Bon Jovi spins first leg of 'Circle' dates for 2010
Bon Jovi will launch a two-year-long world tour in February with a full schedule of arena dates in support of the band's forthcoming new studio album, "The Circle."
The trek gets underway Feb. 19 in Seattle, beginning with a West Coast swing that continues through mid-March before the outing heads east. The tour includes May 26-27 shows in East Rutherford, NJ, the inaugural events of the New Meadowlands Stadium, future home of the NFL's New York Giants and New York Jets. Details are below.
Pre-sales for the two New Jersey shows will begin Oct. 26 at 10 am EDT. Check the band's website for additional ticketing information.
Due in stores Nov. 10, "The Circle" is Bon Jovi's 10th studio album. The band worked with producer John Shanks (Sheryl Crow, Jane's Addiction) on the set, which will be available in both standard and deluxe versions, with the latter including a DVD featuring the documentary "When We Were Beautiful," chronicling Bon Jovi's 2007-08 Lost Highway Tour.
"There's going to be some big choruses on there. It sounds like Bon Jovi, but it sounds fresh," guitarist Richie Sambora told Rolling Stone this summer. "We experimented with a lot of new sounds and had a really good time working with John Shanks, who is also a really good guitar player, so he and I did a lot of 'weaseling' with the guitar sounds.
"There are a lot of really good guitar sounds and new kind of atmospheres on the new Bon Jovi record, that I think makes it really modern. I think people are going to dig it, man. And it rocks hard."
The album's first single, "We Weren't Born to Follow," hit radio airwaves in August. The cut debuted at No. 90 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the band's 27th career entry on the singles chart.
The group's previous full-length effort, "Lost Highway," debuted at the top of The Billboard 200 in 2007, spawning the hit "(You Want To) Make a Memory." It was the band's first chart-topping album since 1988's "New Jersey."
TOUR DATES
February 2010
19 - Seattle, WA - KeyArena
22 - San Jose, CA - HP Pavilion
24 - Phoenix, AZ - Jobing.com Arena
26 - Anaheim, CA - Honda Center
March 2010
2 - Sacramento, CA - ARCO Arena
4 - Los Angeles, CA - Staples Center
6 - Las Vegas, NV - MGM Grand Garden Arena
8 - Denver, CO - Pepsi Center
9 - Omaha, NE - Qwest Center
11 - Wichita, KS - INTRUST Bank Arena
13 - Fargo, ND - Fargodome
15 - Kansas City, MO - Sprint Center
17 - Auburn Hills, MI - Palace of Auburn Hills
19, 20 - Montreal, Quebec - Bell Centre
23, 24 - Philadelphia, PA - Wachovia Center
29 - Washington, DC - Verizon Center
April 2010
7 - St. Paul, MN - Xcel Center
10 - Dallas, TX - American Airlines Center
13 - Tulsa, OK - BOK Center
15 - Atlanta, GA - Philips Arena
17 - Tampa., FL - St. Pete Times Forum
18 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL - BankAtlantic Center
21 - Nashville, TN - Sommet Center
22 - Charlotte, NC - Time Warner Cable Arena
May 2010
26, 27 - East Rutherford, NJ - New Meadowlands Stadium
July 2010
15 - Edmonton, Alberta - Commonwealth Stadium
17 - Winnipeg, Manitoba - Canad Inns Stadium
20 - Toronto, Ontario - Rogers Centre
24 - Foxboro, MA - Gillette Stadium
28 - Regina, Saskatchewan - Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field
30 - Chicago, IL - Soldier Field
Joss Whedon Speaks Out Regarding Upcoming 'Dollhouse' Absence
News broke yesterday that Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" is getting pulled from Fox for the month of November, signaling the network's lack of faith in the Eliza Dushku-starring show's prospects going forward.
While the removal of "Dollhouse" from sweeps month wasn't exactly a shocker to anybody following the series' downward spiral in both the creative and commercial departments, it did prompt the show's much-beloved creator to speak out.
Following an open letter posted at The TV Addict, Whedon took to his own blog to address some of the growing concerns about "Dollhouse" and the show's November absence.
"Well, I'm not as depressed as everyone else," wrote Whedon. "We weren't about to rock sweeps anyway, and though there's a chilly November, December is CRAZY. It's like an Advent calendar of episodes!"
Aside from expressing enthusiasm about "Dollhouse" posting double-headers on Friday throughout the month of December, Whedon suggested that the lack of November airtime would afford him the opportunity to promote the show to new viewers.
"We get November to try to spread the word (which I'll be leaning on Fox to do, though it's hard to imagine them doing as good a job as the WhyIWatch guy) and then December is pure gluttony," he said. "Plus the episodes line up extremely well in these pairs, and we'll have an absurdly appropriate lead-in."
Whedon also spoke about his upcoming director stint on Fox's "Glee," which some have viewed as the network's attempt to connect Whedon and "Dollhouse" with a different audience.
"This is not a diabolical Fox scheme," he said of the directorial gig. "This is me going 'can I can I?'"
TV comic giant Soupy Sales dies
DETROIT - Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died Thursday. He was 83.
Sales died at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.
At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.
"If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would have recognized him as much as Soupy," said Usher.
At the same time, Sales retained an openness to fans that turned every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session, Usher said.
"He was just good to people," said Usher, a former jazz music producer who managed Sales in the 1950s and now owns Detroit-based Marine Pollution Control.
Sales began his TV career in Cincinnati and Cleveland, then moved to Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961.
The comic's pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales. During the early 1960s, stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine received their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," Sales said in a 1985 interview.
Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents, owners of a dry-goods store, sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan. The family later moved to Huntington, W.Va.
His greatest success came in New York with "The Soupy Sales Show" - an ostensible children's show that had little to do with Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Sales' manic, improvisational style also attracted an older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.
Sales, who was typically clad in a black sweater and oversized bow-tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of tiny listeners to empty their mothers' purse and mail him all the pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents.
The cast of "Saturday Night Live" later paid homage by asking their audience to send in their joints. His influence was also obvious in the Pee-Wee Herman character created by Paul Reubens.
Sales returned from the Navy after World War II and became a $20-a-week reporter at a West Virginia radio station. He jumped to a DJ gig, changed his name to Soupy Heinz and headed for Ohio.
His first pie to the face came in 1951, when the newly christened Soupy Sales was hosting a children's show in Cleveland. In Detroit, Sales' show garnered a national reputation as he honed his act - a barrage of sketches, gags and bad puns that played in the Motor City for seven years.
After moving to Los Angeles, he eventually became a fill-in host on "The Tonight Show."
He moved to New York in 1964 and debuted "The Soupy Sales Show," with co-star puppets White Fang (the meanest dog in the United States) and Black Tooth (the nicest dog in the United States). By the time his Big Apple run ended two years later, Sales had appeared on 5,370 live television programs - the most in the medium's history, he boasted. He had a pair of albums that hit the Billboard Top 10 in 1965; "Do the Mouse" sold 250,000 copies in New York alone.
Sales remained a familiar television face, first as a regular from 1968-75 on the game show "What's My Line?" and later appearing on everything from "The Mike Douglas Show" to "The Love Boat." He played himself in the 1998 movie "Holy Man," which starred Eddie Murphy.
He joined WNBC-AM as a disc jockey in 1985, a stint best remembered because Sales filled the hours between shock jocks Don Imus and Howard Stern.
Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, Hunt and Tony, a pair of musicians who backed David Bowie in the band Tin Machine.