Evanescence back on top of U.S. album charts

Amy Lee of Evanescence performs at the Rock in Rio Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro October 2, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Ricardo Moraes

LOS ANGELES | Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:21pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Grammy-winning gothic rock band Evanescence topped the Billboard 200 chart on Wednesday with their latest self-titled album, "Evanescence."

The latest album sold 127,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan, sending the band straight to the number 1 spot for the second time in their career.

"What You Want", the lead single off "Evanescence," climbed the Rock Songs airplay chart this week from 15 to 13, Billboard said.

Evanescence previously debuted at the top spot with their 2006 album "The Open Door," which sold 447,000 copies in its first week.

Evanescence knocked "American Idol" winner Scotty McCreery's debut album "Clear As Day" from the top spot to the number 4 position.

British singer Adele held on to the number 2 spot with "21" while rockers Five Finger Death Punch entered the charts at number 3 with their new album "American Capitalist."

Evanescence, led by singer Amy Lee, first entered the Billboard charts in 2003 with their debut album "Fallen," which featured the hit singles "Bring Me To Life" and "My Immortal."

The band are currently on a 15-city tour around the U.S. which will be wrapping in New York on November1.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Sellout concert raises $725,000 for fire victims (AP)

AUSTIN, Texas – A lineup of Texas legends brought a sellout crowd at this week's country music mega-concert, raising $725,000 for victims of the recent wildfires.

More than a dozen performers, including Willie Nelson, George Strait and the Dixie Chicks, helped sell out the Frank Erwin Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

A check was presented Thursday to the Austin Community Foundation to help with the long-term recovery of the Central Texas communities ravaged by fire.

A fire that started Sept. 4 in Bastrop County destroyed at least 1,500 homes and left two people dead. It was the most devastating of the numerous wildfires that have scorched some 6,000 square miles in Texas in nearly a year.

Flaco Jimenez, Asleep at the Wheel and Lyle Lovett also performed.

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Yo Yo Ma turns to bluegrass music for new album (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – He's known as one of the world's best classical cellists, but for his latest musical effort Yo-Yo Ma has dropped Bach and picked up bluegrass.

Grammy Award-winner Ma spent a year recording songs with bluegrass titans Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile for a project entitled "The Goat Rodeo Sessions," an 11-song set of original compositions, due out October 24.

Meyer, Duncan and Thile put some initial thoughts together for the tracks over the last year and then the four of them got together to develop and record.

"We started off with the stories, like every culture," Ma told Reuters about this project. "Every culture has its own brand of stories, its characters. There's nothing but similarities (between bluegrass and classical forms). This developed from people trusting and admiring each other. All the music I play is roots based, and it gets further along."

While it might surprise some that a proficient classical musician like Ma would transition to this version of Americana, "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" is Ma's second project with Meyer. The two recorded two albums with violinist Mark O'Connor -- 1996's "Appalachia Waltz" and 2000's "Appalachian Journey."

But these sessions are different, not only with the expansion into a quartet of instruments, but also with the addition of Thile, whose creativity on the mandolin earned him notoriety first with his band Nickel Creek and now with the Punch Brothers.

The album drifts between playful songs like "Attaboy" and "Less is Moi," that are tinged with folk elements, to softer, more poignant arrangements on "Franz and the Eagle" and "Helping Hand."

Although most of the songs are instrumentals, Thile is joined by Crooked Still's Aoife O'Donovan for vocals on "Here and Heaven" and "No One But You."

BLENDING WITH BLUEGRASS

The cello isn't thought of as a traditional bluegrass instrument the way the banjo is, but Ma said its malleable nature makes it blend-in without sounding out of place.

"The cello, as usual, can do a number of different roles," he said. "Sometimes I'm trying to match the violin, the bass, the mandolin. I shift around a little bit -- sometimes we're equal voices, sometimes we're particular roles."

The title of the record, "The Goat Rodeo Sessions," is a nod to the expression, "goat rodeo," which is often used to describe a situation in which a thousand things must go right in order for something to work.

"My worst nightmare was that (the album) would sound like worlds colliding," Thile said. "Music shouldn't sound like some new patchwork genre. The idea was to come up with a collaboration that is seamless. Like a new organism, as opposed to a Frankensteinian monster."

While the songs were written prior to hitting the recording studio, the group allowed themselves to improvise and evolve during rehearsals. Doing so gave the record a more loose and flowing sound than with classical or bluegrass standards.

"I think the music that resulted was a product of a time or place," Thile said. "People coming out of the hills and making Appalachia -- that's kind of over. It sounds to me like new music. It doesn't sound like classical music, it doesn't sound like bluegrass. It has this liquid feeling of the various times we were playing."

"When I hear the, we are not in the 'whose the author' sort of thing," added Ma. "The music would shift from one rehearsal to another where we'd get information about how the four voices interact and decide 'we should try something like this.' There was a wonderful evolution that occurred right during the recording sessions."

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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"Some Girls" reissue to include unreleased track (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An upcoming reissue of the classic Rolling Stones album "Some Girls" will include a recently discovered track which will also be released as a single.

"No Spare Parts," which was recorded in Paris and was recently discovered by producer Don Was for inclusion on the new editions of "Some Girls" due out on November 21, tells the story of a trip from Los Angeles to San Antonio.

It features Mick Jagger on electric piano, Keith Richards on acoustic piano, Ron Wood on pedal steel guitar, Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass, Universal Republic Records said Thursday.

The label said the song, first recorded by Chris Kimsey in early 1978, features a "country guitar twang, subtle groove and soulful storytelling," describing it as "a powerful and poignant acoustic tune."

"Some Girls," a 1978 release that featured "Miss You" and "Beast of Burden," went a long way toward reestablishing

the Stones' then-flagging youthful appeal. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts and No. 2 in the United Kingdom.

"No Spare Parts" is slated for a world premiere on October 20 on the "Ken Bruce" show on BBC Radio 2, and will be available the same day on U.S. platforms beginning at 10 a.m.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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Coldplay launches fresh chart assault with fifth album

Coldplay lead vocalist Chris Martin performs at the Rock in Rio Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro October 1, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Ricardo Moraes

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON | Fri Oct 21, 2011 10:42am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - You may not understand the title of Coldplay's new album let alone be able to pronounce it, but "Mylo Xyloto" is a name music fans may have to get used to as the group launches a fresh assault on the world's charts.

The English quartet's fifth studio album hits shelves in Britain on Monday and the United States on Tuesday, and early critical response is mostly positive for a record aided and "enoxified" by Brian Eno.

Judging by comments made during a blitz of interviews to publicize the album, Coldplay could do with a little love, something that might seem strange given their success.

Their last record, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," was released in 2008 and went on to become that calendar year's top-selling album at 6.8 million copies.

The one before that, "X & Y," claimed the same honor in 2005, shifting 8.3 million copies globally.

They are one of the world's biggest bands, have multiple Grammys and album sales of around 50 million to their name.

Yet that has not shielded the unusually unassuming rock stars from criticism that tends to focus on their clean-cut "middle class" image and music that naysayers label as "bland" and "Radiohead-lite."

Guitarist Joe Satriani also sued the band, alleging that their chart-topping and award-winning "Viva La Vida" contained elements of his "If I Could Fly." The two sides reportedly settled out of court in late 2009.

"We got to a very low place on the last record where we felt not very popular," lead singer Chris Martin told the Sun tabloid.

"But it was refreshing as it made us start from scratch. A clean slate. So many people had made up their minds about us already that we had nothing to lose."

YOUNG COMPETITION

That sense of defiance came with a realization that, in order to rule the charts again, Coldplay are not up against "stadium bands" like, say, U2 but teen sensation Justin Bieber and English singing sensation Adele.

"Now we have Justin Bieber and Adele to compete with and they're a lot younger," 34-year-old Martin, who is married to Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow, said in a recent interview.

"We have to have the energy to put as much effort into our work as they do. If it's over, it's over and I can live with that. The most important thing always is to proceed as if every album is the last and not expect anything more."

Early reviews of Mylo Xyloto have been generally positive, with critics remarking that, while offering some fresh twists, the sound is essentially the Coldplay of old.

"It's a surging, chiming, upbeat epic, almost thunderously enthusiastic," wrote Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph in a four-star review.

He went on to call the album "irresistible," but voiced reservations, shared by Alexis Petridis of the Guardian in a three-star review, about the lack of depth in lyrics and music.

"Questioned about the title, Martin has insisted 'it doesn't have any meaning'," said McCormick. "His defiant inarticulacy feeds the notion that Coldplay are a pop group in rock clothing."

Rolling Stone magazine's Josh Eells gave the record three-and-a-half stars, commenting: "On Mylo Xyloto, the choruses are bigger, the textures grander, the optimism more optimistic. It's a bear-hug record for a bear-market world."

Martin, along with bandmates Jonny Buckland (guitar), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums), have produced a concept album loosely based on a love story set in a dystopian world.

In June, Coldplay released its first single "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall" followed by "Paradise" in September.

Among the highlights of the 14-track album are "Princess of China," featuring Rihanna on vocals, and "Charlie Brown," which Billboard magazine called the record's best song.

Coldplay is signed to EMI Group Ltd.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Neil Young launches film of storied benefit concerts (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) – A concert DVD featuring Neil Young and a generation of music icons will launch this month with live screenings across the United States.

The movie and related CD collection showcases rare live, acoustic performances by many of music's biggest names, all of whom have played over the past 25 years at the annual Bridge School benefit concerts organized by Young and wife Pegi.

The more than two dozen artists range from Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney to David Bowie, Patti Smith and Metallica.

The film will screen for one night only, Oct 24, in 22 cities, coinciding with the CD and DVD release by Warner Bros. Records.

The charity concert is held annually at the outdoor Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View, California.

It supports The Bridge School, a facility for children with severe speech and physical impairments that specializes in alternative communication methods.

The Bridge School was founded in part by the Youngs, when they were unable to find a suitable learning environment for their son Ben, who has cerebral palsy, and by Jim Forderer, another parent of a special needs child.

The first benefit concert was held in October 1986, and has been held each year apart from 1987, the year the educational program was launched.

The event has become a pilgrimage for Young's fans, nicknamed Rusties, many of whom hold their own gatherings around the time of the shows.

Young, the Canadian rocker, is heavily involved in selecting the show's lineups, which usually comprise a mixture of music legends and emerging talent.

This year's concerts will be held Oct 22 and Oct 23. Apart from Young, performers will include rockers Foo Fighters, crooner Tony Bennett, British folk rock band Mumford & Sons, and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.

(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Top 20 Concert Tours from Pollstar (AP)

The Top 20 Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows in North America. The previous week's ranking is in parentheses. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.

TOP 20 CONCERT TOURS

1. (2) Kenny Chesney; $1,977,243; $72.88.

2. (3) Taylor Swift; $1,843,404; $74.41.

3. (4) Sade; $1,205,324; $95.64.

4. (5) Britney Spears; $859,434; $80.28.

5. (7) Brad Paisley; $668,053; $37.77.

6. (8) Journey; $636,963; $50.29.

7. (9) Rascal Flatts; $606,654; $36.81.

8. (New) Foo Fighters; $557,985; $48.48.

9. (11) Jason Aldean; $509,099; $32.01.

10. (10) Tim McGraw; $501,792; $36.84.

11. (12) Katy Perry; $498,286; $42.66.

12. (14) Keith Urban; $494,445; $55.32.

13. (15) "American Idols Live"; $489,071; $54.52.

14. (16) Train / Maroon 5; $467,444; $42.77.

15. (13) Mötley Crüe; $467,277; $58.67.

16. (17) Def Leppard / Heart; $454,710; $51.58.

17. (18) Steely Dan; $406,623; $69.00.

18. (19) 311 / Sublime With Rome; $284,261; $30.52.

19. (21) Bob Dylan; $248,797; $55.25.

20. (New) "So You Think You Can Dance"; $206,977; $53.97.

For free upcoming tour information, go to http://www.pollstar.com

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