U2 Expanding 'Unforgettable Fire' This Fall
While U2's "360 Tour" just got underway in Chicago this past weekend, fans are in store for another treat this fall as the 25th anniversary of the band's classic 1984 album, "The Unforgettable Fire" will be celebrated with a host of reissue configurations. Due October 27 from Island/Universal, four options will be available that include B-sides, rarities, alternate versions, and previously unreleased songs including "Disappearing Act" (a.k.a. "White City"), a song that was originally started in 1983 with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Only recently the band put the finishing touches on "Disappearing Act" in France, according to an interview with BBC Radio 1.
Handling the re-mastering duties was U2 guitarist The Edge. The four versions will include a 180 gram vinyl album version, a standard re-mastered CD version, a deluxe double version with a 36 page bound book and a limited edition super deluxe box set, which includes the 2 CD version, a 56 page bound book, 5 portfolio prints and a DVD that will feature rare videos, concert footage and a "Making of" documentary of the album.
Although no official announcement has been made on U2.com, fans who have visited the group's merchandise table at recent concerts have received wind of this release from a shopping bag advertisement. In a possible nod to the upcoming anniversary, the band has been playing the title track "The Unforgettable Fire" at recent shows for the first time in many years. "The Unforgettable Fire" continues in a series of deluxe reissues of U2's earlier work. 2007 saw the expanded release of "The Joshua Tree," for that album's 20th anniversary and in 2008 the group reissued "War," "Boy," and "October" in similar deluxe formats.
U2 is currently in the midst of a stadium and arena tour of North America, with the next shows scheduled for September 16 and 17 at Toronto's Rogers Centre. The band's latest album "No Line on the Horizon" was released this past February and has sold 991,000 according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Cyrus goes paperless for all tickets on 45-city tour
When Miley Cyrus hit the road two years ago, many of her young fans' parents were outraged that they couldn't get tickets without paying exorbitant prices to scalpers or resellers. Cyrus hopes to fight that inflation this time around by going paperless with her 45-city Wonder World tour that kicks off tonight in Portland, Ore.
The paperless tickets, which are purchased online through Ticketmaster, require the buyer to provide ID at the venue and swipe the same credit card for entry. The method has been tried out by other tours in recent months, but hers is the first arena tour to admit all concert-goers using the system.
Cyrus' 2007-08 Best of Both Worlds tour grossed $55 million and sold 1 million tickets, according to Billboard Boxscore.
"Miley's (management) thought it was a great way for real Miley fans to get original tickets and pay face value," says David Butler, president of Ticketmaster North America. "That's something she wanted to do for her fans to keep the price reasonable," in the $40 to $80 range.
Ticketmaster started offering the service about four years ago to sports teams. Acts such as AC/DC and Bruce Springsteen have used it recently for high-end seating. In all, Butler says more than 300,000 paperless tickets have been sold this year.
"We started it as a convenience for the fans, similar to the model the airlines follow," Butler says.
It has worked so well at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock that the venue had the equipment permanently installed. "We've done eight or nine concerts," including Brad Paisley and Kenny Chesney, says general manager Michael Marion, who says response has been largely positive. "We've used it only for the prime seats, but it works well."
Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade publication Pollstar, says it remains to be seen how fans will react as the practice becomes widespread. He says paperless doesn't allow tickets to be sold or transferred, which is a problem for people who need to unload them at the last minute, or must take their kids to the show to get them in.
"There are some less-than-friendly customer aspects to it, and there (could) be some blow-back from that," he says.
And there's anecdotal evidence that resellers aren't being frozen out entirely.
"I've heard stories of ticket brokers throwing (pre-show) parties, then walking everybody to the arena and getting them in with the credit card they used," Bongiovanni says. "If there's a way to game the system, the brokers are going to find it."
Publicist: Patrick Swayze dies at 57
LOS ANGELES – Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into viewers' hearts with "Dirty Dancing" and then broke them with "Ghost," died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.
"Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months," said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. No other details were given.
Fans of the actor were saddened to learn in March 2008 that Swayze was suffering from a particularly deadly form of cancer.
He had kept working despite the diagnosis, putting together a memoir with his wife and shooting "The Beast," an A&E drama series for which he had already made the pilot. It drew a respectable 1.3 million viewers when the 13 episodes ran in 2009, but A&E said it had reluctantly decided not to renew it for a second season.
Swayze said he opted not to use painkilling drugs while making "The Beast" because they would have taken the edge off his performance. He acknowledged that time might be running out given the grim nature of the disease.
When he first went public with the illness, some reports gave him only weeks to live, but his doctor said his situation was "considerably more optimistic" than that.
"I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," Swayze told ABC's Barbara Walters in early 2009. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it."
A three-time Golden Globe nominee, Swayze became a star with his performance as the misunderstood bad-boy Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing." As the son of a choreographer who began his career in musical theater, he seemed a natural to play the role.
A coming-of-age romance starring Jennifer Grey as an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze as the Catskills resort's sexy (and much older) dance instructor, the film made great use of both his grace on his feet and his muscular physique.
It became an international phenomenon in the summer of 1987, spawning albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in "(I've Had) the Time of My Life," stage productions and a sequel, 2004's "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," in which he made a cameo.
Swayze performed and co-wrote a song on the soundtrack, the ballad "She's Like the Wind," inspired by his wife, Lisa Niemi. The film also gave him the chance to utter the now-classic line, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."
And it allowed him to poke fun at himself on a "Saturday Night Live" episode, in which he played a wannabe Chippendales dancer alongside the corpulent — and frighteningly shirtless — Chris Farley.
A major crowdpleaser, the film drew only mixed reviews from critics, though Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "Given the limitations of his role, that of a poor but handsome sex-object abused by the rich women at Kellerman's Mountain House, Mr. Swayze is also good. ... He's at his best — as is the movie — when he's dancing."
Swayze followed that up with the 1989 action flick "Road House," in which he played a bouncer at a rowdy bar. But it was his performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg.
Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.
Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview.
"Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze.
"When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."
Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo.
His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme.
"I couldn't get seen on it because everyone viewed me as terminally heterosexually masculine-macho," he told the AP then. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.
Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel "Dary" Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers — and essentially the father figure — in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.
Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.
In the '90s, he made such eclectic films as "Point Break" (1991), in which he played the leader of a band of bank-robbing surfers, and the family Western "Tall Tale" (1995), in which he starred as Pecos Bill. He appeared on the cover of People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991, but his career tapered off toward the end of the 1990s, when he also had stay in rehab for alcohol abuse.
In 2001, he appeared in the cult favorite "Donnie Darko," and in 2003 he returned to the New York stage with "Chicago"; 2006 found him in the musical "Guys and Dolls" in London.
Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."
He played football but also was drawn to dance and theater, performing with the Feld, Joffrey and Harkness Ballets and appearing on Broadway as Danny Zuko in "Grease." But he turned to acting in 1978 after a series of injuries.
Within a couple years of moving to Los Angeles, he made his debut in the roller-disco movie "Skatetown, U.S.A." The eclectic cast included Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormack and Billy Barty.
Swayze had a couple of movies in the works when his diagnosis was announced, including the drama "Powder Blue," starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker and his younger brother, Don, which was scheduled for release this year.
Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa to shine a light on "man's greed and absolute unwillingness to operate according to Mother Nature's laws," he told the AP in 2004.
Swayze was married since 1975 to Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. A licensed pilot, Niemi would fly her husband from Los Angeles to Northern California for treatment at Stanford University Medical Center, People magazine reported in a cover story.
Spider-Man 4 Gives Bruce Campbell A Starring Role
I’m still trying to process the idea of another Spider-Man movie being made. Maybe Sam Raimi was aware of the endless amount of flaws in Spider-Man 3 and hopes to erase them with a superior movie. Maybe he just needed to get something like Drag Me To Hell out of his system so he could approach Spider-Man with a clear head. Maybe he got a fatty check that could pay his kids college tuitions twelve times over.
Whatever it is, Raimi seems to be a lot closer to filming than any of us may have realized. According to Raimi’s bro crush Bruce Campbell, who talked to Access Hollywood at the premier of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, filming for the movie will start in January 2010 with a release date projected for May 2011.
That’s not all Bruce revealed, though. It seems as though Spider-Man 4 may have him showing up as more than the announcer at the boxing ring. Campbell told Access Hollywood that Raimi has a “major part” for him in the next movie, but he was given no details as to what the part may be.
Many speculate that Campbell will be playing a villain in the movie, perhaps even Mysterio, but I’m going to put myself out there and predict that he’s playing Spider-Man. Maybe Tobey didn’t come back after all. Maybe Spider-Man 4 takes place 20 years in the future with an aged and tired-of-Mary-Jane Peter Parker. Maybe this movie will be awesome after all.
Kanye West outburst upstages VMA winners
Beyonce took home Video of the Year last night (9/13) at MTV's Video Music Awards ceremonies, an event marred by Kanye West's disruption of another winner's acceptance speech.
Moments after accepting the VMA trophy for Best Female Video, teenage country star and first-time VMA winner Taylor Swift was interrupted by West, who took the microphone from the singer's hands to complain that the statuette should have gone to Beyonce.
"Taylor, I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time," West said, as the audience at New York City's Radio City Music Hall began to boo and a shocked Swift stood clutching her trophy. West, who did not win an award, was booed whenever his name was mentioned for the remainder of the night.
Later, during her own acceptance speech for Video of the Year (for "Single Ladies,") Beyonce called Swift to the stage to complete her own interrupted speech.
Swift praised Beyonce to reporters backstage. "I thought that I couldn't love Beyonce more and then tonight happened and it was just wonderful." She also said she had never met West and had never been a fan of his music. "I don't know him and I don't want to start anything," the singer told reporters.
For his own part, West--who has disrupted several award shows with similar antics in the past after not receiving trophies, including the Grammy Awards and the American Music Awards--later apologized on his blog, while continuing to maintain that Beyonce should have won the award. "I'M SOOOOO SORRY TO TAYLOR SWIFT AND HER FANS AND HER MOM. I SPOKE TO HER MOTHER RIGHT AFTER AND SHE SAID THE SAME THING MY MOTHER WOULD'VE SAID. SHE IS VERY TALENTED! "BEYONCE'S VIDEO WAS THE BEST OF THIS DECADE!!!! ... EVERYBODY WANNA BOOOOO ME BUT I'M A FAN OF REAL POP CULTURE!!!," he added.
Aside from Swift's and Beyonce's awards, currently imprisoned rapper T.I. took home the prize for Best Male Video for "Live Your Life," featuring Rihanna, and Eminem continued his comeback by taking the award for Best Hip-Hop Video for "We Made You."
The awards show also featured several nods to the late Michael Jackson, including a musical and dancing tribute from sister Janet Jackson, and a moving speech by Madonna, who recounted her twin rise to superstardom with Jackson in the '80s.
"Sometimes, we have to lose things before we can truly appreciate them," said Madonna, who was dressed all in black. "Yes, Michael Jackson was a human being, but yes, he was a king. Long live the king."
Other winners on the night included Britney Spears, who received Best Pop Video for "Womanizer," and Green Day, which took home the award for Best Rock Video for "21 Guns." Lady GaGa was named Best New Artist, while Matt & Kim won Best Breakthrough Video for the duo's "Lessons Learned."
"Sabotage," a 1994 video from Beastie Boys, won in the Best Video That Should Have Won a Moonman category, which refers to the VMA's iconic astronaut-styled statuette.
Here is a complete list of winners:
Video of the Year
"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"
Beyonce
Best Female Video
"You Belong With Me"
Taylor Swift
Best Male Video
"Live Your Life"
T.I. featuring Rihanna
Best Rock Video
"21 Guns"
Green Day
Best Pop Video
"Womanizer"
Britney Spears
Best Hip-Hop Video
"We Made You"
Eminem
Best Brekthrough Video
"Lessons Learned"
Matt and Kim
Best Video That Should Have Won a Moonman
"Sabotage"
Beastie Boys
Best New Artist
Lady Gaga
"Basketball Diaries" author Jim Carroll dies
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Punk-rock poet and musician Jim Carroll, who chronicled his wild teen years in "The Basketball Diaries," has died of a heart attack, his ex-wife told The New York Times.
Rosemary Klemfuss, who was married to Carroll in 1978 before they divorced in the mid-1980s, said he died on Friday at his Manhattan home. He was 60, the newspaper said on Sunday, although other biographical profiles listed his age as 59.
Carroll's most famous work, "The Basketball Diaries," was published in 1978. In it, he wrote of his wild youth as both a basketball star and a drug abuser during his teen years at Manhattan's private Trinity school, was made into a 1995 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Pioneering punk-rock singer Patti Smith told the newspaper "I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation."
"The work was sophisticated and elegant," said Smith, who helped usher Carroll into a music career that included songs such as "People Who Died" and "Catholic Boy."
Carroll also worked with rockers from Lou Reed and The Doors to Pearl Jam and Rancid.
Carroll, a fixture on Manhattan's downtown punk-rock scene, saw his poetry lauded by Beat Generation icons including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His work was published in The Paris Review, and he worked at Andy Warhol's Factory and on the pop artist's films.