New Scott Weiland solo disc on the way (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland will release his second solo album on November 18, a decade after his first solo outing hit stores.
"Happy," which will be issued on Weiland's own Softdrive label, boasts guest appearances from three members of No Doubt: bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young. It was co-produced by Weiland and Doug Grean, with Steve Albini also engineering a handful of songs.

Although the full track list has yet to be announced, "Happy" includes "Paralysis" (a Bowie-esque midempo with a crunchy chorus) the banjo- and acoustic guitar-addled "She's So Cold," the peppy rocker "Talk About Love," the bedroom pop-leaning "Somedays" and the glammy, riffy "Missing Cleveland."

Weiland is planning to tour in November in support of "Happy," with dates to be revealed. Until then, he's on tour with the reunited Stone Temple Pilots through October 31 in Pelham, Ala. His previous solo release, "12 Bar Blues," was issued in 1998 via Atlantic.

Reuters/Billboard

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New Kids On The Block hope new album has right stuff (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hit '80s boy band New Kids On The Block are no longer kids, but all five men are hoping they still have the "right stuff" after reuniting and releasing their first album in 14 years this week.
The New Kids were still teenagers when they released their debut self-titled album in 1986. They sold more than 70 million albums, with hits including "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" and "I'll Be Loving You," before breaking up in the mid-1990s.

But Jordan Knight, Jonathan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg and Danny Wood say the lucrative reunions of groups like The Police, The Spice Girls and Take That had nothing to do with their own decision to get back together.

"It had absolutely no bearing, whether it was The Police or the Spice Girls," McIntyre, 35, told Reuters in an interview as he sat on a couch alongside Wood and the Knight brothers. "It was just the right timing for us."

"We had to feel confident and good about what we were doing," he said. "When we went into the studio there weren't expectations for a tour or an album. It was just like, 'let's see what we got."'

What they got was their fifth studio album, "The Block," which was released in the United States on Tuesday. The first single off the album, "Summertime," peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after it was released in May.

"Lyrically it's very reflective of who we are now," McIntyre said. "We're grown men in relationships, complicated relationships, there's ups and downs and we're all in different places in our lives."

"There's also stuff that's just really fun and really dance driven and really club driven," he said.

For "The Block," the group worked with artists including Timbaland, Akon, Ne-Yo, Lady GaGa and the Pussycat Dolls.

"We're a group who are more entertainers, we pride ourselves on doing a good stage show," said Jordan Knight, 38. "I think that kind of entertainment goes in waves and we are ... seeing that kind of wave kind of hit again."

In an early review of the album, The Los Angeles Times said there was a "surprising strength in most of the material" and that "believe it or not, they've got the right stuff."

New Kids On The Block kick off a North American tour this month in Toronto and are planning to tour Europe early in January. But can fans expect more from the reformed boy band?

"The door is open for the future, it's definitely wide open," said Wood, 39. "We will all sit down and talk and see where we are at that point."

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Library of Congress to honor Stevie Wonder (AP)

WASHINGTON - The Library of Congress will honor Stevie Wonder with its second Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Librarian of Congress James Billington, who announced the prize Tuesday, noted that the prize honors an artist whose work transcends musical styles to bring diverse listeners together and foster mutual understanding. It recognizes a musician's lifetime of work.

Wonder, 58, will receive the award on Feb. 23, 2009. The first Gershwin Prize was awarded in 2007 to Paul Simon.

Self-taught on piano, harmonica and other instruments, Steveland Morris was just 12 when he first wowed national TV audiences on shows like Dick Clark's "American Bandstand." He was "Little Stevie Wonder" back then, a name he says someone at Motown Records — he can't remember exactly who — came up with.

From his earliest days as a prodigy covering Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" through such songs of his own as "You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "My Cherie Amour" and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours," his music has sought to uplift and inform as well as entertain.

Among his albums: "Talking Book," "Innervisions," "Fulfillingness First Finale" and "Songs in the Key of Life," the last of which included his classic single "Love in Need of Love Today."

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Great White offers $1M to settle fatal fire suits (AP)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Members of the 1980s rock band whose pyrotechnics sparked a nightclub fire that killed 100 people have agreed to pay $1 million to survivors and victims' relatives, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
The settlement offer from Great White is the latest stemming from the February 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick. Roughly $175 million has now been offered by dozens of defendants to settle lawsuits over the blaze, which also injured more than 200 people and was the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.

The band does not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which requires the approval of the more than 300 people suing, among other conditions.

The blaze began when the band's tour manager, Daniel Biechele, shot off streams of pyrotechnics at the start of the concert. Sparks from the pyrotechnics ignited inexpensive packaging foam the club owners had used as soundproofing around the stage. One band member, guitarist Ty Longley, was killed in the fire.

Though the band members were never charged, Biechele pleaded guilty in 2006 to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter and was paroled in March after serving less than half of his four-year prison sentence.

Biechele is covered under the settlement, as are lead singer Jack Russell and other members of the band at the time of the fire. The settlement also covers the record label, manager and management company of the band at the time of the fire.

Great White's insurer is covering the settlement. The insurer has previously said that $1 million was the maximum amount of the band's insurance policy.

The band has said it had permission for the pyrotechnics, something club owners Jeffrey and Michael Derderian have denied.

Attorneys for the band did not return calls seeking comment.

No settlement money has been distributed so far. A Duke University law professor has been appointed to work out a formula to determine how much money each person should receive.

The victims and survivors sued several dozen defendants after the fire, including foam companies, the rock radio station that ran advertisements for the concert, the club owners and the local fire marshal who failed to cite the club for the foam on the walls and ceilings.

The state of Rhode Island and the town of West Warwick each agreed last month to settle for $10 million.

The case has been settled in piecemeal fashion over the past 12 months, effectively erasing the possibility of a trial that some victims' relatives had hoped could give them answers about the circumstances of the fire.

"I just feel that we're never going to get the answers we need that would put some of this to rest for us," said Chris Fontaine, whose son, Mark, was killed in the fire and whose daughter, Melanie, was badly injured.

She said she thought the band "was getting off easy" and would have faced a much more costly verdict if the case had gone to trial.

Great White, from Southern California, rose to popularity in the 1980s, boasting a blues-inflected hard rock sound and scoring a Grammy nomination for its best-known song, a cover of the tune "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."

Besides Biechele, the only people charged as a result of the fire were the club owners, who pleaded no contest to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter in 2006. Michael Derderian will be out on parole next year. Jeffrey Derderian was spared jail time and given community service and probation. The brothers have been sued but have received bankruptcy protection.

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Springsteen ends world tour at Harley celebration (AP)

MILWAUKEE - Bruce Springsteen ended his world tour over the weekend, toned down but revved up.
Springsteen played more than 30 songs over 3 1/2 hours Saturday night on Milwaukee's lakefront for Harley-Davidson's 105th anniversary celebration. He made few comments between songs.

Only for a few moments before "Livin' in the Future" did the rocker — who often brings his liberal-leaning political comments to the stage — stray into politics.

Springsteen performed to a crowd not unlike the one that gave Republican presidential candidate John McCain a warm welcome Aug. 4 at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Many roared their motorcycles during McCain's speech.

Springsteen said "Livin' in the Future" was about what was happening now: cheese, Harley-Davidson motorcycles (tailoring it to his Wisconsin crowd), transfats, "500 channels of nothing on" and the Bill of Rights.

But he also mentioned wire tapping and rendition — the secret transport of terror suspects from one country to another.

"Things that basically at the heart are un-American," he said. The crowd gave spattered groans but mostly stayed silent.

He did not play "Born in the U.S.A," his anthem about the difficulties Vietnam war veterans faced, or the anti-war ballad "Devils and Dust" about Iraq.

Springsteen's Saturday performance was his last stop on his tour. His Web site said Springsteen and the E Street Band have performed 100 concerts for more than 2 million fans.

Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson expected more than 100,000 people from around the nation and world to participate in the four-day celebration that officially started Thursday in Milwaukee and its suburbs. It included a parade through the city, a party along the lake, activities at the new Harley-Davidson Museum, a special exhibit at Discovery World and other big-name bands.

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Half-sisters win fight to direct Bayreuth Festival (AP)

BAYREUTH, Germany - The dramatic struggle played out backstage, pitting the great-grandchildren of composer Richard Wagner for control of the legendary festival dedicated to his music.
When the curtain rose Monday, half-sisters Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier had been chosen to succeed their father, Wolfgang, at the helm of the Bayreuth Festival, bringing the verve of youth and steady hand of experience to an event legendary among opera connoisseurs.

The festival's board said Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier would be co-directors of the annual extravaganza in Bavaria, after last week's end to their father's 57-year run as overseer of an event that began in 1876.

The 24-member board sided with the half-sisters over their cousin Nike Wagner, who mounted a surprise bid just a week ago with renowned Belgian director Gerard Mortier, after a power struggle that stretched on like a Wagnerian opera but more closely resembled Shakespeare's "King Lear."

"It was an extremely stressful time," Katharina said Monday.

Their 89-year-old father, Wolfgang Wagner, has led the festival since 1951, when he revived it after a World War II hiatus with his brother Wieland — Nike's father.

Both Wolfgang and Wieland staged important productions of their grandfather's works, but it is Wieland who is remembered as a genius and is credited with helping to found the Regietheater movement. When he died of cancer in 1966, Wolfgang was left as the festival's sole director.

Wolfgang steered Bayreuth across the next four decades as the festival remained a cornerstone of opera culture. Today some fans wait seven years or more to purchase tickets to popular stagings.

In 2001, the festival's board — which includes officials of the German federal, Bavarian state and Bayreuth city governments — tried to force Wagner to step down by naming Eva, his daughter from his first marriage, to take over.

Wolfgang refused, arguing he held a lifelong contract. Then last November came the death of his second wife, Gudrun, whom many considered the festival's guiding light. In April, Wolfgang agreed to step down at the conclusion of Bayreuth's 2008 edition.

That moment came last week amid a blast of trumpets and thundering applause at the Festspielhaus, the venue that Richard Wagner designed himself to host the festival.

Bayreuth Mayor Michael Hohl, a board member, said Katharina and Eva will get a 5-to-7-year contract, and he expected it to be negotiated and signed before year's end.

"We will be absolutely sure not to make the mistake of a lifelong contract anymore," Hohl said.

For years Wolfgang had said he wanted Katharina, his 30-year-old daughter with Gudrun, to be his successor. Despite the momentum of that blessing, Katharina's Bayreuth debut, a bombastic staging of "Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg" in 2007, was booed by the audience.

As her role at the festival increased this year, she helped introduce live filming, a public viewing and a new Web site that streamed a production of "Die Meistersinger" for the first time to paid subscribers. But she said she wasn't trying to overhaul the vision for the festival founded by her great-grandfather in 1872.

"It's definitely an improvement for Bayreuth, but I wouldn't call it something as lofty as a new path," Wagner said in an interview with The Associated Press in June. "You have to move along with advances in technology."

In the end, Katharina applied to run the festival jointly with her 63-year-old half-sister Eva, Wolfgang's daughter by his first marriage with Ellen Drexel.

Eva brings a rich resume to the festival. She is an artistic consultant at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France as well as the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Eva said she and her half-sister bring different talents to the partnership. "But in the end we will do everything collectively," she said.

Katharina and Eva made their presentation to the board Monday, as did Nike Wagner and her proposed partner, Mortier, who helped rejuvenate the Salzburg Festival in neighboring Austria and is to become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera next fall.

Mortier felt the board did not give a fair hearing to the presentation he and Nike created.

"As everybody knew, the decision was already made for a long time, but it was interesting to see that a democratic way of election did not work," Mortier wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "They told me that the project was very interesting, but that they decided to stay with the Wagner family."

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Associated Press writers Brigitte Caspary reported this story in Bayreuth and Patrick McGroarty in Berlin. AP writer Ron Blum in New York contributed to this report

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On the Net:

Bayreuth Festival: http://www.bayreuther-festspiele.de

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Usher to help kick off NFL season with concert (AP)

NEW YORK - Like the NFL teams beginning their new seasons, Usher is hoping to go all the way to the Super Bowl.
The R&B singer will perform the season's kickoff concert on Thursday in New York's Columbus Circle along with Keith Urban and Natasha Bedingfield. The 3 p.m. concert will be held just before the season opener, when the Washington Redskins take on the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

Like the Redskins and Giants, Usher is aiming for the big game in February. The game might be the destination of all football players, it's also one of the most sought-after gigs in music.

"I don't think it's too early to consider it," said Usher, speaking from Atlanta. "Certainly being associated with the organization makes that a lot more possible. There have been conversations for a lot of years about me being part of a performance at a Super Bowl."

He added: "I'm hoping that this leads, definitely, to that. This whole process is basically you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

Usher feels that he's sufficiently built up his "brand" over the past decade — it can sometimes be easy to forget that the 29-year-old singer has been around that long. Recent Super Bowl performers include Prince and Tom Petty.

Last year, Usher married Tameka Foster and the couple had a son, Usher Raymond V. The onset of family life has brought out a more mature side of Usher, whose 2008 album "Here I Stand" deals considerably with growing into adulthood.

At the kickoff concert, which will stream on NFL.com, Usher plans to perform "Here I Stand," "Changing Places" and "What's Your Name" with guest star will.i.am.

Usher, who spent much of a his childhood in Tennessee, counts himself a Titans fan, and vividly recalls being at the 1999 Super Bowl and watching the Titans' Kevin Dyson fall one yard short of the end zone as time expired.

An expert dancer, Usher gives props to Randy Moss and Terrell Owens' endzone dances, but says their moves still fall short of another.

"The greatest end zone dance of all time has to be Cuba Gooding Jr.," said Usher, referring to the actor's dance in "Jerry Maguire." "The greatest of all time."

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On the Net:

http://www.nfl.com

http://www.usherworld.com/

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