Photo by Barry Plummer
The biggest names in classic rock gather together to pay homage to the Lizard King and his riders on the storm, The Doors!
Features superb performances by members of Deep Purple, Foreigner, Yes, Rainbow, Mountain, Moody Blues, and ELP plus Edgar Winter, Chris Spedding, Todd Rundgren, David Johansen and more!
Includes innovative renditions of all of the Doors’ very best songs including “Light My Fire,†“Riders On The Storm,†“Break On Through (To The Other Side),†“Love Her Madly,†“L.A. Woman,†“People Are Strange,†and lots more!
Available on both digipak CD and limited edition GREEN vinyl!
Featuring: Patrick Moraz, Lou Gramm, Leslie West, Mike Stein, Mick Box, Joe Lynn Turner, Edgar Winter, Keith Emerson, David Johansen, Jordan Rudess, Steve Morse, Graham Bonnet, Steve Hillage, Ken Hensley, Roye Albrighton, Eric Martin, Elliot Easton, Todd Rundgren, Geoff Downes, Mark Farner, Ian Gillan, Rick Wakeman, Pat Travers, Billy Sherwood
*Produced by Billy Sherwood
From the producer of the groundbreaking Pink Floyd tribute albums Back Against The Wall and Return To The Dark Side Of The Moon (over 75,000 units sold) comes this musical celebration of one of the most important bands of Progressive, Art Rock music – Supertramp!
Includes exclusive new covers of the band’s biggest hit singles “The Logical Song,†“Take The Long Way Home,†and “Give A Little Bit†PLUS fan favorites “Breakfast In America,†“Crime Of The Century,†“Bloody Well Right†and more!
Features members of Asia, Yes, King Crimson, The Doors, Deep Purple, XTC, Toto, Mr. Mister, Dream Theater, Nektar, Porcupine Tree, Gentle Giant, Renaissance, Rainbow & more!
Available on CD in a special limited edition digipak (only 600 made) and limited edition BLUE vinyl (only 300 made)!
Photo by Barry Plummer
Nik Turner, founding member of Hawkwind who contributed saxophone, flute and vocals to the group’s first seven albums as well as co-writing some of their most beloved songs, passed away in the evening of November 10th.
His family posted this message earlier today:
We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Nik Turner – The Might Thunder Rider, who passed away peacefully at home on Thursday evening. He has moved onto the next phase of his Cosmic Journey, guided by the love of his family, friends and fans.
Turner was simply one of the most creative minds of his generation. His tenure with Hawkwind was just the beginning of his journey to the outer reaches of the rock music universe as Turner would go on to release an astoundingly adventurous and diverse catalog of solo albums as well. His collaborations with everyone from UK Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt to Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger to Todd Rundgren along with Steve Hillage of Gong, Amon Düül II founder John Weinzierl, Die Krupps leader Jürgen Engler and so many more expanded his creative energy and brought new generations of music fans into his audience. Just this year saw the reissue of Turner’s incredible concert
extravaganza, Space Ritual 1994, as both a CD/DVD set as well as a 3LP set, which features guests Helios Creed of Chrome and Psychic TV’s Genesis P-Orridge as well as
Hawkwind alumni Del Dettmar and Alan Powell.
Cleopatra Records would like to offer our deepest condolences to Nik’s family and friends. We always felt Nik to be a part of our family, and we will continue to remember him and honor him as such.
Via: billboard.com
Terri Nunn says a reunion with Berlin co-founders John Crawford and David Diamond is “out of nowhere for me, too.” But on Aug. 2 the trio will release their first Berlin album together since 1984 — Transcendance, whose title track is premiering exclusively below — and hit the road during the summer with the B-52s.
“It’s fantastic, it really is,” says Nunn, who revived Berlin in 1997, a decade after it first broke up. “We are different people. It’s a different connection, a different partnership than we used to be. I’m not scared all the time, like I used to be, and John is a lot more relaxed than he used to be. And David is still a lot of fun; He was always the brat of the group and still is, but he’s also a lot more compassionate. So it’s really great.”
With doors of communication opened after Berlin was part of a VH1 Bands Reunited episode in 2004, the group’s current reunion was brought about by personal circumstances — Crawford’s divorce and Diamond’s split with a partner. “It was just an upheaval for both of them and we reached out to each other and it was really a reconnection,” Nunn says. “And in the process of that we got creative, as we always were ’cause that’s what we do when we’re together. And things started to pop.” After some initial sessions faltered, the trio was introduced to award-winning Australian producers Andy and Thom Mak, who brought Transcendance — which resumes Berlin’s particular brand of synth-pop, including a remake of the troupe’s provocative 1983 single “Sex (I’m A…)” — to fruition.
“I guess for me it’s proving to myself I can still make great music that’s relevant to me and that says something,” Nunn notes. “It needed to have a message. A lot of EDM and electronic music that is happening now is sonically great, but it’s not saying a whole lot…and I felt I could add to that, especially for people who aren’t 20 years old and just want to have sex in the backseat of a car and go to the dance club. That’s fine for kids but not for me. It doesn’t speak to me at all. There is more to talk about at my age and people that are around the age that we are, and this album has a lot of different topics on it.”
Chief among those is Transcendance’s title track, which was inspired by conversations Nunn had with her mother, who died in 2007, and with one of her mother’s close friends before her own death last year.
“My mom and I were really close,” Nunn says, “and (the song) is about what she described to me, what it was feeling like to let go, to die. The last thing my mom said to me was, ‘Terri, I’m going to miss you and the people I love, that’s the sadness, but this is not sad. This is cool. This is amazing.’ And right around the time we started this album, a year and a half ago, her friend Judy Taylor called and she said exactly the same things as my mother had told me; She said, ‘Terri, this is probably the greatest adventure I’m ever going to have, and I’m kind of excited about it.’
“And I was like, ‘Whoa! I want to feel like that!’ We are all going to have it, so does it have to be bad? No, maybe it isn’t. I hung up the phone with Judy and was absolutely inspired and wrote the lyrics in 20 minutes.”
Redoing “Sex (I’m A…),” a duet with Crawford, as well as other songs such as the album-opening “I Want You,” allowed Nunn to plant a flag “about a new experience of sexuality in my life right now, and how it’s different. I didn’t know what to expect to be older and what sex is going to be like now; It’s different, and there’s a lot of things it isn’t that it was in my twenties, but there’s a lot of things it is that it wasn’t in my twenties, too. There’s some really cool changes. There’s no more neediness in it anymore — it’s just fun, pleasure, enjoyable. It doesn’t need to be any more than that anymore.”
With age, meanwhile, don’t expect Nunn to be jumping on Crawford and having him carry her off stage when they perform the song. “There was a point where John had said he would never sing ‘Sex’ with me, because he was very religious at that point,” Nunn recalls. “He just slowly got himself back into it. What’s great for me is that we wrote the song together, so to get to sing it with him again is so amazing for me.”
Transcendance, which is being released by Cleopatra Records, also coincides with the 40th anniversary of Berlin’s formation in Los Angeles, though it would be a few years before the group broke through with his such as “The Metro” and “No More Words” — and, of course, hitting chart-topping and Academy Award-winning heights after Diamond’s departure with “Take My Breath Away” from the 1986 film Top Gun. But Nunn says she’s happy the group is marking the time with new material.
“It doesn’t feel like 40 years, ” she says. “I had no idea we’d get to play this long. It’s kind of like a marriage; You hope it will be forever, but you don’t know. I’m just proud of what we did — and what we’re doing.” She also predicts that working with Crawford and Diamond will be a going concern for Berlin.
“John just said the other day that if I want to do this through my seventies, he’s there,” says Nunn, 57. “It’s wonderful to hear that from him. He was born to be a writer, and he has so many songs; Even when we finished this album, he said, ‘I have 40 more. When are we going to do the next one?’ We’ll see if people respond to this. I hope they do, because we’re not just doing it for ourselves, you know. We’re not a garage band. We want people to respond and actually contribute something.”
Berlin’s upcoming tour dates include:
July 5 – Milwaukee, WI – Summerfest*
July 6 – Nashville, TN – The Cowan*
July 24 – Paso Robles, CA – California MD-State Fair*
July 28 – Costa Mesa, CA – The Hangar@ OC Fair*
August 3 – San Diego, CA – Embarcadero Marina
August 4 – Los Angeles, CA – Microsoft Theater
August 6 – Portland, OR – Oregon Zoo Amphitheater
August 7 – Seattle, WA – BECU ZooTunes Concert Series
August 8 – Missoula, MT – Kettlehouse Amphitheater
August 10 – Bend, OR – Les Schwab Amphitheater
August 11 – Murphys, CA – Ironstone Amphitheatre
August 12 – Saratoga, CA – The Mountain Winery
August 14 – Phoenix, AZ – Comerica Theatre
August 16 – Salt Lake City, UT – Red Butte Garden Amphitheatre
August 17 – Dillon, CO – Dillon Amphitheater
August 18 – Greenwood Village, CO – Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
August 21 – San Antonio, TX – The Majestic Theater
August 22 – Austin, TX – Bass Concert Hall
August 24 – Sugarland, TX – Smart Financial Centre
August 25 – New Orleans, LA – Saenger Theatre
August 28 – Clearwater, FL – Ruth Eckerd Hall
September 6 – Greensboro, NC – White Oak Amphitheatre at Greensboro Coliseum Complex
September 7 – Atlanta, GA – Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park
September 8 – Huber Heights, OH – Rose Music Center at the Heights
September 10 – Chicago, IL – City Winery Chicago*
September 11 – Grand Rapids, MI – Fifth Third Bank Summer Concerts at Meijer Gardens
September 13 – Toronto, ONT, CA – Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
September 14 – Detroit, MI – Meadow Brook Amphitheatre
September 17 – Washington, DC – The Anthem
September 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Mann Center for the Performing Arts
September 20 – Mashantucket, CT – Foxwoods Resort Casino – Grand Theater
September 21 – Buffalo, NY – Riviera Theatre*
September 22 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues Cleveland*
September 24 – New York, NY – Summerstage – Central Park
*Berlin Headline Dates