12.3.16 Music News with "Adam Connections"
Dec 3, 2016 1:20:13 GMT -5
Post by Q3 on Dec 3, 2016 1:20:13 GMT -5
From 2015 but totally banner-worthy! Adam performing at KTUphoria 2015.
There is no Adam news today but there is a lot of interesting music news. So I am opening up today's discussion to any music news -- with one small catch. There needs to be an Adam connection!
Here's a few of the top music headlines - with Adam connections.
Robbie Rocks Big Ben Live confirmed for New Year’s Eve
By Carl Fallowfield on 02/12/2016
Once again BBC One hosts a spectacular New Year’s Eve celebration with a concert from one of the UK’s greatest performers, Robbie Williams, live from London.
Robbie Williams will be performing live at Central Hall Westminster, in Robbie Rocks Big Ben Live on New Year’s Eve, in the build-up to the clock striking midnight to see in 2017 and continuing again after the fireworks on BBC One.
More here: www.cumbriacrack.com/2016/12/02/robbie-rocks-big-ben-live-confirmed-new-years-eve/
This Adam Connection is easy. Queen + Adam Lambert Rocked Big Ben Live in 2014.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRbTPo98NRo
Review: The Rolling Stones Reinvigorate the Blues on 'Blue and Lonesome'
4.5/5 stars
Our take on rock legends' first LP since 2005
On April 7th, 1962, three young Englishmen obsessed with American blues met for the first time, at the Ealing Jazz Club in London. Two of them – singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards from an aspiring combo, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys – were attending a performance by the local blues scene's leading troupe, Blues Incorporated, led by guitarist Alexis Korner. The third man, guitarist Brian Jones, was playing with Korner's group, under the pseudonym Elmo Lewis. Three months later, on July 12th, Jagger, Richards and Jones made their live debut as the Rollin' Stones at the Marquee Club, with bassist Dick Taylor, later of the Pretty Things, and pianist Ian Stewart, who would become the Stones' devoted road manager and true-blues conscience.
Between those spring and summer landmarks, Jagger also did time with Blues Incorporated in a lineup that included the Stones' eventual drummer Charlie Watts, singing imported electric-Chicago standards such as "Got My Mojo Working," a 1957 single by Muddy Waters, and a late-1955 recording by Jimmy Reed's guitarist Eddie Taylor, "Ride 'Em on Down." Fifty-four years later, on Blue and Lonesome, Jagger turns back to that Taylor stomp, chewing on the words – descended from a starker Delta blues, "Shake 'Em on Down," codified on a 1937 release by Bukka White – like a favorite meal as the air gets thick with Richards and Ron Wood's sniping guitars and Watts' rifle-volley snare fills.
Recorded last December in just three days with co-producer Don Was at British Grove Studios in the London suburb of Richmond – almost spitting distance from the site of the Crawdaddy Club, where the Stones played a life-changing 1963 residency – Blue and Lonesome is the band's first all-covers studio release since the 1964 U.K. EP The Rolling Stones, and the Stones' first pure, straight blues record ever. It is also the working lineup of the world's biggest blues band – with Wood in his 41st year as the new boy and bassist Darryl Jones as Watts' co-anchor since 1993 – doing what comes naturally in a dozen songs mostly associated with sweet home Chicago: Reed, Howlin' Wolf, singer-guitarist Magic Sam and especially harp master Little Walter, with four of his Fifties and Sixties singles here.
There is deep South too. The brash London whelps that covered bayou bluesman Slim Harpo's 1957 B side "I'm a King Bee" on their debut album and named a live LP in honor of the flip ("Got Love If You Want It") have a romping good time with "Hoodoo Blues" by Harpo's contemporary, Lightnin' Slim. And named a live LP in honor of the flip ("Got Love If You Want It") have a romping good time with "Hoodoo Blues" by Harpo's contemporary, Lightnin' Slim. And there is a thrilling, unexpected stop, with slide guitar from fellow pilgrim Eric Clapton, at the Louisiana intersection of blues and soul in Little Johnny Taylor's "Everybody Knows About My Good Thing." The Stones were actually working closer to the older Delta, covering Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move" on Sticky Fingers, when Taylor's single was a Top Ten R&B hit in 1971 on the Ronn label out of Shreveport. But Jagger's freewheeling phrasing is the good-time relish of a man who has been writing cheatin' songs all of his life but knows when he's got the gold standard in front of him.
The Stones first heard these songs as foreign language – the lust and trials of older, hardened men. That rough weather now fits the Stones – including Wood, who did his apprentice time in London R&B mods the Birds and on bass for the Jeff Beck Group – like a suit off the rack at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market. In "Just Your Fool," a Checker Records 45 for Little Walter in 1962, Watts presses the beat like a forced, precision march under the chug and spike of Richards and Wood's guitars. "Blue and Lonesome," from a 1965 Little Walter single and caught here in a single take, opens with a rush of power-chord sustain, then drops into tense strut marked with jittery bursts of slalom guitar, Jagger cutting in with seething confrontation, especially on harp. Jones originally played that instrument in the Stones, but Jagger grew into their secret weapon. His hearty, supple attack and exclamatory accents are as exciting and decisive as Richards' bedrock ways on guitar.
Made on impulse, as a much-needed break during other studio work, Blue and Lonesome is a monument to muscle memory. Solos are brief and tight, evoking the honed-punch effect of the original recordings. The running highlight throughout the album is the churning ensemble bond: the hot-plate jump of the guitars over the chasing rhythm in the Little Walter sprint "I Gotta Go"; the feral, stalking tension in Magic Sam's "All of Your Love" as Jagger tears at the title lyric like an upper-octave Howlin' Wolf.
Blue and Lonesome is not a record of mere returning, a look back at how it all started. The Stones were already big time when some of these songs were released by the originators including Howlin' Wolf's 1966 threat "Commit a Crime" and Magic Sam's defining version of "All of Your Love" on his 1967 landmark, West Side Soul. In fact, the younger Stones couldn't have tackled Jimmy Reed's 1957 lament "Little Rain" like the slow, advancing storm here. Watts comes in like stoic resignation, on brushed snare, under rolling clouds of guitar; Jagger fires lightning streaks of harp. It's barely a song – six lines of determined yearning and time running out. But it is dense with lesson, a reflection of the grip and wisdom that, for every bluesman, only comes with miles and age.
Link: www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/review-the-rolling-stones-blue-and-lonesome-w453332
Adam connection: The Rolling Stones are his mother's favorite band. He performed a Rolling Stones song on Idol.
youtu.be/EWIJIQ61Ieg
SNL Announces Final 3 Musical Acts
twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/804794737660227585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Adam connection: He was on the same bill with Shawn Mendes in Buffalo in 2015.
How Westworld’s Music Became Equal Parts Groundhog Day and MTV
Author: Charley Locke. Charley Locke Culture Date of Publication: 12.02.16.
There aren’t many saloons where you can get into a decent pistol duel nowadays. But at the Mariposa in Sweetwater, you can walk in, order a shot of bourbon, and straight-up Aaron Burr a robot—all to the strains of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of a player piano that happens to be ever so slightly out of tune. “That’s the twist,” says Ramin Djawadi, the composer for HBO’s Westworld. “In the show, everything is so real, until you look closely. The music is a subtle layer of that.”
Djawadi is no stranger to scoring an epic HBO drama; he also composes for Game of Thrones. But Westworld, which wraps up its first season on Sunday night, depends on a tension that’s rooted in reality rather than Westerosi legend. To heighten the contrast between the dusty prairie town of Sweetwater and the sterile, glass-walled control center, Djawadi chose entirely different instruments: acoustic guitars and harmonicas for the saloons and plains of the park, synthesizers for the futuristic laboratories.
At times, Djawadi further amplified the disconnect by using the same songs in both worlds, just using different instrumentation. “We wanted the control room to still feel Western, to be gritty and tough, like in the park,” Djawadi says. “But visually, they’re very different, and you can support the separation between the two worlds sonically.” The same piece of music feels entirely different when played by acoustic guitar and fiddle (Teddy riding the train into town), or by synthesizers (lab techs evaluating hosts’ gun-slinging abilities).
88 Keys to Teasing Out Subtext
Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) weren’t the first robots to blur the boundaries between hosts’ programmed constraints and guests’ autonomy: A more primitive technological creation did so from the opening scenes. The player piano in the corner of the Mariposa Saloon provides accompaniment to repetitive days in Sweetwater. Each morning, the characters unwittingly play out a Wild West-themed Groundhog Day, with the piano-only version of the show’s theme song acting as the same weather report. “It’s been an amazing tool to seamlessly blend the background score into source music, as a subtle way of reminding the audience that everything in there is programmed,” Djawadi says. “Everything is on a time loop.”
As Maeve slowly uncovers the truth of her false world among the unsuspecting guests, she does it to tunes that many viewers—and, presumably, visitors to the park—-already associate with angst and melancholy. But these aren’t dirges from the 1800s. Djawadi and Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy gave the piano decidedly modern tastes: The Cure; Soundgarden; Radiohead. (Lots of Radiohead.) So Maeve’s journey happens against the anachronistic backdrop of “Black Hole Sun” and “Fake Plastic Trees”; by the time the piano plays an arrangement of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Maeve controls her world entirely. “She’s making an active decision of breaking this time loop, and we actively picked a different song,” says Djawadi. “It shows she’s heading away from the repetition.”
Nolan’s deep love of Radiohead aside, the old-fashioned technology serves as the perfect foil for a show about futuristic robots living in a nostalgic recreation of the past. “The player piano was, and shout-out to Kurt Vonnegut for the idea, sort of the first, primordial version of our hosts: A Rube Goldberg machine that is created to evoke human emotion,” Nolan said at New York Comic Con earlier this year. Djawadi had never used a player piano before—he had to outsource the construction of the paper roll to Gnaw-Vol-ty Rolls, one of the few companies that still creates material for the instrument—but his creation provides fittingly anachronistic audio to Westworld. At least, until the player piano becomes sentient and starts wielding a knife.
Link: www.wired.com/2016/12/designing-westworld-music/
Adam connection - Adam tweeted about Westwood and has worn clothes by Vivienne Westwood Man.
twitter.com/adamlambert/status/792534559636262912
Dead & Company Detail 2017 Summer Tour
19-date run kicks off in Las Vegas in May
The returning band – Grateful Dead members singer-guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart; singer-guitarist John Mayer; former Allman Brothers Band bassist Oteil Burbridge; and keyboard player Jeff Chimenti – will revisit several of the iconic venues they've performed at previously, including a two-night stand at Boston's Fenway Park. They will also perform for the first time at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl and Chicago's Wrigley Field.
Each evening, Dead & Company will play two sets comprising material from the Grateful Dead's vast catalog.
The group's cross-country jaunt begins on May 27th in Las Vegas at MGM Grand Garden Arena. They perform eight dates on the West Coast before heading south to Atlanta on June 13th where they play Lakewood Amphitheatre. The tour routes through the East Coast for seven dates before ending its run with two shows, June 30th and July 1st, at Wrigley Field.
Tickets go on sale on December 9th. There will also be several ticket presales available beginning December 5th. Details can be found on the Dead & Company's official website.
Dead & Company 2017 Tour Dates
May 27 - Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena
May 28 - Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion
May 31 - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
June 3 - Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
June 4 - Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
June 7 - West Valley City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre
June 9 - Boulder, CO @ Folsom Field
June 10 - Boulder, CO @ Folsom Field
June 13 - Atlanta, GA @ Lakewood Amphitheatre
June 15 - Burgettstown, PA @ KeyBank Pavilion
June 17 - Boston, MA @ Fenway Park
June 18 - Boston, MA @ Fenway Park
June 20 - Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
June 22 - Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
June 24 - New York, NY @ Citi Field
June 25 - Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
June 28 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
June 30 - Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field
July 1 - Chicago, IL @ Wrigley Field
Link: www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dead-company-detail-2017-summer-tour-w453415
Adam connection: "His dad, Eber, who worked as a DJ in college and followed the Grateful Dead throughout the Eighties..."
Link: www.rollingstone.com/music/news/adam-lambert-wild-idol-20090625
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Adamtopia CalendarDecember 6, 2016 Rocky Horror Picture Show DVD released
On the distant horizon: Chapter 4
The full event calendar is located here: adamtopia.com/calendar
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Happy Birthday!!