By Ed Christman 51 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - From studying the charts while working at Billboard as a teen to soaking up the sounds of the Bowery while punk was exploding, Seymour Stein, co-founder of Sire Records, has spent his life immersed in music.

"He is probably the greatest living storyteller of the music business," Tommy Boy Entertainment founder Tom Silverman says. "He not only knows the B-sides of every record no matter how obscure, but he knows stories behind every one of them, especially from the 1950s to 1970s."

At the age of 14, Stein's first music industry job was as assistant to Billboard head of charts Tom Noonan. Soon he was working for legendary labels like King Records and Red Bird Records. By 1968 he and Richard Gottehrer paired to form Sire Productions, which evolved into the label of the same name. (The name was a combination and reordering of the first two letters of each man's first name.)

The company licensed bands in the first part of the 1970s, but things really jelled in the second half, when Stein signed the Ramones. Sire ultimately became the most successful punk/new wave label in the United States, if not the world. Along the way, Gottehrer and Stein split amicably, and by 1977, Sire was affiliated with Warner Music Group, where it remains today.

Sire has issued records by Talking Heads, Richard Hell & the Void-Oids, the Dead Boys, the Paley Brothers, the Rezillos, the Undertones, the Pretenders, Madness, Secret Affair, English Beat, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Plastic Betrand, the Saints, M/Robin Scott, Yaz, Modern English, Aztec Camera, Jonathan Richman, the Cure, the Cult and Brian Wilson. If that didn't ensure Stein's place in history, he also signed Madonna.

Q: How did music come into your life so early, and how did you wind up at Billboard?

Seymour Stein: "I used to listen to the radio under the pillow. I went up to Billboard when I was 13, and Tom Noonan was very kind and set up a table for me and let me read through the bound volumes of old issues.

"I attracted a lot of attention: 'Who was this crazy kid?' they wondered. Tom introduced me to all the people at Billboard, and in particular Paul Ackerman (the magazine's music editor from 1943-73) was very influential on me and on the industry. I also was very impressed by Bob Rolontz, who was one of the best reporters Billboard ever had.

"I started working for Tom as his assistant, doing research when I was 14 in 1957, and then Paul would send me to review a show. They never mentioned they were paying me. When I realized that, I went home and told my parents, 'I should be paying them for letting me work there."'

Q: How long were you at Billboard?

Stein: "I worked at Billboard continuously through high school, and when I graduated I was going to go to college, but Tommy offered me a full-time job, so I took it. In 1961, I then went to Cincinnati to work for Syd Nathan at King Records until 1963. I learned more about the record business from Syd than anyone else. He was my greatest mentor."

Q: How did Sire come about?

Stein: "When I was at Red Bird we were on the eighth floor in the Brill Building (in New York), and on the ninth floor was a company called FUG Productions, which is where Rich Gottehrer worked. Together, we formed Sire, (a name) I liked because it was similar to King Records. It was a struggle in the beginning. We didn't have very much money, and a lot of the records we put out were things that we licensed from EMI, like the Climax Blues Band, Renaissance and Focus."

Q: It would seem that you hit your stride in the mid-'70s.

Stein: "For me, growing up in New York was the center of the music business. New York had everything. Everyone played here, and we had Alan Freed (the DJ who coined the phrase "rock 'n' roll"). But little by little, New York became less and less. Then, there was the whole punk/new wave thing, but nobody liked to go down to the Bowery. I didn't mind; I didn't find it threatening.

"(CBGB founder) Hilly Kristal was a wonderful man. He gave everybody the opportunity, and he cared about his bands. He found the Dead Boys and turned me on to them. When I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (in 2005), in addition to my family I had two guests with me, Hilly and Tom Noonan."

Q: Early on Sire was kind of like the first Rhino, issuing records that might not be commercial but were important, like the Pretty Things and the "Nuggets" compilation.

Stein: "Funny, that's what the people from Rhino told me years later, that my reissues inspired them."

Q: How did you find Madonna?

Stein: "Mark Kamens brought me Madonna. He was a great DJ, but wanted to be a producer. I gave him $18,000 to develop six acts, and the third was Madonna. I signed her from my hospital bed."

Q: How would you describe your A&R (artists and repertoire development) direction nowadays?

Stein: "I don't have any music direction; I let the music take me. I think a hit can come from anywhere. What a lot of people are missing is how the rest of the world has come up. Look at Russia, India, China and Turkey. These are incredible markets. And smaller ones like Indonesia and South Africa are on the rise. The place I go to almost every year, which I am convinced will be a very big market, is India. It's more than Bollywood, which is also very good and changing all the time. Beyond that, India has great producers, great writers and great artists."

Q: Is there anything that the industry should be doing that it's not?

Stein: "One of the things that is a big problem with the industry as we grow larger: There is no mentoring going on. I was fortunate to have many (mentors)."

Q: What's your appraisal of where indie labels stand today?

Stein: "Now is a great time to be an independent label. The best way to deal now would be to have the synergy between the indie and the major. It has worked very well for me and allowed me to do what I arguably do the best, and what I like doing the best — being around music."

Reuters/Billboard

By SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Juanes kicked off the U.S. leg of his world tour at Madison Square Garden, bringing a message of peace and a giddy enthusiasm to be performing in “the temple of music.”

He opened Thursday night with his hit “A Dios le pido,” and kept the public on its feet with more than 20 songs, including “Mala gente,” “Fotografia,” “Volverte a ver” and the megahit “La camisa negra.”

The Colombia star showed his activist colors, preaching peace between his homeland and its neighbors amid a diplomatic crisis over a deadly Colombian cross-border raid into Ecuador last week that killed a senior Colombian rebel and 24 others.

“This night as a Colombian, I want to extend my right hand and embrace all my Ecuadorean brothers, I want to extend my left hand and embrace all my Venezuelan brothers,” Juanes said. “Only we can come together under a single flag, the flag of peace.”

A hush fell over the stadium as Juanes led a tribute to land-mine victims, singing “Minas piedras” while two giant screens carried images of the victims of anti-personnel mines by photojournalist Gervasio Sanchez.

Leading a band of seven, guitar in hand, Juanes briefly lost his way while singing “Mentira” — but the crowd was forgiving.

“I forgot the lyrics and it’s my turn to improvise,” Juanes confessed to wave of applause.

For an encore, Juanes played a rousing rendition of Colombian Joe Arroyo’s “La rebelion.”

___

On the Net:

http://www.juanes.net

By Erin Parker 14 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Guitarist Kaki King's first three studio albums put her firmly on the radar of adventurous rock listeners, but she's drawing wider attention with recent contributions to a Grammy Award-nominated album and two Academy Award-nominated films.

The diminutive King's guest turn on Foo Fighters' 2007 disc "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace" and her work on the scores for "August Rush" and the Sean Penn-directed "Into the Wild" are formidable boosts as she launches her fourth album, "Dreaming of Revenge," due March 11 via Velour Recordings.

Foos frontman Dave Grohl gushed to Billboard last summer about how King "shredded" him while they recorded the acoustic instrumental "The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," and Penn personally invited her to work on "Into the Wild" after sound designer Martin Hernandez introduced him to her music.

"I'd very much like to become more visible, but I also love film scoring and sitting in on other people's records, helping people write songs or anything where I get to be creative under pressure," King says.

Her new album's distinct melodies and catchy pop choruses should make traditional promotion less of a challenge than it has been for some of her past work, and King says she'd welcome radio exposure. But she admits that she's still finding the balance between the creative and business sides to her career.

"The industry is so different now. Everything that is cool and great kind of has legs through a very different source, so I certainly don't think (of radio viability) when I'm writing," she says. "Mostly what I focus on is trying to make the music sound really good and going out on the road, which is the domain that I can control."

Touring remains key to King's fortunes. She usually performs solo, exhibiting the kind of dazzling fret-tapping techniques that have drawn her favorable comparisons to the late Michael Hedges.

King will be ubiquitous at South by Southwest, where she will play no less than five shows during the concurrent film and music festivals in Austin, Texas. North American concert dates follow through mid-April.

Her bubbly personality is captured in a series of Web vignettes about the making of the new album that were posted to blogs and on King's MySpace site. Velour is also going against the grain with claymation and stop-animation videos for the "Air and Kilometers" and "Pull Me Out Alive," respectively.

"I love the idea of traditionally promoting this album, and I'd love to do a world tour," King says, "but I also have another world of people who are interested in me for different reasons. I love the fact that I can go play with the Foo Fighters, go do a TED Talk (at the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conference) and then go on tour with a band."

Reuters/Billboard

By Tamara Conniff 50 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The story of Tomas Young, an American soldier paralyzed during combat in Iraq, has drawn the attention of such star performers as Pearl Jam, Ben Harper and Tom Morello, not to mention Phil Donahue, who helped direct and produce a documentary about Young's experiences.

That film, "Body of War," screens March 13 at Austin's Paramount Theater as part of the South by Southwest Film Festival, and is scheduled for theatrical release in select U.S. cities beginning in April.

Young recently chatted with Billboard about choosing the material for the album "Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran," which Sire will release March 18, and what he hopes to accomplish by sharing his struggle.

Q: How did you pick the songs for the album?

Tomas Young: "I wanted them to be diverse and appeal to fans of any kind of music. Maybe you pick it up because you like Lupe Fiasco or Public Enemy, and then you get some Ben Harper accidentally thrown into your ear hole that maybe makes you think a little more about a different subject. I had all this unanswered rage channeling through my body, and music is a real outlet for it. Like most people, for most of my life, I've found solace through music."

Q: How many of the songs are featured in the documentary?

Young: "Only two, because the idea for the CD came well after the film had been completed — Eddie (Vedder's) solo version of 'No More' and 'Light Up Your Lighter' by Michael Franti, which appears in a scene where I'm putting my Purple Heart and my complimentary American flag gift from the United States government up in my closet."

Q: How did you meet the film's co-director, Phil Donahue?

Young: "I've always been kind of a political junkie. So when I was laid up in Walter Reed Hospital, my mom was there and she said, 'You've finally made it to Washington. Is there anybody you want to meet?' At the time, the only presidential candidate serious about pulling the troops out of Iraq was Ralph Nader, and possibly because I was on morphine most of the time, I said I wanted to meet him. He had called up his friend Phil Donahue and told him he was going to visit a mother and son at Walter Reed, and would he like to come with? And Phil spent more time, personally talking to my mother and (me), and I guess I left an impression on him. I don't understand how I did that under morphine, which is not too bad a way to live if you're in horrible pain."

Q: What was it like to have your life shown so raw onscreen?

Young: "In the film you see me being catheterized by my mother, and that's pretty intense. But I managed to crack jokes during the whole thing, so I hope people get my sort of gallows humor. At first I was a little hesitant to show too much, but I eventually came to the realization that the more I show, the more people will know the ramifications of what's going on."

Q: Why did you join the military?

Young: "Right after 9/11, I saw the president talking about how we were going to smoke the evildoers out of their cave and bring them to justice. I guess I've watched too many 'Law & Order' episodes. I thought you followed the evidence, went (to war) and took out the guilty. When we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, we didn't go after the Chinese because they looked sort of similar.

"You want to know why I became an atheist? Well, I became very depressed and despondent over the idea that we were going to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. So I went to the local battalion doctor to see if they could give me something to help make the voices in my head shut the f— up. And he told me it was standard Army procedure before they diagnosed anybody with psychiatric illness or prescribed them any medication for them to go see the chaplain.

"I've always been agnostic, and I went, but I thought, 'I have to do what I have to do to get the pills.' The chaplain looked me square in the face and said, 'I think you'll feel better when you get over to Iraq and start killing people.' So I stood up and said, 'Thank you, sir, for confirming everything I thought about religion. I'm gonna go get my Prozac.' And that's what I did."

Q: What do you hope to accomplish though your activism?

Young: "I want there to be a sharp decline in military enlistments. I don't want to see another American or Iraqi son or daughter in a situation like I am, or worse. I want veterans to receive the proper attention and care, because many of them don't have the means or the opportunity to go outside of the (Department of Veterans Affairs) system to seek the health care they so desperately need."

Reuters/Billboard

By John Benson 5 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - After flying high for a decade, Counting Crows reached a crossroads in late 2006, when singer Adam Duritz found himself in a downward spiral of rock star excess and overwhelming depression.

Known as the emotive dreadlocked singer whose open-wound emotions fuel his creative ambitions in the studio and improvisational spirit onstage, Duritz was in bad shape. Not only was he unable or unwilling to seriously consider finishing the follow-up to 2002's "Hard Candy," but he questioned whether he wanted the band to continue at all.

"The writing got affected by the fact that I just hated the whole life," Duritz says. "It's just like, 'I'm tired of the record business.' I was tired of radio and the press and the degrading aspects of being famous. The entertainment industry is such a f—ing cesspool. So I just, like, went on walkabout."

At various times in the past year, including the initial sessions for what yielded the new album, "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings," Duritz slowly emerged from a fog he blamed on various antidepressants that left him with numerous side effects (including insomnia and weight gain).

Also playing a key role in coming to terms with his celebrity was a chance encounter with Mick Fleetwood on a plane bound for Maui. For five hours, Duritz says, he opened his heart to his idol, who is no stranger to rock 'n' roll insanity.

Fast-forward five months, and Duritz and the Crows returned to the studio to finish up "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings," due March 25 via Geffen. The semi-concept album is divided between rock-driven songs and more acoustic-based material.

"I didn't really know what I was going to do with the band," Duritz says. "I knew I had a record I wanted to make really badly, that I had at least one last thing to say."

The new single "You Can't Count on Me" — which, according to Nielsen SoundScan, has sold 34,000 downloads since its early February release — is No. 6 this week on Radio & Records' Triple A (adult alternative album) chart. The group has earned 11 top-10 hits on that tally since it was established in 1996.

The Crows, who toured fairly consistently during the long break between "Hard Candy" and the new album, are expected to spend the next 18 to 24 months on the road, in North America and Europe.

The group's renewed exuberance crystallized for Duritz last summer after a particularly momentous Des Moines, Iowa, show.

"We started to leave, and I'm like, 'Wait a minute,"' Duritz says. "I jumped off the bus, ran back to the other bus, banged on its door and just jumped on everybody, pushed them on the ground and punched them and said, 'We're awesome.' Then I ran back to the other bus and drove a thousand miles. That's kind of what's going on with our band right now. Good things."

Reuters/Billboard

By Gail Mitchell 36 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson have penned a slew of R&B/pop classics. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "I'm Every Woman" are just two of the hits they've written since breaking through in 1966 with Ray Charles on "Let's Go Get Stoned."

But the married team managed to keep a few chart-hot singles for themselves. A compilation of their seminal R&B and dance singles released between 1973 and 1981 is captured on the two-disc "Ashford & Simpson's the Warner Bros. Years: Hits, Remixes & Rarities" (Rhino Records, February 26). It debuts at No. 21 this week on Billboard's Top Electronic Albums chart.

The duo released nine Warner Bros. albums that contained such percolating dance grooves as "It Seems to Hang On" and "Found a Cure." And thanks to Simpson's brother Jimmy — who began extending the duo's album tracks for dance club DJs — the "remix" concept came into popular play.

Disc one of the collection offers a 14-track set of hits and several songs that originally were issued as promo-only 12-inch remixes ("Send It," "Top of the Stairs"). Disc two finds Tom Moulton, Joey Negro and other top remixers putting their own spins on eight of those A&S tracks.

The compilation led Ashford & Simpson to alter their performance of one song, "Stay Free."

"We rearranged our arrangement because we liked this remix so much," Simpson said. "With (producer) Johnny ("D" DeMairo's) vision, these remixers were respectful of our original songs."

Beyond performing, Ashford & Simpson still operate New York eatery/club the Sugar Bar, are composing songs for a musical adaptation of author E. Lynn Harris' novel "Invisible Life," host the infomercial for Time Life's new "Uptown Saturday Night" R&B/dance collection and saw newcomer Ryan Shaw earn a Grammy Award nomination for his cover of their "I Am Your Man."

With a songwriting wish list of artists that includes Mary J. Blige, Ashford says the duo is "just waiting for that phone call."

Reuters/Billboard