Brett Dennen's Hope For The Hopeless Tour

At each show, a portion of merchandise sold will benefit the Life is good Kids Foundation, which has donated more than $3 million to date to charities helping at-risk children across the country. - more on this story

the bird and the bee TV and Tour

PR reports: the bird and the bee have announced that they will hit the road for a short run of U.S. tour dates on the heels of the January 27 release of Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future, their second full-length album, which finds them charting new sonic terrain as they take their stylish '60s pop and Brazilian influence deeper into the psychedelic period of rock and the Tropicalia era.

the bird and the bee will also be making appearances on two major late night TV shows, performing January 26 on NBC's The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and February 4 on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Their 11-city tour kicks off in San Diego on February 5, includes a show in Los Angeles at the Natural History on February 6, and wraps up in New York at Carnegie Hall's intimate Zankel Hall as part of the WFUV Live at Zankel series on March 7. - more on this story

Attn iPhone Slackers

PR reports: Slacker, Inc. today announced the availability of the free Slacker Mobile application for iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod touch at the Apple iTunes App Store. The free application is available immediately by visiting www.Slacker.com from your iPhone.

iPhone and iPod touch users in the U.S. can now have a powerful and personalized listening and music discovery experience that lets anyone listen to over 100 expert-programmed Slacker stations, over 10,000 artist stations or a nearly unlimited number of the listener's own custom-created stations.

For the first time, iPhone and iPod touch owners can take advantage of Slacker's unique features for the ultimate in music discovery, such as artist biographies and album reviews, station fine tuning, "peek ahead" song previews and custom artist stations. In addition to marking songs as favorites, listeners can also ban songs and artists to create perfect custom radio stations on their iPhone. - more on this story

O'Death Is Coming

PR reports: Roots gypsies O'Death ring in the New Year with a new global tour. They will be supporting their third LP, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin, released October 28th on Kemado Records.

Like the sting of Earl Scruggs drunk on Gogol Bordello's whiskey flask, O'Death will leave you craving for more.

The quintet, vocalist/guitarist Greg Jamie, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Gabe Darling, fiddle player Bob Pycior, bassist Newman and drummer David Rogers-Berry, has evolved the possessed Americana-meets-gypsy-punk of recent years into a more urgent, unrelenting celebration of life, death and everything in between. - more on this story

Motown Records 50th Anniversary Podcast Series

PR reports: The legendary Motown Records celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with a series of promotions and releases from Berry Gordy's groundbreaking company and Universal Music Enterprises, including a series of online podcasts featuring rare and intimate conversations with the label's legends, producers, songwriters and singers, which started on Monday, Jan. 12 at www.classic.motown.com. The podcasts are also available on iTunes.

The year-long series of episodes gets underway with an interview featuring Smokey Robinson reflecting on Motown's early days, his relationship with Gordy and the impact the label has had on American culture.

Fresh episodes will debut bi-weekly, including those with founder Berry Gordy; Nick Cannon; the late Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops; The New York Times columnist Frank Rich; Smokey Robinson detailing the genesis of "Shop Around," the label's first million-seller; the Temptations' Otis Williams and the late Melvin Franklin; Stevie Wonder; Levi Stubbs and Lamont Dozier (of H-D-H fame) discussing "Reach Out I'll Be There"; KCRW's Garth Trinidad; Diana Ross; songwriters Pam Sawyer and Marilyn McLeod on the creation of Ross's hit "Love Hangover"; hip-hop pioneer and Universal Motown artist Q-Tip; Smokey Robinson and more of the Miracles; and songwriter/producer Dozier. - more on this story

Cauldron Set Release

Abuse of Caps Lock Records reports: CAULDRON, who recently signed a multi-album, worldwide deal with Earache Records, have finished work on their debut album, CHAINED TO THE NITE.

CAULDRON singer JASON DECAY comments: "That's f**ken rite, she's all done, mixed up and almost ready to go, we're just waiting on the mastering which should take place this week sometime, so we should have a new tune or two up on the myspace by the end of next week! In the meantime, you can check out one of the tracks featured on the Heavy Metal Killers comp."
- more on this story

Jaguar This Time Again

MMP reports: Metal Mind Productions will rerelease Jaguar's "This Time" on 19th January in Europe and 10th March in USA (via MVD). New digipak edition includes 4 bonus tracks (demo, live and remix) and is limited to 2000 copies. Digitally remastered using 24-Bit process on a golden disc.

Lost heroes? Living legends? Heavy metal veterans. All these phrases can used with Jaguar, the classic metal formation that stormed the British charts in the early 80's. Being a part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement, the band quickly gathered a large group of fans, selling thousands of records in England alone. Their career came to a halt after 1985, when the group decided to retire from the music scene.

Thankfully Jaguar returned years later to reclaim their rightful place among heavy metal heroes. "This Time" is one of the most important albums from the band's early period – it's both an artistic experiment, as well as a truly magnificent collaboration of glam rock and heavy metal. - more on this story

Lotus Hitting The Road

PR reports: Lotus hits the road this winter for a run of shows in the country's southeastern states. The tour comes on the heels of a huge year for Lotus, one that offered widespread exposure for their new album Hammerstrike and massive growth for the band.

The band's 2008 successes, including a coveted cover story in Pollstar Magazine and sold out shows from coast to coast, haven't distracted these humble musicians with Mennonite roots.

Lotus' most recent album, Hammerstrike (released in October 2008), finds the band reaching back in order to move forward. Primarily recorded live in one room to analog tape by Bill Moriarty (Dr. Dog, Man Man), the album captures a sound that harkens back to the 70's but never slips into nostalgic retreads. - more on this story

Talking Cerbero

PR reports: The latest episode of "Talking Metal" hosted by Mark Strigl, John Ostronomy, and guest co-host, Dan Lorenzo (The Cursed, Hades, Non-Fiction), features an interview Strigl conducted with Marco and Carlo Tonalezzi of the first Brazilian Metal band, Cerbero.

Topics include Screaming Metal (theTalkng Metal band), New Jersey's Dingbatz, Hades, Amon Amarth, Howard Stern, the Metal Nurse, and Talking Metal listeners Zman and Bert Gabriel. The podcast can be downloaded at this - location

Lisa Hannigan Announce First U.S. Headlining Tour

PR reports: Lisa Hannigan confirms her first headlining U.S. tour. Beginning February 11 on the West Coast, the tour includes stops at Los Angeles's Troubadour on February 21 and New York City's Highline Ballroom on March 7.

Hannigan's much anticipated solo debut Sea Sew will be released February 3 on ATO Records. The album is already in frequent rotation at taste-maker radio station KCRW and has earned early praise from The Los Angeles Times, which calls it "charmingly idiosyncratic."

Hannigan's chance meeting with acclaimed singer-songwriter Damien Rice led to a long period of collaboration and development. From the outset, Hannigan quickly generated attention for her own vocal performances and spent the subsequent few years touring the world, playing sell-out shows at Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre. She contributed significantly to Rice's platinum-selling debut O and critically lauded follow-up 9. - more on this story

Ray Charles Digital America the Beautiful Single

PR reports: Concord Music Group today announced that it will digitally release Ray Charles' signature rendition of "America the Beautiful" on January 20, Inauguration Day in America. The song, offered digitally for the first time, will be made available via all digital music retailers.

Charles recorded "America the Beautiful" in 1972 at his landmark Los Angeles recording studio, R.P.M. for his A Message From the People album. His interpretation became the archetype and remained a permanent staple of his performance repertoire for the remainder of his career.

According to Charles' biographer David Ritz, "Ray didn't love the song at first. It's a patriotic song, coming from a place of pain and struggle. He was reluctant to tackle it unless he could infuse it with his singular bluesy style. He took an American classic composition, found its essential soul, changing it in such a radical way that most people now think of his version first before all others." - more on this story

. Supersuckers - Get It Together

That's right. Supersuckers is back with the first album since the excellent Motherf***ers Be Trippin'. One thing I can say for sure is that I know what to expect from a new Supersuckers album: a lot of hard-hitting straightforward rock n roll tunes. (4.5 stars) - Read the full Supersuckers - Get It Together review

. Bruce Springsteen Month: Born in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A. is a buffet of styles and songs that rock out without common ground. However, in the end, sometimes rock n' roll is best served at its most rocking and resounding and Born in the U.S.A is the filet mignon of rock records (4 stars) - Read the full Bruce Springsteen Month: Born in the U.S.A. review

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