In addition to being nominated for two Latin Grammy awards (Best Music Video and Best Pop Performance by a Duo Or Group With Vocal for her duet with Marc Anthony on "No Me Ames"), Jennifer Lopez has been added to the list of hosts for the ceremony. Lopez will co-host with Gloria Estefan, Antonio Banderas, Jimmy Smits and Andy Garcia. Though it is expected that Lopez will perform, it has not yet been confirmed. The awards ceremony takes place Sept. 13 at Los Angeles' Staples Center only days after the Sept. 2 Lady of Soul awards for which Lopez also received a nomination (for Best R&B, Soul or Pop solo performance by a new artist). And if you can't get enough of seeing Lopez at celebrity studded galas, she received two MTV Video Music Awards nominations and a VH1 Vogue Fashion Awards nomination. The VMA's takes place Sept. 7 while the Fashion Awards are Oct. 20 . . .
Chuck Berry, the man who Brian Wilson said wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock & roll beats" will be among this year's recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors 2000. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced this year's honorees, which also include classical singer and conductor Placido Domingo, actors Clint Eastwood and Angela Lansbury and ballet dancing actor Mikhail Baryshnikov. Previously honored musicians include Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. The annual Honors Gala will be held on Dec. 3 at the Kennedy Center's Opera House and broadcast on CBS in December . . .
Radiohead have offered a big tease for fans eagerly awaiting the Oct. 3 release of their new album, Kid A. The group has made the album cover art available at www.radiohead.com as well as placing ultra-short snippets from four of the album's tracks, "Pool," "Fighting Men," "Polar Fall" and "Test Card," online. The song samples can be found at www.hollywoodandvine.com/radiohead . . .
Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes rescheduled three of the performances that they were forced to cancel following Page's back injury. The performance at Mountain View, Calif.'s Shoreline Amphitheater is now set for Sept. 15; the show at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, Calif. has been rescheduled for Sept. 17 and the Houston, Tex. show at Cynthia Woods Pavilion will now take place on Sept. 20. The three rescheduled dates bring the band to the third leg of their tour which launches on Sept. 23 in Miami, Fla. Page and the Crowes were unable to reschedule the other four cancelled shows (Seattle, Sacramento, Denver and Dallas) due to "routing problems," offering their regrets to inconvenienced fans . . .
Survivor's Richard Hatch is the latest addition to the list of presenters at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. The million dollar winner will join previously announced presenters including Chris Rock, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Sting, Lil' Kim, the Rock, Nelly and others. The awards are scheduled for Sept. 7 . . .
Former Minutemen/Firehose bassist Mike Watt announced a fifty-six date tour last week, but he's already amended it to include shows with former Dinosaur Jr frontman J Mascis. Starting Oct. 21 in Orlando, Fla., Watt will play with Mascis for a month stateside and an additional month in Europe (the dates have yet to be announced). "He needs a bass for his new thing, J Mascis and the Fog, and I've always dug him," Watt says. Of the illness that debilitated him for a large part of the year and kept him off the road until now, Watt says, "I'm doing better but still hurt as you can imagine. That shit took so much out of me." Watt plans to start recording his third solo album after the tour . . .
The BBC has hired Britney Spears to pen an "Agony Aunt" column on the strength of the advice she spooned up in her book Heart to Heart for the "So..." teen segment on their Web site. The pop princess has proven to be an expert on such puzzling topics as: How do you talk to your mom? How do you overcome obstacles? How do you deal with success and failure? And the all-important struggles with dating and relationships, dress codes, self-esteem, and body image? If you have a burning question, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/so/ to find Britney's advice column where you can fill out the form and send it to the BBC before Sept. 8. Spears will begin addressing the queries after that date . . .
Godsmack are set to release the follow-up to their eponymous debut Oct. 31. Awake was produced by frontman Sully Erna and Mudrock, who also worked on the band's multi-platinum debut. The first single, also titled "Awake," will be released in early October. The band wrote most of the album's material while on the road behind their first release. "This one's a lot more aggressive," says Erna, "it has a bit more attitude and it's a little angrier" . . .
Three days before their follow-up to Sunburn (which spawned the modern rock radio hit "Shimmer") hits stores, Fuel will kick off a nine-city fan appreciation tour that brings the band and label-mates Vallejo (on select dates) to cities across the East Coast. Fans who purchase Something Like Human, out Sept. 19, at specified local retailers will be qualified to get free tickets. You can also try your luck at winning them via local radio stations. For the full list of cities and information on local radio stations and retailers go to www.fuelweb.com . . .
Members of 98 Degrees, 'N Sync and Sugar Ray will be popping up on Hollywood Squares during the week of Sept. 4-8, as the TV show hosts a Teen People week. Also trying their hands at the tic-tac-toe trivia game will be Jessica Simpson, Vitamin C, Hoku and MTV Jams host Tyrese. In addition to appearing on the syndicated TV program, the artists will appear in a fashion spread in the October issue of Teen People (which will hit newstands in the beginning of September). Since the shows are pre-taped, backstage photos are already up on the Hollywood Squares site, www.hollywoodsquares.com . . .
MTV's Campus Invasion Tour gets under way this fall with Wyclef Jean, De La Soul and Black Eyed Peas infiltrating institutions of higher learning. The full itinerary is yet to be finalized, but the tour is expected to kick off in October and run through mid November. Meanwhile, the Wyclef Jean Foundation -- his non-profit charity that donates music lessons and instruments to kids around the world -- has announced its first fundraising event for the year. Wyclef will perform a full set from his new album, The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book at a fundraiser at New York's Copacabana on Sept. 6. And Jan. 19, Wyclef will become the first hip-hop artist to play Carnegie Hall, where he will perform with children's choirs and orchestras. A slew of yet-to-be-named special guests are expected . . .
Willie Nelson has asked presidential candidates Al Gore, George W. Bush, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan as well as 110 other members of Congress to meet and discuss farming issues with a contingent of farmers before the fifteenth anniversary of Farm Aid on Sept. 17 at Virginia's Nissan Pavilion. "It is so bad in farm country that the farmer's return on a bushel of corn won't even buy a gallon of gasoline," Nelson said in a statement. "This is why we need the members of Congress and the future president to hear from family farmers about how we can work together to ensure that our food continues to be produced in America by our family farmers." Tickets for the event, which is also scheduled to feature co-founders John Mellencamp and Neil Young, along with Barenaked Ladies and CSNY, are still on sale through Ticketmaster . . .
Hootie and the Blowfish are giving fans the opportunity to help finalize the track-listing for Scattered, Smothered and Covered, their collection of rare recordings and other odds and ends culled from soundtracks and compilations. Ten tracks have already been selected for the album, including covers of tunes by R.E.M. ("Driver 8"), Vic Chesnutt ("Gravity of the Situation"), Tom Waits ("I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You") and Roy Orbison ("Dream Baby"), among others. For fans twenty-one-years and older, they can log onto www.budweiser.com (fans younger than the legal Web-drinking age will be routed to an Atlantic Records site to vote) and vote for five out of eight additional songs that might make the cut as well as for one of three album cover ideas . . .
The U.K.'s newest hitmakers, the Corrs, are set to drop their Euro-popular In Blue on an American audience. The Irish quartet's third album has hit No. 1 in fourteen countries and on Sept. 12, they will turn their attention to an audience of Yanks that never made stars out of such U.K. sure-things as James, Teenage Fanclub and thus far, Travis. Three of the tracks from In Blue were produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange (Def Leppard, Shania Twain), with the remaining tracks either produced or co-produced by the band with some aid from Mitchell Froom (Suzanne Vega, Los Lobos). The album's first single, "Breathless," is already filling U.S. airwaves . . .
Loooong before Celine, long before Dionne, there was Dion. And while the folk/rock/doo-wop legend might not carry the same name recognition today as his Titanic-namesake-counterpart, Bronx-born Dion DiMucci will get his props on Oct. 24 when The Right Stuff/EMI release Dion: King of the New York Streets. The three-disc collection will span the entirety of his forty-year career. Disc One, "The Wanderer," will cover his early work with the Belmonts in 1957 through the hit-laden years leading up to 1963, while Disc Two charts the mid-Sixties through mid-Seventies, leaving Disc Three to bring him up to date including covers of Bruce Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind" and "Book of Dreams." In addition to six previously unreleased tracks, the set includes liner notes by Dave Marsh as well as written musings by Springsteen, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Waylon Jennings . . .
How do you think they're going to take it Down Under when the Aussies realize that Atlanta Radio station 99X has appropriated the name of their annual alt-fest Big Day Out? Seemingly without a care in the world, WNNX-FM has dubbed their October radio show "Big Day Out 2000," and have already confirmed top drawer acts like Green Day, Papa Roach, Stone Temple Pilots, Travis and the Deftones to rock the house at Lakewood Amphitheater. Proceeds will be donated to Angel Flight, a nonprofit organization that provides free private air transport for seriously ill patients who need to travel great distance to get necessary medical treatments. Organizers plan to add more bands to the stellar line-up, with tickets going on sale on Aug. 26 from Ticketmaster . . .
Despite releasing Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia less than a month ago, the Dandy Warhols are already prepping their next effort. Speaking backstage at Britain's V2000 festival, singer Courtney Taylor said he was scheduled to meet with Massive Attack this week to work on new material. "I'm going down to their studio on Thursday," he said. "Rob, 3D and I are going to screw around and see how we work together because we like hanging out and we like getting drunk and we like talking about music, so we're going to see if we can make music together. It's like the missing link for a whole lot of things. [They] achieve the same sort of thing we achieve both emotionally and hypnotically, but he uses a different tool, so it's theoretically perfect." In addition, the Dandy's are looking to bring in producer/re-mixer Black Dog for a track. They currently have seven new songs written . . .
U2 have finally given their new studio album a name: All That You Can't Leave Behind. The album, produced by longtime U2 associates Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, will be shelves "in late October," according the band's official Web site, www.u2.com. The first single "Beautiful Day," will go to radio on September 1. Penned by Bono, "Beautiful Day" was inspired by the frontman's experience with Jubilee 2000 effort to drop the Third World Debt. The video for "Beautiful Day" will premiere at the MTV Awards on Sept. 7. The track listing for All That You Can't Leave Behind is: "Beautiful Day," "Elevation," "Walk On," "Stuck In a Moment," "Peace On Earth," "Kite," "New York," "In A Little While," "Wild Honey," "When I Look At The World" and "Grace" . . .
Candidates take note. Pearl Jam have found a sure-fire way to get apathetic young voters interested in the political process these days. In exchange for volunteering to man voter-registration booths on the current leg of their U.S. tour, fans were guaranteed one free ticket to that night's show. A day after making the request via the band's Sony Web site, all the volunteers needed had been recruited. Volunteers put in three hours work, approximately from 5:30 to 8:30, before the concert begins. If you're still apathetic and just want to hear live PJ without the altruism, the twenty-five bootlegs from the band's European tour will go on sale via www.tenclub.net beginning September 5 where they will be sold for "a special price." If you want to get a leg up on what each CD has to offer, the site also features set lists and artwork for all twenty-five discs . . .
Madonna has filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, an arm of the United Nations, to help her pry the name madonna.com from an alleged cybersquatter. Internet porn vendor Dan Parisi runs the site, as well as a number of rather misleading URLs including the lascivious Whitehouse.com, which brought him head to head with Clinton administration lawyers last year. Parisi argues that the singer has no right to lay claim to the site, because "Madonna" is a common word in the English language, and she has no right to take it out of the public domain. For her part, the Material Mom has accused Parisi of "holding the domain name hostage," and is asking the WIPO to make him relinquish control of the URL. But Parisi who bought the domain for $20,000 in 1998, according to the database at Network Solutions, has no plans to let go of the handle. Initially it was a porn site, but most recently Parisi has transformed it into an open forum about his dealing with the singer, posting both letters from their respective lawyers. He insists he did not purchase the name with an eye to selling it back to the singer. "We have never offered to sell this domain to Madonna Louise Ciccone, and have rebuffed all offers from her to purchase the domain name madonna.com," he claims . . .
Creed were forced to cancel their two night stand at Detroit's Pine Knob Amphitheater over the weekend. Despite early reports, the cancellations came not because of Scott Stapp's sore throat, but because interim bassist Brett Hestla, whom the band borrowed from Virgos Merlot after Brian Marshall exited Aug. 10, injured his hand when the band performed at Cleveland's Gund Arena Aug. 16. "Hestla was hurt while onstage on Thursday. It's not serious, but the band was forced to postpone their shows in Detroit on Aug. 18 and 19," explained a rep for the band. The beleaguered band has since rescheduled those shows and will be back in the Motor City on Sept. 7 and Sept. 9 . . .
Boyz II Men have plotted a summer tour to go with their upcoming album Nathan Michael Shawn Wanya, which is set for a Sept. 12 release. Featuring Luther Vandross, the outing kicks off on Aug. 22 at West Palm Beach, Fla.'s Mars Music Amphitheater. The twenty-city, twenty-date tour wraps up on Sept. 24 in Concord, Calif. . . .
ANDREW DANSBY, JOLIE LASH, CHRISTINA SARACENO, JAAN UHELSZKI, JENNIFER VINEYARD
(August 25, 2000)