Guns N' Roses to play gigs at House of Blues, Wiltern, Palladium

Despite vocal protestations late last year about the notion of playing the Hollywood Palladium, Axl Rose and his band Guns N' Roses announced this morning a three-night March "L.A. Takeover" that will feature gigs at the landmark Palladium and Wiltern theaters, along with a return to the Sunset Strip that birthed the original lineup with a stop at the House of Blues.

The band, which will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, currently features Rose as its sole original member along with longtime players Richard Fortus, Tommy Stinson, Bumblefoot and others. The band will do the three gigs during the week of March 9. They did a similar run of dates at smaller venues in New York last month after undertaking a mid-sized stadium tour in the late fall that brought them to the Forum in Inglewood.

From Run-DMC to U2, the durability of the Monkees & Davy Jones

Television was the priority, but the Monkees still made a lasting impression on pop music. The band's string of hits between 1966 and 1968 may have initially cashed in on Beatlemania, but the songs have long transcended novelty status, no doubt due in part to the fact that the Monkees' albums drew from expert pop craftsmen such as Carole King, Neil Diamond and the songwriting duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

With the news today that Monkees frontman Davy Jones had died, Pop & Hiss takes a look at the band's enduring influence on the generations that followed.

"The Monkees," a TV series heavily influenced by the whimsical nature of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night," first aired in September 1966, and the music from those shows soon crossed over to the pop charts. The members of the Monkees long fought to correct the perception that they were little more than puppets, though their first few singles featured little more than the group's voices over other artists'  songs and instrumentation. Those early hits included the Boyce & Hart cut "Last Train to Clarksville" and Diamond's "I'm a Believer." 

The Monkees, which also featured Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith (who was considered the serious musician of the group) and Micky Dolenz, saw its show declining in popularity by early 1968. Yet during that  short run, the Monkees had toured with Jimi Hendrix and put one of the first-ever uses of the Moog synthesizer on record with the song “Daily Nightly.” 

PHOTOS: Davy Jones: Dec, 30, 1945-Feb. 29, 2012

Jones was primarily an actor until his Monkees role as frontman turned him into a teen idol. As the face of the group, Jones led the evolution of the Monkees from a TV show creation to a notable part of '60s pop culture. Below, a look at some of the artists, including Run-DMC and the Sex Pistols, who tackled songs made famous by the Monkees. 

Frank Ocean spats with Don Henley over 'Hotel California' sample

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave the reach of copyright law.

So says the Odd Future R&B savant Frank Ocean, who today took to his Tumblr page to say that his song "American Wedding," which sampled the bar-karaoke staple "Hotel California," had apparently ruffled the feathers of Eagles singer-songwriter Don Henley.

Ocean's debut album is due this year, and it is much anticipated after his collaborations with Jay-Z and Kanye West on their "Watch the Throne" album.

"American Wedding" originally appeared on Ocean's debut mixtape, 'nostalgia,ULTRA', which last year was re-released by Def Jam, and Ocean has frequently performed it live. But on his blog today, Ocean said:

"Don henley is apparently intimidated by my rendition of Hotel California..He threatened to sue if I perform it again. I think that's...awesome."

Right now, YouTube clips of the track have the audio muted, with the standard notice that "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled."

We've reached out to representatives of Henley for comment and confirmation, and will update this post with any new information. But for now, it looks as if the steely knives are out between two era-defining L.A. voices.

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Odd Future's Frank Ocean re-releasing 'nostalgia, ULTRA' through Def Jam

-- August Brown

Photo: Frank Ocean's debut Los Angeles show at the El Rey Theatre on Nov. 15, 2011, in Los Angeles. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times.

Celine Dion cancels all Vegas shows until June on doctor’s orders

Celine Dion has been forced to scrap more of her shows at Las Vegas' Caesars Palace because of a virus causing an inflammation of her vocal cords.

The French-Canadian songbird has been ordered to rest her voice for six to eight weeks. She was initially thought to be well enough to take the stage again Saturday, but she won't be able to resume performances until June 9, she announced on her website Tuesday.

"I tried to sing at my sound check last week, and I had no control of my voice whatsoever," Dion said in a statement. "We thought that after a few days' rest I would improve, but it wasn't getting any better."

It was previously announced that Dion would shutter shows through March 3. The singer was diagnosed with a viral illness and weakness in her right vocal cord during an examination at UCLA Medical Center on Monday.

Voice on album isn't Michael Jackson's, daughter reportedly says

A video that allegedly shows Paris Jackson questioning the authenticity of her late father’s vocals on the King of Pop’s posthumous album “Michael” is reportedly being shopped around to various media outlets, according to TMZ.

The video was supposedly taken from an online video chat with Paris and several friends in 2010, before the disc was released. Jackson died in June 2009. During the chat, Paris allegedly played one of the songs from the disc, the Akon-produced "Hold My Hand," when one of her friends asked the 13-year-old if it was really her father. 

"It's not him ... the whole album isn't even him!! Go online ... go on YouTube and look up Jason Malachi. That's him," Paris Jackson says, according to TMZ. "I should know if it's him or not because he would sing to me all the time."

Davy Jones, actor and member of the Monkees, has died

Davy Jones, the British Invasion-era singer who became a household heartthrob as a member of the Monkees, has died in Florida.

The Martin County Medical Examiner’s Office in Florida confirmed Wednesday morning that they had been notified of Jones’ death but would provide no other details. He was 66.

Before the Monkees, Jones earned acclaim as the Artful Dodger in the London production of "Oliver!"

PHOTOS: Davy Jones | 1945 - 2012

The band, which also featured Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz, formed in 1966 for an NBC television show during the peak of Beatlemania, and the quirky comedy became an American hit.

In 2011, the Monkees (minus Nesmith) reunited for a 45th anniversary tour that landed at the Greek Theatre in July. The band performed many of its string of hits, including "I'm a Believer," "Last Train to Clarksville" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

Jones was scheduled to perform Monkees songs at a March 31 concert at the La Mirada Theatre in La Mirada.

 ALSO:

Davy Jones: Four clips from a zany career

Bruce Springsteen's 'Wrecking Ball' arrives Tuesday

Esperanza Spalding gets her 'Grammy moment' at the Oscars

 -- Randall Roberts

Photo: The Monkees (from left): Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith. Credit: Museum of Television & Radio.

Parsing the samples and quotes on Bruce Springsteen's 'Wrecking Ball'

In the liner notes to Bruce Springsteen's new album 'Wrecking Ball," which arrives Tuesday, amid the lyrics, line-up, thank-yous and production notes is a tiny-fonted paragraph listing the non-Boss recordings and songs that Springsteen and producer Ron Aniello either sampled or quoted on the record.

Bruce Springsteen, sample king? 

It's not the descriptor that most would use when discussing the artist, but, according to the notes, Springsteen references no less than five other songs within his 18th album, ranging from funk vocalist Lyn Collins to Curtis Mayfield to the Alabama Sacred Heart Convention and a few different Alan Lomax-directed field recordings from the 1940s and '50s. He employs the sound of an AK-47 firing, and even swipes a chunk of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." (Alas, he doesn't use the classic "Apache" break.)

On the surface, the Boss' curiosity about cut-and-paste culture might come as a surprise; he is, after all, an American songwriter born and raised within the pure tradition of original musical storytelling. But Springsteen has long quoted others' music within his own, beginning with the first song on his second record, "The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle," whose "The E Street Shuffle," is an acknowledged riff on Major Lance's 1960 hit "The Monkey Time." Too, he loves peppering his set with a good cover song, and is quick to list influences and inspirations when discussing his craft. 

Judging by the list of samples for "Wrecking Ball," he dug into the well of American music during the construction of the record. Below, some of Springsteen's quotes and samples.

Lyn Collins, 'Me and My Baby Got Our Own Thing Going' 

Lyn Collins' 1972 funk jam "Me and My Baby Got Our Own Thing Going" was produced by James Brown and written by Collins along with Brown, Fred Wesley and Charles Bobbitt. Springsteen references it on the third track on "Wrecking Ball," called "Shackled and Drawn."

Can Danger Mouse make Norah Jones cool?

After sweeping the Grammys with an Adele-like force in 2003, Norah Jones hasn't exactly had a disappointing career. But after three subsequent albums that showed signs of Jones stretching beyond the jazz-dusted nocturnal vibe that made "Come Away With Me" such a breakout hit, there's a nagging sense that we know what to expect from her.

Even with the occasional assistance of Okkervil River's Will Sheff and current indie darling Ryan Adams, her 2009 record "The Fall" was still, ultimately, a pretty typical Norah Jones record with low-key yet polished songs framing her gently sanded voice. Even her recent album with her side project the Little Willies earlier this year just felt like a more direct acknowledgement of the country elements that always hovered at the edges of Jones' music.

Co-written and produced by Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse), Jones' upcoming album "Little Broken Hearts" could be the artistic left turn she needed. Jones' appearances on Danger Mouse's spaghetti western-informed 2011 album "Rome" added an element of danger to Jones' typically sultry vocals, and "Little Broken Hearts" seems intent on carrying that idea forward with a cover image cribbed from Russ Meyer's "Mudhoney."

The first single, "Happy Pills," came online Tuesday, and Burton's fingerprints aren't hard to see. Backed by a clockwork guitar pulse and heavy-footed drums that could be a half-speed outtake from the Broken Bells sessions, Jones sings with a mix of sass and yearning about getting over the wrong man with a classic R&B refrain of "Please just let me go now." Taken with a pinched, distant chorus of "nah, nah, nah," the song may not entirely put to rest the unfortunate "Snore-ah" Jones nickname among some circles, but it's a promising start.

Listen after the jump.

Album review: Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames' 'New Multitudes'

"New Multitudes," a new album by Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker and Yim Yames, is the latest work to mine the vast stash of some 3,000 songs that the great--and prolific--folk troubadour Woody Guthrie left behind when he died in 1967 at age 55.

Most of the material now held by the Woody Guthrie Archives is just pages of lyrics, or fragments, with little or no indication of how Guthrie thought the music should sound, so this quartet of alt-rock musicians has been charged with creating original melodies and accompaniment, yielding a cross-generational realization of Guthrie’s ideas.

Wisely, there seems to be little attempt to mimic Guthrie’s style and sound. Instead, they’ve put his words into contemporized musical frameworks, creating a sense of what his work might have sounded like were he still around working and jabbing at social and political sacred cows today.

These concoctions have inherent charm both from Guthrie’s typically pithy, sometimes deceptively trenchant writer’s eye and from the foursome’s fittingly earnest musical settings. But they also reveal the musical lineage of which Guthrie is both a key disciple and an inspirational fountainhead for successive generations.

“Careless Reckless Love” reflects Richard Thompson-like folk troubadour trappings, “Old L.A.” rides along on a fluidly propulsive rhythm echoing R.E.M., “No Fear” accesses the Velvet Underground’s proto-punk minimalism and “ V.D. City” mines the cragginess of John Mellencamp’s heartland rock.

“Change the pen, change the ink/Change the way you talk and think/Change the tubes and change the tires/And change the thing your heart desires,” Guthrie wrote in the title tune, exhorting listeners to remake themselves from the ground up if they want to make the world a better place. It’s a notion Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames (Jim James of My Morning Jacket) have taken fully to heart here.

The quartet comes to L.A. for a March 7 show at the Mayan Theatre.

Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames
“New Multitudes”
Rounder
*** (3 stars)

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Review: 'Listen, Whitey!' and 'Soundtrack for a Revolution'

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Album Review:  Estelle's 'All of Me'

--Randy Lewis

 

LMFAO, Iron Maiden and more: This week's on-sales

A list of upcoming shows across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses.

Staples Center

LMFAO, June 5 (Sat.)

Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

Iron Maiden, Aug. 9 (Fri.); Zac Brown Band, April 15 (Sat.)

Gibson Amphitheatre

Charles Aznavour, April 22 (now); Latino 93.3 Spring Break Bash, April 14 (Wed.); Pepe Aguilar, Aug. 3 (Fri.)

Greek Theatre

Neil Diamond, Aug. 11 and 16 (Mon.)

Wiltern

Mayer Hawthorne & the County, June 15; Anjelah Johnson, June 22 (Fri.)