“Rock group's CD blitz includes Mr. Potato Heads - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” plus 4 more

Rock group's CD blitz includes Mr. Potato Heads - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Britney Spears: What she did -- and didn't do - Chicago Tribune
Tattle: Seems like it's fun and game (the Phils) for Bruce Willis - Philadelphia Daily News
The Star Online - Star-ecentral.com
'Rock Band' adds to Fab 4's legacy - Arizona Business Gazette

Rock group's CD blitz includes Mr. Potato Heads - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: 04 Sep 2009 12:19 AM PDT

How many Kiss Mr. Potato Head kollectibles are you going to need?

For many fans, the answer will be two of each -- one set for you and one for the kids to play with, and lose all the pieces.

The Kiss Mr. Potato Head -- sure to be the most entertaining piece of merchandise the band has ever issued -- will take its place in the Kiss Korner at Walmart on Oct. 6 as part of a merchandise blitz that accompanies "Sonic Boom," the Detroit band's first album in 11 years.

With CD sales struggling over the past decade, the pitch for merch has intensified, but Kiss is taking it to the next level. The Kiss Korner will include T-shirts ($5), a fleece blanket ($10), limited edition Kiss M&M candies, catalog CDs ($5-$9) and makeup kits, masks and wigs (at select Walmart stores, $5).

"Sonic Boom" will be a three-CD package ($12) with the new 11-track CD, a re-recorded greatest hits CD with classics like "Rock and Roll All Nite," "Deuce" and "Black Diamond," and a live DVD shot in Argentina during the "KISS ALIVE 35" South American tour. One new track, a vintage-style rocker called "Modern Day Delilah," is already making the rounds of YouTube.

Kiss is just the latest in a line of artists to sell their new CDs exclusively through a big-box retailer. The movement goes back to the mid-'90s when Best Buy struck a deal to package additional materials like photographs and archival interviews with the "Beatles Anthology." For a while, albums by the likes of Rod Stewart and Britney Spears were sold at these mass-market stores with extras.

In 2005, Garth Brooks signed the first exclusive distribution deal with a single retailer, Walmart, for "The Limited Series," a boxed set that quickly went platinum. Walmart delivered more platinum for The Eagles comeback "Long Road Out of Eden" in 2007 and AC/DC's "Black Ice," the second biggest-selling album of 2008. Like with Kiss, there was an AC/DC store-within-a-store with T-shirts, hoodies and other items. Industry people estimated AC/DC sales more than tripled because of the Walmart connection.

"It was a game-changer for the music industry," says Ed Christman, retail editor at Billboard magazine. "And Kiss lends itself even more to this type of merchandising."

Guns 'N Roses didn't have the same magic with a Best Buy deal for the long-awaited "Chinese Democracy," which came in below expectations, debuting at No. 3 and selling 369,000 in the first week. In March, Prince went to No. 2 on the charts with the Target-only 3-disc set "LOtUSFLOW3R."

Christman notes that the downside to the big-box deals is that it's pulled people away from smaller, more endangered retailers, potentially hurting the industry in the long run.

Even with the successes of the Eagles, AC/DC and others, CD sales are well below what major artists were selling during the early '90s boom when the Shania Twains, 'N Syncs and Pearl Jams of the world were going 10-times platinum. To make up for it, superstars are turning to T-shirt sales in big-box stores, not to mention such hot properties as Guitar Hero Aerosmith and the much-anticipated Beatles Rock Band, due next Wednesday.

The Beatles and Kiss are among those bands to be immortalized already with action figures, but Kiss, once feared to be "Knights in Satan's Service," is the first on the block with its own Mr. Potato Head and package of M&Ms (please tell us there will be Van Halen M&M's without the brown ones!).

The only downer news for Pittsburghers in this whole Kiss "Boom" is that the KISS ALIVE 35 tour, supposedly determined by an online fan vote, is not coming here. The closest stop is Cleveland on Sept. 28.

We'll hope for a second leg while we pull off Gene Simmons' Potato Head tongue.

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Britney Spears: What she did -- and didn't do - Chicago Tribune

Posted: 04 Sep 2009 12:04 AM PDT

Tattle: Seems like it's fun and game (the Phils) for Bruce Willis - Philadelphia Daily News

Posted: 04 Sep 2009 12:04 AM PDT

BRUCE WILLI S went for an omelet yesterday morning at the counter of Little Pete's (219 S. 17th), our 24/7 colleague Dan Gross reported yesterday on Philly

Gossip.com.

Gross' spy thought Willis' wife, Emma Heming, was the woman with him, but wasn't sure.

The "Die Hard" star, a Penns Grove, N.J. native, was also expected last night in the Diamond Club at Citizens Bank Park to catch the Phillies vs. the Giants.

Lawmaker's fired up

This is a new one for Tattle: Someone is upset at local TV news for not covering a fire.

Obviously it's not here in Philadelphia, where a burning marshmallow could draw choppers at 6 and 11.

No it's California, where basically a good portion of the state burns every summer.

There, Supervisor Michael Antonovich is criticizing TV and radio stations for failing to provide early round-the-clock coverage of the largest fire in Los Angeles County history.

The media let people down as they faced danger, not knowing where to go or what to do, Antonovich said, adding he had heard the complaint from "countless constituents."

"Surely informing the public of life and safety measures, evacuation centers, is more vital than the wall-to-wall coverage that

we've seen of the custody fights for Michael Jackson's and Britney Spears' children," he said.

But Chris Ender, senior VP of communications for CBS Television, said, "The coverage from our stations - CBS2 and KCAL9 - has been comprehensive and ongoing with news programming, on-screen crawls, text alerts and updates on the station's respective Web sites."

The 219-square-mile fire started Aug. 26 and has destroyed more than 60 homes, killed two firefighters, forced thousands of people from their homes and turned millions hoarse with its smoke. It was 22 percent contained on Wednesday.

Through the years, as many as seven L.A. TV stations have switched to instant 24-7 coverage of events, including the 1992 riots that resulted in 55 deaths and nearly 2,400 injuries; the 1993 wildfires that burned in six counties and caused $1 billion damage, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake that killed 72, injured 9,000 others and caused $25 billion in damages.

Tattbits

* An appeals court in New York

City heard arguments yesterday on whether a Swedish author can publish a book in America that was once promoted as a sequel to J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."

A federal judge had originally found the book copied too much of Salinger's work and blocked its U.S. publication.

One of the appeals court judges, Guido Calabresi, indicated he had read the new book, titled "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye."

He referred to it as a "rather dismal piece of work."

* Madonna wrapped up her

world tour with sightseeing at Jordan's famed ruins in Petra.

Madonna helicoptered into this ancient city in a trip arranged by Queen Rania, wife of Jordan's King Abdullah II.

She was escorted by Jordanian security and an armed bodyguard during her 15-minute tour yesterday, in which she walked in almost total darkness. Jordanian security lit the area with headlights from their vehicles.

* Virginia police say Chris

Brown

will remove graffiti, pick up trash and wash cars as part of his sentence for beating ex-girlfriend Rihanna.

Brown, 20, was sentenced in California last month to five years' probation, six months of community labor and a year of domestic-violence counseling for the February attack. He is performing the labor in Richmond, Va., near his home.

Brown will be supervised during his service, but will have to pay for any additional security if the public becomes aware of his presence.

* In another dumb move, Chris

Brown has annoyed the one person no one should annoy.

Oprah.

TMZ.com reports that Oprah is mad about comments Brown made about her in the new issue of People, regarding Oprah's TV show on "abuse, inspired by Rihanna."

"I commend Oprah on being like, 'This is a problem,' " Brown says, "but it was a slap in my face. I did a lot of stuff for her, like going to Africa and performing for her school. She could have been more helpful, like, 'OK, I'm going to help both of these people out.' "

An Oprah rep responded:

"Oprah is very appreciative that Chris Brown performed at her school but she takes domestic abuse very seriously. She hopes he gets the counseling he needs."

Got it, Chris? Performing at my school does not give you a free pass to punch your girlfriend.

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.

Send e-mail to gensleh@phillynews.com.

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The Star Online - Star-ecentral.com

Posted: 03 Sep 2009 05:09 PM PDT

Friday September 4, 2009

Song and dance

By SHEELA CHANDRAN

Put your jazz hands together for Nickelodeons original musical, Spectacular!

FACE it song and dance movies make for a successful storytelling formula. From memorable films like Grease, Footloose, Fame and Disney Channels phenomenal High School Musical (HSM), we all agree such movies have attained massive popularity courtesy of energetic dance moves, catchy songs, feel good storylines and not forgetting, good-looking actors.

Following the success of HSM in 2006, Disney Channel released two sequels HSM2 and HSM3, as well as other made-for-TV-movies like Camp Rock and Cheetah Girls. These have become a global brand name for the channel, raking in millions of dollars in earnings through a mountain of merchandise including DVDs, books, computer games and soundtracks.

With such demand for musicals, its no wonder more and more kids channels are following in Disney Channels footsteps and introducing movies from this genre. The latest to hit our shores is Nickelodeons original musical, Spectacular!

The mean girl

The movie, directed by Robert Iscove (Dark Angel and Save The Last Dance), is about budding rock star Nikko (Nolan Funk) who, after being kicked out of his band, joins floundering show choir group Spectacular! led by Courtney (Tammin Sursok). With a national singing championship around the corner, Nikko hopes to win the contests cash prize to help fund his album.

A culture clash between the discipline of show choir and wild spontaneity of rock n roll ends up producing a whole new musical style that could spell trouble for rival group, Ta-Da, led by Royce (Simon Curtis) and girlfriend, Tammi (Victoria Justice). Two musical worlds collide as the competing teams of talented singing and dancing teens angle for the national championship.

While the storyline for Spectacular! may appear to be from the same cookie cutter as HSM, Justice explained the movie was a refreshing change in terms of storyline, music sequence and choreography.

Viewers tend to compare Spectacular! to HSM because both are musicals. Despite sounding like another run-of-the-mill high school tween movie, Spectacular! is about conflicts and how they can be resolved.

Also, we dont break into song every now and then. It features delightful dance and singing routines, and even parents might be forced to acknowledge its appeal, said Justice in a long-distance call from Los Angeles.

The sweet 16-year-old, best known for portraying mean girl Lola Martinez in Nickoledeons Zoey 101, is playing a similar role in the movie. According to her, the only difference is this time around, she plays a meaner and conniving person.

I have experience playing the mean girl so it was easy. Lola is sugary sweet and sarcastic whereas Tammi is plain mean and competitive. Her whole life revolves around song choir and shes very dedicated to it. When she finds out Courtney is lead singer of the other band, she freaks out and goes into destruction mode, added Justice, whose acting credentials include guest starring in Gilmore Girls, The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody and Everwood.

The budding actress is also playing lead actress in Oscar award-winning Bobby Morescos comedy film The Kings Of Appletown, slated for release in December.

Besides rubbing shoulders with teenage heart-throb Funk (Steven Spielbergs Taken and Bryan Singers X-Men 2), Justice said being a lead cast member enabled her to explore other talents like singing and dancing.

In Spectacular!, she appears in four dance routines and co-recorded three songs Lonely Love Song, On The Wings Of A Dream and Things We Do For Love with co-star Curtis.

In this movie, I managed to spread my wings and focus on my passions acting, dancing and singing. Vocal and dance training was undoubtedly rigorous but it has enabled me to further hone my talents, said the svelte beauty of Puerto Rican and American parentage.

Show choir talent

In Spectacular!, Curtis plays arrogant show choir member Royce who goes to great lengths to win the singing championship. However, in real life, the 23-year-old appears as a humble and courteous actor who has not let fame go to his head. During the same interview, Curtis was friendly and willing to answer questions posed to him.

Curtis is a trained show choir member who, at the age of 10, booked his first role in the national touring company of the musical Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Raincoat. According to him, being in the movie enabled him to re-live his show choir days.

Show choir is about a group of people who combine choral singing with dance movements. It is really big in my hometown (Tulsa in Oklahama), he revealed.

Upon hearing about Spectacular! auditions, I immediately signed up. It was a tough process whereby candidates were put through nine hours of auditions (singing, acting and dancing) a day. Choreographer R.J. Durell, who has worked with Madonna and Britney Spears, was very disciplined and made us work hard for our roles.

I believe it was my determination and love for show choir that helped me take on Royces character and song recording, added Curtis, whose credentials include starring in Shannon Hiles 2008 horror film, The Intervention, and hosting Disney Channels Gotcha Covered.

According to Curtis, the most difficult part of shooting the movie was having to do over 50 takes for the dance number, Lonely Love Song, with Justice.

There was a fair share of difficult days on set. Its the hardest dance number in the movie, and we shot in a room that was very hot. We re-shot the dance routine many times and it was a gruelling process.

All in all, it was fun due to the accommodating crew members and cast.

Spectacular! premieres on Nickleodeon (Astro Channel 612) tonight at 7pm.

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'Rock Band' adds to Fab 4's legacy - Arizona Business Gazette

Posted: 03 Sep 2009 04:41 PM PDT

By the time they hit the streets with "Abbey Road" in late September 1969, the Beatles' standing as the most important rock-and-roll phenomenon the world had ever known was undeniable.

Forty years later, they remain a vital presence in contemporary culture.

And it's not just Boomers bathing in the warm afterglow of nostalgia. To anyone familiar with their legacy, it would be difficult to make it through such modern masterworks as Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" or Radiohead's "OK Computer" without picking up on echoes of the Beatles.

Their finest work routinely crowds the Top 10 anytime a list of greatest-albums-ever is assembled (four of 10, including "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" at No. 1, in Rolling Stone's most recent poll, where voters ranged from Carole King to Britney Spears to Wyclef Jean).

And now the Fab Four are about to infiltrate one major pocket of pop culture that has oddly been Beatle-free for far too long when "The Beatles: Rock Band" is released Wednesday, allowing fans to play along in a virtual band with a seemingly random assortment of Beatle tracks, from "Twist and Shout" to "Dig a Pony."

That same day, the Beatles catalog will be reissued in remastered form, marking the first real attempt since the dawn of the digital age at a serious upgrade in the way those timeless records are heard.

A 14-CD boxed set of the stereo remasters, priced at $179.99, was the top-selling item at Amazon's music store for weeks before its September release date. Josh Randall, who served as creative director on "The Beatles: Rock Band," says Harmonix, the game's Cambridge, Mass.-based developer, has gotten more requests for Beatles songs on "Rock Band" than for any other artist.

Continuing impact

Howard Kramer, curatorial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, has seen his share of Beatlemaniacs, and his advice to anyone who feels the Beatles' relevance is limited to those who made the most of the Summer of Love is to "come to the Rock Hall and check out all the kids in Beatles T-shirts."

"You would change your tune immediately. It's incredible the amount of teenagers and kids who are completely nuts about the Beatles."

Allan Rouse, who was part of the team of engineers who remastered the catalog, has seen the same phenomenon at Abbey Road Studios in London, where the Beatles recorded nearly all their studio material.

"I look at the age of the people outside the studio, signing the wall," he says, "and we're not talking about 55-year-olds, 60-year-olds. We're talking about their grandchildren."

As Kramer says, "Their fans aren't dying off or getting older. Every year, there's a new group of fans who discover the Beatles."

And a large percentage of those fans go on to start their own band, effectively keeping the adjective Beatlesque in common usage.

The Beatles remain "the gold standard," Kramer says, their relevance undiminished by the passing years.

Jim James, who fronts the critically acclaimed My Morning Jacket, recently released a haunting six-song tribute to the late George Harrison.

"I think it's impossible to be a music fan without being a Beatles fan," says James, who, being in his early 30s, wasn't yet born when the Beatles went their separate ways. "And anyone that plays pop music or rock music and says they haven't been inspired by the Beatles is lying."

An old cassette of "Abbey Road," discovered in his parents' closet, put John Baldwin Gourley, 28, on the road to founding Portugal. The Man, among the more exciting pop groups to emerge in the past five years. When Alternative Press had Gourley take part in a feature called "The Band Who Changed My Life," his choice was obvious.

"My friends that listen to hip-hop, my friends that listen to metal, they all listen to the Beatles," Gourley says. "In Alaska (where Gourley was raised), you go to these bars and it's trappers and construction workers, and they listen to Pantera and Metallica - construction-builder music. But the second the Beatles come on the jukebox, it's an immediate head-bob from everyone in the room."

Bob Hoag, 36, a producer based in Mesa, had no tape of "Abbey Road" to change his life. His parents didn't even like the Beatles.

"There was never Beatles music in my house," he says. "I always thought of them as, like, an oldies band until about 10 years ago. I had a roommate who thought I was crazy to have never listened to the Beatles. I was like, 'It's oldies-station stuff.'

"Of course, he gave me 'Rubber Soul,' 'Revolver' and everything from there on. And it changed my life.

"Here were people doing really interesting and innovative things with songs and arrangements. And there's real emotion in everything they did. It's not just competent musicians playing well-rehearsed, well-arranged, well-written songs. There's so much more to it than that."

Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick, whose latest album finds the band covering "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" live, 30 years after hitting the mainstream with "At Budokan," was part of the first generation of rockers to have had their lives changed by the Beatles.

"Seeing the Beatles on 'Ed Sullivan' was the beginning," Nielsen says. "That got me to learn how to play the guitar."

'Template for success'

Beyond inspiring several generations of our most-acclaimed musicians - from Elvis Costello to Thom Yorke of Radiohead and, on the less-acclaimed side of acclaimed, the Jonas Brothers - the Beatles catalog has stood the test of time, in part, because it's that brilliant.

Beatles biographer Philip Norman, author of "Shout: The Beatles in Their Generation" as well as the recent "John Lennon: The Life," puts it this way: "You are not going to get a better pop record than the Beatles made long ago when studios were still very primitive and George Martin had very few tracks to play with. They created this yardstick that everyone wants to equal and surpass. "

Brian Hiatt, an associate editor at Rolling Stone, where the Beatles topped a list of greatest artists even 40 years after topping the pop charts with "I Want to Hold Your Hand," sees them as "one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization in the 20th century."

"They've transcended their time," he says. "They've transcended their genre. They stand apart."

That their story continues to fascinate doesn't dampen the appeal.

Norman recalls that Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press officer, liked to describe their story the 20th-century's greatest romance.

"And it is. It's like an epic Russian novel," Norman says. "It has this amazing cast of characters, extraordinary events and weird coincidences and ultimately ends with a terrific tragedy, like great Russian novels tend to do. It's like an epic story of our time."

And a popular story at that.

"They really are the template for success in the pop world," Norman says. "Anyone who makes it, sooner or later, is going to be compared to the Beatles. They're going to be said to have sold more records, had more number-ones in succession, played to bigger audiences, been mobbed more hysterically at airports. They are the measure for all sorts of pop success."

What's all the more astonishing is that they managed to achieve that level of success with music that often was nothing short of revolutionary. Imagine a world where Radiohead outcharted Taylor Swift. That's where the Beatles lived, pushing the boundaries and bringing the culture along for the ride.

"Obviously, we don't see that happening now," says Tom Moon, who included several Beatles classics, from "A Hard Day's Night" to "Abbey Road," in his book of "1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die." "It's almost flukey when something that is of truly high, provocative artistic merit is also a hit. For people who care about music in its historical context and look at it as a series of revolutions, these guys represent that moment where you could be revolutionary and move the whole discussion forward and do that with music that, at the end of the day, was still pop music in its truest essence."

Reissues upgrade sound

The significance of these reissues, beyond the blip in media attention, is that now, when people hear that true pop essence for the first time, the records will actually sound as brilliant as they did on vinyl in the '60s.

"What's important about the reissues," Hiatt says, "is that you can listen and not be put off by inferior sound. I don't think you're going to mistake it for something recorded in the last five years. However, it's been brought up to the current sonic standards so the rock songs hit with the kind of thump you'd want rock songs to hit with."

Rouse, having remastered the project, says, "Bearing in mind that they were transferred to CD back in 1987 when digital was in its infancy, the increase in digital technology is such that, by the time we loaded these in the computer today and compared them with the original releases on CD, we already had an improvement before we did any work."

And now that the work has been done?

"I'd have to think that listening to these CDs at present," Rouse says, "is the closest you're going to get to coming to Abbey Road studios, and for me to go get an original master tape and play it to your ear."

He isn't sure whether having built a better-sounding Beatles is enough to guarantee a sudden surge in Beatlemania. What matters, he says, is that any new audience, "however it's created, has the best-sounding CDs available now so that when they do buy them they're not going to in any way be let down."

As for "Rock Band," that could have a bigger impact on the Beatles' standing 40 years from now.

"The 'Rock Band' game, I think, will be one of those things where a number of generations are going to buy that and enjoy it," Kramer says, "because it's a whole new platform on which to enjoy the Beatles."

An inimitable band

As new generations discover the Beatles through "Rock Band," reissues or by stumbling across an old cassette, one constant is this: They can't be topped.

As Hiatt says, a thing like Beatlemania can happen only once.

"It's more likely that something that's not music would have that impact," Hiatt says. "Maybe it's once every hundred years, and around 2060 we'll get something big. But they (the Beatles) were also tied into a lot of cultural things that were happening. It's a set of historical circumstances that would be very difficult to replicate."

Among those circumstances is the fact that they arrived, as My Morning Jacket's James says, "at a time in the world when a lot of that groundbreaking was ready to be done."

And people loved them for it, whereas today our culture tends to turn its back - or frown, at least - on anything approaching innovation in pop music.

"A lot of acts can say they've earned more money," Norman says, "or played to bigger audiences. That can happen. What you do not get is any group that creates the amazing love that the Beatles created. You can play a Beatles record to a little child, and they love it immediately.

"No other group could be more beloved than the Beatles were and still are. That was the terrible price they paid. This love became an awful kind of force that squeezed the life out of the band.

"And once the Beatles broke up, each of them was like a kind of shell-shocked survivor from some terrible war because of this awful weight and responsibility and pressure of being loved so much."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495.