Beatles music to be available to stream

Musical advice for fans who lost touch

LOS ANGELES, Dec 19, (Agencies): To the excitement of Beatles fanatics worldwide, the famed British rock group is rumored to finally begin releasing their music on streaming services.

Billboard reported that there is conflicting information on the exact date in which Beatles originals will grace the playlists of music streamers, but discussions are strongly hinting at a Dec 24 arrival date.

It’s also unclear which streaming sites will secure deals to stream the Fab Four’s iconic tracks. Earlier reports linked Universal Music Group’s Apple Records label to some sort of exclusive streaming deal, but Billboard’s sources suggest that it’s likely “most, if not all” streaming sites will have access to Beatles’ comprehensive portfolio on the reported Dec 24 release date.

Whatever the deal, parties involved are keeping it under wraps. Representatives from Rhapsody, Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Deezer and Slacker didn’t immediately comment on the status of the looming deal.

The English quartet has often chosen to sit out the digital revolution. It took the Beatles six years to join the ranks of iTunes’ artist roster, 25 years to release the “Anthology” documentary following the band’s 1970 dissolution and 22 years to remaster their music after initially releasing it on CD in 1987.

The band’s cautious involvement in this realm of the business, however, hasn’t appeared to affect its popularity or relevance in music. The Fab Four sold 450,000 digital albums and over 2 million tracks during their first week in the iTunes store in 2010.

Though a definite release date is up in the air, the introduction of Beatlemania to music’s streaming sphere will likely garner an equally manic reaction.

The Queen of Soul made a surprise appearance at the House of Swing, helping the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra usher in the holiday season at their first concert in their newly refurbished home.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had a special gift for the audience when he introduced Aretha Franklin in the middle of Thursday night’s annual “Big Band Holidays” concert at the Rose Theater. The concert followed a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by Bette Midler to open the new Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Atrium at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Franklin, walking onstage to a standing ovation, said, “Wynton, I think maybe I’ll change the program just a little bit.”

Accompanying herself on piano, she then sang the traditional Christmas carol “O Tannenbaum” in English and German. She followed with a soulful, gospel-infused version of the Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt tune “My Cup Runneth Over,” an outtake from her 1972 album “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” which she recently added to her concert repertoire.

The 73-year-old diva, joking that “this happens to be my 50th year in the business and I’m feeling it,” dedicated her performance to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died in 2006. Ertegun signed Franklin to the label in 1967 and helped turn her into the Queen of Soul by recording such hits as “Respect.”

Mica Ertegun, a prominent interior designer, chose to honor her late husband’s legacy by providing the lead gift and taking an active role in the multimillion-dollar makeover of the public spaces connecting Jazz at Lincoln Center’s three performance venues.

Marsalis, in a backstage interview, noted that when Jazz at Lincoln Center moved into its new home, dubbed the House of Swing, on two floors of the Time Warner Center in 2004, the organization poured its resources into the performance venues, leaving little left over for the atrium, which was treated as an afterthought.

Now, he says, the public space has “a warmth and feeling” that was lacking before. The redesign, with its curving walls of red oak, opens up the public space to the two-story glass windows offering sweeping views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, adds a raised stage by the windows for performances by jazz ensembles, connects the floors with a glass staircase, and incorporates state-ofthe-art technology, including a 26-foot (8-meter) video wall.

“It’s elegant, it’s grand and it has a type of relaxed formality,” said Marsalis, JALC’s managing and artistic director. “It’s a more welcoming atmosphere for the House of Swing.”

The concert was a welcome homecoming for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which used other New York venues and toured the US after the renovations began in July.

The Violent Femmes, who helped shape the alternative rock scene with their blend of folk and punk, have announced their first album in more than 15 years.

The Milwaukee-based band, led by singer and guitarist Gordon Gano, said late Thursday that the new album, “We Can Do Anything,” would come out on March 4.

The Violent Femmes plan to mark the release with an extensive tour of New Zealand and Australia, where the group has long enjoyed a strong following.

The band did not offer clues to the music but earlier this year released an EP that largely stayed true to the group’s trademark style of high-energy acoustic rock.

The Violent Femmes found an underground and eventually mainstream following in the 1980s with hits such as “Blister in the Sun,” “Add It Up” and “Gone Daddy Gone.”

Taking the hard musical edge of folk rock, but with lyrics more likely to concentrate on sex than politics, the Violent Femmes were a major influence on the alternative rock scene that emerged in the early 1990s.

Music journalist Jim Fusilli calls them the generationally biased, or Gee Bees. They’re the folks who lose touch with popular music around the time their first grey hairs sprout, and are convinced that nothing can compare with the music of their youth.

Some are boors, no doubt. But not all have closed minds — the pressure of jobs, kids and mortgages is what caused some Gee Bees to lose their musical adventurousness.

Fusilli, a music writer at The Wall Street Journal, has made it his mission to coax such folks back into the present day through his website, ReNewMusic.net and a focused collection of his stories in the book, “Catching Up.” With the holidays upon us, we asked him to recommend five albums that Gee Bees might not know but should.