Line dancing: good for that achy breaky heart - Music

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Prefer your fitness with a dose of country?
If you're hankering to move with cowboy attitude, experts say line dancing could be the ideal workout. Even if you've never moseyed into a country bar or felt particularly at home on the range.
"Line dancing is exercise for people who like country music," said fitness instructor Amy Blackburn, "people who might not join a gym because traditional exercise, like treadmills and weight lifting, is either intimidating, or it bores them to death."
Blackburn, who is based in Nashville, Tennessee, said line dancing is the thing to do on a Saturday night. Her DVD, "Country Line Dance Party," is an aerobics workout carved from its signature shuffles, kicks and stomps.
"The music's upbeat. The workout burns calories and strengthens the core, legs, and hamstrings," she said. "And you can take it down a level to keep it low impact."
Though deeply rooted in Irish and German folk traditions, line dancing was off most urban grids until 1992 when Billy Ray Cyrus, father of teen idol Miley, stomped upon the stage with his megahit "Achy Breaky Heart."
Today line dancing is a worldwide phenomenon. Devotees have formed organizations as far away as Singapore and Australia.
Adam Herbel, a.k.a. the Dancing Cowboy, teaches country line dancing at The Rodeo Club in San Jose, California. He said some come for the exercise, some for the music and atmosphere.
REDNECK AEROBICS
"We have a funny thing called redneck aerobics," said Herbel, described as a series of five or six upbeat line dances strung in a row.
"When the DJ calls out 'its redneck aerobics,' everybody knows what's coming," he said. "Sometimes the fitness gals will do pretty advanced line dancing."
Herbel said the dances change from area to area so one song may have 50 different dances to it. Nevertheless, it's not hard to learn, the music is cheerful and the folks are friendly.
"You can master single line dance in a one hour class," he said. "It appeals to ladies because you don't have to have a partner to do it. So I tell the guys, if you want to have a chance at least get out and try."
Known around the San Francisco Bay area of California as the Queen of Line Dancing, Doris Volz has been dancing since 1992 and teaching seniors since 2003.
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Why The Beatles' arrival on iTunes matters - Music

NEW YORK (Billboard) - It's tempting to dismiss the Beatles' long-delayed arrival on iTunes as a non-event. After all, it's been more than seven years since iTunes began selling music. And EMI Music reissued the band's entire discography on CD barely a year ago.
Still, here are five reasons why the Beatles-iTunes deal is important:
1. Digital marketing boost for the Beatles catalog
Yes, unauthorized copies of the Fabs' music have been available for free on file-sharing networks for more than a decade. But during that time, as CD sales entered into a tailspin, iTunes emerged as the largest music retailer in the United States, topping even former market leader Walmart.
Although file-sharing continues to thrive, music retailing isn't dead. Eminem's chart-topping album "Recovery" is available everywhere on peer-to-peer networks. And yet since the album came out in June, about 728,000 U.S. consumers still chose to visit a digital retailer like iTunes and pay for it, accounting for about 25% of the album's total U.S. sales of 2.9 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
ITunes will extend the Beatles catalog's reach to a sizable new audience of online shoppers, who for the first time will be able to click, purchase and download "She Loves You," "Ticket To Ride," and other cherished titles. Troubled EMI parent Terra Firma will appreciate the new revenue stream.
2. Apple Corps drops its resistance to digital distribution
Apple Corps, which manages the Beatles' catalog, finally dipped its toe into the digital music market in late October with a reissue campaign that included a multi-artist compilation "Come And Get It" and classic albums by Badfinger, James Taylor, Billy Preston and other artists. Remarkably, they were the first Apple Records titles to be sold as both CDs and digital downloads.
Now that Apple Corps has reached a deal with iTunes on the Beatles catalog, it will hopefully pave the way for other digital products incorporating the band's music.
3. iTunes reinforces its market dominance
New, on-demand streaming music services like Spotify, Rdio and MOG have generated lots of buzz during the past year. But the Beatles-iTunes deal, which gives the digital retailer a period of exclusivity on one of the most storied catalogs in recorded music, provides a timely reminder of who really dominates digital music.
The deal also shows that even though the major labels have expressed a desire to foster greater competition in digital retailing, their urgent, short-term need to maximize sales still leaves them eager to cut exclusive deals with the No. 1 U.S. music retailer. And that, of course, only strengthens iTunes' leverage vis-a-vis the recording industry.
4. iTunes LP scores a big win
Ever since iTunes launched its "iTunes LP" album format in September 2009, the enhanced artwork, lyrics and videos it offered have failed to excite the mainstream digital music market.
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Asia shows dominance at Geneva piano competition - Music

GENEVA (Reuters) - Two young pianists from Japan and South Korea demonstrated the dominance of young Asians in the world of classical music at the Geneva International Music Competition on Thursday night.
Japan's Mami Hagiwara took the jury's first prize, worth 20,000 Swiss francs, with her performance of Maurice Ravel's Concerto for Piano in G major.
The jury awarded South Korea's Hyo Joo Lee a second prize worth 12,000 francs for her playing of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto in C minor.
But Lee, 25, delighted the public more with her sensitive but masterly rendition of one of the great works of late Romanticism, and she took the audience prize voted on by the public in the hall as well as winning a contract to record a portrait CD with orchestra sponsored by Swiss watchmaker Breguet, part of the Swatch Group.
The Geneva contest, launched in 1939, is one of the most prestigious on the international circuit, with pianists such as Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini among its laureates.
In this year's piano section, by far the biggest number of the 41 entrants came from East Asian countries, with Russia forming the next biggest group.
With the Ravel concerto, Hagiwara, 23, chose a demanding piece, where the piano is matched against swelling jazz references in the first movement and the military gallop of the last.
But she handled the apparently artless slow second movement with a firm delicacy, never allowing the piano to be submerged by the orchestra.
The jury awarded the third finalist, Russia's Maria Masycheva, another second prize.
Masycheva, 28, chose to display her technical mastery with the fiendishly difficult third piano concerto in C major by Sergei Prokofiev. She seemed to handle Prokofiev's rippling scales effortlessly but was often hard to hear above the orchestra, raised almost to an equal partner by Prokofiev.
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Who destroyed Epic Records - Music

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - It started out like any label showcase at October's CMJ, the five-night music conference that's been held every year since 1980. The event draws hundreds of industry professionals, influencers, fans and upstart bands to New York City's clubs, all looking to find -- or become -- the next big thing.
A few dozen T-shirt-and-jeans-clad college reps gathered on the Bowery, next to the space that used to house legendary punk club CBGB.
Augustana, the latest pop-rock priority on Epic Records, prepared to take the stage. The San Diego-based five-piece, which had achieved a modicum of success with its 2008 album "Can't Love, Can't Hurt," had a lot riding on this performance -- and so did the label.
Epic has had declining sales and a dearth of hits at a moment when the entire industry is struggling to adapt to a new model -- one in which monetizing physical product is secondary to marketing and branding.
The 57-year-old label was fighting for its life. It was a long way from the Sony-owned company's heyday in the '80s and '90s, when such artists as Michael Jackson, George Michael, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine were racking up combined sales in the hundreds of millions worldwide.
Epic's current roster still features a superstar or two (namely Shakira), but they're far outnumbered by developing acts like Augustana, who knew this performance was crucial as an opportunity to motivate the people who would be representing their new music to radio, retail, press and the online world.
One song in, singer Dan Layus' microphone experienced some feedback -- a technical glitch about as common as a guitarist breaking a string. But what happened next was anything but.
According to eyewitnesses in the crowd, Epic Records president Amanda Ghost, 36, a career songwriter who had held the top spot at the label for 20 months, stepped onto the stage, grabbed the microphone and, with her native North London accent, spoke her mind.
Among a string of expletives, said a source, "she was screaming: 'Who booked this fucking place? It sounds like shit! We don't treat our artists this way at Epic. I'm not letting them play another minute!' " -- and pulled the plug on the show. "The room just got silent."
Six days later, a memo issued by Sony Music Label Group chairman Rob Stringer -- brother of Howard, CEO of Sony Entertainment -- announced that Ghost would be leaving the company at year's end.
"Amanda has been an important creative force at Epic in the past two years," it read. "In returning to the natural focus of her artistic career, I look forward to us working together in the future."
For a woman who had a penchant for profanity and a reputation for unpredictable, sometimes violent outbursts, it was a surprisingly quiet firing -- and with it, the latest trial in unconventional management was over.
The result? Sad and seemingly conclusive: that Epic Records most likely will become an imprint of Sony Music's flagship label Columbia. If so, departments will likely be forced to merge, its artist roster cut by two-thirds along with the president position.
"I owe the people at Epic, some who've worked for me for many years, to get it right," said Stringer. "I have a responsibility to balance the ship, so we're going to sit down, not make any rash decisions, shore up the roster and hopefully make some progress in the next six months. ... It would be wonderful to start again, but I have a responsibility to the artists to do the right thing, and I'm really going to try."
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Josh Groban makes drastic changes for new album - Music

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Josh Groban is a rare commodity in the music business: a safe bet.
Classically trained, celestially voiced, the kind of sweet-faced, well-mannered, personable young man who probably gets hand-knit sweaters as gifts from fans in lieu of panties, Groban is virtually immune to the vagaries of pop-music trends.
His most recent album, the 2007 Christmas record "Noel," sold 5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and topped the Billboard 200. All told, he has sold almost 20 million albums in the United States.
Because his material appeals to adults whose taste and preferences are stable, Groban can depend on their loyalty. No one would have batted an eye had he released another collection of holiday tracks every couple of years, toured theaters and arenas, dropped in again on Oprah and "Today" and "Glee," headlined public-TV pledge drives and generally reaped the quiet but lucrative rewards of mainstream, middle-of-the-road success.
Instead, Groban, 29, decided to make some drastic changes. He split from his former manager, Brian Avnet, and signed to Q Prime, known for managing guitar extremists Metallica and Muse. He also parted with longtime producer David Foster and teamed with Rick Rubin, the bearded Zen master behind the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash and Danzig.
On his new record, "Illuminations," due November 15 on Reprise, Groban co-wrote more of the material than he ever had on previous albums, and also recorded a song by an unlikely favorite: goth-rock cult star Nick Cave.
The new partners are especially head-scratching given that Groban's music is possibly the most un-rock stuff out there. With a voice ranging between tenor and baritone, Groban draws more comparisons to Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli than Eddie Vedder or James Hetfield. It's easy to imagine him singing on the radio in the 1940s; his music, which nods to Broadway, opera and European pop, typically finds its truest expression in the kind of swelling, inspirational ballads that accompany first dances at weddings.
Moreover, Groban's older audience still buys physical albums: His breakthrough song, "You Raise Me Up," has sold a relatively modest 977,000 downloads, despite being covered by artists around the world and by "American Idol" contestants who want to bludgeon the judges with their range.
"I was in such a cozy position," Groban says of the period after "Noel" blew up and soundtracked family Christmas dinners across the world. "I had the No. 1-selling album of the year and I could have just kept doing that. But then I started to have an itch."
RUBIN SANDWICH
Groban first appeared on the music scene when he was barely out of high school, working as a rehearsal singer for events like the Grammy Awards and performing at former California Gov. Grey Davis' inauguration. He studied drama at Carnegie Mellon for a few months but dropped out to focus on music.
He released a self-titled album in late 2001 that has so far sold 5.1 million copies, according to SoundScan. After a galvanizing star turn on the TV dramedy "Ally McBeal," he would perform for everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the Prince of Wales, and release three more studio albums ("Closer," "Awake" and "Noel") and three live sets ("Josh Groban in Concert," "Live at the Greek" and "Awake Live") during the next nine years. The success of "Noel" as 2007's best-selling album is doubly impressive since it came out in October of that year and only needed 10 weeks to claim the title.
Amid the post-"Noel" haze, Groban met Rubin while at lunch with Madonna's manager Guy Oseary. "I told Guy I wanted to meet Rick and he set it up, and it turned out we had a lot in common," Groban recalls. "I followed up with Rick to say that I enjoyed chatting with him and wanted to be friends, and then he heard some music and said he wanted to produce on the record."
Rubin says he wasn't apprehensive about working with Groban, despite the fact he had never tackled a project of this nature. "I like working with different kinds of artists," he says, "and working in Josh's medium seemed like an exciting challenge."
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Lady Gaga, Katy Perry lead MTV Europe nominations - Music

The U.S. pop princesses are both shortlisted in four categories -- best pop act, best song, best female act and best video. Completing the nominations for Lady Gaga is best live act and for Katy Perry "best world stage performance."
Elsewhere in the nominations list, rapper Eminem has four nominations including best song, best male act, best hip hop and best video for his Rihanna collaboration "Love the Way You Lie."
British stadium rockers Muse, along with Thirty Seconds to Mars, Linkin Park and Kings of Leon, find themselves up against "Prince of Darkness" Ozzy Osbourne in the best rock category.
Pop phenomenon Justin Bieber, Ke$ha, B.o.B, Plan B and Jason Derulo are nominated for best new act.
Perry and Linkin Park are confirmed to perform at the annual event, one of pop music's biggest nights outside the United States.
Following is a list of the main nominations for the MTV Europe Music Awards, to be held in Madrid on November 7.
- Best Rock: Kings of Leon; Linkin Park; Thirty Seconds to Mars; Muse; Ozzy Osbourne
- Best Pop: Lady Gaga; Usher; Katy Perry; Miley Cyrus; Rihanna

� Continued...
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Carson Daly show revamps to focus on music - Music

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - With the debut of its 10th season on September 20, NBC's "Last Call With Carson Daly" is overhauling its format to become predominantly focused on music, offering live performances, behind-the-scenes artist segments and spotlights dedicated to emerging acts.
"Before we ditched the studio, we'd been locked into that kind of late-night feel: monologue, then a desk thing, then the lead guest," says Daly, who started out as a VJ on MTV's "TRL" and as a DJ at KROQ Los Angeles. "Music has always been kind of an afterthought in the world of late night, which was a dumb thing for me since it's the epicenter of who I am. This new format enables us to include music wherever we want."
Among the acts that will be featured on upcoming episodes are Alberta Cross, the Walkmen, Japandroids and Broken Bells. "Carson's like, 'If we can do an entire half hour on music, that's what we want to do,'" says Davis Powers, music booker for "Last Call." "Certainly we'll program it where if it's a big-name act, they can take the whole half hour. But our main goal is to program our half-hours as music-heavy as possible so you're getting variety and different types of content."
Aside from reality TV shows, music-centered programing is almost nonexistent on network TV. While IFC's "360 Sessions" and select episodes of Sundance Channel's "Iconoclasts" provide cable viewers an in-depth look at recording artists and their work, this sort of programing rarely appears on the broadcast networks.
The music-centric format was tested during the show's ninth season, under the auspices of new executive producer Stewart Bailey, who previously worked on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." Guy Oseary also remains as "Last Call" co-executive producer.
"I have to give (Bailey) a lot of credit for this -- I feel much more comfortable and in my element, and not like I'm playing the part of a late-night host," Daly says. "I'm out in the real world and I get to organically talk about music."
Besides taking "Last Call" into its 10th season, Daly also serves as DJ for KAMP-FM Los Angeles. In addition, Daly will continue to host NBC's "New Year's Eve With Carson Daly."
A segment of the show, "Spotlight," focuses on emerging or underexposed artists; among those to be featured include Jay Electronica, Big Freedia and Tift Merritt.
"All the other traditional late-night shows are feeling the pressure of booking what is on the charts -- the top 10 acts -- and they all fight for it," Daly says. "We have a young staff that's passionate about music. To me, the power is in the diversity."
Powers says he's working with all the major Los Angeles music venues, including the Coliseum, to set up live shoots to incorporate into the "Last Call" slate. "Our approach to shooting artists in a live setting is ambitious," he says. "(We've already) featured Lily Allen at the Wiltern and the xx at the Palladium."
While the promotional power of a 1:35 a.m.-2:05 a.m. time slot is more limited than that of a show airing in prime time or during the traditional late-night slots, ratings for the show average 873,000 viewers per night, according to Nielsen Media Research, compared with 1.6 million on average for the season to date for "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," which precedes "Last Call" on NBC.
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Legendary boxing gym goes the distance - Music

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - The folks at Gleason's Gym like to say that boxing is the art of not getting hit.
With its down-at-the-heels decor, Gleason's looks like it's taken a punch or two. But focus and fancy footwork have kept this oldest active boxing gym in the United States firmly in the ring since 1937.
"I'm a specialist. We're a boxing gym. That's what we do," said Bruce Silverglade, owner of Gleason's, located in Brooklyn, New York. "Woman or businessman we'll train you in the sport of boxing, prepare you physically and mentally for a 12-round fight."
Although the gym has retained its rough and tumble feel one of the biggest changes in the past few decades has been the arrival of white collar clientele.
Businessmen discovered Gleason's in the late 1970s, so in 1988 the gym set up the first white collar boxing match: between an English professor and a veterinarian.
Women showed up in the 80s and were welcomed. Today 50 percent of Silverglade's clients are businessmen and women.
"Women train and sweat and get a good workout. If they want to look good, they go to Chelsea Piers," he said, referring to the trendy Manhattan fitness complex.
"If they just want to work out they come here."
These days the biggest single group at Gleason's, aside from fighters, is lawyers and judges.
"It's one of the last melting pots," he said. "You don't know if the person to your right is a millionaire from Wall Street or a kid from the projects."
But no one who trains there should expect to be pampered.
"Walk up our steps and first thing you'll notice is the smell," said Silverglade. "There's no air conditioning. That's the aroma of working out."
Muhammad Ali and Twyla Tharp are among the many who have savored that scent over the years. Middleweight Jake LaMotta is one of 132 world champions who trained there, as did Robert DeNiro when he played LaMotta in "Raging Bull."
Hilary Swank used Gleason's to shape up for her Oscar-winning role in "Million-Dollar Baby."
Gleason's glories in its appearance of decrepitude. To Silverglade, it's not neglect, it's ambiance, and a juicy source of revenue.
"The look of the place is a money maker," Silverglade said.
Gleason's blood-red walls and concrete floors are regularly rented for fashion shoots and movie locations.
"We keep the paint chipping off the walls because the fashion people like the contrast of a pretty woman in good clothing against a boxing gym," he said.
Even the taped and rusty dumbbells are in demand.
"That rust and tape makes a lot of money for me," he added.
When the neighborhood went from grungy to gentrified, Silverglade rolled with the punches. He put on chamber music concerts and art festivals, alongside the amateur boxing matches.
"There have been oboes and French horns, that kind of music. During the neighborhood art festival, artists are invited to display their work here as long as it has something to do with boxing."
Jihad Abdul-Aziz has been a trainer at Gleason's for three years. The former Golden Gloves champion explained that while it takes time to learn the proper punches, how to move around, jump rope, boxing is one of the most intense workouts there is.
"You'll definitely get in shape," he said. But like most boxers, he thinks the real payoff is mental.
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Reggae meets Pink Floyd, Beatles with the All Stars - Music

By Jeremy Gaunt
CROPREDY England (Reuters Life!) - Anyone who has ever listened to reggae masters Toots and the Maytals taking John Denver's "Country Roads" to new heights knows that reggae can cover just about anything.
The Easy Star All-Stars, which delivered a thumping dose of Jamaican dub to a heavily Brit folk-rock audience at Fairport's Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire at the weekend, is reaching new levels.
From the cult CD "Dub Side of the Moon", through "Radiodread" to "Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band", the New York-based group is jamming its way through a pantheon of rock classics.
Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", Radiohead's "OK Computer" and The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", to be precise.
What is remarkable about the productions -- which follow the originals from start to finish -- is that each comes across as a true homage rather than a rip-off cover.
And while it is unsurprising that reggae would do well with the likes of Floyd's "Money" or The Beatles' "Lovely Rita", it is less immediately obvious with tracks such as "Breathe" or "Within You Without You".
Yet it works with great effect, as many bouncing, joyful fans in the Cropredy crowd attested, albeit that some of the more fiddle-focused folkies at the back seemed unmoved.
The success of giving classics the Caribbean treatment does not seem strange to Ras I Ray, the All-Stars' bassist and sometime frontman.
"It is the simplicity of reggae music," he told Reuters ahead of the Cropredy set. "In all music you can have reggae music."
The All-Stars usually comprise nine people -- eight musicians and singers, and a sound mixer who Ray is adamant counts as a full band member. They are individual artists brought together by Easy Star Records, a specialist in reggae and dub production.
What success the band has achieved so far has been mainly in western Europe, particularly Britain where a tour is ending this week and a new one, incorporating Ireland, is due to start in October.
In between, the band is playing in Canada and the United States. Ray says the latter has been a hard nut to crack because the U.S. music industry is compartmentalised and, frankly, doesn't know where to put the All-Stars.
Meanwhile, another cover is on the way, but the band either doesn't know what it will be because Easy Star Records has not decided, or is just not telling.
"There is another cover in the future. We don't know exactly what it will be," Ray said.
Somebody in the room mumbled Abba. Could have been a joke, might not have been. Either way, reggae and the All-Stars would surely handle it.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
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Lady Gaga wins record 13 MTV video music nominations - Music

Rapper Eminem was the most nominated male artist with eight nods after the success of his latest album "Recovery", while Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber scored his first nomination in the best new artist category for the music video of hit single "Baby".
Newcomer Ke$ha joined veterans Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Katy Perry, Usher and indie band Florence and the Machine among the other nominees.
Lady Gaga has two entries in the coveted video of the year category -- "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" featuring Beyonce -- where her competition includes Eminem for "Not Afraid" and rapper B.o.B for "Airplanes".
The glam pop singer also won nods in the best pop, best dance and best female music video categories.
"I'm so honored for all the little monsters and self-professed freaks of the universe, to have more VMA nominations in a single year than any artist in MTV history. Ironically, I'm even more proud it's an unlucky number; 13," Lady Gaga said in a statement.
"A long time ago the world told me and my little monsters we would never be heard, together we changed the rules. God put me on Earth for 3 reasons: To make loud music, gay videos, and cause a damn raucous. Thank You MTV!," she added.
The awards will be presented in a live telecast from Los Angeles on September 12.
Eminem noted sarcastically that the award show fell in the middle of his U.S. tour. "Apparently MTV doesn't care that I have two massive stadium shows on the other side of the country the day after the VMAs," he said. "I mean, I'll be there but don't expect me to be nice about it."
Viewers can vote for the general categories on website vma.mtv.com starting on Tuesday, and voting by text message for the best new artist will continue throughout showtime on September12.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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