Chris Willman-Senior: Last News

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticBoxed sets are typically compiled for the music fan that wants a lot of just one thing. But the Hollywood Bowl’s tens of thousands of repeat customers every summer tend to be musical omnivores.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticJim Seals, who as part of the duo Seals and Crofts crafted memorably wistful 1970s hits like “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl,” died Monday at age 80.Several friends and relatives confirmed the death. “This is a hard one on so many levels as this is a musical era passing for me.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIt’s hard to remember any performer who been so on top of the world as Post Malone who has gone to such lengths to convince us he’s bottoming out as Malone does in “Twelve Carat Toothache,” his fourth album. It’s a common lyrical trope that success breeds discontentment, and Malone has already trod some of that territory — four years and two albums ago, he was telling us he was “Rich & Sad.” But that song almost seems like a feint compared to where he’s at now.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticDowntown Los Angeles is a very different place than it was when the Los Angeles Conservancy kicked off its  “Last Remaining Seats” film screenings in movie palaces 35 years ago. When the annual series hits key theaters this month (after taking the last couple of Junes off for the pandemic), there will be far less trepidation in the air about the fate of some of the key theaters and the neighborhoods they’re in than there was back in 1987.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticNot since Kanye and Drake played the Coliseum together six months ago has there been a coming together of forces quite so opposite on a stage in Los Angeles, or maybe anywhere. We’re speaking, of course, of the combined performance by the UCLA and USC marching bands (mentioned here in alphabetical order — no favoritism) that climaxed the official opening of the Hollywood Bowl’s summer season Friday night.It takes a lot to overshadow Gwen Stefani, the LA Phil, Gwen Stefani with the LA Phil, a pair of world-class ballet dancers, Branford Marsalis performing the film music of John Williams, and Williams making a surprise appearance to conduct his own world-premiere piece.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticAnyone who wants to foster the tandem promotion of racism and sedition will have to do it somewhere other than the CMA Festival. The annual gathering has declared that Confederate flag imagery will be banned at the biggest country music festival in the world, which will take place in Nashville June 9-14.The CMA Festival becomes the second large country music festival to institute such a ban, following the Stagecoach Festival April 29-May 1, which also made headlines for putting the flag and associated racially charged imagery on the nixed list.As in that earlier instance, promoters of the CMA Festival did not make an announcement about the ban, but rather it was publicized by journalists looking through the fine print of a list of prohibited items on the festival website, where “Confederate flag imagery of any kind” is listed alphabetically right under “Cameras with a detachable lens longer than 6″.” In a statement given to the Tennessean (which called the move “an under-the-radar decision”), the Country Music Association confirmed the new policy, and pointed out that it had been on the website since that page went up in April.“This year’s CMA Fest is our first major fan-facing event in nearly three years,” said the CMA’s statement.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticWhen Ryan Adams took to the stage of Carnegie Hall in May for a sold-out show, his first public one in nearly four years, he received a standing ovation when he walked onto the stage that, by some accounts, lasted several minutes. The actual length of the ovation (and several that are said to have followed over the next three hours) is undocumented because, apparently, there were no journalists on hand.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic“Almost Famous” is almost ready for Broadway. The specific New York theater has yet to be announced, but opening dates for the musical adaptation of the Cameron Crowe film were revealed by the Shubert Organization on Thursday, with previews set to begin Sept.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe time has come today for the Rolling Stones to introduce the 1966 song “Out of Time” into their setlist. Improbable as it may seem, given how often the song has been covered by others or licensed for the movies, the band had never performed the tune live until it showed up at the Stones’ European tour opening Wednesday night in Madrid, Spain.There was a rumor the song might show up, as eavesdroppers on tour rehearsals had heard the Stones trying out “Out of Time,” although there are typically rarities that they test during rehearsal periods that seldom or never make it onto a tour. So its actual appearance at the Metropolitano Stadium opener was considered a blessed event indeed.Given the enduring popularity of the song among fans, some might assume it was released as a single in ’66, but that wasn’t the case after it first appeared as an “Aftermath” album cut.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticWolfgang Van Halen is not pulling any punches when it comes to an impending TV documentary special about the death of his father, Eddie Van Halen, calling it “pathetic and heartless” and wishing a pox on everyone who created the doc or even plans to tune in.“Fuck Reelz Channel, fuck everyone that works on this show, and fuck you if you watch it. Fucking disgusting trying to glamorize someone’s death from cancer,” tweeted Van Halen, 31.His outrage was in response to a Blabbermouth tweet publicizing the June 5 premiere of “Autopsy: The Last Hours Of Eddie Van Halen,” an episode of the ongoing series “Autopsy: The Last Hours of…”Under her user name @Wolfiesmom, Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie Van Halen’s former wife, responded to Wolfgang’s tweet with her own shorter thought on the special: “Good Christ this is disgusting.” Wolfgang played bass alongside his guitar-hero father in the band Van Halen from 2006 forward.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticWhen Jack White has performed in Los Angeles on past post-White Stripes tours, he’s often chosen venues that seem to fit his grand but down-and-dirty rock aesthetic: historic, stately and maybe dimly grungy places like the Shrine and Mayan. Take a look at the itinerary for his in-progress “Supply Chain Issues Tour,” though, and you’ll find that he’s favoring newer, shinier places.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe recipients of the Academy of Country Music’s annual “ACM Honors” for 2022 were announced Wednesday, with the honorees at the ACM’s industry-centric adjunct ceremony in August to include Morgan Wallen, Shania Twain, Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton, ASCAP exec Connie Bradley and the television series “Yellowstone.”The ceremony will take place August 14 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The show is not to be confused with the org’s competitive ACM Awards broadcast, which took place March 7 at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium and went out over Prime Video this year.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticHalsey’s next single has a release date — with or without a TikTok moment to fuel it. Capitol Records announced in a tweet Tuesday morning that “So Good” will come out June 9, with Halsey additionally declaring that the “fiasco” over its release is apparently over.Curiously, the release date was framed as an open letter to Halsey, suggesting that the two parties may still be doing a lot of their dialoguing via social media right now, although the promise of “open dialogue” may be as much for the fans and other artists who have rallied behind Halsey in the dispute as for the artist.“Halsey,” tweeted Capitol, tagging the singer, “we love you and are here to support you.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticEarlier this year, Elvis Costello released an album titled “The Boy Named If.” Now, as a follow-up, he’s putting out an EP of songs that really were conceived or covered when he was a boy.His first band, in 1972, was called Rusty, and now he and another principal from that group, Allan Mayes, have joined forces to record and release the very first Rusty EP — or, as Costello says of it, “the record we would have cut when we were 18, if anyone had let us.”The six-song release, “The Resurrection of Rust,” is already being released, exclusively for now, at Costello’s tour stops in the U.K.; it showed up at his merch table Sunday night in Leeds, much to the puzzlement of fans who wondered what a “Rust” was. It comes out for everyone else on June 10, digitally and on CD in territories except the U.S.; July 1, on CD in the U.S.; and on vinyl worldwide later in the summer.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticFor the last 25 years, almost, the group Wilco has been running away from any sort of descriptive tag that has “country” in it, as a suffix or anything else, after Jeff Tweedy’s previous band, Uncle Tupelo, helped kick off the wave of alt-country that continues to be a fixture of modern American music as we know it. Of course, no matter how far they strayed, if you had ears to hear, the influence never really went away.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticOlivia Rodrigo probably isn’t begging to be compared to Paul McCartney. No one would wish that on a superstar — we can call her that now, right? — who just turned 19 years three months ago.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn the longtime parlance of music retail, the vinyl format’s biggest enthusiasts over the years are sometimes known as “crate diggers.” But it might be time to put that image to bed… unless you consider the display racks at Target to be crates, and the young women who are flipping through contemporary releases by Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift to be diggers.Data being collected on an ongoing basis by Luminate (formerly PMC Data and, before that, Nielsen) shows that huge growth for vinyl in the last couple of years has largely been driven by pop superstars and mass merchants — which doesn’t mean that rock ‘n’ roll, indie stores and the traditionalist music geeks who favor them are experiencing any declines at all. It’s just that generation gaps, genre gaps and point-of-purchase gaps have all but disappeared as vinyl has become the No.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticA new recording of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” produced by T Bone Burnett and manufactured as a one-of-a-kind disc in a unique format will be sold at Christie’s in London on July 7, with an estimated value of 600,000-1 million pounds, the auction house announced Wednesday.It’s being described as Dylan’s first studio recording of what is possibly his most famous song since he originally released the folk anthem in 1962. The singular disc, in the acetate-like Ionic Recording format, appears to be autographed by both Dylan and Burnett on one side, and comes in a wooden case that marks it as a “one-of-one.”In late April, Burnett announced that he had gone into the studio with Dylan cut a full album of the legend re-recording his classic material for his new company, NeoFidelity Inc, and its Ionic Originals format, which he described as a new development in analog technology.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticIn another example of it raining when it pours, the greater Los Angeles area, which previously had zero country or Americana festivals, is now going to have two in the coming months. The latest to be announced is the BeachLife Ranch Country & Americana Festival, to take place Sept.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticAerosmith singer Steven Tyler has entered rehab, necessitating the cancellation of a run of shows in Las Vegas this summer, the veteran band announced on social media Tuesday.The group said in a joint statement that Tyler, whose previous experience with rehab is well-known, relapsed as a result of dealing with pain management in the process of having foot surgery.Refunds for the concerts, part of the group’s “Deuces Are Wild” residency at the Dolby Live theater at Park MGM, will be automatically processed through Ticketmaster or can be obtained at the point of purchase, the band said. The announcement added that a further set of residency shows is expected to proceed beginning in September.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticA tour by the band Bright Eyes that has led fans to express concern over the erratic behavior of frontman Conor Oberst reached its most provocative point yet Sunday night, as the singer was described as taking leave of the music after just a song and a half. The remaining musicians invited fans onto the stage to fill in, karaoke-style, for a number of tunes before the show was canceled altogether and refunds offered.The fun of the impromptu karaoke notwithstanding, the Houston concert may have represented a nadir for a tour that has seen Oberst’s fans lament his behavior at numerous stops along the way, although other dates seem to have come off without much of a hitch.“Conor was in awful shape,” reported one Houston fan on social media, in a reaction typical of dozens of posts coming in from concertgoers on the scene.