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Concerts

Rock and roll!!!

Pearl Jam Detail Short Summer Stadium Tour

Pearl Jam will embark on a short tour this summer, pairing their “Home Shows” in Seattle with “Away Shows” in Missoula, Montana, Chicago and Boston.

Pearl Jam will play Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula August 13th, after which they’ll hit Wrigley Field in Chicago for two concerts, August 18th and 20th. The band will close their quick trek with another two-night stand at Fenway Park in Boston, September 2nd and 4th.

Fans can register for access to tickets through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program starting today, January 24th, through February 6th at 4 p.m. PT. The verified fan pre-sale begins February 16th at 10 a.m. local time. Members of Pearl Jam’s Ten Club will also have special access to pre-sale tickets starting February 7th at 10 a.m. PT, with full details available on the band’s website. A limited number of remaining tickets will be sold via a general sale that starts February 21st at 10 a.m. local time.

Pearl Jam previously announced their “Home Shows” will take place at Seattle’s Safeco Field on August 8th and 10th. The band has pledged to donate at least $1 million from the concerts to fight homelessness in Seattle. They also hope to raise $10 million over the next year in collaboration with local businesses, government agencies and non-profits to further alleviate the problem.

Categories
Concerts

Go, retire and live your life Sir Elton!!

Elton John announces lengthy farewell tour, with Canadian stops

Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world, and says he’s hoping to go out “with a bang.”

“I’ve had a good run, I think you’d admit that,” John said Wednesday. He added that he wanted to “leave people thinking, ‘I saw the last tour and it was fantastic.”‘

The 70-year-old singer, pianist and composer announced the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour at an event in New York, saying he wants to spend more time with his family.

John is married to Toronto native David Furnish, and the couple have two young children.

“My priorities now are my children and my husband and my family,” he said. “This is the end.”

The charismatic performer’s website lists two concerts in Toronto (Sept. 25-26), as well as shows in Ottawa (Sept. 28), Quebec City (Sept. 29) and Montreal (Oct. 4). Tickets go on sale Feb. 2.

He was recently in Canada for a pair of November shows in Ontario cities Kingston and St. Catharines.

John, whose hits include Your Song and Candle in the Wind, has won five Grammys, an Oscar and a Golden Globe for The Lion King, a Tony Award for Aida and received a Kennedy Center Honor.

John several weeks ago announced he’d be winding up his Las Vegas residency in May. The Million Dollar Piano show in Vegas will close after some 200 performances in six years.

At the Grammy Awards on Sunday in New York City, John is to perform alongside Miley Cyrus and will collect the President’s Merit Award.

It’s not his first honour from the Grammys. He also received the Legend Award for lifetime achievement in 2000 and that same year was named its MusiCares Person of the Year for his philanthropic efforts, which include raising hundreds of millions through his Elton John AIDS Foundation.

On Jan. 30, the I’m Still Standing: Elton John tribute concert is taking place at Madison Square Garden featuring guest Cyrus, Miranda Lambert, John Legend, Kesha and Sam Smith, to be broadcast on CBS in the U.S. later in the year.

John launched his first tour in 1970 and boasts having performed over 4,000 times in more than 80 countries. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

He has suffered several medical setbacks of late, including a bacterial infection last year that he contracted during a South American tour and an E. coli bacterial infection in 2009. He’s also suffered appendicitis and has been fitted with a pacemaker.

From 1970-76, John released 10 original studio albums and seven consecutive chart toppers.

He has sold more than 300 million albums.

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Television

Why not?! I guess…

‘Murphy Brown’ Returning to CBS With 13 Episodes

Candice Bergen is returning for the sitcom reboot, which will air during the 2018-19 season.
Not one to be left out of TV’s current reboot frenzy, CBS is adding another vintage comedy to its lineup: Murphy Brown.

The landmark sitcom, from Diane English and starring Candice Bergen, was an Emmy darling and a cultural touchstone for its then-uncommon portrayal of a single working mother. The Warner Bros. produced effort has received a 13-episode straight-to-series order and will include Bergen reprising her role. English is returning as well, serving as writer and executive producer through her Bend in the Road Productions shingle.

The order for more Murphy Brown, just shy of the 30th anniversary of its 1988 premiere, comes as networks and streamers have looked to their past catalogs for programming that will make an impact in the increasingly fractured TV market. On the Big Four, the most notable revivals include such similarly groundbreaking series as NBC’s Will & Grace, ABC’s upcoming Roseanne revisit and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Fox’s The X-Files.

As CBS noted Wednesday in a release about the order, there’s no shortage of material for the show, which was set in the offices of a cable news channel. The titular character, at the time, was parts Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, with an attitude all her own. Murphy Brown “returns to a world of cable news, social media, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate,” per CBS. During its 10-year run, the series targeted real politicians, perhaps most famously when then Vice President Dan Quayle singled it out in a speech about “family values.” The comedy retaliated by incorporating him into a storyline, culminating in Bergen’s character dumping a truck full of potatoes dumped in front of his residence. (Quayle once misspelled the root vegetable during a visit to a school — which, by 1992 standards, was worthy of mockery over many news cycles.)

Again multicamera, Murphy Brown is the first straight-to-series order for CBS’ 2018-19 season and comes days after ordering pilots from three female writers. The network has publicly struggled with its on- and off-camera tendency to hire white men. Murphy Brown might be the first reboot to land on the broadcast network, but CBS has been busy mining its own library elsewhere. Streaming service CBS All Access has already launched a new Star Trek, and a reboot of The Twilight Zone is in the works.

What’s not immediately clear about the Murphy Brown order is who else of the original cast may be on board. Faith Ford, Joe Regalbuto and Grant Shaud all have busy TV careers; Charles Kimbrough appears to be at least semi-retired; and Robert Pastorelli died in 2004.

It’s also worth noting that Murphy Brown isn’t currently streaming. That library is almost sure to land somewhere in the run-up to its TV return — and the price tag on those 247 episodes should prove to be a lucrative side effect of this revival.