Jazz News

Digital Music Track Sales Surpass 1 Billion

Source: Michael Ricci
December 18, 2008

Annual sales of digital songs will surpass 1 billion downloads this year, a first for the struggling music industry.

Nielsen SoundScan predicted in April that music downloads would reach this milestone, and with two weeks remaining in the year, that forecast appears to be proving accurate. Individual song downloads will reach about 1,040,000 for the year, with the top 200 tracks accounting for 17% of sales. The best-selling digital song of the year is Leona Lewis' “Bleeding Love," which sold ...

Continue Reading

Sag Announces and the Real Race Can Now Begin

Source: Michael Ricci
December 18, 2008

With this morning's announcement of the 15th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations, the “real" race for Oscar can now begin in earnest. Critics awards are nice and we are getting a steady diet of them every day, but it's the guild awards that tend to be a real barometer of the temperature of the race. This is where peers vote for peers and much of the membership tends to overlap with the academy's. The SAG Awards nominations are a ...

Continue Reading

TV Studio in a Box

Source: All About Jazz
December 18, 2008

TV Studio in a Box Enables Long-Tail Television

If you were impressed when manufacturers began putting home theaters in boxes, wait until you feast your eyes on NewTek's TriCaster, which packs an entire live television production studio into a comparable cube of space. With minimal training, anyone who can operate a computer can use it to broadcast professional-quality live video over the internet or on television. “It's basically a live TV truck in a backpack," said Philip Johnson, NewTek senior ...

Continue Reading

Steven Spielberg's Nod to Big Bands in 1941

Source: All About Jazz
December 18, 2008

Happy Birthday to Steven Spielberg No director or producer has ever put together a more popular body of work. That's why the movies we're now seeing are made in his image.

Steven Spielberg born December 18, 1946, first films were made at a time when directors were the most important people in Hollywood, and his more recent ones at a time when marketing controls the industry. That he has remained the most powerful filmmaker in the world during ...

Continue Reading

Sam Bottoms Dies at 53; Actor Appeared in 'Apocalypse Now,' 'Last Picture Show'

Source: Michael Ricci
December 17, 2008

Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who played the role of California surfer- turned-GI Lance Johnson in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, has died. He was 53. Bottoms died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles of glioblastoma multiforme, a virulent brain cancer, said his wife, Laura Bickford.

The brother of actors Timothy, Joseph and Ben Bottoms, Sam made his screen debut as a teenager in Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film The Last Picture Show, in ...

Continue Reading

Neil Young Has a Heart of Gold and a Car of Biodiesel

Source: Michael Ricci
December 17, 2008

He Keeps On Rockin at the Garden: Neil Young gave the first of two tour-ending concerts at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, on a bill that also included the bands Wilco and Everest. Near the midpoint of his sprawling, deeply satisfying show at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Neil Young asked a simple question: Where did all the money go? He sang this line and repeated it, for emphasis or symmetry. And a few moments later he issued ...

Continue Reading

The Testimony of Sweet Baby James

Source: All About Jazz
December 17, 2008

James Benton is chock full of soul, man. So much that he can barely control it. Take the song “The Body,” for instance. It’s a boogie-woogie groove authored by Benton himself that was banned from Portland radio in 1955 because of its sexually suggestive underpinnings. Sure, after performing “The Body” to throngs of jazz and R&B lovers over the past 55-plus years, it’s no longer tops on Benton’s hit list (though the crowd invariably devours it as a dance favorite). ...

Continue Reading

2009 New Orleans Jazz Festival Announces Schedule & Musical Guests

Source: All About Jazz
December 17, 2008

The 2009 New Orleans Jazz Festival has released its schedule, as well as a list of the performers for the two weekend festival. This will be the 40th anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and will showcase some of the best names in the music business. The festival is scheduled to take place over two weekends, starting on April 24th-26 and ending on the weekend of April 30-May 3 in 2009. Ticket have gone on sale for ...

Continue Reading