Joe Bonamassa Wins Award!

Guitar International feted two of Gibson heroes last week with major awards.
Joe Bonamassa was voted Guitarist of the Year in honor of his new album Dustbowl and Black Country Communion’s world tour and live DVD.
“Though still a young 34 years of age, this guitar slinger has accomplished more than most players could imagine to achieve in a lifetime, and 2011 was a testament to the hard work, dedication and hours spent in the practice room and on the bandstand by this guitar great,” Guitar International said in a statement.
And our man Slash was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. “A guitarist who has revived his career (twice, with his recent solo albums after Velvet Revolver’s demise), played with Michael Jackson, Alice Cooper and many more music icons, and held his commitment to rock over his entire career certainly deserves Guitar International’s Lifetime Achievement Award. And with his impeccable track record, one can only assume Slash has much more rock ’n’ roll in the tank.”

As a matter of fact, he does – and the engine is revving up now for a new album due later this year. Congrats, Joe and Slash! by paul burch

Coachella 2012 Sold Out!!

That was fast: Weekend 1 was gone in 40 minutes, while Weekend 2 only took two hours to sell out.

[Update: General Passes for both Coachella weekends are now sold out!]
We all knew it was going to be crazy, but this is just outrageous. Tickets for the 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival went on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, and within three hours both weekends were sold out.

With Radiohead making their long-awaited return to the desert for Coachella 2012, demand was higher than ever for the Springtime festival, which sees upward of 65,000 music fans a day flock to the polo fields of Indio, CA for an immersive art and live-music experience that spans rock, hip-hop, electro, indie and beyond. The festival will be expanded to two weekends this year, for the first time bringing all involved players out for an April 13-15 run, and back again for a April 20-22 repeat performance.
General admission tickets for both weekends, priced at $285 each, are now sold out, as are $665 VIP tickets, tent camping spots, and $100 VIP parking passes, according to the festival's website. Tent camping spots are also sold out for the second weekend. In short, if you haven't dished out the funds already, you may want to make other plans.
Tickets for Coachella were first made available for just a week in June of 2011, months before the lineup was announced. This year's Coachella lineup was announced Monday and includes headliners Radiohead, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and the Black Keys, along with pinch-me reunions of At The Drive-In and Refused. Check out the full Coachella 2012 lineup here.
Coachella's not the only highly sought-after fest on the calendar, either. Additionally, tickets to the Ultra Music Festival are completely sold out as well. The three-day event set for March 23-25 in Miami will include headlining sets from Tiesto, Kraftwerk, Justice, Avicii and David Guetta, among others.By Johnny firecloud

Van Halen Rocking NY

NEW YORK — They’ll be playing arenas when they tour next month, but last Thursday night, a regrouped Van Halen provided thrills in a tiny club where a VIP crowd stood elbow-to-elbow as the storied band played some of its greatest hits, including “Jump” and “Panama.”
“Welcome to Occupy Van Halen, ladies and gentleman!” frontman David Lee Roth yelled just before the band launched into “You Really Got Me,” the first in an hourlong, high-energy set.
The show was at the famed Café Wha? in New York’s West Village — a club owned by Manny Roth, the uncle of Roth.
David Lee Roth noted some of the greats that played in the club — including Bob Dylan — and told the crowd, “I’m more nervous about this gig than I would ever be in the Garden,” referring to Madison Square Garden.
The band soon will be playing the Garden and other venues like it, as it kicks off a nationwide tour next month. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers start the tour in Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 16, and will tour through June, hitting cities such as Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. They’ll also be promoting a new album: The group announced Wednesday that it’ll release “A Different Kind of Truth” on Feb. 7, the group’s first album with Roth since its celebrated album “1984,” released that same year.
Van Halen has gone through plenty of changes since then. Roth left the band for a solo career and was replaced with Sammy Hagar in a messy breakup; he later returned to the band as Hagar exited in a split that had just as much discord. There would be more turmoil as bassist Michael Anthony was replaced a few years ago with Wolfgang Van Halen, the son of guitar great Eddie Van Halen.
But it was all smiles last week, as father and son, along with Eddie’s brother and drummer Alex all were on hand as the reconstituted group played a warm-up of sorts before their nationwide tour, their first together in almost four years.
“This has been a really long time coming,” Roth told the audience.
The band hardly seemed rusty. Though his mic was weak, Roth’s voice wasn’t, as his signature screech was in top form, as was Eddie Van Halen’s scorching guitar play on songs like “Hot for Teacher” and “Dance the Night Away.”
Roth joked about the small size of the club: “The last time I stood on a stage this low, I had to get the car home by midnight.”
Later, he talked about how he used to wander through the club as a kid, dreaming of a chance to play on its stage.
“It took us 50 years to get this gig. It was easier to get in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame than to get this gig,” he said.
Roth’s uncle Manny, now 92, was in the audience, sitting next to John McEnroe, one of several luminaries in the crowd.

“It’s come full circle,” said a beaming David Lee Roth amid the audience’s cheers.BY NEKESA MUMBI MOODY

The Doors New Song Release Been 40 Years

The Doors will release their first new, unreleased track in 40 years on Monday to kick off the belated 40th anniversary of the band's landmark "L.A. Woman" album.

Lost track "She Smells So Nice," which "L.A. Woman" co-producer Bruce Botnick discovered while reviewing the album sessions for a remastered re-release project, will debut on the band 's Facebook.com page at noon EST a day before it is released to radio.

The tune kickstarts what is being called "The Year of The Doors" and will pre-empt a new DVD, "Mr. Mojo Risin': The Story of L.A. Woman" and the release of a 40th anniversary package featuring the remastered 1971 album and previously unreleased tunes from the recording session and alternate takes of classic tracks "L.A. Woman," "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm."

2011 Album Sales Up

(Reuters) - U.S. album sales rose in 2011 for the first time since 2004, partly reflecting cheaper album prices and special offers as well as a booming vinyl market, music industry analysts said on Wednesday.

Album sales grew by 1.4 percent to 330.6 million units in 2011 according to figures published in Billboard magazine, up from 326.2 million in 2010.

The small increase in the world's biggest music market will be welcome news to the industry after years of declining revenues.

"This can partially be due to aggressive pricing of albums in the marketplace, which are being priced a lot more economical for consumers, addressing their concerns that $10 for an album may be too expensive," Keith Caulfield, associate director of charts at Billboard.com told Reuters.

U.S. physical CD sales fell six percent last year, but the 20 percent increase in digital album downloads to a record 103.1 million more than made up for the losses, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Digital song sales grew 8.5 percent in 2011 to a record 1.27 billion downloads, compared with 1.17 billion in 2010.

Vinyl album sales soared to 3.9 million copies, versus 2.8 million in 2010. Caulfield called the growth in vinyl albums "crazy," attributing it to an "untapped market."

"It's reaching two kinds of consumers -- the older consumers who remember vinyls fondly and may even have turntables, and the younger consumers who can have a physical copy in hand and have that artwork to look at," he said.

ADELE TOPS ALBUM, SINGLES SALES

As expected, British singer Adele's "21" was the top-selling album in the United States last year at 5.82 million copies, the highest annual tally since Usher's "Confessions" sold 7.98 million copies in 2004.

"21" outsold the second-best selling album, Michael Buble's "Christmas" ($2.45 million), by more than two to one. Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," rapper Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter IV" and country singer Jason Aldean's "My Kinda Party" rounded out the five top-selling albums.

Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" was also the best-selling U.S. single of 2011 at 5.81 million downloads, followed by LMFAO's dance track "Party Rock Anthem," which clocked in at 5.47 million. They were the only two digital tracks to cross the 5 million milestone in any calendar year.

Katy Perry's "E.T.," Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" and Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" rounded out the top five digital songs of the year.

Jim Donio, president of the U.S. National Association of Recording Merchandisers, said the increase in album sales was due to a variety of reasons "including more aggressive marketing efforts and offers, availability and consumer adoption of legitimate digital commerce models (and) the power of social media."

In Britain by contrast, album sales fell 5.6 percent to 113.2 million in 2011, according to figures from industry body BPI. Digital album sales rose 26.6 percent while CD sales slumped 12.6 percent to 86.2 million.

Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, called on the British government to take tougher action against online piracy, the music industry's single biggest challenge.

"Unless decisive action is taken in 2012, investment in music could fall again -- a creative crunch that will destroy jobs and mean the next Adele may not get her chance to shine on the world stage," Taylor said.

Van Halen NYC TOM NIGHT Cafe Wha

Though nothing is official, word is the band are going to perform a 45-minute set. The group hasn't played in public since the end of their 2007/'08 reunion tour with original frontman David Lee Roth, though they have been rehearsing for their upcoming world tour at the Roxy in Los Angeles for the past few months. A new album is in the works, and a new image released by the band has the date 2.7.12 on it. A new video and single is expected to hit sometime this month. The tour goes on sale January 10th. The 250-seat Cafe Wha? may seem like an unlikely place for Van Halen to launch their new tour, but the club has an important family connection to Lee Roth. His uncle Manny Roth owned and operated the venue, providing a stage to then-up-and-coming acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Bill Cosby, Bob Dylan, Richard Pryor and many others. While the Van Halen camp has been extremely quiet about the band's plans for 2012, they recently put up a giant billboard in Times Square and teaser footage showing the band rehearsing at the Roxy. They have also given the fansite VHLinks two exclusive videos of the band reminiscing about Eddie Van Halen's old Volvo and judging wet T-shirt contests back in the seventies.The site also says that a "trusted source" tells them the band has been "busy booking rehearsal space and hotel rooms for the band and their crew for [this] week in NYC.source Rolling Stone