Morning Music Notes – BEACHFRONT AVENUE!

On the heels of her typical drunken, poorly received opening concert, Amy Winehouse has cancelled her European comeback tour. Having not released an album since her second album, Back to Black, took the world by storm in 2006, fans were hoping for Amy to get back on track. Instead, given the option of a) working hard to produce a successful career or b) being pissed drunk all the time, Amy has focused on b), and to her credit, has done quite well in cementing her reputation in that category.

Speaking of wasted talent Vanilla Ice has launched a real estate advice website. Wait, why the heck is this news? Hopefully the advice is more extensive then when Vanilla Ice yells out “Beachfront Avenue!” during his Ice Ice Baby song. Although in hindsight, that DOES sound like great advice – waterfront properties always do well.

According to Digital Music News, Apple will be paying record labels a percentage based on the number of song matches from your iTunes library to their Cloud service. This is from the $25 annual fee. This is further broken down by the number of songs you have in your library, meaning that each song essentially contributes a fraction of a penny to the labels. No wonder EMI is for sale.

Cee Lo Green from Gnarls Barkley has announced plans for a new Gnarls Barkley album. Cee Lo Green has a knack for making wildly popular and then overplayed and hated songs. The first was Crazy from Gnarls Barkley’s first album, while more recently, Fuck You (or Forget You as the lame kid-friendly version is called) has does well on the charts and on the radio. Is it too late to change the inside joke / basketball reference band name pun?

English folk singer Laura Marling will release her third album, A Creature I Don’t Know, on September 12 in the UK, and presumably the following day in North America. Laura was nominated for a Mercury Award for her previous 2 albums, released in 2008 and 2010. The losses scarred her for life, hence the quick turnaround time for her new album. At least that is the rumour I am starting.

Glastonbury by the Numbers

Glastonbury is this weekend, and sadly I will not be attending. The Telegraph provides some interesting numbers and stats on this year’s edition, including:

3,225: the number of loos (PHM: that’s a funny term for toilet) on-site. They may not be the most fragrant places on earth but it still takes a team of 300 people to keep them usable over the duration of the event.

350: the number of cows who normally wander the fields of Worthy Farm. They will be tucked out of harm’s way for the duration of the event.

60: the number of officially listed stages at the Glastonbury Festival. Think beyond the Pyramid and Other stages. There are in excess of 2,200 performances listed on the official line-up including speakers, poetry readings and more.