Stevie Wonder Plans U.S. Tour

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 3, 2007
Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stevie Wonder will go on his first U.S. tour in more than a decade, starting next month in San Diego.

The 57-year-old singer made the announcement at an outdoor performance in Los Angeles on Thursday.

''A Wonder Summer's Night'' will feature 13 concerts from Aug. 23 to Sept. 20 in eight states. Stops in California include San Diego, Lake Tahoe, Concord, Santa Barbara, Saratoga and Los Angeles. Other cities include Portland, Ore.; Woodinville, Wash.; Chicago; Detroit; Atlanta; and Baltimore. The final concert will be in Boston.

Tickets will be available beginning Aug. 11. Ticket prices weren't immediately released.

Although Wonder has given numerous performances worldwide, his last full-scale tour in the U.S. was in 1995.

The Motown legend has some two dozen Grammy Awards and dozens of hits. His song ''I Just Called to Say I Love You,'' featured in the movie ''The Woman in Red,'' won the Academy Award for best original song in 1985, which is really too bad because so much of his work is a thousand times better and yet that's what a lot of people know him by. Go figure.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Wonder.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

just busy, married, traveling a lot for work, etc.

Finally, my debut album for RCA has been released on cd:

http://www.amazon.com/Mood-Swing-Nails/dp/B000QJLLSA/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-5455938-3709406?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1181283857&sr=1-2

The new BLONDE REDHEAD is growing on me. I had a hard time with the vocals at first. Now, I'm starting to dig em. My initial response was the cd was a pretentious arty bore with irritating lead singer. But, upon closer listening, 23 has revealed some charm and hooks.

I had this album on vinyl (purchased in late 1985), but sadly it was tossed with the rest of my vinyl (all of my 12" mix LPs, classic Beatles and tons of others) by a parent that didn't understand my music.

Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem are making their first ever stop in Utah on Sept. 26th. Just got tix today for movielover14 and I to go (her birthday is on Sept 30th).

In recent years, the economics of pop music have been upended. The market for CDs has collapsed, and not even the rise of legal downloading can offset the damage to record companies. Meanwhile, demand for live performances has rocketed

There is a story doing the rounds in the US that says a lot about the state of the music business. It concerns a young rock band who decided to stop selling their CDs at concerts. Selling CDs has, for many years, been a good way for an act to reclaim the margin that would otherwise have been snaffled by a retailer. But it made no sense to this band once they discovered that by selling CDs for $10 they were cannibalising sales of their $20 T-shirts.

There are two points to note here. First, that a simple garment with a logo stamped across it, probably manufactured for pennies in a third-world sweatshop, now costs twice as much as an album of digitally pristine, highly wrought music recorded in a state of the art western studio. Second, most bands, however successful, now make their money from live work and the merchandising opportunities that go with it, rather than from recordings...

Groups used to tour, often at a loss, to stimulate sales of their latest album. Now it's the other way around. Hence the widely reported decision earlier this year by the Crimea, a band previously signed to Warner Bros, to release their new album as a free download. The band explained this not as an anarcho-hippie gesture in support of the principle that music ought to be free, but as a sensible promotional tactic. Their hope is that by disseminating their music online, they will expand their fan base and increase their returns from touring. Having seen the small size of the cheques they got from Warner, they know where not to look for their future income...

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9735

Lucky. I've yet to see Arcade Fire live, but LCD Soundsystem put on one of the best live shows I've ever seen a few years ago.