New Releases, Dec. 26: Switchfoot, Matisyahu, 'Rocky Balboa'
Switchfoot "Oh! Gravity"
The San Diego rock band, which has made its mark in both the secular and nonsecular music worlds, returns with a follow-up to 2005's "Nothing is Sound." One of the album's tracks, "Awakening," was produced by Steve Lillywhite, a British mastermind who has worked with Phish, U2 and The Rolling Stones.
The group--which features bassist/vocalist Tim Foreman, singer Jon Foreman, guitarist/keyboardist Jerome Fontamillas, guitarist Drew Shirley and drummer Chad Butler--will support the album with a lengthy North American tour that kicks off on Valentine's Day in San Francisco.
* * *
Matisyahu "No Place to Be"
The Hasidic reggae star returns with the CD/DVD offering "No Place to Be."
The CD portion features seven new songs recorded with reggae production team Sly & Robbie. It also features additional remixes produced by AdRock (Beastie Boys) and Bill Laswell, who produced the artist's March release, "Youth."
The DVD disc, "Live in Israel," was shot in Tel Aviv in December 2005. The concert footage is intercut with interviews and street performances from Jerusalem. It also includes the new music video for the single "Jerusalem."
The vocalist recently completed his first Festival of Light Hanukkah tour, which included a mid-December, three-night stand at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom.
* * *
"Rocky Balboa: The Best of Rocky"
This 17-track set, which is being released in conjunction with the latest "Rocky" film, collects all of the memorable songs featured in Sly Stallone's profitable film series. Included in the mix are James Brown's "Living in America," Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" and, of course, the late Bill Conti (music)'s "Gonna Fly Now."
* * *
"Family Values Tour 2006"
This is the fourth release to document a Family Values Tour (the others came from tours in 1998, 1999 and 2001). This CD includes performances by such tour participants as Stone Sour, Flyleaf, Dir en Grey, 10 Years, Deadsy, Bury Your Dead, Bullets and Octane, and Walls of Jericho. There is also a companion DVD being released separately.
* * *
David Gilmour "Arnold Layne EP"
The Pink Floyd guitarist/vocalist pays his respect to the band's troubled visionary Syd Barrett, who died in July, with this recording of two memorable Barrett numbers. The first selection is the early Floyd tune "Arnold Layne." The second is "Dark Globe," which originally hails from Barrett's solo album "The Madcap Laughs." David Bowie and Floyd's Richard Wright are also featured on this work.
* * *
More new releases:
Chetes, "Blanco Facil" (EMI)
Earth, Wind & Fire, "Beautiful Ballads" (Sony)
Enigma, "LSD: Love, Sensuality and Devotion--The Remix Collection" (Virgin)
Gang Starr, "Mass Appeal: Best of Gang Starr" (Virgin)
Incognito, "Bees + Things + Flowers" (Universal)
Angela Lansbury, "Legends of Broadway" (Sony)
Bernadette Peters, "Legends of Broadway" (Sony)
Matt Redman, "Beautiful News" (Sparrow)
Chita Rivera, "Legends of Broadway" (Sony)
Former President Ford dead at 93
LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over." But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.
He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.
They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.
And she remained one of the country's most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.
Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.
In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn't seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.
The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage's gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.
Fans pay tribute to Brown; funeral set
AUGUSTA, Ga. - The James Brown statue on Broad Street, here in his hometown, was draped in an American flag and a red scarf as several dozen people gathered Tuesday to pay their respects to the late singer. Flowers were left at the base of the statue in tribute to Brown, who died Monday in Atlanta. He was 73.
One visitor to the statue, John Arthur Thomas, 73, of Daleville, Ala., said he stopped by because Brown was a legend and had "done a lot of things from the heart to help people."
"There were some troubled times in his life, like everybody else, but he meant well," Thomas said. "He is a legend. There will never be another James Brown."
Consuelo Miller, 32, of Syracuse, N.Y., whose husband, Rodney, is stationed at Fort Gordon with the U.S. Army, came to the statue with her son and stepdaughter so her children could say that they were there.
"I just wanted to bring the kids down here to let them see a great star," Miller said. "He is the `Godfather of Soul.'"
The Rev. Al Sharpton will officiate at Brown's funeral service, said Brown's agent, Frank Copsidas.
Sharpton and some of Brown's relatives spent Tuesday afternoon at an Augusta funeral home, where they were expected to view the singer's body and complete funeral arrangements.
The public funeral service will be held Saturday at James Brown Arena in Augusta, followed by burial later in the day, Copsidas said. Brown's body will lie in state at the Apollo Theater in New York on Thursday and again on Saturday at the Augusta arena. A private service for family and friends will be held Friday at an undisclosed location.
The singer died of heart failure less than two days after he had been hospitalized with pneumonia and only three days after leading his annual holiday toy giveaway in Augusta.
He also had diabetes and prostate cancer that was in remission. But he initially seemed fine at the hospital and talked about his New Year's Eve show at B.B. King Blues Club in New York, Copsidas said.
Rena Siwek, public relations director for the club, said an announcement would be made Wednesday on who would be filling Brown's spot.
"We're working furiously here," Siwek said.
The New York City club wasn't the only venue affected by Brown's death. Some 1,400 tickets had been sold as of late last week for a show Wednesday night at the Palace Theater in Waterbury, Conn. The show was to kick off a national tour. The theater box office was issuing refunds.
Brown is survived by his partner, Tomi Rae Hynie, one of his backup singers, and at least four children — his two daughters, Deanna Brown Thomas and Yamma Brown Lumar, and sons Daryl and James Brown II, Copsidas said.
Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, won a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living in America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He had a brief but memorable role as a manic preacher in 1980's "The Blues Brothers," starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
In a statement released Tuesday by his publicist, Aykroyd said, "No one has ever integrated music, musicianship, dance and showmanship so effectively as did J.B. Every rap, hip-hop, house, soul, R&B, rock and pop artist practicing today has been influenced compositionally and choreographically by Mr. Brown.
"Fortunate were those of us who were able to engage his talents and witness his latest shows. The greatest on-stage revue of music in the history of our planet."
Brown was himself to the end, at one point saying, "I'm going away tonight," said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with the singer when he died. "I didn't want to believe him," he said.
A short time later, Brown sighed quietly, closed his eyes and died, Bobbit said.
HDTV's sharp increase in popularity concerns TV stars fearful of such clarity
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Vanity, thy name is hi-def TV.
The holiday shopping season was expected to boost the number of U.S. homes with high-definition televisions to nearly 33 million. In the eyes of a growing number of image-obsessed on-air personalities, that's 33 million reasons to be concerned.
Besides spectacular vistas and shockingly real playing fields, hi-def clarity puts any and all wrinkles, pimples and pores on display in well-lit bathroom-mirror detail.
Some TV types say big-screen HDTV could lead to the end of the extreme close-up as we know it. Others predict hi-def fears could soon be reflected in artists' contracts.
When "Good Morning America" debuted in high-definition last year, host Diane Sawyer, 61, noted that viewers will now know when she's stayed up too late the night before. "They will see it right there," Sawyer said, indicating the puffiness under her eyes.
Dissolve to the TV industry's behind-the-scenes pros, who are developing new ways to help the talent keep up appearances in today's hi-def world.
"The grain structure of film allows a softness that HD video tends not to have, posing more challenges, especially when it comes to capturing female faces," says Stephen McNutt, director of photography for the Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica."
"We seem not to care about seeing men in a rougher, more edgier way," he explains, "whereas females, we're used to seeing them in a softer, more appealing way. So there's a little more filtration needed, and you have to approach it from a different standpoint."
While lighting techniques have been helpful, new advances in cosmetic applications have done wonders, too, says Patricia Murray, "Battlestar's" head of makeup. Murray uses foundation and makeup that is airbrushed onto the skin, rather than by sponge or fingertip.
"For me, air brushing is very helpful for high definition when you want an even coverage," says Murray. "However, it's not ideal for every situation."
Murray explains: "We have a show that's very raw, and it's not so glamorous, so the application needs to be a little lighter because we allow the shine of the skin to come through; we don't cover the dark patches under the eyes as much. However, with other shows, you have to watch the amount of shine you allow because high definition picks that up quite a bit."
Of course, makeup alone won't stave off the HD glare. "Regular facials and a really good skin care is key," Murray says of her advice to cast members. "Drinking lots of water, avoiding coffee and cigarettes, exercise, all those things help the skin's natural glow."
Being show business, Botox injections and facelifts also continue, even though HDTV reveals those tight lines and plumped puckers in extreme clarity.
"Just about everything is more obvious in hi-def," says Sheila McKenna, founder of New York-based Kett Cosmetics, an airbrushed, HDTV-friendly makeup line used by some on "The View," "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Today," and all over CNN and ESPN.
McKenna notes that older news and entertainment personalities tend to be more concerned about how they look on HDTV, but younger celebrities don't always look so flattering in the format, either.
Some camera operators believe fears about HDTV exposure could bring an end to extreme close-ups on television shows.
"I think there's a danger area of saying the extreme close-up is not flattering - it's a part of the grammar of television to do that," says Tom Houghton, director of photography for "Rescue Me." The Sony TV-produced show is shot in HD, but appears on FX, which is among a number of cable networks that still airs in standard definition.
"Maybe we don't want to be quite so close, now that people have bigger screens," Houghton adds. "We're evolving from what was once a 12-inch screen in black and white in the living room to a huge 57-inch home-theatre screen, and that's a big difference in what you're going to see."
"Certainly in the very beginning, no one wanted to work in HD," notes Dan Dugan, producer of the CW network's HD comedies "Girlfriends" and "The Game." "Everybody felt safe with what film has given us, and to go to something new, people are always afraid. But I think you'll find less opposition among the creative community now than five years ago."
Broadcast networks in the United States now offer the bulk of their prime-time programming and major sports coverage in HD. Cable provides some HD content, with a few channels that are dedicated to HD.
And a handful of local stations offer their newscasts in hi-def.
With the U.S. Federal Communications Commission mandate that TV networks move from analog to digital by 2009, talent agent Harry Gold says that concerns over HD may factor into some artists' contracts.
"You take a show like 'Desperate Housewives,' which is in really glossy high-definition. In order for those women to look as glamorous as they want to look, they need to really pay attention to how they're made up and how they're lit, what kinds of lenses are being used and all that kind of stuff," says Gold, president of TalentWorks. "They do have to have some say about how they look on screen."
Actress Kat Foster of the Fox HD comedy "Til Death" sees things a bit differently, opting away from the newfangled airbrushed techniques for traditionally applied corrective foundations that, she says, give her a more natural look onscreen.
"It would behoove everyone to see the real celebrity, wrinkles and all," declares the 28-year-old Foster. "I think the more human we are, the more attractive we are to the people who watch us."
But will she feel the same way in 10 years?
James Brown's hometown fans pay respects
AUGUSTA, Ga. - The James Brown statue on Broad Street, his hometown, was draped in an American flag and a red scarf Tuesday as several dozen people gathered to pay their respects to the late singer.
Flowers were left at the base of the statue in tribute to Brown, who died Monday in Atlanta. He was 73.
One visitor to the statue, John Arthur Thomas, 73, of Daleville, Ala., said he stopped by because Brown was a legend and he had "done a lot of things from the heart to help people."
"There were some troubled times in his life, like everybody else, but he meant well," Thomas said. "He is a legend. There will never be another James Brown."
Consuelo Miller, 32, of Syracuse, N.Y., whose husband, Rodney, is stationed at Fort Gordon with the U.S. Army, came to the statue with her son and stepdaughter so her children could say that they were there.
"I just wanted to bring the kids down here to let them see a great star," Miller said. "He is the `Godfather of Soul.'"
The Rev. Al Sharpton will officiate at Brown's funeral service, details of which were still incomplete, said Brown's agent, Frank Copsidas.
Sharpton said he and Brown's two daughters planned to view the singer's body Tuesday afternoon at an Augusta funeral home and finalize funeral arrangements.
Brown's daughter-in-law Diane Dean Rouse said she hoped the funeral would be open to the people of Augusta.
The singer died of heart failure less than two days after he had been hospitalized with pneumonia and only three days after leading his annual holiday toy giveaway in Augusta.
He also had diabetes and prostate cancer that was in remission. But he initially seemed fine at the hospital and talked about his New Year's Eve show at B.B. King Blues Club in New York, Copsidas said.
The B.B. King club, which promised ticket holders a replacement show, will announce Wednesday who will be filling the spot, said public relations director Rena Siwek.
"We're working furiously here," Siwek said.
The New York City club wasn't the only venue affected by Brown's death. Some 1,400 tickets had been sold as of late last week for a show Wednesday night at the Palace Theater in Waterbury, Conn. The show was to kick off a national tour. The theater box office was issuing refunds.
Brown is survived by his partner, Tomi Rae Hynie, one of his backup singers, and at least four children — his two daughters and sons Daryl and James Brown II, Copsidas said.
The singer was himself to the end, at one point saying, "I'm going away tonight," said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown when he died.
"I didn't want to believe him," he said.
A short time later, Brown sighed quietly, closed his eyes and died, Bobbit said.
"His thing was `I never saw a person that I didn't love.' He was a true humanitarian who loved his country," Bobbit said.
Brown was born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, and abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends. He grew up in Augusta in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it, learning how to hustle to survive.
By the eighth grade in 1949, he had served 3 1/2 years in reform school for breaking into cars. While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.
Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, won a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living in America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He had a brief but memorable role as a manic preacher in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers."