The Verve Release New Album

The new Verve album will be called "Third", the band have announced. The follow-up to "Urban Hymns" will arrive this summer, a decade after Richard Ashcroft and co's last record. With the band set to headline the Glastonbury Festival this weekend, details of their comeback have now been confirmed. The first fruits from the album, single "Love Is Noise", was unveiled on BBC Radio One earlier this week. "Third" is expected to be released on August 18.

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The Zutons-You Can Do Anything (album review)

The Zutons
You Can Do Anything
[Deltasonic]
Artist: The Zutons
Released: 02 June 2008
Catalogue number: DLTCD078

Review by Chris Jones

Two years after Tired Of Hanging Around, the album that made them a family name (or at least the album that contained their hit Valerie, which, when covered by you-know-who, paid off their mortgages), the Zutons return in a bullish mood. Again. You Can Do Anything seems to continue where the previous album left off. Their initially cuddly exterior, soon gives way to some very urban paranoia and angst.

Hidden amongst the retro riffs, horn squawks and lustily sung choruses are tales of scroungers (Family Of Leeches) infidelity (Dirty Rat), intolerance (You Can Make The Four Walls Cry) and sheer bloody violence (What's Your Problem, Bumbag). Add to this the tales of rent boys (Freak) and you soon cotton on that this is not a pretty picture of modern Britain that the band want you take home with you. And it's all delivered with that great yearning scouse voice of Dave McCabe that helps overcome the overwhelming kitchen-sink squalor of it all sometimes.

Musically it's definitely business as usual, and the departure of guitarist Boyan Chowdbury seems to have merely spurred them on to greater guitar madness. Always Right Behind You boasts some killer slide. Mind you, the saxophone of Abi Harding still seems a little too basic at times. More and more you suspect she's there for the wrong reasons. She may provide contextual eye candy for male fans, but sometimes the little musical texture that she does add is frankly negligible.

But no matter. The Zutons are, you'll be relieved to know, on fine form. And maybe this time around they can keep the big hitters for themselves.

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What's Your Problem
Give Me A Reason

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Zeppelin Join Foo Fighters On Stage

Two members of Led Zeppelin joined Foo Fighters onstage at their show in London on Saturday night. Guitarist Jimmy Page and bass player John Paul Jones emerged during the encore at the Wembley Stadium gig. Their appearance came towards the close of a spectacular second night at the venue, following Friday's concert. Announcing the arrival of the legendary rock duo, Foos' frontman Dave Grohl said it was "the greatest f*cking night in our band's lives". The crowd of nearly 90,000 people then saw the super-group perform Zeppelin classics "Rock'n'Roll" and "Ramble On". Foo Fighters set-list, according to the NME, was as follows: "The Pretender" "Times Like These" "No Way Back" "Cheer Up Boys, Your Make-Up Is Running" "Learn To Fly" "This Is A Call" "Long Road To Ruin" "Breakout" "Stacked Actors" "Skin And Bones" "Big Me" "Marigold" "My Hero" "Cold Day In The Sun" "Let It Die" "Everlong" "Monkey Wrench" "All My Life" "Rock'n'Roll" "Ramble On" "Best Of You".

The White Stripes Together again

Meg and Jack White were reunited onstage in America last night at a Raconteurs concert, according to reports. The duo behind The White Stripes have not appeared together since the drummer was revealed to be unwell last September. However, Meg emerged at the end of a homecoming gig from Jack's other band on Sunday. Walking on with her former husband at the Fillmore venue in Detroit, she took her seat at the drum stool of The Raconteurs' Patrick Keeler. It was a brief public outing though, with White announcing, "Hey everybody, this is Meg White!", before she waved to the crowd and left the stage. The White Stripes have no current touring plans although the The Raconteurs play a host of European festivals this summer.

Dylan Blasts 'hypocritical' Music Industry

Legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan has hit out at the state of the music industry - branding it "hypocritical rubbish".

The folk rock icon is tired of the industry which made him famous, insisting it is filled with fake people and hypocrites.

And the star admits he feels uncomfortable socialising with music industry insiders - feeling more in tune with the "dignified" literature and art worlds, branding them "honest" and "upfront".

He tells The Times newspaper, "The music world's a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish. I know that the book people are a whole lot saner. And the art world? From the small steps I've taken in it, I'd say, yeah, the people are honest, upfront and deliver what they say.

"Basically, they are who they say they are. They don't pretend. And having been in the music world most of my life I can tell you it's not that way. Let's just say it's less dignified."

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Coldplay Stream New Album

The new Coldplay album will be unveiled on their MySpace today, the band have confirmed. "Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends" is officially released on June 12 but can be streamed online from 6pm. Meanwhile, it's been confirmed that the group's live comeback in London will be broadcast on BBC radio. The concert, which takes place at the Brixton Academy on June 16, will go out as part of Zane Lowe's show. As previously reported, Coldplay tour the UK at the end of 2008. The dates are as follows: December 2008 01+02 Birmingham, NIA 05+06 Glasgow, SECC 07 Sheffield, Arena 10 Liverpool, Echo Arena 11+12 Manchester, MEN 14+15 London, O2 Arena

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Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend Bo Diddley Dies in Florida

MIAMI (Reuters) - Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley, who banged out hit songs powered by the relentless “Bo Diddley beat” that influenced rockers from Buddy Holly to U2, died on Monday at the age of 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., his management agency, Talent Consultants International, said in a statement.


“One of the founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll has left the building he helped construct,” the statement said.

Diddley suffered a stroke during a concert in Iowa in May 2007 and was hospitalized in Omaha, Neb. In August 2007 he had a heart attack in Florida.
Garry Mitchell, Diddley’s grandson and one of more than 35 family members at the musician’s home when he died, said his death was not unexpected.


“There was a gospel song that was sung and he said ‘wow’ with a thumbs up,” Mitchell told Reuters, when asked to describe the scene at Diddley’s deathbed. “The song was ‘Walk Around Heaven’ and in his last words he stated that he was going to heaven.”

Why not see him in action on You Tube singing “Mona,” with Tom Petty.That beat -- fusing blues, R&B, Latin and African rhythms -- resurfaced over the decades in countless other rock and R&B songs, among them Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away,U2's “Desire,” or Johnny Otis' “Willie and the Hand Jive,” Bruce Springsteen's “She’s the One,” David Bowie's “Panic in Detroit,” or the Animals, the British Invasion band that recorded the tribute song “The Story of Bo Diddley” in 1964.

BB King Live At The BBC (album review)

Artist: BB King
Released: 25 February 2008
Catalogue number: 5306314


Review by Martin Longley

This collection spans two decades of the Mississippi blues master's BBC output, from 1978 to 1998. The material is mostly recorded at gigs in London, Glasgow and Croydon, but a pair of live-in-the-studio session tracks are tagged on at the end, numbers which were originally laid down for Andy Kershaw's Radio 1 show. The King sound is eternal, and it's remarkable how little his formula has changed over this time span (and indeed before and after the selected years). The one development is that as age advances, B.B. has decelerated the set's pace, including longer onstage patter between numbers, and even over each song's vamping musical introduction.

The first five tracks are from a 1978 Hammersmith Odeon concert, in London. The slick revue style is already in place, but King's delivery remains gritty, its rawness intact. There's a roughness to his smoothness. It's a winning combination of rugged vocals and guitar meeting tight horn arrangements, and slick organ swirls. The pace on Caldonia is sprightly, punching with saxophone and trumpet solos. Then, King cuts to the exposed soulfulness of I Love To Live The Life, followed by a sudden descent into the coasting ballad softness of Night Life. Often, it's these slower tunes that carry greater weight, and the pace is kept down-and-spacious for The Thrill Is Gone.

Fourteen years on, and the band sound remains much the same, with a lengthy guitar introduction setting the scene for I Gotta Move Out Of This Neighbourhood, quieting down for an exposed B.B. vocal. Many of his songs tend to deal with woes brought on by womankind, even if peppered with some sly self-lacerating humour. The best of these is How Blue Can You Get?. The five tracks from Croydon's Fairfield Hall, in 1998, show how King had increased the verbals by this stage, but the disc closes out with its two concise Kershaw cuts, the band just playing it straight in the BBC's Maida Vale studio. Neither ropey nor exceptional, this collection inhabits the sturdy middle ground between these extremes.

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Unsigned bands play at festival

More than 60 unsigned bands will be playing in Dundee over the next two days in the GoNorth festival.

The event aims to showcase acts from the north of Scotland to the music industry, although artists from all over the country will be playing.

There will also be bands from England, Ireland, Norway, Iceland and France.

As well as performances there will be workshops on songwriting, screenwriting and how the industry works, along with screenings of music films.

One of the main attractions is an interview with Stevie Wonder manager Keith Harris.

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Fatboy Slim returns to Rock Ness

Superstar DJ Fatboy Slim is to again headline the Rock Ness music festival, its organisers have confirmed.

The DJ, who performed at the inaugural Rock Ness in 2006, will be joined on the bill by Dundee band The View.

Also playing at the annual festival on the banks of Loch Ness on 7 and 8 June will be Razorlight and Editors.

Tickets for the festival, which attracts 35,000 music fans for each of its two days, will go on sale at the weekend.

The eclectic line-up also features German electro-punk act Digitalism, Brazilian dance-pop band CSS and festival favourites 2 Many DJs, who will again be performing in their Radio Soulwax arena.

Rock Ness will be held near the village of Dores, four miles south west of Inverness.