Last Resort. They were massively coked out in the studio so they were layering all these harmonies and ridiculous things on top of it and it has that sheen to it and it's way overproduced. In all honesty, we did that album in my first year and I thought it was the one album I had dropped the ball on. I didn't think I put the right musicians together who expected the weight of that record. So I shelved the album but we picked it up again last year and went at it with everything I had."
We'll find out in October whether Craig pulls it off as Hotel California checks in to Paradise Live.
Natalie Cole, whose '70s hits, like the enduring This Will Be (An Everlasting Love), have been covered by American Idol wannabes, has been diagnosed with hepatitis C. Read AP story here.
Also, Rolling Stone Ron Wood, who has done the rehab route before, is back in rehab seeking treatment for his drinking. Read more.
Photo: AP
A track from Guns 'N Roses' delayed Chinese Democracy appears headed to the video game Rock Band 2 on the Xbox 360 system this fall. The track's name: Shackler's Revenge.
Does this mean Chinese Democracy will finally see a release date? At this point: Who cares? GNR without the crackling chemistry of Axl Rose bucking up against Slash simply isn't a GNR I much care about. Read details here.
AP Photo
Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg told the AP that video footage of Britney Spears has been shot for use on Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour (which has a date in November at Pro Player Stadium in Miami.)
Photo: AP
The soon-to-be-single-again Madonna (she's denying a pending divorce but we aren't buying her statements to the contrary) previously sang with trouble-magnet Brit on Me Against the Music.
On August 19, Capitol/EMI launches an audiophile vinyl campaign domestically with the release of eight titles in the From The Capitol Vaults series. All of them were previously out-of-print on vinyl. Six of the newly remastered, limited edition albums are presented on 180-gram LPs, while two albums initially released as double 10” 140-gram LPs will be reissued in their original configuration. Artwork and packaging replicates the original issues.
Titles in the first wave include:
U.S. vinyl sales have increased by more than 80% in the past year as the CD has declined and retro-lovers seek out the warmth and naturalness of old vinyl. (A sex scene on the David Duchovny Showtime hit, Californication, even revolved around old vinyl LPs). More titles are to come.
Country star Keith Urban's Oscar-winning wife Nicole Kidman gave birth to their baby girl, his publicist said. Sunday Rose Kidman Urban came in at 6 pounds, 7-1/2 ounces. The Aussies' baby was born in Nashville.
Sunday was born on a Monday morning. Sunday??
Photo: AP
Texan trio ZZ Top hasn't made a decent album since 1986's Afterburner, and even that one was drowning in synths and sounds dated today. But they have just signed a deal with Rick Rubin's American Records and Rubin, who has performed career surgery on Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, could easily do the same for ZZ. The goal is to return to the classic La Grange sound. Read the Billboard.Com report.
Photo: Jared Lazarus, Miami Herald, 2008, at Dolphin Stadium.
Songwriter/humorist Brent Burns shot Pain at the Pump, an amusing video about today's rising gas prices and set it to a country music beat. See it here:
Motley Crue's new Saints of Los Angeles CD represents the Motley Crue Motley Crue fans grew up with and loved (or hated) in the 1980s. This CD, inspired by the group's sleazy 2001 autobiography The Dirt, feels much more like the natural follow-up to 1989's classic Crue CD Dr. Feelgood than the band's forced attempts at trying to fit their glam metal sound into prevailing (fleeting) trends in the 1990s when they attempted grunge, techno and sullen rock with predictably lame results. It's the first CD since 1997's unlistenable Generation Swine to feature the original lineup of Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee.
Saints traces the foursome's '80s rise from the underbelly of the Sunset Strip to the world of big time rock and roll where they wallowed in drugs, booze, sex and alcohol-related car crashes (one of which, with singer Vince Neil behind the wheel, killed a member of Hanoi Rocks in 1984) and interband clashes. This time, the boys remember to bring the catchy pop-metal hooks that came naturally on '80s albums like Girls, Girls, Girls, Shout at the Devil and Dr. Feelgood. The track White Trash Circus sums it up:
"Been livin' on the road about a year and a half/If we go another mile we're gonna kick each other's ass/Someone's gonna quit or someone's gonna die/And we don't give a s--- because we're busy gettin' high/Another lawsuit and another arrest/Wouldn't change a thing because we love it to death."
The band plays West Palm Beach on July 1. Look for my review of Saints of Los Angeles in the July 4 Weekend section of The Miami Herald.
While watching an episode on the recently released The Odd Couple: The Fourth Season (CBS DVD) I was amused to see who the guest star was on that season's second episode, Last Tango in Newark (air date Sept. 21, 1973). It was Edward Villella, now of Miami City Ballet. Felix (Tony Randall) takes Villella's ballet appreciation class and much comedic chaos ensues. 
Sure, we can't afford to drive to work with gas topping $4.15 a gallon and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are starting to look like a viable dinner option, but the times aren't hard for all South Floridians.
According to Rolling Stone.Com, one of them, Jimmy Buffett, has just bought himself the Trump Marina Hotel Casino in Atlantic City for $316 million. The site details precisely why the singing tycoon can handily manage such a pricey endeavor. Click here for details.
Our movie critic reflected on his memories of George Carlin on his movie blog; Carlin, 71, died of heart failure Sunday. My recollections revolve mostly around his classic comedy LPs of the '70s such as 1972's Class Clown and FM & AM and 1974's Toledo Window Box. Many an afternoon was spent at my friend Claude's house listening to his copies of Carlin's LPs with their often scatalogical and drug-related humor and, of course, his landmark monolog Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, captured on his Class Clown LP.
All of these albums have been reissued on CD and MP3s of original tracks are available on sites like Amazon too.
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Another funny person died Sunday: Actress Dody Goodman, best known to pop culture fans as ditzy Blanche, the principal's assistant in Grease and Grease 2, died at 93. Goodman also played the mother of the title character on Norman Lear's loopy '70s spoof serial Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. (The first half of its first season is on DVD).
The saga of Gainesville band For Squirrels was one of the saddest of '90s music stories. The band, thanks to local music champion Rich Ulloa, had developed a following in South Florida, played often at defunct clubs like Rose's Bar, and its wistful, R.E.M.-like indie music landed them a record deal with Epic. On the eve of the release of their major label debut, a car crash took the lives of lead singer John F. "Jack" Vigliatura, 21, bassist William R. "Bill" White, 23, and road manager Tim Bender, 23, in Sept. 1995. (They are pictured on a press photo, above, held by Charlotte Barron, Rose's then co-owner).
There is a nice update on surviving member Travis Tooke and his recent music and personal activities (he's a dad now) on Billboard.Com. Click here.
Pundits said it couldn't be done -- the days of an album selling one million copies in a single week were over. That threshold hasn't been crossed since 50 Cent did it in 2005. Even Kanye couldn't approach it last year. Miley? No, not her either. (She'll get another shot at the chance when her new CD comes out this summer).
But this week the struggling music industry has at least one week to celebrate. Billboard.Com reports that rapper Lil Wayne (pictured, from Billboard.Com) will debut at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 with Tha Carter III. The album sold just over 1 million copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. Credit a popular hit single, Lollipop, and, perhaps, pent-up demand. There hasn't been a smash rap album in some time. Lil Wayne's celebration dance is expected to be brief, however. Coldplay's fourth album, the clunkily-titled, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, is expected to dethrone the rapper when it's first week sales are tabulated and Tha Carter takes its expected second week sales dip. Still, the feat's impressive in these times of dwindling sales.
Billboard reports that only nine other acts have accomplished the million or more mark in a debut week. These include two albums apiece by 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys, Eminem, Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, Norah Jones, Usher and Limp Bizkit.
Hollywood, Fl., police offer turned Design Star contestant Michael Verdugo (pictured) survived his first challenge on the HGTV program Sunday night. Mikey V was paired with Matt Locke to design an upstairs bedroom and the two men were judged highly for Locke's design idea and Mikey's hard work at completing it. So far, so good for our homeboy. (If he wins, he'd be the second Design Star from South Florida; Miami's Dave Bromstad won the first season).
But what were the judges thinking when they axed lone designer Jerome Miller's downstairs bedroom? Sure, placing two beds toe-to-toe was not a good idea, but otherwise his room looked great in my view. Clean, spacious, inviting. And he did the work alone. Meantime, the women on the show (except for Trish) spent an inordinate amount of time crying and sniping at one another. Tracee Dore, in particular, was the worst team-player imaginable. She contributed nothing, had no ideas on the telecast and then blamed everyone else for their project's poor showing. She must get the boot! Ditto Michael Stribling, this season's dancing queen from Texas who couldn't stop mugging long enough in front of the cameras to contribute anything of value to the team (except for insisting on a pool table). He's insufferable.
Worse, Stephanie Cook and her teammate didn't even finish the ugly, gaudy living room they designed in the time given and yet, despite an admonishment from the judges, cry-baby Cook got a pass to move on to the next challenge. Not fair. Jerome was unfairly slighted.
I've never followed the show but since I'd done a recent Home and Design feature story on Verdugo (and an interview last year with Bromstad for a reality show story) I figured I'd check it out. I'm rooting for Mikey; it appears, so far, his chief competition is Matt who was the only contestant to earn kudos from an Entertainment Weekly critic who had panned the program in the magazine. If I can stand more weeks of the weeping women and irritating Stribling I'll post updates. Go Mikey!
Our TV critic Glenn Garvin is right, CBS' new Swingtown stinks. As storytelling goes, it doesn't capture the 1970s I grew up in -- granted, I was 16 when the decade ended and the concept of wife swapping was foreign in the circles I ran in.
So why do I watch? A: I need a life now that American Idol's ended and B: I love '70s pop and this show is overstuffed with '70s pop songs and period references.
If only producers would get it right. Here's a running list -- by my count -- of continuity errors they have committed in the first two episodes. The show is set, so far, on the weekend of July 4, 1976. The Bicentennial year. So how come we have seen and heard these things?:
One of the teenaged boys is seen perusing a Penthouse magazine with his buddy in his locked bedroom. Dad comes in and -- nudge, wink -- grabs the nudie mag and tosses it back to his son and tells him not to tell his mother he has it. Sharp eyes will note that the edges of the pages are yellowed with age. But the pages wouldn't be yellowed with age at that time. If anything, they'd be especially pristine since the magazine would not be on newsstands for another two years. The Penthouse cover, featuring bespectacled model Kate Simmons reading a newspaper, was the September 1978 isssue. (I should know, I had it too. Thanks, Dad!)
Cynics will say, with some accuracy, that when an artist dies their work becomes over praised. One could make that argument for Dennis Wilson's 1977 solo album Pacific Ocean Blue. It was the first solo album by a member of the Beach Boys. It wasn't a big hit, peaking at No. 96 on the Billboard 200 in an 8-week chart run. Wilson, himself, said it "lacked substance." He was more excited about the follow up album he'd planned, Bambu, but his drowning in 1983 halted its completion. The POB album briefly appeared on CD in 1991 but quickly went out of print and has been unavailable since. But on June 24, Sony plans a lavish two-CD reissue and triple-vinyl release. It's worth another look.
The first disc contains the entire POB in remastered fidelity, along with demos and unreleased tracks. Disc two of the CD package contains the tracks that would have made up Bambu and they exist here in various states of completion. Some aren't bad, but Wilson underestimated his released work.
It'd be easy to dismiss Pacific Ocean Blue based on Wilson's singing. Years of cocaine and alcohol abuse, plus cigarettes, had turned his already raspy voice even raspier, out of tune, strained and wobbly. (Think Peter Criss of Kiss struggling with a fur ball.) But POB is curiously fascinating, nonetheless.
As a time capsule, the album deftly captures the hedonistic West Coast ambience of the late '70s. Wilson's challenging melodies and widescreen arrangements reward repeat listens. His subjects range from the ecology (River Song) to faltering relationships (he was fighting with wife Karen Lamm at the time; the two divorced and he would wind up in a tumultuous but musically inspiring relationship with Christine McVie while cutting Bambu) and a eulogy for a fallen friend (Farewell My Friend). As big brother Brian did before him, Dennis went for a wide sonic palette and his work takes time to reveal its pleasures.
Wilson was wrong. POB had substance. It's not an instantly accessible charmer, but today it's considered the jewel of Beach Boys solo albums (granted, that's damning with faint praise). It's worth investigating and Sony has done a fantastic job of repackaging this lost album. They reproduce the lyrics, add a few insightful essays with links for more online, plenty of period pictures, plus studio notes. It's a special edition that earns the tag, "special."
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Sony plans similar treatment for the July 8 issue of Billy Joel's The Stranger: 30th Anniversary Edition on a two-CD + DVD package. This is not nearly as significant as the Wilson find, however. For starters, The Stranger has never been out of print and it's been remastered repeatedly, including a striking 5.1 Super Audio (SACD) surround-sound mix this version can't possibly approach in fidelity. The second disc contains a 1977 Carnegie Hall concert which completists will want but it's not as if live Joel recordings are that uncommon. The strangest aspect of this Stranger reissue is the title itself: The album came out in 1977. Do the math, that's 31 years ago. Sony should have had this out in 2007 or, better yet, lavish this anniversary treatment on the 1978 jazzier follow up album, 52nd Street, which earned Joel an Album of the Year Grammy and boasts the distinction of being the first pop album pressed onto the CD format when the compact disc was created in the early 1980s.
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On Tuesday the 17th, Rhino finally releases Chicago's Stone of Sisyphus. This was an album Chicago recorded in 1993 with feelings of reinvigoration and purpose after spending the 1980s recording pop pap presented by outside songwriters and losing their identity. This edgier work, they hoped, would announce to the world Chicago had returned from the creatively dead. Alas, the group's label, Warner Bros., hated it. Wasn't commercial, they said. They said if they release it they won't promote it. Chicago refused and took the masters with them. Over the years, a couple tracks wound up on compilations and a boxed set, but the project as a whole remained one of those lost albums collectors' clamor for.
Now that we've heard it we can say this: there's truth on both sides. It wasn't commercial. But in 1993 Chicago had long had its day and, in a time of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Dr. Dre, the pop market wasn't going to embrace anything from Chicago. It's also not a very good album. It's overproduced (by Peter Wolf) and clogged with filler. In other words: it's like any other Chicago album in that even their best works (Chicago VI, VII, Hot Streets) were always hit and miss affairs. Chicago, at its peak, was a singles band. To its credit, Stone of Sisyphus was a marked improvement over the faceless Top 40 ballads they churned out for a decade. The highlights -- the title track and the ballad Better Than Elvis -- sound like Toto but, like Toto's pop/rock hits, these boast impressive pop hooks and would fit fine on any Chicago Greatest Hits album. Better Than Elvis, especially, was as viable a single as anything Warner Bros. had previously issued on this band.
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Finally, it's just a single disc of previously released material, but for Father's Day on Sunday, you couldn't do better than slipping Dad (or yourself) a copy of Frank Sinatra's Nothing But the Best. It's a 22-track compilation of Sinatra's best songs from his Reprise era (plus a previously unreleased Body and Soul with a new arrangement). Purists would probably cite Sinatra's 1950s period with Capitol Records as his artistic peak but I prefer the Rat Pack '60s era captured on this collection. Frankie had more swagger, heft and flair by that point. It's this period newcomers like Michael Buble and Matt Dusk are approximating these days to much commercial success (especially Buble) but no one could equal the late Chairman of the Board. Here's proof 22 times over.
South Florida once had a rock scene. Oh sure, the musicians of the time complained about a lack of support and we never landed on the musical map the way Seattle did in the early 90s (Marilyn Manson and country's The Mavericks made it), but South Beach had its share of happening rock clubs (Washington Square, Rose's Bar, Stephen Talkhouse, Stella Blue) and names like The Holy Terrors, Arlan Feiles (pictured in 1995 at Churchills), Rob Elba, Rat Bastard, Brian Franklin and others were fixtures in The Miami Herald's Weekend section 15-20 years ago.
Fans can get reacquainted with some of these rockers at the following event:
SOUTH FLORIDA ROCKERS-DANCING IN THE COMBAT ZONE
Musicians banded together to record a compilation album whose proceeds benefit our men and women in uniform. Rob Elba says 100% of all download rights generated from the project will be donated to The Iraq Veterans Against the War (http://www.ivaw.org)
A limited edition 1,000 CDs will be pressed. From the press release:
THIS PROJECT INDIRECTLY RESULTED FROM THE MASSIVE RE-HOOK UPS OF FLORIDA MUSICIANS FROM BACK IN THE EARLY 80's ERA AT THE SHEILA WITKIN BENEFIT/ROCK AND A HARD PLACE CONCERT/FILM
The Song Dancing In The Combat Zone ..features
Greg McLaughlin – Lead Vocals (The Front, Scurge)
Rob Elba – Rhythm guitar (Holy Terrors, X-Conz)
Charlie Pickett – Slide Guitar (Himself, The Eggs)
Ray Harris – Bass Guitar (Z-Cars, Cats on Holiday)
Pat Maguire – lead 12 string and slide guitar (Dion, Ross Emory Band)
Dave Cabrera – Backing vocals (Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilera, Lenny Kravitz, Sting)
Michael Molina – backing vocals (The Coins - Creepin’ Charlie)
Steve Bristol-Drums (Chickenbox)
Rat Bastard getting it all down on tape
Dancing in the Combat Zone CD Tracklisting:
1)Dancing in the Combat Zone-South Florida Rockers
2)Sign Up-Arlan Feiles
3)Greed Is King-Pat Maguire
4)To the Troops (We love you so)-Charlie Pickett
5)G-13-Critical Mass
6)Liars (What I'm fighting for)-Dave Cabrera
7)Young Lts.-Icecold Archbishop
8)Tourists Are Pink-The Cichlids
9)Gone South-Michael Molina w/Creeping Charlie
10)Liar Liar-Friendly Fire
11)War Drums of Love-Revolver
12)As it Was Ending-Brian Franklin
13)Rules of Engagement-Rat Bastard
14)War-Ghost Hospital
15)Nothing Hidden-Prinzel/Butler Project
16)Do or Die-Radar O Reiley
17)Good Chow-Sons of Sappho
RELEASE PARTY TO BE HELD:
WHEN – SATURDAY, JUNE 28TH
WHERE - CHURCHILLS, Miami
WHY – TO CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF SOUTH FLORIDA ROCKERS-DANCING IN THE COMBAT ZONE
The Front
Charlie Pickett
Brian Franklin/Rob Elba
Rat Bastard
Friendly Fire
Radar O Reiley
with special guests
Dave Cabrera & Pat Maguire
and a special performance by the
South Florida Rockers!
Read my review of Stevie Nicks' Saturday concert at Hard Rock Live by clicking here.
Photo: AP/Orlando Sentinel
South Florida's favorite son Jimmy Buffett has much going on. No new album, per se, but DVD, tour, kid's book.
Read all about it by clicking here.
Photo: Noah Greenberg/2006
"SHUUUUUTTTUUUUUUUPPPPPPPP!" my pal Lesley exclaimed in delight in an email when I told her Universal plans to re-release the 1980 Olivia Newton-John musical Xanadu as a restored DVD with digitally remastered visuals and 5.1 audio, complete with a remastered CD soundtrack, on June 24.
Sure, most critics panned the film and it was a notorious flop upon its release. "Where else can you see Olivia Newton-John skate around in rags with lightbulbs on her knees,'' sniffed one scribe at the time. I remember being underwhelmed, too, watching it in a near empty and now defunct Bird Road movie theater in August 1980 with money from my first lifeguarding job. Grease, this was not. And its dismal reception basically killed Olivia's budding movie career after the earlier smash. The soundtrack, however, with one side Olivia songs, the other Electric Light Orchestra tracks, was a big hit that entire summer and Magic, the title track and Suddenly still endure as tuneful pop singles. Perhaps what seemed strange at the time -- a movie about a roller disco, which were then the rage, that featured no disco music on its soundtrack -- has weathered time better because its songs owe no allegiance to a passing trend.
Then a stranger thing happened. Xanadu developed a cult following and today has ardent fans, like, um, Lesley who probably won't mind my sharing this revelation. A new Broadway version is the immediate hit the movie never enjoyed in its first-run.
Sure, I recognize that the original movie is craptastic. Director Robert Greenwald seems to have spent his entire budget on its lead star and costar Gene Kelly (in his last musical). It's little wonder Xanadu has transferred to the theater stage because all of the sets in the film look like wooden stage props. Greenwald simply points his camera at the cardboard sets and shoots, sometimes not even bothering to show Kelly's feet -- an oversight that infuriated the great dancer his widow reveals on a new featurette. For her lovely Suspended in Time number, Olivia, still clad in her white schmata, sings while outlined in crayon yellow. She looks like the victim of a nuclear power plant leak operated by Big Bird.
Yet watching this refurbished print, with its improved sound, still made for a fun evening. Yes, like the new Sex and the City movie, one could easily find its faults and tear it apart. But if you just go with it as one of those "so bad it's good" novelties, Xanadu, a film about a muse who falls in love with a struggling artist on earth, has ample charm; some of the dancing proves entertaining and the costumes are eye-catching. Don Bluth's animated segment, to ELO's Don't Walk Away, seems to have wandered in from another movie, but it's a delight. The songs, one and all, are terrific pop nuggets. The overriding feeling is one of uplift and a nod to the power of positive thinking.
Buyer beware tho: The new "Going Back to Xanadu" documentary boasts that the cast and crew discuss the making of the film. That's true but the cast you want to see -- Olivia, Kelly and Michael Beck -- don't appear. Kelly died in 1996 so he's off the hook, but I miss lead couple Olivia and Michael's viewpoints on this otherwise informative and good-natured addition to the previous bare-bones edition on DVD. (Can you believe both leads are 59 and Olivia's to hit 60 in September?)
The remastered soundtrack CD, added as a bonus disc, also boasts decent fidelity and is a nice have since the ELO songs have not appeared on remastered compilations in the U.S. Yet the studio should have gone further by expanding the original 10-track soundtrack album to include Olivia's feisty Fool Country, an odd pop/rock/country twang number that was featured in the film, on the B-side of the No. 1 single, Magic, and in the new Broadway version. ELO's Drum Dreams, the I'm Alive B-side, should also have been plucked from obscurity and added to the disc.
Quibbles aside, Xanadu's Magical Music Edition is one of those rare DVD reissues that is worth the upgrade if you're a fan -- and admit it, many of you are out there. It's just right for a Xanadu DVD watching party! Just have plenty of marshmallows on hand.
The above headline sports the Twilight Zone theme music. Apropos given the revelation that Clay Aiken is gonna be a, gasp, daddy. What Would Jesus Do?
From TMZ: TMZ has learned Clay Aiken is going to be a daddy. In case you didn't process that, Clay Aiken is going to be a daddy. Here's what we know. Multiple sources tell us the mother is Jaymes Foster, a record producer and Clay's best friend. He lives at her home when he's in L.A. We're told 50-year-old Foster is due in August. She's the sister of record mogul David Foster. She divorced a few years back and has no kids. Aiken is 29. We're told Foster was artificially inseminated. (Well, duh!) But Clay is a lot more than sperm -- we're told he will have an active role in raising the child.
No immediate word from Aiken's rep -- or the turkey baster which collapsed, laughing in hysterics.
Before American Idol put its focus on pop music and brought renewed attention to popsters, Orlando music man Lou Pearlman founded Backstreet Boys and N Sync, among others, in the late '90s and rode that wave for a few years. He's been sentenced to 25 years in prison on federal charges. Read more here.
Remember Michael Johns' It's All Wrong, But It's All Right? Brooke White's You're So Vain? Archie's Smokey Mountain Memories? If you've been putting off buying them via iTunes you best hustle: The American Idol performance songs and videos by this season’s eliminated contestants will be available only until midnight on Wednesday, May 21. Songs by the Top 2 Davids will be available until the following week. Then, they're gone. Visit www.iTunes.com for info.
Check out a colleague's post on American Idol's effect on text messaging. Click here.
Hard to believe Carly Simon's never done a concert in Miami. Until Friday. This was a benefit for CHARLEE Homes for Children at downtown Miami's Gusman. Read my review by clicking here. And, yep, she did that Brooke White American Idol song, You're So Vain. As Paula Abdul might say, "Carly made it her own." [Just kidding, folks, just kidding.]
Photo: me, chatting with Carly, post-concert. Photo by Jennifer Barr.
Set list:
Back the Way
Hold Out Your Heart
Island
It Was So Easy
Anticipation
De Bat (Fly in Me Face)
Buy My Record (performed by guitarist David Saw from his album, Broken Down Figure)
America (a new song performed by Ben Taylor and David Saw from a forthcoming Taylor CD)
Ohio (a cover of Neil Young's Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young classic)
How Can You Ever Forget
This Kind of Love
Coming Around Again
You're So Vain
Let the River Run
Carly Simon appears to have an instore appearance scheduled for May 17 at the Starbucks/Hear Music store on Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. My editor saw a sign in the store window. Details to come.
Singer-songwriter Carly Simon came to the attention of American Idol viewers this season when finalist Brooke White performed her 1972 classic, You're So Vain. Simon, impressed with the rendition, publicly hoped that Brooke would win and called her on the morning of her dismissal to offer words of praise and support.
Simon has never performed in Miami but that will change Friday when she appears in concert at the Gusman Center in downtown Miami to benefit the children's support group, CHARLEE. (Her family opera, Romulus Hunt, will also be staged by FIU on Saturday.) Simon says she will be in attendance for that, too. Details and tickets, click here. Naturally, she will do You're So Vain as well as a handful of songs from her sublime new CD, This Kind of Love. There will be a full article in Sunday's Arts section in The Miami Herald but we couldn't fit in everything. Here's some of what you missed:
Simon on her parents' marriage and its effect on her writing: "I was digesting all the information that I was processing in my own life, and other people's lives, [trying] to put it into a context that was more entertaining and possibly more dramatic,'' Simon recalls about composing Romulus Hunt. In so doing, a painful memory surfaced. As a teen, she had caught her mother in an affair. Her father, Richard Simon, co-founder of the Simon & Schuster publishing house, died soon after.
"They didn't divorce,'' Simon says. "But it was a harrowing shock for me.'' That was something that was ongoing until the day my father died. We all felt it. In a way, one of the things that killed my father was the sale of Simon & Schuster [the publishing company he had co-founded] and being cuckholded that, together, was enough to topple him. The kids just live on with these things, wanting to love the mother who survives, yet being angry at the mother, but so wanting the love of the mother and for the role model to 'be good.'"
Simon on coming to Miami for her first concert: Simon teases that she almost didn't come. Notorious for anxiety attacks that have limited the number of concerts she's given -- plus a fear of flying --could have conspired to keep Simon grounded at her Martha's Vineyard home.
"Marilyn March [CHARLEE's Development Director] asked me and it was so much like the Troubadour in 1971. I said no at first,'' Simon says, recounting her first concert tour as Cat Stevens' opening act at the famed Los Angeles rock club and how she'd conspired to bow out. Elektra Records wanted its new artist to tour. Simon would capitulate on one condition: "Get me Russ Kunkel.'' She knew that the famed session drummer would be unavailable since he was on the road with James Taylor at the time. Kunkel came through. Simon had to play.
"I told Marilyn, 'Well you know, I'd need a lot of money because it costs a lot to pay my band.' I mentioned a figure and she didn't flinch. Then I said I'd need a private plane to take me back home.
'We can arrange that.'''
Clearly, that ploy once again backfired. "I'm going to give back the money to the CHARLEE fund because I felt so terrible,'' Simon says, laughing.
Simon on the recording of her new CD, This Kind of Love, available on Starbucks' Hear Music label. Its her first collection of originals since 2000's The Bedroom Tapes: "This one is so influenced by Caetano Veloso. I was thinking I would do a bossa nova/Brazilian samba album where every song was going to have that beat and half of it would be in Portuguese and the other half in Spanish and it would be very true to that genre because I'd been so influenced by that music.
"When I was 18 I saw Black Orpheus for the first time and I wanted to write music like Jobim and Luis Bonfa. But I didn't have the guitar skills. 
Then I listened to the Best of Caetano Veloso and he didn't stick to bossa nova and samba. He was into world music and he went all over the place. He was influenced by Italian music and by Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol and that was not just South America.
"That's what I wanted for [This Kind of Love,] an album that has the seasonings of a samba bossa nova South American record."
Simon on People Say a Lot, her favorite among her new songs from This Kind of Love. It's an angry song from an artist who has written very few angry tunes. It features a hip-hop tempo and a rap-sung vocal from Simon. The track also uses an 10-second snippet of film dialog from the classic 1950 Bette Davis movie, All About Eve. How she secured that sample is as interesting as the actual song: "We finished mastering the album and we realized we didn't get the rights to use All About Eve. My lawyer quickly called up the movie company, MGM, and it cost a whole lot of money I paid out of my own pocket, about $15,000 to $20,000." But she also needed clearance from the estate of the late actor George Sanders, who had spoken the dialog in question. His rights were overseen by a woman named Elaine Tully in Sussex, England. "I called Sussex information myself ... with all the possible spellings of Tully. Someone from my lawyer's office had the bright idea of calling a courier in Sussex.'' That did the trick, the bicyclist courier knew who Tully was and Simon called her personally. "She was delighted," Simon said. The woman didn't charge her much, either.
Simon learns that her popularity with gay audiences soared thanks to her exposing All About Eve in her song, People Say a Lot: "I did an interview with a gay and lesbian magazine from the South and [the interviewer] said, "Do you realize how many friends you have made in the gay community for using that movie?'' That movie is so loved, it's always referenced. I thought that was really interesting. I'm so delighted."
In case you're wondering, here's the dialog Simon samples. It appears at the end of the movie and also at the end of her song which was inspired, in part, by the storyline of Eve and backstabbing people:
Two artists associated with country music died recently. The bigger of the two, Eddy Arnold, is credited by Billboard magazine as the most successful country artist of all time. That's because he had such a long run of hit singles over a career dating back to the mid 1940s, up through his peak years in the 60s when he embodied the Nashville Sound. He'd ditched the fiddles and country accents and applied his smooth tenor to pop songs with strings and lush harmony vocals that had come to define country in the 60s.
His reign was before my interest in country music began but I have a couple of his CDs. A wire obit had late singer/TV personality's Dinah Shore's description of his voice and it intrigued me: "Like warm butter and syrup being poured over wonderful buttermilk pancakes,'' she had said.
I can't describe that voice any better. His rich, thick and sweet voice was impressive. He recorded his final album, his 100th, in 2005 at the age of 87. Even at that age, his vocals on the ballad-oriented All These Years Ago had warmth and control. He certainly hadn't suffered the type of vocal decline that plagued the late Frank Sinatra in his latter years or the frayed voice fellow octogenarian Tony Bennett has now.
The other singer who died was Paul Davis, at 60 of a heart attack. He didn't have Arnold's cache but I was more familiar with some of his music since it was popular in the 70s and 80s. By the 80s I had moved on from his music as I didn't care for the sugary Cool Night, Sweet Life or '65 Love Affair and wasn't interested in venturing into his hit country duets with Marie Osmond. But his 1978 classic, I Go Crazy, was a staple of my teen years. That song spent 40 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, that was a chart record for longevity then. Every morning, that beautiful pop tune, with its tinkling piano fills, popped onto WQAM on our AM car radio at 5 a.m. while we were on the MacArthur Causeway heading toward the University of Miami for swim practice. To this day, if I hear that track I'm catapulted back to that early morn' drive to the pool for lap after lap with fellow Hurricane Swim Club teammates. Gonna have to give that tune a play on the iPod.
Pavlov had nothing on the Claymates. Clay Aiken put out a new CD this week and, of course, critics slammed it. [I gave it 2 out of 4 stars, lamenting the Hallmark Card-variety lyrics and a sameness of tone, but had praise for his beautiful vocals which have never had a better showcase on CD until this one. Claymates might not believe this, but I actually liked Clay when he was on Idol and admit to having his first single, Invisible, as well as Solitaire, on my iPod. I'm still waiting for Clay to fulfill the promise he had on that show yet a good four, five plays of this new CD just hasn't convinced me he's anything but a lightweight with a lovely voice. Many other reviews, however, weren't that charitable and slammed the ballad-heavy disc with a plain F.) Read my review here.
Here's some reaction:
The five contestants will sing two Neil Diamond songs tonight. We hear that David Archuleta will tackle Sweet Caroline and America. David Cook will do I'm Alive and All I Really Need Is You (what's that one?) and Jason Castro's Forever in Blue Jeans and September Morn. [Syesha, pictured, fared the best.] I was hoping Cook, the most masculine of the three, would do Neil's Solitary Man or Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon (songs Michael Johns would have been excellent on) rather than the '80s tune he picked.
I wish Randy would stop booing Simon during introductions. After seven seasons it's not funny anymore (never was) and just makes him seem like such a moron.
"For me it's the chance to encourage the singer, the performer," Neil Diamond said.
The contestants will be judged after their second song this time. But not on this blog! We'll get right into it!
Jason: This kid's lack of musical knowledge (has he heard of anyone???) is grating. His performance of Forever in Blue Jeans, one of Neil's jaun
