Did you notice , while Adam Lambert was onstage singing “We Are The Champions,” that Brian May really lit up and sort of leaned toward Adam in a kind of Statesman-like manner? As if the wheels in his head started to turn and burn with the idea that with Adam, Queen could abandon the Casino Circuit and get back to the Arena Circuit… I think it would be one of the great stories in Rock for the century so far.

A reporter asked Gene Simmons of Kiss if Adam had what it took to sing with Kiss. Gene said he didn’t think Adam had a Rock Voice, but was better suited for ballads and such. BUT… he did offer Adam the opportunity to tour with Kiss, presumably as an opening act.

There’s been plenty of Facebook chatter about Gene Simmons saying Adam would be better suited to sing with Queen – and then being labeled as a homophobe for the comment. I haven’t been able to find any verification of not only gene’s supposed comment nor the homophobe tag. But I do believe it is true that Adam would be GREAT with Queen. (By the way, just about everyone on the web has comments on Adam’s orientation, some entertaining stuff from Perez Hilton…

Look at the dynamics: Paul Rodgers has announced that he’s parting ways with Queen, which leaves Brian May with a void at lead singer. Adam is very Freddy Mercury-esque: he’s theatrical, he’s flamboyant, he’s probably either gay or the “soft” rocker that the rest of the band won’t go out for a smoke with on breaks (is there such a thing as a vegan-rocker?) Regardless what he is or isn’t, I think the possibility of Adam as Queen’s new front-man opens a mega opportunity for the brand.

I think Queen would announce a US tour and sell out every arena they book and in some cities would do 2-3 shows. HUGE MONEY.

I think you get a “Queen; Best Of..” album in the can with Adam singing the vocals. You could even just have him lay down replacement tracks over the original recordings and get that baby on the market fast! It would probably go double platinum in a month. This, of course, would introduce an entirely fresh new demographic to the Queen library and existing release sales would increase from that: the new album would sell to not only the new demo but also to those of us who listened to Queen when they were current.

The next thing would be to record a new album of new Queen material. No doubt Brian May has some new stuff he would love to record with a voice like Adam’s and surely Adam has some ideas of his own, that when touched by Brian would probably be brilliant.

I hope someone is trying to broker that deal right now. But here’s the sticking point….

Every contestant on American Idol signs a release before they audition that basically gives up their artistic souls to Simon Fuller for a minimum of three years, with a perpetual first-right-of-refusal for ongoing contract renewals held squarely in the hands of Simon, not the artist. EVERY American Idol artist that now has a national singing/recording career is still under management contract by Simon. Do you think Simon has made any money on that deal? So how would Adam structure a contract with Queen? Would he forfeit a percentage of his income relevant to his cut from the Queen proceeds? Where would the royalties reside? Would Simon have legal input to song selection to preserve his financial interests? I can’t see anything like that happening. It all is a very mucky mess.

Bottom line is this: I think that because of the Idol contracts and clauses, Adam cannot join anyone that is an existing brand. He’ll be relegated to doing his own solo act, with heavy input from the Idol brass- at least on the first release – and maybe he does a Queen number in his show. Oh well. It is called the music business after all…

That’s probably why Gene Simmons limited his offer. Gene knows the business. He’s a business man, after all and a brilliant one. I’ve met him in person – actually sat next to him and Shannon Tweed at a taping of The Sinbad Show, when that was on the air. He’s an impressive guy and no question he knows a mess when he sees one.

At this point we’ll have to wait and see. I’m curious what your comments are….

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Posted 19 May, 2009 in Seattle Jazz – (0) comments

Dianne Reeves headlines the
2009 Bellevue Jazz Festival

Bellevue Jazz Festival Preview
May 22 – 24
for information: http://bellevuejazz.com

The new, old Bellevue Jazz Festival reconvenes for the second year in a row in its current incarnation, a full-blown, three-tiered, weekend-long, diverse offering of artists, both well-known and novices, all within walking distance (a vigorous one perhaps, but a walk nonetheless) in a maturing, downtown Bellevue.

Originally started in 1978 at Bellevue Community College as a grass-roots, local event, the current festival aims to compete with the likes of the jazz festivals of Portland and San Francisco. That means corporate dollars (Microsoft), grant money (4 Culture), and nationally-recognized musicians like Dianne Reeves, the Mingus Big Band, Kurt Elling, Danilo Perez, Mose Allison and Patricia Barber.

The BJF starts the Friday before Memorial Day and runs through Sunday, competing with one of Seattle’s most popular and longest-running musical events, the Northwest Folklife Festival. The BJF has committed itself to a three-year run. It has yet to make money but is convinced it is on the right track to becoming a viable event.

“We’re fortunate this year to have major sponsors,” said festival director Leslie Lloyd. “We are way ahead of the game compared to last year. Ticket sales are always a challenge…The economy trickles through all aspects of every business. We’re hoping people will choose to stay home over Memorial Day weekend and choose one more rich offering close to home.”

The headline acts, which includes the addition of the hometown Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, will perform in the Meydenbauer Center. Tickets for individual concerts range from $20 to $85. Ticket packages that allow you to see an entire day’s worth of performances or the entire weekend’s lineup range from $99 to $199.

For those on a budget, most of the shows are free. There will be no cover charge to hear most of the local musicians performing at various bars and restaurants: Drummer Jose Gonzales and his trio, bassist John Hamar’s trio, singer Trish Hatley and New Age Flamenco all perform Friday night; Singer Greta Matassa, pianist Bill Anschell and trumpeter Thomas Marriott (coming off the release of his newest CD, “Flexicon”) perform Saturday night; Pianist Primo Kim, guitarist Dave Peterson, and saxophonist Hadley Caliman perform with their respective trios Sunday.

Various musicians will also host late-night, open jam sessions Friday and Saturday night at the Courtyard by Marriott-Downtown Bellevue hotel. And sprinkled throughout the weekend will be performances by student combos from some of the area’s strongest high school jazz programs: Newport, Bellevue, Edmonds-Woodway, Sammamish, Shorewood and Ingraham.

A highlight of the festival is the Rising Stars program, a hand-picked group of 18 of the area’s best high school musicans, including several that performed recently at the prestigious Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival in New York: Roosevelt’s Max Holmberg and Mat Muntz, Garfield’s Ellie Lightfoot, Newport’s Eli Meisner, Zach Stoddard and Ariel Pocock. The Rising Stars were nominated and auditioned before a panel of jazz educators. They will perform with the SRJO to close the festival.

Parking at or near the Meydenbauer Center costs $5 to $8 and parking is free at many of the smaller venues. Taxi service is limited and the event will not provide a shuttle. But most of the venues are within a 10-minute walk of one another.

“The truth is that it takes three to five years to establish an event,” Lloyd said. “We’re still in that process.”

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Thu May 14, 8:48 PM EDT

ATLANTA — Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament was mugged outside an Atlanta studio where the band is recording, police said.

Three masked men dressed mostly in black came out of the woods behind Southern Tracks recording studio and attacked Ament and employee Mark Anthony Smith as they arrived in a rented Jeep late last month, DeKalb County police said.

Police say the men smashed three of the Jeep’s windows and grabbed a Blackberry and two computers and demanded money. Ament jumped out of the passenger side and tried to run, but one of the men knocked him to the ground and stole his passport.

The men got away with $3,000 cash, along with computers and other equipment worth more than $4,000. Paramedics treated Ament for head injuries.

Surveillance cameras recorded the incident but no one has been arrested.

Pearl Jam management had no comment Thursday.

Southern Tracks is a studio in north Atlanta that’s worked with artists including Aerosmith, Stone Temple Pilots and Bob Dylan.

Rolling Stone reports Pearl Jam is working on an album they plan to release themselves in the United States.

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Troy and I (Mark) are very fortunate entertainers. We get to sing in front of the very best working musicians in the Northwest every time we take the stage and I have to tell you, that is a gigantic privilege. When you play with cats this good you have freedom to take chances, freedom to relax into what we’re doing and when you have that you can rise to another level. Play above your game and last night that element was infectious onstage. Steve “Long Grain” Rice, Chris Clark, Garey Williams and Travis Ranney laid down some absolutely amazing stuff and the audience was at full pitch.

Our regular drummer, Devan Stovall, came down with the flu and he called me at about 3:30 to let me know he was really sick and didn’t think he should play. He felt terrible about not only having to “call in sick” literally hours before a gig, but also because he really wanted to be on with us. Vino is always our most electric gig. If you want to see the Pack at our best, this is where to see us. On Wednesday afternoon I got a call from a guy named Garey Williams out of the blue. He’s a drummer looking for gigs and was referred to us by Osama Afifi, a world-class bass player that we’ve worked with in the past. Osama toured with Yanni for 5 years and regardless of what you think about that music, you gotta have some serious chops to win that selection process and be on that kind of gig. This guy sold out stadiums all over the planet for a living…

So anyway, I figured if Osama felt that this cat would be a good fit for the band, then this cat would probably be a good fit. “Packish” is what we look for in our players. So when Devan went down, I called Garey and asked if he could make it for an 8:00 downbeat. There ya go. Packish he is indeed. Really great chops and seriously, for a guy who just walks right into a propeller of Pack, he was brilliant. We had a lot of great compliments about him.

Bassist Chris Clark, who used to tour with Bob Hope doing his big shows back in the 60’s and played in the band that you saw in the original “Nutty Professor” movie with Jerry Lewis, also played with Count Basie and other legendary band leaders, absolutely tore that dog to shreds. Amazing solos, incredible melodic lines, solid, solid chops. But that’s what happens when you’re that flippin good, you deliver with awe-inspiring aplomb. There’s a big difference between a good bassist and a GREAT bassist.

Stevie, “Long Grain” was playing with a sort of “out-of-body” elevation and frankly, was the glue and magnet that kept the Pack galaxy from spiraling wild into the universe. It’s such a treat to have him on our stage. I can’t really use words to describe his play, so I’ll give you a digital impression: 110100001010111010111000101011001011… That’s all I can say, and that’s a lot! The Grain is a blend of controlled recklessness and artistry that, when infused with the right ingredients (aka other great musicians) becomes something akin the the Green Flash, a rare seafaring phenomenon witnessed by very few sailors – and even then, maybe only once in a lifetime. ALL of the elements have to be in place, in perfect harmony to create the “Flash” and this is what Steve does. He creates that Flash. Lucky us.

Travis Ranney is just plain jaw-dropping. We’ve all seen live bands with sax players that are good and you say to the person next to you, wow, he’s really good.” But if you were in the audience when Travis bit the reed last night, you said nothing. You just allowed your entire body to become a gigantic blossom, a beaming smile, a warm – no, hot fusion of excitement and appreciation. This cat can flat-out blow. Amazing isn’t a word that can really cover it. There were so many open mouths and dropped jaws in the room it would have made a dentist nervous. What a delicious treat.

Then you had Troy and I. Probably the weak links in the big picture of things, but, we do what we do and people just keep loving it. Lena Bundy (Soul’d Out) had the night off from her busy performance schedule and I convinced her to join me in back-up vocals to “Let’s Stay Together” (Al Green). That wasn’t enough for me so I finally convinced her to do a solo number and she just KILLED with “Our Love is Here To Stay.” For those of you who don’t know her, she’s a world-class jazz and pop artist from Sweden also has trained with the same vocal coach that Celine Dion uses in Stockholm. I know… pretty amazing.

Claude, the owner of Vino Bella was finally coaxed up to the microphone to sing “Under the Boardwalk” to a very appreciative and gleeful audience. He can actually sing, he can… Good stage presence too and naturally everyone loved him.

GREAT night for the Pack. We’ll see about getting on the calendar at Vino again in the next couple of months. We don’t like to be away too long…

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Wayman Tisdale: ‘Biggest heart … biggest smile’
A RARE PERSON From playing BASKETBALL to playing the guitar, Tisdale’s charisma started with that world-class grin

BY BERRY TRAMEL
Published: May 16, 2009

Wayman Tisdale sat in the OU sports information office one night after study hall, practicing a speech.

Olympic Basketball Gold Medalist Wayman Tisdale flashes a smile as he works his way through a crowd of about 500 people at the State Capitol Thursday during ceremonies honoring Oklahoma’s Olympic athletes. Oklahoman Archives

Aug 28 The Oklahoman’s sports team talks about Wayman Tisdale, little league and the opening games for OU and OSU.

All these years later, Cindy Cloutier, then an Oklahoma student worker and still a Wayman fan, recalls the details.

Tisdale’s speech was about basketball expenses. He referred, in his best polished voice, to money for the “rentation” of Lloyd Noble Center. Wayman’s brother, William, bubbled in laughter, saying there was no such a word. Never fear, Wayman said. “It’s all in the delivery.”

Isn’t it the truth?

Wayman Tisdale’s delivery never faltered. Always with a smile.

Playing hoops or the bass guitar, winning games or friends, losing his leg or dying with grace, Tisdale delivered the rarest of charm, a genuine charisma that started with that world-class smile.

Tisdale died Friday in Tulsa at the age of 44, an Oklahoma icon not just because of turnaround jump shots and Jazz melodies, but that magnificent smile that is everyone’s favorite memory of Tisdale.

“He reminded me of Magic Johnson,” said another OU basketball legend, Alvan Adams, after learning of Tisdale’s death.

“That smile. Most of us when we played were serious, were combative, were competitive.

“Wayman and Magic were all those things, but they smiled while they kicked your butt.”

Who else in sport is remembered for their smile? Who else played at the highest level, with maximum intensity but such unrestrained joy? Wayman Tisdale lit up a room, even if that room was a coliseum.

Basketball is the most personal of games. Fans and cameras get close, unencumbered by helmet or hat. We feel like we get to know basketball players, really know them, and when someone as entrancing and delightful as Wayman comes along, the connection is strong.

Strong, and in this case pure.

“Truly that smile was just him,” said Jan Warner, president of the OU Tip-In Club during Tisdale’s days. “An unusually bright, loving guy all the time.”

The memories flooded Warner on Friday. She was with Tisdale during all those delightful days, first meeting him before OU’s 1982 NIT game at Oral Roberts, when Tisdale was a Tulsa Washington senior, and the fun was infectious even to strangers.

At OU, Wayman and William and teammate Chucky Barnett would come over to her house, the Warners supplying hamburgers and the players supplying the hijinks. “It was a three-ring circus,” she said. “Make you laugh till you doubled over.”

A few years ago, the Warners went to see Tisdale in concert, after he became a best-selling jazz guitarist, and he charmed music audiences with his talent and smile, same on the stage as he was on the hardwood.

“It was so precious to be with him,” Warner said. “I’ll miss him a lot. But he sure did give a lot of people excitement and joy.”

The excitement came from baskets made. The joy from smiles delivered.

The smile never wavered, even in despair. Wayman sat courtside at the Ford Center 38 days before his death, being honored by the NBA Thunder, and while his body was betraying him, the smile never did.

While the San Antonio Spurs interrupted their halftime warmup to shake hands and encourage a comrade, Tisdale talked about basketball and music and how he was doing fine, even though he wasn’t.

“Nicest man in the world with the biggest heart and an even bigger smile,” said former NBA star Reggie Miller, an Indiana Pacer teammate of Tisdale’s. “I thank him for befriending me and showing me there is more to life than just basketball.”

In the end, maybe that’s what Wayman Tisdale and his smile delivered.

Berry Tramel: 405-760-8080; Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1.

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Hello everyone. The blog posts we had up were a little confusing for our fans – they weren’t sure where to add their comments so we created this new post for you. So now it’s clear – tell us what you’re up to, give us feedback on our recent shows, tell us where you’d like to see us perform. Anything you want to say, say it here!

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We want to let you know that the season is heating up for bookings. In the past week we have added a May 4 gig at the Seattle Sheraton for Motor Coach International; a May 23 gig at Karma Vinyards in Chelan, WA to introduce their new champagne vintage; A December 11 corporate Holiday party at the Monte Christo Hotel in Everett, WA; The Angel’s Ball at the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, OR on Dec 5 and an anniversary party for a private party in Elma, WA. We’ve had numerous inquiries in the past several days and will surely be adding more gigs to our calendar for weddings and other corporate events. We’ve also been chosen as the “house band” for a new TV show to air on KONG and KING TV in Western Washington – taping begins in July. We’ll be on the air twice a week! We’ll let you know more as it gets closer.

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We’d like to thank all our fans who came out Thursday, April 16 to our debut show at Parlor Live. The show was a smashing success. The band was absolutely on fire and the management was so impressed they’re now building a showcase event that features us in the near future. It looks like the event will be a ticketed special performance as a “supper club” kind of thing. We’ll keep you posted once the date is calendar-confirmed. Thank you for your ongoing support!

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Until we get our feedback form up and running, this will be the place to leave it. So if you are a fan of The Pack, let us know what you think of us!

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