This Christmas, “Grease” stars Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta are giving you the gift of the 1970s, whether you want the decade back or not. After nearly 35 years, the pair has reunited to record a Christmas album with guests Kenny G (yes) and Barbra Streisand among others. All proceeds from “This Christmas” will go to charities selected by Travolta and Newton-John. “We want to make a lot of people smile and happy. It’s a project that we’re hoping turns into a perennial, one that can continue to raise money for these causes year after year, a gift that keeps on giving,” said Newton-John in a statement.
Naming a new band? When the Cars, the Police, Heart and the Eagles did so their lack of originality may have cost them a few style points but it probably didn’t hurt their record sales any.
Today an aspiring band can’t afford to make the same mistake. With so many artists breakthroughs coming as the result of social media sites, and with the power of the “like” click meaning as much as the major label ad campaign, a band must make themselves easy to find online. And that means having an original word or word combination as a band name.
Just as Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan are easier to Google today than the Police are, bands named Mumford & Sons and Flaming Lips and Freelance Whales are a little easier to spread word about than bands like The Shore, Youth Group, Roman Candle and Girls, if only because it’s easier to find their Facebook pages.
Don’t use a common word or phrase to name your band. There’s money in exposure, and exposure is easier to come by for a band who use a fresh word combination to name themselves.
Pete Townshend sits down with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone to discuss his new biography, his relationship with Roger, the ghosts of Keith Moon and John Entwistle and his love for his iPod.
In 1994 Jimmy Page and Robert Plant collaborated on a new musical project for the first time since the death 14 years earlier of Led Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham. The reunion resulted from an invitation to appear on MTV’s hit series Unplugged. But Page and Plant wanted to steer clear of nostalgia, so they excluded former Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones from the project and named it Unledded.
The resulting album and DVD feature an assortment of Zeppelin songs that were reinterpreted with the help of an Egyptian ensemble, an Indian vocalist and the London Metropolitan Orchestra, but perhaps the most interesting part of the project was a trio of new songs recorded with local musicians in Marrakesh, Morocco. Those performances, one of which is shown here, were the result of a collaboration with traditional musicians of the Gnawa minority, whose sub-Saharan ancestors were brought to Morocco many centuries ago as slaves.
“We’d never met the Gnawa when we went there,” said Plant in a 1994 interview, “but they were very patient, and smiling is a great currency.” Gnawa music is traditionally performed for prayer and healing, and differs from other North African music. “They play a kind of music which is much more akin to the music of the Mississippi Delta than it is to do with Arab music,” Plant said in another interview. “It’s haunting, seductive, and quite alluring.”
Every Moment Has A Song 