Classic Hits

Will Rolling Stones fans finally get to hear some new music in 2023? That’s the word from U.K. tabloid The Sun, which reports that an unnamed source has confirmed that the band intends to put out its first new album of original material in 18 years next summer.

According to The Sun, Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood took part in recording sessions during the past two weeks at New York City’s famed Electric Lady Studios. The report claims that they worked with “a raft of world class session musicians” as well as longtime Stones touring bassist Darryl Jones and drummer Steve Jordan, who joined the group’s touring lineup in the wake of drummer Charlie Watts‘ death last year.

The newspaper also reports that the source says The Rolling Stones will likely launch a major tour following the album’s release that would include shows in the U.S., South America and Europe.

The Sun says the source noted that after Watts’ death, the band was unsure about whether it would continue, “But now they’ve had time to reflect they all feel it’s the right thing to keep doing what they’ve always done as a band, make new music and hopefully hit the road again to perform it to their fans.”

A new album would be the first that the band ever recorded without Watts. In March, Richards revealed in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that he, Jagger and Jordan had been writing new songs together. The Rolling Stones’ last album of original tunes was 2005’s A Bigger Bang.

Earlier this year, the band launched a 60th anniversary tour, a European trek that ran from June to August.

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Former Wings drummer Denny Seiwell and current Yes bassist Billy Sherwood are among the artists who have contributed to Shadows in a Jar, the sixth album by veteran guitarist and songwriter Earl Kayoss‘ Life on Mars project.

Shadows in a Jar will be released November 18 and can be preordered now at CherryRed.co.uk, as well as multiple other online retailers.

Kayoss’ main Life on Mars collaborator is Fernando Perdomo, a veteran producer and guitarist whose credits include the star-studded 2021 album Ram On, a tribute to Paul and Linda McCartney‘s 1971 Ram record, and 2021’s Energy Overload, a collaboration with Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice. Seiwell also played on Ram On, as well as on the original Ram album.

You can check out a video for the Shadows in a Jar track “After All,” which features Sherwood on vocals, bass and drums, on Kayoss’ official YouTube channel.

Here’s the full track list of Shadows in a Jar:

“Ego”
“The Key”
“Stray Dog”
“After All”
“Technology”
“Rabbits”
“And Besides…”
“She’s Already Gone”
“Rock People”
“Nancy’s Finger”
“Only One”
“Hurricane Jane”
“Shadows in a Jar”*

* = bonus track.

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Chicago will return to Las Vegas’ Venetian Theatre for an eight-show residency in February and March 2023.

Marking the sixth consecutive year the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees will visit the theater, which is located inside The Venetian Resort, the performances are scheduled for February 24 and 25, and March 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 and 11.

Tickets for the new Vegas shows will go on sale to the general public on Monday, October 24, at 10 a.m. PT. Chicago fan club members will be able to buy presale tickets starting Thursday, October 20, at 10 a.m. PT. Live Nation and Ticketmaster customers and members of The Venetian Resort’s Grazie loyalty program can purchase presale tickets beginning Friday, October 21, at 10 a.m.

You can purchase tickets via Ticketmaster.com, VenetianLasVegas.com, the box offices at The Venetian and by calling 702-414-9000 or 866-641-7469.

Chicago, which released new studio album Born for This Moment in July, has 10 U.S. tour dates left on its 2022 schedule. The shows run from an October 20 concert in Memphis, Tennessee, through a November 2 performance in Lubbock, Texas.

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Veteran pop singer Gary Puckett, who scored a series of high-charting hits with his group The Union Gap during the late 1960s, celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday, October 17.

Puckett and The Union Gap’s biggest hits were 1967’s “Woman, Woman,” and 1968’s “Young Girl” and “Lady Willpower,” which peaked at #4, #2 and #2, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.

The band followed those up with three more top-20 singles, 1968’s “Over You,” and 1969’s “Don’t Give In to Him” and “This Girl Is a Woman Now,” which reached reached #7, #15 and #9 on the Hot 100.

“Young Girl,” “Lady Willpower” and “Over You” were written by Jerry Fuller, who also produced The Union Gap’s first three albums.

Puckett and The Union Gap were nominated for Best New Artist at the 1969 Grammy Awards, but lost out to Jose Feliciano.

Puckett parted ways with The Union Gap in 1971 and launched a moderately successful solo career. He withdrew from the music business in the early ’70s, but returned to performing and recording in the early 1980s. Since then, he has performed regularly on the oldies circuit, often with a backing band called The Union Gap, and has sporadically released solo albums.

Puckett and the current Union Gap are taking part in the Sixties Gold tour in the United Kingdom, which runs through late November. They also have several U.S. shows lined up. Visit GaryPuckettMusic.com for more information.

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Founding R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry is back. He’s in a new group called The Bad Ends, who, like his former band, hail from Athens, Georgia.

The Bad Ends also feature singer/guitarist Mike Mantione of the veteran Athens band Five Eight, as well as Dave Domizi on bass and vocals, Geoff Melkonian on keyboards and vocals, and Christian Lopez on guitars and mandolin.

The group will release its debut album, The Power and the Glory, on January 20, 2023. The first track from the record, “All Your Friends Are Dying,” is available now as a digital single.

The Bad Ends have also debuted a music video for the tune, which you can watch on the New West Records label’s YouTube channel.

The clip features cameos by R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills and Pylon singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay, and much of the footage was shot at Berry’s home near Athens. The video includes scenes of The Bad Ends members driving ATVs and performing around a swimming pool, where they eventually appear as zombies.

Berry, who hadn’t played in a full-time band after leaving R.E.M. in 1997, recalls in a new SPIN article that he wound up joining The Bad Ends after “a chance pedestrian encounter in downtown Athens” with Mantione in 2017.

“At that point it had been over two decades since I’d involved myself with the record-making process and here was a man Peter Buck recently described as ‘the unsung hero of Athens rock and roll’ offering an opportunity to play in the game again,” Berry explains. “It was energizing to once again play with top-notch musicians.”

The Bad Ends will make their live debut at the Athens Uncovered concert in Athens, GA on November 27.

You can preorder The Power and the Glory now.

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Mariah Carey seemingly gave fans the go-ahead to begin thinking about Christmas.

The so-called Queen of Christmas took to Twitter to tease something festive and ominously captioned it, “It’s almost time…” She also shared a photo of her bathtub and an embossed bath mat embedded with her initials, but it’s the curious red robe draping off the steps that has fans humming with excitement.

Mariah followed up with a video of her in her bubble bath with her back turned to the camera, along with the word “but…” She’s wagging a finger as the sound of a clock ticks in the background.

She then finished the post trilogy with a cheeky video of her splashing in her bubble bath alongside the caption, “not yet.” In the video, she joyfully responds with “not yet” to a child asking if they can decorate the tree and listen to her smash hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

Unfortunately, that’s all we have so far from Mariah regarding the holidays. Considering we haven’t even celebrated Halloween yet, she might be saving up for a big announcement once we get closer to Christmas.

Still, this is causing fans to celebrate that the self-professed Queen of Christmas is “thawing.”

In other Mariah news, she has her children’s book The Christmas Princess coming out in a few weeks. The book, which features “Little Mariah,” hits the shelves on November 1.

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After Melissa Etheridge saw one of her heroes, Bruce Springsteen, do his Springsteen on Broadway show, she figured she could do the same thing: telling her life story on stage, and using her songs to illustrate it.  That idea is now a reality: Last week, Melissa Etheridge –My Window: A Journey Through Life opened at New York’s New World Stages…which is technically Off-Broadway, but is literally in the heart of the theater district.

“Dreams come true,” Melissa told ABC Audio a few months ago about doing a show like this. “Y’know, as a kid…what performing, what music, what the entertainment industry was, as I was growing up in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s…it was all Grammys and Oscars…and Nashville and New York and Vegas and Broadway. These are the entertainment icons.”

She added that she was “really excited” about doing something on Broadway, which she calls an “amazing place for entertainment.”

In the show, Melissa takes the audience through her entire life, from the day she was born right up to the present day. On a mostly bare stage, she tells her story with the help of some vintage photos and video, a trippy light show, a hilarious female “roadie” — played by physical comedienne Kate Owens — and instruments ranging from a piano and guitar, to a clarinet, bass and drums.

With plenty of humor, Melissa details her musical development, her sexuality, her very public relationships, motherhood, her breast cancer battle, her spiritual awakening and the 2020 loss of her son to opioid addiction. And, of course, you’ll hear many of her greatest hits, from “Bring Me Some Water” and “I’m the Only One” to “I Want to Come Over” and, of course, “Come to My Window.”

Melissa Etheridge –My Window: A Journey Through Life  runs through October 29.

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Journey guitarist Neal Schon recently revealed that the band would be returning to the road next year for a new tour with their 2022 opening act Toto. Now, the group has announced official plans for the trek, which will celebrate Journey’s 50th anniversary.

The outing, dubbed the 50th Anniversary Freedom Tour 2023, will feature 38 North American dates, running from a February 4 concert in Allentown, Pennsylvania through an April 25 show in Palm Springs, California.

The trek will include the four previously announced makeup concerts that Journey postponed earlier this year, which are scheduled for March 1 in Washington, D.C.; March 4 in Hartford, Connecticut; March 9 in Quebec City; and March 12 in Toronto.

Tickets for the newly announced shows will go on sale to the general public this Thursday, October 20 at 10 a.m. local time at JourneyMusic.com. Citi card members will have access to presale tickets starting Tuesday, October 18 at 10 a.m. local time; visit CitiEntertainment.com for more info. A limited number of VIP packages will also be available.

“We are all thankful and overwhelmed by the success of our Journey Freedom Tour 2022 this year,” says Schon. “We are looking forward to hitting the road again with our very good friends Toto! Come join us for a special evening full of fun and Rockin’ good memories.”

Adds Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, “Excited to perform for our fans as we tour next year with Toto. The combined hits of both bands represent a couple of decades of excellence that have become a soundtrack for people’s lives.”

Meanwhile, Journey recently debuted a lyric video for “Beautiful as You Are,” a song from their recently released Freedom album. Check it out on the band’s YouTube channel.

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Todd Rundgren‘s long-delayed studio album Space Force, which features collaborations with a wide variety of artists, finally got its release Friday, October 14.

The 12-track collection includes contributions from Cheap Trick‘s Rick Nielsen, Steve Vai, Thomas Dolby, Crowded House‘s Neil Finn, ex-King Crimson singer/guitarist Adrian Belew, Weezer‘s Rivers Cuomo, Sparks and The Roots.

Space Force is a follow-up to Rundgren’s similarly collaborative 2017 album, White Knight, and he tells ABC Audio that new record differs from its predecessor in that most of the new song ideas originated from the artists he worked with rather than himself.

“[With] Space Force … I was putting much more of the responsibility for the material on my collaborators,” he explains. “I wanted them to germinate … the process, to seed it by giving me something of theirs that they had worked on but perhaps never finished.”

Not surprisingly, the album features songs influenced by various musical genres, including hard rock, prog rock, R&B, ska, rap and electronica.

“[It’s] almost like an anthology of different artists who might have been popular at a certain time. Although the artists that are on my record have varying degrees of popularity in different eras,” Rundgren explains. “So the flavor of the record is eclectic.”

Since much of Space Force was put together during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rundgren generally created the tunes remotely with his collaborators.

Todd says the “typical process” of working on a track for the album would be “me getting someone to send me something — often they would send me more than one thing, so I would have an option — and then me … applying my sensibilities to it to bring it into the realm of … an actual song that can be released.

Here’s Space Force‘s full track list:

“Puzzle” — with Adrian Belew
“Down with the Ship” — with Rivers Cuomo
“Artist in Residence” — with Neil Finn
“Godiva Girl” — with The Roots
“Your Fandango” — with Sparks
“Someday” — with Davey Lane
“I’m Not Your Dog” — with Thomas Dolby
“Espionage” — with Narcy
“STFU” — with Rick Nielsen
“Head in the Ocean” — with Alfie
“I’m Leaving” — with The Lemon Twigs
“Eco Warrior Goddess” — with Steve Vai

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Alice Cooper has announced full details about the 2022 edition of his star-studded annual charity fundraiser, Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding.

The event, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, is scheduled to take place on December 3 at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix. Joining the shock rocker on the lineup are Sammy Hagar, Rob Zombie, The Romantics‘ Wally Palmar, Gin Blossoms, and comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Jim Breuer.

Tickets for the concert will go on sale to the general public Friday, October 21, at 10 a.m. local time at CelebrityTheatre.com. There will also be presale offers beginning Monday, October 17.

The event will raise money to pay for staff and resources at Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers, which provide free music, dance, arts and vocational training programs for people aged 12 to 20. There are two centers, located in Phoenix and Mesa, Arizona, respectively.

“We are excited to be celebrating our 20th year with a stellar lineup of talent who dedicate their time and passion to help us raise funds for our Rock Teen Centers,” says Alice. “We are grateful to everyone who continues to make this one of the finest shows in the Valley and promise another memorable evening of music and mayhem!”

The fundraiser will feature performances by the Solid Rock dancers, the Bucket Brigade percussion collective and the winners of the annual Proof Is in the Pudding Music and Dance Competition.

Visit AliceCooperSolidRock.com for more information.

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