Locced Down

LOS ANGELES—Jessica Simpson is feeling “much better” after being hospitalized with a kidney infection. Simpson was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Friday for a “minor kidney infection” and was released Monday, Simpson’s representative Lauren Auslander told The Associated Press. In Touch magazine reported Simpson’s hospitalization Monday.

Auslander said the 27-year-old singer-actress is feeling “much better now.”

According to
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CLEVELAND—Sean Levert, a third of the 1980s R&B trio LeVert and son of lead O’Jays singer Eddie Levert, has died after falling ill while serving a jail term. He was 39. Authorities said Monday that an autopsy was inconclusive but foul play was ruled out.

Levert was sentenced last week to one year and 10 months in jail for failing to pay $89,025 in child support. He died at Lutheran Hospital in Cleveland late Sunday, less than an hour after he was taken there from the jail, said coroner Frank Miller.

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How You Can Begin To Play Classical Piano Music

People love to learn a new instrument or just an instrument in general. For the beginner who is looking at learning the piano, now is just the time for you. There are websites popping up all over the internet where people all over the world can begin to learn classical piano music or any type of music they want. Want to know something else? You can begin to learn for free. Okay
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LOS ANGELES—Heather Mills soon will be back in front of the cameras. The former Mrs. Paul McCartney, who recently wrapped up a very public divorce from the ex-Beatle, is among the celebrity judges just announced for the upcoming Miss USA Pageant.

Other judges for the April 11 competition include actor/comedian Rob Schneider, actor/musician Joey Fatone, actress Kristian Alfonso, Olympic-champion swimmer Amanda Beard, actress Kelly Carlson and San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman.

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LOS ANGELES—Nelly is bummed he wasn’t able to collaborate with Bruce Springsteen on his new album.

“I was really trying to get The Boss, but The Boss is all over the world,” Nelly told The Associated Press on the orange carpet at Saturday’s Kids Choice Awards. “It didn’t really work out. I know he’s interested in doing it. And I’m interested in doing it.”

Nelly was mum on what a duet with Springsteen would’ve sounded like, but the “Hot
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SIEM REAP, Cambodia—Ricky Martin met with victims of sexual exploitation Saturday during a visit to Cambodia to promote the fight against human trafficking.

Martin held infants and listened to a 14-year-old rape victim’s song during his visit to a shelter in the northwestern city of Siem Reap, home of the famed Angkor temples.

“She sings like an angel,” Martin said after the girl finished a song she composed about the plight of trafficking victims.

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LOS ANGELES—Rihanna and Chris Brown both walked the orange carpet at the Kids’ Choice Awards. Separately. “We’re not in a relationship or anything,” Brown told The Associated Press before Saturday’s slime-filled ceremony.

Rumors have been swirling for weeks the R&B singers are dating, but Brown was quick to squash such gossip, insisting he was single and Rihanna was just a friend. The 18-year-old “Kiss Kiss” crooner, clad in a custom-made
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NEW YORK—Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt finally did it and, yes, it was that good.

March 28, 2008, will be circled in the annals of the Metropolitan Opera, perhaps with a few gold stars thrown in. After illness had kept them apart for five performances, the world’s leading heldentenor and the great American dramatic soprano sang a complete “Tristan und Isolde” together for the first time Friday night.

In a pinnacle of his 37 years at the
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The Sex Pistols Biography And Top 10 Songs

The Sex Pistols are one of my favourite groups because even though people said that they couldn’t play their instruments, I thought they give it a very good go. I first started listening to the Sex Pistols because they
annoyed my dad who ONLY listens to country music and won’t consider listening to anything else. The more I got moaned at for listening to them the more I actually played them.
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The Sidekick crush of the day is on Steven Fiore, who brings his aptly named Charleston, S.C., act Steven Fiore & the Good People to the Paradise Lounge tonight. There’s a little bit of Colin Meloy in Fiore, whose sad and sweet indie-folk songs say so much. Joining him will be the Newton indie-rock band the Novel Ideas and the Nick Drake-inspired Steve Biegner. 7 p.m. $5. Paradise Lounge, 969 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 617-562-8800. thedise.com (more…)

Next month, the Juilliard String Quartet and Harvard University research professor Lewis Lockwood will release “Inside Beethoven’s Quartets,” an analysis of the composer’s works for four. Today, you can get a preview of what they discovered when the Julliard group and Lockwood will give a presentation of their work at Paine Hall at Harvard. They’ll talk, play, and take questions. 4:15 p.m. Free. John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, 61 Kirkland St.,
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Eels was a strange band more than 12 years ago when the song “Novocaine for the Soul” was a surprise hit, and the band has never really normalized. The two decade-spanning retrospectives released this year, “Meet the Eels” and “Useless Trinkets,” are full of bandleader Mark Oliver Everett’s quirky, catchy little ditties like “I Like Birds” and “Funeral Parlor.” The songs tend to change a bit live, which you can see firsthand tonight at the Somerville
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Listening to Howlin’ Rain’s latest, “Magnificent Fiend,” you might feel as if you’ve somehow been dropped into the year 1976. The album’s warm, wide-open grooves and country harmonies bring to mind Steve Miller, the Allman Brothers, and the Grateful Dead, drawing just enough from the band’s influences to seem both fresh and familiar. Howlin’ Rain’s new lineup, sans drummer John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), plays Great Scott tonight with
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CAMBRIDGE - He’s known as the albino Muslim rapper from Minnesota, which is a tidy way of pointing out that Brother Ali is the ultimate outsider. While kids from the hood had it rough, grew up tough, and switched on the swagger as rappers, Ali - cranium crooked, legally blind, and allergic to the sun - had it rougher. He was oppressed not for his color, but for his colorlessness.

To the delight of those rap fans underserved by even the most conscious
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The Boston Classical Orchestra embodied its name on Friday, performing works by Haydn and Mozart, a pair with enough celebrity to attract a healthy crowd to Faneuil Hall with a program of rarities and, in one case, a kind of premiere.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 40 is lesser-known among its 100-odd brethren, perhaps, as music director Steven Lipsitt wryly noted, because it lacks a marketable nickname. Invention still abounds: A charmingly sparse andante
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Four world premieres in one night is ambitious even by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s standards, but Saturday’s novelty at Jordan Hall was also an old-fashioned Boston tryout for a New York opening: This week, conductor Gil Rose and the group bring the program to Brooklyn’s MATA Festival, an annual new-music showcase previously run by BMOP’s current composer-in-residence, Lisa Bielawa.

The concert began with a flourish: Alejandro Rutty’s
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For all her avant-garde reputation and coded contemplations on the human condition, Laurie Anderson remains one of our most charismatic modern storytellers, the gold standard in musical commentary. Softly chilled, a bit eerie, and uniquely curious, yes, but above all she’s provocative, amusing, and friendly.

And with her new work, “Homeland,” an austere, epic examination of contemporary American culture rolled out in a 16-song, 95-minute show
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Take the tough-but-tender pedal steel country of Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams, blend in the melodic folk-rock of Jackson Browne, then add a dash of the mournfulness of early Neil Young and you get a taste of the winning talent that is singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards.

Edwards is touring behind her new album, “Asking for Flowers,” and a packed house at the Paradise Friday night was already converted when Edwards strolled out with her acoustic
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Learing To Play Keyboards Has Many Benefits

Many people will say that learning to play the keyboard is must easier than learning to play the piano. Although it might seem like they are the same when it comes to learning how to play them, but this is not the case. Learning how to play keyboards is easier, not just because it is smaller than the piano and easier to handle, but also the actual play. Many people prefer to choose
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Polyrhythmic Drum Set Technique - History And Development

Though most drum kit fills can be used in all styles of music, there are stylistic considerations specific to genres. There are guides that specify which types of fills are most practical in particular styles. Beginning and Ending Fills Most styles use fills which end on beat 1 of the following measure. The consistent exceptions to this are 4/4 Afro-Cuban drum sets grooves
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MILFORD, Mich.—Tone Loc plans to play shows at two bars in the Detroit area that were swindled by a man posing as the rapper’s manager.

Tone Loc will play April 11 at the Red Dog Saloon in Milford and April 12 at Bumpers in Westland, The Detroit Free Press reports.

Red Dog owner Patty McMillan gave about $400 last summer to a man posing as Tone Loc’s manager who promised his client would perform at her bar. Authorities say the man also scammed Bumpers out of $1,000.

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Zune On The Go

One of the best devices on the market today for portable downloading of movies, TV shows and music is the zune. It also looks pretty cool too. Until the zune I was not really into the idea of hand held video devices I can listen to music 24/7 but washing video on the go never appealed to me. However now that it is possible to load your favourite movie or latest tv show in seconds. And if like me you spend time
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NEW YORK—Franco Zeffirelli, who has directed film, theater and opera worldwide, is being honored this weekend for the dozen lavish productions he created that “shaped the history” of the Metropolitan Opera.

Three Zeffirelli productions are being performed this season, including Puccini’s “La Boheme.” Its season opening Saturday was a celebration of the Italian director who made his Met debut in 1964 with a production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

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AUSTIN, Texas - They say you can’t get from A to Z without stumbling through the entire alphabet. R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe takes this metaphor for life, and most everything else having to do with life, to heart. He is stretched out in the backyard of Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, pondering a quarter century of R.E.M. music.

The band has just finished sound check and in a few hours will perform for the first time at the South by Southwest music festival,
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On “Real Emotional Trash,” his fourth post-Pavement release and second credited with his band, the Jicks, Stephen Malkmus continues to delight and madden those who revere him for his work in that seminal ’90s alt-rock band. It’s a typical and typically strong compendium of groovy jams (some clocking in more than 10 minutes long) and Malkmus’s uniquely oblique lyrics about suspected murderers, chardonnay-swillers, and mismatched romantic partners.

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Starting A Successful Rock Band

One of the dreams of every aspiring guitarist, drummer or bass player is to start a band. It is something they hold onto even into adulthood as they pray they will ‘make it’ and become well-known rock musicians, full of fame and wealth. However, how does one go about starting a band that will make it big?

Well, first of all there is formula for success, and much of it is hit and miss.
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NEW YORK—Ben Heppner and Deborah Voigt finally sang together in a complete performance of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” earning three curtain calls and eight minutes applause from an excited audience at the Metropolitan Opera.

The duo had been scheduled to sing in all six performances of a revival that began March 10. Heppner, the world’s top heldentenor, missed the first four because of a blood-born infection. Voigt, among the leading
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LOS ANGELES—Phil Spector made a brief court appearance Friday in which his new lawyer said he could not be ready for the music producer’s murder retrial until September at the earliest.

The lawyer also filed a writ asking that a neutral judge be appointed to decide if Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler should be disqualified from Spector’s second trial because of alleged bias.

Fidler earlier rejected the bid to remove him, saying he was impartial in the case and that it was too late to file such a motion.

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Don’t get us wrong - having a big, lucrative recording contract is probably nice. But isn’t it more hard rock to keep it DIY? You can see a lineup of authentic Boston-area indie rockers tonight at the NCN (No Contracts Needed) Live ‘n’ Local show at the Somerville Theatre. The list of true-blue independent bands on the bill includes 3rd Left, the Ride (below), On the Drop, and the Jack Johnson-esque act that’s straight out of Medford, Someday Rome.
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A Bartok scholar once confessed to me that she could not bring herself to read the composer’s correspondence from his late period in America. It was simply too heartbreaking, she said, to witness at close distance the slow expiring of one of the century’s great composers, displaced by exile, dismissed by his adoptive public, his health deteriorating, his finances in ruin. Against this backdrop, the cre ative spring of the composer’s very last years
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