Collective Cadenza took us on a musical tour of New York City today with their newest video experiment. The group performed songs from our favourite artists based on whatever street sign they were standing in front of. And damn, NYC streets sure as hell make a good soundtrack.
Music seems like a great way to pay tribute to NYC, especially considering they shot it on Sept. 11. They guys played Katy on “Perry,” Kanye on “West,” Santigold on “Gold,” and Jay-Z on “Jay” (obvs). On top of that, they played some of our older faves, including Pearl Jam, The Police and The Beach Boys.
This is the same group that brought us The Human Jukebox and The History of Wooing Women. Check out their video below and the playlist after the jump.
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Tours ranging from the rock legends The Police to Justin Timberlake, the man who brought back sexy, raked in hundreds of millions of dollars this year.
Billboard puts The Police’s reunion tour as the most successful of the year, ChartAttack.com reports. The British band reunited to sell more than 1.8 million tickets at various venues around the world and gross $212 million U.S.
But it was still a down year in terms of concert revenues. While Genesis came in at second with $129 million and Justin Timberlake’s “FutureSex LoveShow” tour was a close third with $126.8 million, no tour could compare with last years numbers put up by The Rolling Stones, U2, Madonna, and Barbra Streisand.
Other than the top three, no other tour this year broke the $100 million mark. Included in the top ten are country superstars Kenny Chesney and legend Rod Stewart, both grossing over $70 million. Cirque Du Soleil’s Delirium brought int $59.4 million, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill with $52.3 million, respectively, and Christina Aguilera and Rascal Flatts each took in just over $40 million.
According to ChartAttack.com, North American concert attendance dropped by 19.2 per cent to 51 million tickets sold. Overall revenues also dropped to $2.6 billion, down 10.2 per cent.
Reformed rockers THE POLICE wowed fans in Vancouver, Canada, this week when they played a private show for their devotees on the eve of their first major tour in 21 years.
The low-key concert at the city’s General Motors Place was especially for the group’s most loyal supporters – only members of their official fan club were able to buy tickets for the intimate gig.
And the trio surprised fans with reworked versions of old classics like Roxanne, Every Breath You Take and Message In A Bottle.
Guitarist Andy Summers says, “We’ve got all these famous songs, but we look at them like new pieces of material.
“To a point, we’ve reworked them, but obviously all the famous riffs are there. You can’t play Every Breath You Take without me playing that guitar, obviously.
“We constantly fiddle with them, but because they’re alive, they’re living, they’re not dead. We spent the last two months rearranging and fiddling around until we felt it was good. (There is) some intensity in the songs that may transcend the original recorded versions.”
The Police will officially begin their 30th anniversary tour at the same Vancouver venue tomorrow.
(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.
Reformed rockers THE POLICE have been invited to play their first concerts in Cuba by the communist country’s government.
The group is considering ending its American reunion tour on the Caribbean island in December, according to Fox News reports.
The official invite comes after Police frontman Sting and his actress wife Trudi Styler recently met with dignitaries and artists on a trip to Cuba.
Although the proposed show will be a first for The Police, bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers performed a concert there in 1999.
The group’s reunion world tour will begin in Vancouver, Canada next month, and will include a string of European festival shows and stadium concerts in America.
The group is also one of the headline acts for the Live Earth awareness concert this summer.
(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.
THE POLICE won’t be the only big reunion at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee this June – THE WHITE STRIPES will also regroup after a two-year hiatus.
Singer/songwriter JACK WHITE put the duo on hold to concentrate on launching hue act THE RACONTEURS but he’ll be back onstage with bandmate MEG WHITE this summer.
As WENN went to press, the Tennessee event stands as both The Police and The White Stripes’ only festival show of the year.
Also newly announced for Bonnaroo 2007 are TOOL, WILCO, the FLAMING LIPS, WIDESPREAD PANIC and FRANZ FERDINAND.
(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.
Rock band THE POLICE have confirmed they will open the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles next Sunday – fuelling speculation they are planning a reunion tour.
The MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE hitmakers have so far refused to confirm rumours they are reforming to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of their massive selling song ROXANNE.
A The Recording Academy spokesperson says, “The Police join a stellar list of past Grammy Awards opening acts, which includes reunions and once-in-a-lifetime performances.”
The 1980s supergroup – featuring STING, STEWART COPELAND and ANDY SUMMERS – broke up in 1984 but reformed briefly in 2003 to celebrate their inclusion into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. This will be the first time the Grammy winning band have performed at the prestigious music show.
(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.
The members of reforming rock supergroup THE POLICE will rehearse for their upcoming reunion tour in Vancouver, Canada, according to local reports.
Details of the rehearsals and the tour are being kept a closely-guarded secret but a source close to the MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE hitmakers has revealed to Vancouver’s CFMI classic rock radio station that the trio plans to launch their comeback at the Grammy Awards next month.
According to the radio station’s website, The Police will open the Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles just before announcing full plans to tour the world.
And, with frontman STING booked to tour Europe promoting his new album of lute music from February 18 to March 12, it’s likely the reunion plans and rehearsals will be complete before he hits the road.
The group’s proposed summer tour will be their first in more than 20 years.
(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.
Back in the day, before U2 and Coldplay ruled the airwaves, there was a talented trio from England whose nervous mix of rock, pop and reggae put them at the top of the charts around the world. The band in question was The Police, a three-piece outfit that spawned so many hits, it’s hard to recount them all. “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne,” “Walking on the Moon,” and “King of Pain” are just a few of them, and probably someone, somewhere is listening to one of those songs right now and singing along.
Yes, The Police were huge, and their rise to the top was meteoric and lasting. Luckily for fans, those heady days when the group was on the verge of exploding into international stardom have been captured on Super 8 by drummer and founding member Stewart Copeland, who turned the footage into the entertaining and often funny film, “Everybody Stares: The Police Inside Out.”
Copeland, who was in Toronto this month for the Canadian debut of his documentary at the North By Northeast Music and Film Festival and Conference, shot the footage on a Sankyo 620 camera during 1979 and 1980. The film, which will be released here on DVD in September, is comprised of bits and bites taken from the 50 hours of footage Copeland shot of the band in various countries and situations, with voiceovers by himself and the soundtrack provided by a kind of mash-up of live recordings and original backing tracks.
The documentary takes full advantage of its insider status, including scenes of Sting shaving, the group in the midst of horseplay, hundreds of girls banging on the band’s limo, and guitarist Andy Summers yelling at Copeland to slow down his drumming during a live performance.
“I got Final Cut Pro and so I needed to make something. And after cutting up shots of the kids running around for a while, I thought ‘wait a minute.’ So I went and dug up the shoe boxes with all those Super 8 films in them,” Copeland says as way of explanation for making the documentary. “It was interesting that this film was made by a wild, raging 20-something-year-old and then edited by a 50-something-year-old. It’s almost two different people.”
After watching the movie, it’s hard to believe so much time has passed that Copeland is already in his 50s and a father of seven. Long gone are the golden locks for which he was famous. They have been replaced by thick gray hair. Thick black glasses frame his mature, handsome face. He is tall, fit and possesses the sharp intellect and wit of someone who has been privileged enough to attend expensive boarding schools. (Copeland’s father worked for the CIA and they lived in various countries around the world including a lengthy stint in Lebanon.)
Copeland, who sees himself primarily as a composer now and has done the soundtracks for such movies as “Rumble Fish,” “Wall Street” and “She’s All That,” says one of the main differences between his film and other music documentaries is that “Everybody Stares” does not attempt to explain The Police or make any real statements about them.
“One thing you have to remember about the documentary is that it is a home movie that was lifted from its intended personal obscurity into the public eye and turned into product by people other than myself,” he says. “Sundance [Film Festival, where the movie debuted earlier this year] decided it was a real movie.
“All the other footage I have seen about bands is in the third person. This footage is all from inside the band; it’s first person. You’re a member of the band as you are watching the film, and your name is Stewart — Andy turns and shouts directly at you. Most documentaries dwell on the importance of the group, what the group contributed to music. There’s none of that in my film. It’s strictly a home video.”
The documentary captures the feeling of what it must have been like for the trio as they moved from playing small venues to headlining the largest events in the world. There is one scene when the band is swarmed trying to get to their car after playing Birmingham City Hall that captures this transition.
“Well as soon as we walked out on stage there was this shriek, which was so different because in America we were playing real music to real people,” Copeland says. “But this was something different. It was a teenie-bopper thing, and there’s all these 14-year-old girls with a high-pitched predatory shriek — I mean if piranha fish could make a noise, this is the noise they would make. And it was evident to us right there, from one day to the next, walking out on stage, fame suddenly slapped us in the face. It was just an extremely exciting experience; so exciting that we lost touch with reality. We were in this bubble.”
One might think that this kind of success would strain relationships, but the film paints a picture of a group that genuinely liked each other. None of the band’s rumored infighting is evident, and Copeland says this is just the way it was. He says artistic differences sent the band members in separate directions after eight years.
“In the early days, Sting would bring a song in as a couple of chords, a lyric and a tune, and we’d work out an arrangement for the band, and it was a creative arrangement for all three of us. So we all identified very strongly with the result, which was The Police sound,” Copeland says. “With success came home recording studios in our obligatory rock star country mansions. So now Sting was showing up to the recording sessions with fully mastered, finished pieces of music. So in his eyes they were perfect. Problem is when he brings it to the band, Andy and I are kind of shut out. We wanted a say. And so at first he compromised and went along with it, but that became more and more difficult for Sting.”
While the trio still maintains a close relationship, Copeland rules out any chance of a reunion tour.
“This film has really punctuated the whole Police experience for me,” he says. “Until this film, I felt there was unfinished business. I don’t feel that way anymore. But it was really good. We never saw the downside; we never really started to slip. It was always up, up, up. And so we quit. We never jumped the shark.”
