RANT - TIAGO IORC, COLDPLAY, ABC NEWS:

I realize my blog probably doesn't have that many people reading it but it still annoys me to see some other bloggers using the same information I post a few days after I do. Cool bloggers would say, hey go over and check KulPop's blog for his posting on the Thompson Twins etc., the loser ones just take the information and post it as if they discovered the information themselves, and that just pisses me off. I'll take the high road and not mention any names or post in their comments section, they probably know who they are anyway.















I recently heard the new album 'Let Yourself In' from Brazilian singer Tiago Iorc who I had never heard of before. The song 'Nothing But A Song' is a nice mellow pop tune that might appeal to fans of Teddy Geiger, (MP3 up for one week). Speaking of Geiger, he continues to work on his new album according to his website.

I wasn't overly thrilled with the new Coldplay single 'Violet Hill' but hearing the tracks 'Viva la Vida' and 'Lost' renew my faith in the band and will ensure that I pick up the cd when it is released in June.

Over at Martin Fry's ABC website they have new concert dates for the Steel City Tour. This is a tour with the bands Heaven 17, ABC and The Human League. All dates are in the U.K. in December, should be a fun time.

1 Dec 2008, Newcastle Academy
3 Dec 2008, Nottingham Royal Concert Hall
4 Dec 2008, Liverpool Echo Arena
5 Dec 2008, Brighton Centre
6 Dec 2008, Bournemouth Arena
8 Dec 2008, London Hammersmith Apollo
10 Dec 2008, Manchester Apollo
11 Dec 2008, Wolverhampton Civic
13 Dec 2008, Sheffield Hallam FM Arena
.

VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:





You can vote for what bands you would like to see on the 2009 Regeneration Tour here (lower right side of screen), currently The Thompson Twins are leading with 13% of the vote.




Speaking of The Thompson Twins there is now an on-line petition set up to try and convince the band's record labels to release some rarities collections, go here to sign your name. It appears that Tom Bailey is on board and willing to help search the archives for cool rarities, let's hope this becomes a reality. I believe the recent reissues of 'Quick Step & Side Kick' and 'Into The Gap' have sold fairly well, maybe that will help BMG and Warners to work together on this project.

Love the song 'Breathe' by Schiller featuring September (Petra Marklund), getting a lot of plays on my iTunes.

Imogen Heap has video blog #22 up on YouTube.

You can download the fun track 'Version' by Plimsouls over at Ohh! Crapp.

Enjoying the Ferras album "Aliens & Rainbows" that I had to download as for some reason the release in Canada won't happen until the end of May. He appears to have a new website now and hopefully he will do a proper tour soon.

I may be going to see Duran Duran at the end of the month. I saw one of their smaller club shows a few years back which was great. The new album is just okay, I hope they don't focus too much on that material and focus on the back catalogue.

ABC's new album 'Traffic' is now set for release on April 28th in the U.K. The first single 'The Very First Time is currently Number 2 on the 7Digital singles chart, right behind Madonna's 4 Minutes.

Enjoying the new sound Jesse McCartney has on the single Leavin' and leaked tracks from his forthcoming album "Departure" due out in May, hopefully he will enjoy some more success after the last album's less than stellar performance.

Still no sign of The Feeling having their second album "Join With Us" released in North America, a real shame that their label seemed to have little success breaking them here. Now to track down the 'Without You' cd single b-sides!

Ashton Kutcher hosts and musical guest Gnarls Barkley on tonight's new Saturday Night Live on NBC.

.

FIVE TIMES AUGUST & VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:


I just discovered the band Five Times August who have just released a new cd titled 'Brighter Side' The band is really singer-songwriter Brad Skistimas from Dallas Texas. He just finished touring with Matt White and will be touring opening for Dashboard Confessional and Augustana in the coming months. Acoustic pop rock tracks make up the album, kind of Jason Mraz meets Matt Nathanson, the first single is 'The Good Life' - MP3 is up for one week. You can watch the music video for the single on YouTube. You can also listen to some more songs on Brad's MySpace site.

The auditions for 'So You Think You Can Dance Canada' start this coming week in Vancouver. Good news is that Mary Murphy from the U.S. version will be doing some guest judging, pity they couldn't have got her for the whole series. The worst news is that Much Music V.J. Leah Miller is hosting the series. I don't think she is very good the times I've seen her on the music video station, and a recent Spring Break special shot in Cancun really made me dislike her skanky personality. They have been running television ads for the series and auditions using the Tiga song 'You Gonna Want Me' that are cool (video on YouTube).

The cheapest place I've found to order the new ABC cd 'Traffic' is CD WOW for 8.99 pounds. I've never ordered from them before but may for this cd, free worldwide shipping also.

I've tried to upload the Alex Sadkin produced 12" version of The Thompson Twins single 'Lay Your Hands On Me' to YouSendIt but my MAC is always giving me a Safari error. Maybe they have something installed to make sure any iTunes M4A's can't be uploaded to file sharing sites, sorry XOLondon, I'll see if I can make it available somehow.

** UPDATE **

I tried again and was successful in getting the Alex Sadkin produced 12" version of The Thompson Twins single 'Lay Your Hands On Me' up for downloading, the MP3 should be there for a week, enjoy.

.

IDOL THOUGHTS & VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:







- Was disappointed to see Danny Noriega eliminated last week (it looks like he was in the audience last night as Ramiele Malubay's 'Bestfriend'). See his appearance on The Ellen Show here.
- I enjoyed Brooke White's version of "Love Is A Battlefield" last week also.
- David Archuletta was feeling the pressure this week, hopefully he won't mess up big time and get voted off as most people have him pegged to win the whole thing.









- Howard Jones has just created an electronic duo stage show that means he can bring his electronic gigs to America with greater ease (recently he's been performing mostly acoustic shows with guitarist Robin Boult.) He has got four dates in America in July with this new set up and they should be cool shows. If you go to his website and listen to his latest podcast you can hear some of the samples that his can create with the new Roland Fantom X-8 keyboard that he is using (along with keyboard and electronics wizard Robbie Bronnimann) on this tour and they sound fantastic. Hoping that a Vancouver show can be arranged since he will be close by in California already.

- Update - See Howard performing with Robbie in the new electronic duo set up at The Roland Electro-Pop Night 2008 by clicking here.

- Martin Fry recently played some concerts in Ontario Canada with a full orchestra, click here for a review of the show. Still no exact release date for ABC's new cd titled 'Traffic', website is still saying in March.

- You can listen to Imogen Heap talking about Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' album here.

- Check out an interview with Teitur here, still no Vancouver tour date.

- Nick Heyward's son Oliver has a MySpace site with some of his musical compositions available to listen to.

- Cinnamon Melts amazing, Vanilla Frosty not so good.

VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:














Missy Higgins is a young Australian singer that I've heard things about over the last few years but never fully checked her music out. Her first album 'The Sound Of White' was released back in 2004 and she has a new album titled 'On A Clear Night' is due out in the U.S. on February 26th. I quite like the song 'Where I Stood' (MP3 up for 1 week) from her new album, it has appeared on several U.S. television shows recently. She is playing Vancouver in February so I may go to the show.

The ABC website now says their new cd "Traffic" will be out in March, it had previously listed February 4th as the release date in the U.K. If anyone is going to Martin's shows in Ontario in late February/early March please let me know, would like to hear about how they go and if any of them are filmed.

Green Gartside is busy working on the follow up to Scritti Politti's last album "White Bread Black Beer", as well as working with Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip on a collabrative project. No word on whether or not David Gamson and Fred Maher are involved as was alluded to in the past that they would all reunite on the next Scritti album.

If anyone out there happens to be in contact with Viv Tayler (Vivienne Tayler) in the U.K. (she may now have a different last name) who ran TeeFax in the 80's let me know, I hope she is well and enjoying life.

VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES:













I'm started to get concerned about what appears to be the absolute lack of promotion for the forthcoming ABC album titled "Traffic". The ABC website mentions that it is due out in the U.K. on February 4th but I've yet to find a website that is selling the cd (or taking pre-orders). I recently emailed their management and never heard back. I don't know what label is releasing the cd or if Martin is pressing it up by himself. I remember speaking to the guy selling the merchandise at ABC's Toronto gig back in 2006 and he said they were waiting to try and get it released on a major label so it would be promoted properly, that doesn't appear to be the case.

I'm really enjoying the Tigercity track "Powerstripe" (from their EP "Pretend Not To Love") mentioned on lots of blogs recently, a great 80's feel, and the vocalist at times sounds like Gerald Eaton from the Canadian band "The Philosopher Kings".

Also liking the "Ghosts" cd "The World Is Outside" and the song "Dark Blue" by "Jack's Mannequin". You can check out the video for the song here.


















You have no doubt heard the song "Pictures Of You" (video) by "The Last Goodnight". I checked out their entire cd "Poison Kiss" and it is actually very good. They definitely have a Maroon 5/Blue October vibe, but on the song "Back Where We Belong " they remind me a lot of "The Feeling" out of the U.K. (MP3 up for one week, or check it out on their MySpace page).

Speaking of "The Feeling", they have a new look to their website and the release date for their new cd "Join With Us" nears in the U.K. (and will be released as a 2 cd limited edition version also). The bad news is that the album doesn't appear to be getting a North American release at the same time as the U.K. If the cd ends up not getting released in North America that will probably mean the chances of fans getting to see them in concert again over here is slim. I'm glad I was at their gig opening for The Fray in Toronto and that I got to meet them when I did as I may never have the chance again.

I've always enjoyed Matt Nathanson's work (he puts on a great live show) and like the song "All We Are" from his new album "Some Mad Hope", worth checking out. Click here to see Matt perform the song acoustically at a Borders store.













As far as the television landscape goes, I'm enjoying the "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" series, "Prison Break" is back as is "October Road", and we got two episodes of the quirky and fun "Chuck" this week, and looking forward to "Jericho" returning on February 12th. I may also check out "LOST" when it returns next week but I'm not sure if I will enjoy another season of it. I checked out the premiere episodes of two AMC shows last week, the Golden Globe winning "Mad Men" and the new series "Breaking Bad". To be honest neither of the shows grabbed me, I'll give them a few more episodes before I throw in the towel on them (it was nice though to see Northern Expsoure's John Cullum back on the small screen in Mad Men). I unfortunately saw a few minutes of what has to be the worst game show ever "The Moment Of Truth" on FOX this week, change the channel if it comes on your television screen.

NEW ABC ALBUM 'TRAFFIC' AND POSSIBLE CANADIAN SHOWS:












Sorry for the lack of posts, I was away for Christmas holidays and before that I was also pondering whether or not I should continue the blog as with no recent comments I doubt many people are reading it anyway. If I can get some extra time to make more frequent and hopefully interesting posts I will and hope people find the blog.

ABC (Martin Fry) is releasing the band's new album Traffic on February 4th in the U.K. with other countries to follow. The first single "The Very First Time' can be heard on the band's MySpace page and sounds great with many classic ABC strings in the mix. This shouldn't be surprising due to the fact that Gary Langan (who worked on The Lexicon of Love and Beauty Stab) produced the new record. The most intriguing note on the website is a live dates listing - February/March, 2008 Canada. I saw them in Toronto back in 2006 and they put on a great show.

UPDATE: Details on Martin's shows in Canada-

Feb 29th and March 1st Martin Fry will be appearing with an Orchestra performing ABC’s greatest hits in Ontario, Canada.
Location: Centennial Hall, London, Ontario with the Orchestra London Canada.

March 5th and 6th the show moves to Kitchener, Canada.
Location: Centre In The Square, Kitchener, Ontario with the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony.