04 January 2012
VVN Music
Patti Smith will be including a tribute to Amy Winehouse on her next album. According to an interview in Uncut magazine, Smith wrote a poem for Winehouse last year when she died and set it to music while working on the new set. "The little song for Amy just blossomed in the studio. We were at Electric Lady doing a whole other song and I wrote Amy a little poem when she died and my bass player, Tony Shanahan, wrote a piece of music and the two matched perfectly."
Also in the latest Uncut, Creedence Clearwater members Doug Cook and Stu Clifford say there will never be a reunion with former lead John Fogerty.
Last year, Fogerty opened the door to discussions of a reunion, but Cook says it's too late. "Leopards don't change their spots. This is just an image-polishing exercise by John. My phone certainly hasn't rung. It might have been a nice idea 20 years ago, but it's too late."
The fourth member of the original group, Tom Fogerty, passed away in 1990.
Two years ago, Don Cheadle announced he was going to direct and star in a film about Miles Davis. That project is finally starting to move forward but it is hardly your standard biopic. Cheadle's vision is to focus on Davis in 1979 when he took a break from the music business. In effect, it looks to be a speculation on what Davis was doing during this time.
Cheadle told the Wall Street journal "It's not a biopic, per se. It's a gangster pic. It's a movie Miles Davis would have wanted to star in."
A more conventional biopic is in the works from George Tillman, Jr. based on Davis' son's memoir of his father.
Adrian Smith, guitarist for Iron Maiden, has formed a new group with Mikee Goodman of Sikth called Primal Rock Rebellion. Their first album will be out in February through Spinefarm.
In the 25 year history of the Billboard Latin Song chart, only ten songs had debuted at number 1 and never one by a female vocalist until this week. Gloria Estefan's Hotel Nacional premiers at the top of the chart, breaking the quarter century drought.
70's hitmakers Smokie (Living Next Door to Alice) had a high-profile show on December 30. They played the Kremlin in Moscow for Dimitry Medvedev, Vladamir Putin and a couple hundred invited guest. The four-song set was at the invitation of Medvedev who is evidently a big fan.
