Classic Hits

It looks like a lot of fans made sure they saw Dead & Company on what was billed as their Final Tour.

The Grateful Dead offshoot has been touring for eight years, and as Billboard reports, this trek, which wrapped July 14-16 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park, saw them bring in their best grosses and attendance numbers. The tour grossed more than $115 million and sold over 840,000 tickets.

Since the band’s inception in 2015, they’ve gone on 10 tours, made up of 235 shows, which were seen by over four million fans. 

The band also set some new records with this tour, including the most shows played at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, (10) the most shows played at New York’s Citi Field (11) and an all-time attendance record for a single show at Boston’s Fenway Park, beating out Boston natives Aerosmith.

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Roger Waters appears to be teasing his remake of Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Waters revealed he was rerecording the 1973 album back in February, and now, he’s shared a snippet of some music on Instagram alongside a video that reads “DSOTM” and “REDUX.” The short song clip appears to be the buildup to the album’s final song, “Eclipse.” 

This isn’t the first time Waters has shared a tease of the rerecording. Back in March, he posted a clip of “Us and Them” on Facebook and explained his reasoning for rerecording the album.

“It’s turned out really great and I’m excited for everyone to hear it,” he wrote. “It’s not a replacement for the original which, obviously, is irreplaceable. But it is a way for the seventy nine year old man to look back across the intervening fifty years into the eyes of the twenty nine year old and say, to quote a poem of mine about my Father, ‘We did our best, we kept his trust, our Dad would have been proud of us’.” 

He added, “[I]t is a way for me to honor a recording that Nick [Mason] and Rick [Wright] and Dave [Gilmour] and I have every right to be very proud of.”

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Ever since music went digital, countless songs and albums have leaked before their release dates as keeping files under lock and key while they get sent back and forth is extremely difficult. Now, Bryan Adams is here to help.

Adams has signed on as a cofounder of Songbox, a Scottish tech company that’s invented a safe way to share music. The technology allows musicians — or anyone else who creates audio content — to store their files securely and share it with whoever they want while preventing unwanted leaks.

What’s more, you can monitor who is listening, which tracks they’re listening to and for how long. That’s super-valuable for any new artist who wants to send their demos to a record company or producer, for example.

Bryan was one of the first people to use the technology, and over the past two years, he’s also helped add new features to the product. Songbox founder Michael Coll says the rocker’s “insight” has been “invaluable” when it came to making it even more helpful for musicians.

In a statement, Bryan says thanks to Songbox, “I don’t need to send out MP3 files or physical products, so it keeps my ideas and early versions safe and secure until I’m ready to officially release the songs. It was exactly what I was looking for.”

He adds, “I’m delighted to join Songbox and to help tell other people in the music business how great this tool can be for their work.”

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Queen has earned quite an honor in the U.K. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers have just been awarded the Brit Billion Award, which “celebrates the band’s outstanding achievement as recording artists in surpassing the landmark of one billion career streams in the U.K.”

“Thank you for presenting Queen with a BRIT Billion Award. We’re grateful to all our fans that support us and continue to enjoy our music. Rock on BPI,” Queen’s Brian May shared in accepting the honor. Roger Taylor added, “I’m thrilled to accept the BRIT Billion Award on behalf of Queen,” noting, “I would like to say thanks to everyone who has extracted a morsel of enjoyment from our music. We are still around and we hope to entertain you a little.”

The award was given to the band by BPI, the organization which represents the U.K.’s record labels and music companies and is responsible for the Brit Awards.

“There can be few artists who have done more to popularize and promote British music around the world than Queen,” Dr Jo Twist, BPI chief executive said. “The term iconic barely does justice to their monumental achievements as recording artists.”

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The new Netflix documentary about Wham! evidently made a lot of fans wake themselves up and stream-stream.

Billboard reports that the critically acclaimed documentary, which charts the four-year career of the duo of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, has resulted in a 41% increase in streaming of their catalog and a 537% increase in their digital sales.

That catalog includes the number-one hits “Careless Whisper,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Everything She Wants” as well as the top 10 singles “Freedom,” “I’m Your Man” and “The Edge of Heaven.”

If you want all of those in one place, the recently released compilation Wham! The Singles: Echoes from the Edge of Heaven includes them all on vinyl and CD.

George Michael’s solo career has also benefited, as he’s seen a 30% increase in his catalog and a 187% increase in his digital sales.

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On This Day, July 20, 1975…

Ahead of the release of his third studio album, Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen launched a new tour at the Palace Theater in Providence, Rhode Island. 

The show marked Steve Van Zandt’s first official gig as a member of the E Street Band and also the live debut of the future classic “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” Other songs in the set included “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Rosalita” and more.

Born To Run was released August 25, 1975, and peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It has gone on to be considered one of the greatest albums of all time and has been certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA.

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Soft-hearted Rod Stewart gave a struggling family in Scotland a cash gift after one of their kids wrote a heartfelt note about their situation.

As a school project asking students about their hopes for the future, 10-year-old Sophia McKenzie wrote, “I have a dream that one day we will live in a world where the cost of living crisis stops and everything is free and nobody struggles with not being able to eat.” Her note was eventually published in The Daily Record.

Sophia’s mother Heather, a single mom with four kids, told the paper, “Sophia sees how much it upsets me when I can’t get them everything they want and she’s seen me go without food so they have enough to eat.”

Rod read Sophia’s letter and contacted the paper. “It broke my heart,” he said. “I simply had to find a way to help.” He ended up giving the family 2500 pounds, which is about 3200 dollars.

“I told [Sophia] what Mr. Stewart did and it has completely thrown her,” Heather told the paper. “We obviously never expected anything like this to happen…it is going to be amazing to see her not have to worry anymore.”

She added, “This is a life-changing amount of money and it means so much to all of us. Mr. Stewart is just an incredible person. I cannot thank him enough. I am so grateful from the bottom of my heart.”

In the past year, Rod has also helped bring a family of Ukrainian refugees to the U.K. and pledged to pay their rent and bills for a year. In addition, he’s paid for patients’ MRI scans at a hospital near his home to reduce wait times.

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Gov’t Mule kicks off their Dark Side of the Mule tour on July 22 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which will have the band celebrating the music of Pink Floyd and the classic album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Mule frontman Warren Haynes tells ABC Audio the idea for the shows originated from the band’s annual Halloween tradition, where “we give ourselves permission to play somebody else’s music.” He notes they’ve covered Neil Young, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and many others.

“In 2008 we did Pink Floyd and the fans really dug it, and we released the recording and it was something the fans really like, so they encouraged us to do it more,” Haynes says.

After releasing the live album in 2014, Haynes says they thought they’d retired it. “[But] when the 50th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon came around, we’re like, ‘All right, we’ll do it one more time,’ which I’m really psyched about.”

The Dark Side of the Moon was released in March 1973, but it’s an album that has only grown in popularity over the years — Haynes thinks that’s because it contains “timeless music.” 

“It was written and performed and recorded in a way that is never going to get old,” he says. “You know, there’s so much music. If you go back decades, some of it has a stamp on it and doesn’t live up to your expectations later on. But that music is better now than it was at the time.” 

Gov’t Mule’s Dark Side of the Mule tour, which features a full set of Gov’t Mule songs, followed by the Pink Floyd tribute, wraps August 20 in Vienna, Virginia. A complete list of dates can be found at mule.net.

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A new docuseries that explores the music of San Francisco is set to premiere in August on MGM+, formerly EPIX. 

San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time focuses on the Bay Area music scene from 1965 to 1975, a period that launched legendary artists like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Steve Miller, Santana and more to national stardom.

The two-part series, from the same team behind the Emmy-nominated music documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time, will air over two Sundays, August 20 and 27, at 10 p.m. ET.

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The story of legendary rock band R.E.M. is being told in a new biography, Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M., by John Hunter. 

Although Hunter did not interview band members Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck or Bill Berry directly, the book is culled from previous video and audio interviews given by the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers. It also pulls from newspaper and magazine articles, as well as interviews with people close to the band, including high school classmates and bandmates, friends and producers.

The book promises to not only delve into R.E.M.’s entire career, which includes such hit albums as Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, but also explore their childhoods, their teenage bands, solo work and more.

Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M. will be released August 2.

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