You don’t have to be quite dead yet, but Forbes’ Top 10 of top-earning musicians is full with acts that started a long time ago – think 1980’s.

A lot of that income comes from touring, merchandising sales, product endorsements and sales of their catalogs, although that last ingredient has taken a nose-dive the past decade.

Here are the rock bands and solo artists that added most to their bottom line between June 2009 and June 2010: (more…)

Online tickets sales for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Giants Stadium concerts in East Rutherford, New Jersey (NJ) for  September 30, October 2 and October 3 started at 10 a.m. EST today. The fact that people are searching all over the Internet to find these tickets is not just because The Boss Bruce Springsteen still rocks, but of course also because of the location of this particular concert. (more…)

The power of association. Product placement certainly ain’t dead yet.

In the second hour of last Sunday’s Celebrity Apprentice Donald Trump had Team Kotu and Team Athena working on new meals for Schwan’s (a fast food delivery service). The next day, Schwans was at the top of phrases searched for, according to Google Trends. The products that both teams created are for sale online, at least for the time being. The items may be pulled once the Celebrity Apprentice season is over, as all three featured products only have one rating. And based on her remark during the show, I suspect that those ratings may come from Ivanka Trump herself (“I don’t think my dad will eat it, but I might.”).

The two-hour show was again more about the celebrity feuds than the challenges or the charities that benefited from the winning project manager. Country singer Clint Black pulled another two one-man shows, poker player Annie Duke went cut-throat on her poker pal Phil Hellmuth when opposing team’s Natalie Gulbis tried to get him to bid on jewelry items for her team and Joan Rivers, who overheard this conversation, called Annie two-faced and compared her to Hitler, who apparently also had his good moments. All of these can be “enjoyed” for at least another week, as Natalie Gulbis and Herschel Walker were the ones packing their bags.

Previous winner Pierce Morgan, now one of Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears”, said that this board room battle was way worse than the quarrels that he himself had with Amarosa. Pierce is all over YouTube again because of overnight British singing housewife sensation Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent, with Pierce Morgan, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell as stunned judges.

Pierce could also not understand why Jesse James had not used his wife Sandra Bullock’s contacts for the fundraiser, but Jesse replied that he doesn’t mix “business with pleasure”. Donald Trump had his own thoughts on why Jesse James was married to Sandra Bullock at all; according to him Jesse must be good in bed? O-K…

Not much online yet on YouTube for this episode, except maybe for Jesse James’ chili fart:

Mor eabout Celebrity Apprentice on NBC.

Not long after they were booed at their Toronto concert by an angry Canadian crowd the band cancelled the remaining two concerts as a support act for Willie Nelson and Ray Price, in Montréal, Québec and London, Ontario. Official reason mentioned on the Boxmasters’ website: one of the band members had the flu.

Yeh, right. (more…)

A day after his non-interview on CBD radio program Q, presented by Jian Ghomeshi, in which he said that “Canadian audiences are like masked patatoes without the gravy”, he went on record to say that he “loves” Canada?

Yeh – right. A really poor attempt at damage control.

When asked about the “mashed patatoes without the gravy” he now says he was talking about the radio host, while this movie of the entire interview shows that he was talking about Canadian audiences:

“Canadian audiences seem to be very reserved. (…) Well, it’s mashed patatoes and no gravy, you know what I’m saying?”

Here is a short movie item on the Globe & Mail’s website (a Canadian newspaper).

This blog is about the power of association. Many celebrities use their celebrity for other causes, being it for humanitarian causes (Bono) or starting a band. An exception may be Billy Bob Thornton.An interview on April 8 2009 by CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi with him and his fellow musicians from the band Boxmasters completely  derailed as the host introduced the “principal singer, songwriter and drummer” to the radio audience as an “Oscar winning screen writer, actor and director”. Billy Bob went all weird from there on…

He is not using his movie career to promote his band – he would like to go into a witness protection program, get a new face and a new identity, so that his musical accomplishments as a drummer in the band The Boxmasters are purely judged on their musical genius.  According to himself (in the interview) nobody has made their type of music “for the last 30 years”. And Billy Bob knows this for a fact, as he “grew up as pretty much a music historian”.

The Interview on CBS’s Q – With Jian Ghomeshi

The man previously known as Billy Bob Thornton (M.P.K.A.B.B.T.) completely blew up in an interview with accomplished and respected Canadian CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, all because he dared introducing him as someone with a movie career. Ah well, it must have been due to his self-described “lower middle-class, white trash upbringing.” (quote taken from the Boxmasters’ website) (more…)