Bulletins

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  Oct 08, 03:15 PM

  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Announces 2008 American Music Masters® Tribute Concert Lineup

  Richie Sambora, Billy Gibbons, Slash and the Ventures among those will play to honor the legendary honoree Les Paul

  
  CLEVELAND - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Case Western Reserve University and Gibson Guitar will honor the extraordinary Les Paul with a tribute concert lineup that befits this musical legend. The tribute concert lineup includes Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees: James Burton, Billy Gibbons and the Ventures along with Jennifer Batten, Dennis Coffey, Lenny Kaye, Steve Lukather, Barbara Lynn, Alannah Myles, Richie Sambora and Slash.

   

  The 13th annual American Music Masters tribute concert will take place on Saturday, November 15, at 8 p.m. at PlayhouseSquare's State Theater.
  Tickets are $30, $40 and $50 and can be purchased at playhousesquare.org and at the PlayhouseSquare box office (216) 241-6000 or by visiting www.rockhall.com . A limited number of Rock Hall VIP event packages (priced at $250 and $500) are available by calling (216) 515-1207.

   

  This once-in-a-lifetime concert features an all-star lineup of artists who will perform to honor the legendary inventor and musician known as Les Paul. This event also tells the story of Paul's life and legacy through multimedia and special tributes. Please visit www.rockhall.comfor updated information about the concert, the weeklong series of events and for more information about Les Paul. Don't miss this chance to witness a guitar fest for the ages.

   

  Community partner Cuyahoga County Public Library invites Les Paul's friends and fans to post and share tributes and stories using the latest technologies by visiting conTRIBUTE at www.rockhall.com . The site will go live on October 20. This partnership with the library allows people near and far to post written, video or photograph accolades and to share their anecdotes about Paul's impact. The testimonials will be permanently housed in the Rock Hall's Library and Archives scheduled to open to the public in 2010.

   

  The complete weeklong series of events will be announced shortly.

   

  About the American Music Masters® series
  The American Music Masters® series, a co-production of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, celebrates the lives and careers of artists who changed the shape and sound of American culture. Each year, the series explores the legacy of one of those pioneering figures in a range of events that includes Museum exhibits, lectures, films, a major conference and a tribute concert benefiting the Rock Hall's Education Department. Drawing together experts, artists, fans and friends, these events aim to provide new perspectives on some of the most beloved and influential musicians of the past century.

   

  The American Music Masters® series began in 1996 when the museum paid tribute to Woody Guthrie with a 10-day celebration of his life and legacy. Other American Music Masters® series honorees have included: the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers in 1997; blues legend, Robert Johnson in 1998; rhythm and blues pioneer, Louis Jordan in 1999; the legendary Muddy Waters in 2000; the "Empress" Bessie Smith in 2001; Hank Williams, the first country western superstar in 2002; Buddy Holly in 2003; folk-blues artist Lead Belly in 2004; Sam Cooke in 2005; Roy Orbison in 2006; and Jerry Lee Lewis in 2007. Artists who have performed at American Music Masters® include Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello, Aretha Franklin, Chrissie Hynde, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.

   

  About the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is the nonprofit organization that exists to educate visitors, fans and scholars from around the world about the history and continuing significance of rock and roll music. It carries out this mission both through its operation of a world-class museum that collects, preserves, exhibits and interprets this art form and through its library and archives as well as its educational programs.

   

  The Museum is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. On Wednesdays, the Museum is open until 9 p.m. Museum admission is $22 for adults, $17 for seniors (65+), $13 for youth (9-12), $18 for adult residents of Greater Cleveland. Children under 8 and Museum members are free. The Museum is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. When you become a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the world of rock and roll becomes yours to explore. Call 216.515.1939 for information on becoming a member. For general inquiries, please call 216.781.ROCK or visit www.rockhall.com.

   

  About Gibson Guitar
  Gibson is known worldwide for producing classic models in every major style of fretted instrument, including acoustic and electric guitars, mandolins, and banjos. Gibson's HD.6X-PRO Digital Guitar and the Gibson Robot Guitar represent the biggest advances in electric guitar design in over 70 years. Founded in 1894 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and headquartered in Nashville since 1984, Gibson Guitar Corp.'s family of brands now includes Epiphone, Dobro,Kramer, Steinberger, Tobias, Echoplex, Electar, Flatiron, Slingerland, Valley Arts, Maestro, Oberheim, Sunshine Piano, Take Anywhere Technology, Baldwin, J&C Fischer, Chickering, Hamilton, and Wurlitzer. Visit Gibson's website at www.gibson.comor www.gibson.com/press

   
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  Sep 28, 07:22 PM

  Apply Now for The Bon Jovi MasterCard® Credit Card With WorldPoints® Rewards!

  
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  Sep 24, 11:30 AM

  India to host 2008 LIVE EARTH event to raise awareness for climate in crisis

  

  Mumbai, India (September 18, 2008) - On December 7, 2008, Live Earth India, this year's concert for a climate in crisis, will feature world-renowned musicians and performers, environmental advocates and celebrities from India, the U.S. and all over the globe. Live Earth India will feature personal and policy solutions to the climate crisis, offer support for India's most important environmental issues and causes, and provide a platform so India can continue its global climate leadership. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who participated in the press announcement live via satellite, said India should lead the world by committing to produce all of its new energy in the electricity sector from clean and renewable sources within the next 10 years. Beneficiaries of Live Earth India include TERI's Light A Billion Lives campaign and Climate Project India, which are dedicated to promoting awareness and finding solutions to current climate situations while alleviating poverty. Along with Mr. Gore, Indian environmental leader Dr. R. K. Pachauri, former 2007 Live Earth headlining band and current headlining band for Live Earth India - Bon Jovi, as well as Live Earth India spokesperson and actor Amitabh Bachchan, all announced Live Earth India with Executive Producer and Live Earth founder Kevin Wall . Also in attendance were Sabbas Joseph from WizCraft Entertainment and representatives from TERI and Project Climate India. In a surprise announcement Kevin Wall disclosed that the Creative Director for Live Earth India was none other than acclaimed Indian film director and producer Shekhar Kapur. Live Earth India is coming to Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai, India, December 7, 2008.

  "Live Earth's mission is to cultivate grassroots and worldwide awareness of and solutions for environmental issues that affect us all. Awareness activates change and important issues deserve a global platform," said Kevin Wall, founder of Live Earth. "That's why the stage for Live Earth India will host some of the biggest artists from India to the U.S. and beyond, while we bring India to the world. And the world has a lot to learn from traditional Indian culture about sustainability."

  "India will be among the leading powers of the global economy in the coming decades," said former Vice President Al Gore. "As a democracy that is looked up to by many nations, especially for its commitment to inclusive growth for its diverse peoples, India has a major role to play in leadership by example for the climate crisis and sustainable development. Kevin and I are honored to bring Live Earth to India.

   
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  Sep 04, 03:37 PM

  'Memphis' captures rock's roots at the La Jolla Playhouse

  

  The musical by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan and theater veteran Joe DiPietro takes on the story of color-barrier-breaking DJ Dewey Phillips.

  By Mike Boehm
  Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
  
  August 31, 2008
  
  LA JOLLA, CALIF. -- "JERSEY BOYS," the show, came off well for the La Jolla Playhouse. The rock 'n' roll bio-play about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons opened late in 2004 and soon after moved to Broadway, where it won a Tony Award for best musical and looks to keep playing to packed houses into the next decade.
  
  Now La Jolla has the not-quite-sequel: Jersey Boys, the partnership -- Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, a writer-composer team of 46-year-olds who, on the face of it, are one of the oddest theatrical couplings since Neil Simon thought up Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar.
  
  Their show, "Memphis," tells how black rhythm and blues music began to reach white listeners on Southern airwaves during the early 1950s. First produced five years ago in Boston and the Bay Area, it's having a retooled staging in La Jolla.
  
  DiPietro, the word guy, is from Oradell in north Jersey. He has close-cropped hair, wears scuffed sandals and was stage-struck from the moment the lights went up on "1776," his first show as a kid. His calling card: “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” a revue about modern romance that closed July 27 after 12 years and 5,003 New York performances -- second only to "The Fantasticks" among off-Broadway musicals.
  
  The music man is Bryan. Born David Bryan Rashbaum, he's from Edison, about 35 miles south of Oradell as the Garden State Parkway flies -- or crawls. His hair is blond and ringleted, like Robert Plant's, and he's outfitted in a "Hellbound" motorcycle T-shirt, black-and-white tennis shoes printed with skulls, and a gold peace sign necklace. He saw a school production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" -- pretty much his only theatrical encounter until he was almost 40. His calling card: a quarter-century of playing keyboards and singing backup vocals in the pop-metal band Bon Jovi.
  
  So, can these guys really function together? Well, listen to them talk about the creation of "Underground," the gospel-fired opening number from "Memphis" -- the first of three musicals they've worked on since discovering about seven years ago that they were creative soul mates.
  
  It happened this year, while they were in preliminary rehearsals for “The Toxic Avenger,” a musical they've adapted from a 1985 B-movie horror film for the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., where it premieres this fall. Bryan was on rock 'n' roll time -- running a little bit late -- as he drove to the theater.
  
  "I'd seen the set for 'Memphis,' " he begins, "and they'd put the club in the opening scene underground. And I thought, 'Underground, that's great.' And as I'm driving, I wrote the song. I called Joe from the car: 'I got it! I got it!' He said . . ."
  
  "I said, 'Write it down! Write it down! You're gonna lose it!' " DiPietro says, following on cue.
  
  "I sang it to my answering machine at home, so I didn't lose it. We walked in . . . "
  
  " 'Everybody take five,' " DiPietro continues. " 'Get away for a minute, be quiet.' "
  
  "We went right to the piano, and -- bang -- we wrote it," Bryan says.
  
  "It took five minutes," DiPietro says
  
  
  
  A creative match
  
  BESIDES being able to make songs flow in a twinkling, "Memphis" director Christopher Ashley notes, DiPietro and Bryan hang tight when collaborating becomes more knotty. "They can talk about the tough stuff," says Ashley, artistic director at the La Jolla Playhouse. "They can say, 'I really don't like that' to each other, and it's not, 'Oh my gosh, he really doesn't like my work.' "
  
  The partnership's beginning was more organic and accidental than arranged.
  
  In 1999, George W. George, an independent stage and film producer ("My Dinner With Andre"), had an idea for a musical based on the life of Dewey Phillips, a white Memphis disc jockey who crossed the airwaves' color barrier during the early 1950s, building a mass white audience for black music. He became the first DJ to spin an Elvis Presley record but self-destructed and wound up a small footnote to rock history.
  
  DiPietro, a fan of early rock, wrote a script and lyrics, then began looking for a composer. "I thought, 'I would love a rock 'n' roll guy to write this, but I know zero rock 'n' roll guys.' I gave it to my agent, and it went out into the black hole, or wherever agents send scripts."
  
  Cut to Bryan, pedaling through his morning Lifecycle routine out by the pool behind his home in Colts Neck, N.J., while he reads the "Memphis" script. Since the late 1990s he had branched out, honing his song craftsmanship by collaborating with writers outside Bon Jovi; that led to a solo gig writing songs for an unproduced musical based on "Sweet Valley High," a book series about twin teenage girls. Sweating and reading, "I heard every one of the songs that was there, heard the finished product."
  
  OK, DiPietro said, when Bryan called and promised he could do the show justice. Put music to one of the lyrics, and we'll see. Within a day, the rocker had written and demoed "Music of My Soul," and taken the CD to Federal Express so DiPietro would get it at home in Manhattan the next day.
  
  Recalls DiPietro: "I listened to the song once, and I said, 'I hope he's not crazy, because this is the guy.' "
  
  When "Memphis" premiered in 2003 at North Shore Music Theatre in Massachusetts, Bryan suffered the stage jitters -- and caught the theater bug -- during a first preview attended mostly by older folks. "I literally had to move a stack of walkers over to sit down. I felt powerless. I look and say, 'We're going to get killed. It's going to be too loud, and they're going to hate it, it's just going to be so wrong.' " As it turned out, "By the end they were up and clapping and singing. The thing I forgot was that it was their time -- the 70-year-olds were 20 in 1950."
  
  At first, "Memphis" languished as producer George tried unsuccessfully to find backers for a New York run (he died last November at 87). DiPietro and Bryan knew other producers were eager to jump in when George's option ran out, and they bided their time writing "The Toxic Avenger" and getting started on a third show, tentatively called "Chasing the Song," a fictional account of Brill Building-type songwriters in the early 1960s.
  
  Now "Memphis" has a new life, in a co-production by the La Jolla Playhouse and the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, where it is scheduled to open in January. In the lead role is Chad Kimball, whose credits include inhabiting a cow suit as Milky-White in "Into the Woods" at the Ahmanson in 2002 and starring on Broadway as John Lennon in "Lennon."
  
  While grounded in rock, R&B and gospel, the show's songs are contemporary, not '50s period pieces, the co-creators say. The goal is to capture the exhilaration and sense of discovery generated by early rock 'n' roll -- while also dealing with racial boundaries that were not ready to fall, and with the self-defeating qualities DiPietro thinks are intermingled in rebels driven enough to be boundary-breakers.
  
  
  
  Juggling acts
  
  REHEARSALS were well along in La Jolla before Bryan finished a Bon Jovi tour and was able to leap in. Back in theater mode during a recent rehearsal, he watched the cast of more than 20 actors work up the show's rousing finale, then gave detailed suggestions, never letting go of an impish grin. "Let it rip like crazy," he urged, calling for a big, gospel-style, note-bending improvisational blowout of voices at the end.
  
  DiPietro also has other gigs. He reports that "Nice Work If You Can Get It," his musical built around songs by George and Ira Gershwin, is in limbo for now after "a big fallout" among the original producers; Harry Connick Jr., had been announced to star as a Prohibition-era playboy. But DiPietro is pleased with the London reception last spring for his new drama about gay men's sexuality -- a show whose title is both succinctly descriptive and baldly obscene.
  
  As their improbable Jersey connection continues, Bryan, impatient with musical-theater timetables, pronounces himself reborn to run with the partnership: "I said to Joe, 'Look, if it takes anywhere from five to eight years to go from script to getting it onstage, that's like seven more shows and I'm dead.' We've got more in us than that, so we'd better start leapfrogging the stuff."
  
  mike.boehm@latimes.com
  
  "Memphis," La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 28. $42 to $75. (858) 550-1010.

   
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  Sep 03, 01:19 PM

  Jon Bon Jovi Helps Build Housing For Poor Families

  Click Here:

  
  

  

  
  

  One of New Jersey's best-known rock 'n' rollers has teamed up with the states largest city. CBS 2's Scott Rapoport reports.
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  Sep 03, 01:11 PM

  Jon Bon Jovi Helps House the Needy

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  MyFoxNY.com -- New Jersey-born rocker Jon Bon Jovi is giving back to his state. His foundation has donated $1 million to help build an affordable housing development in Newark. The apartments will house homeless people with special needs, such as AIDS/HIV patients.