George Michael Concert News

After performing more than 80 shows in Europe, Michael kicks off the U.S. leg of his 25 Live tour in San Diego on June 17 before heading to 19 other cities. The arena tour will showcase songs from his album Twenty-Five, out April 1 and featuring duets with Mary J. Blige and Paul McCartney.

As he prepares to head stateside, "there are some improvements I can really make to the show. If I have anything to do with it, they're going to see the best show of their lives."

Tickets will go on sale Tuesday exclusively via an iTunes package. Tour tickets will be available elsewhere beginning the weekend of April 5.

Tour dates and stops for George Michael's first U.S. tour in nearly 20 years

June 17: San Diego/San Diego Sports Arena
June 19: San Jose, Calif./HP Pavilion
June 21: Las Vegas/MGM Grand
June 22: Phoenix/US Airways Center
June 25: Los Angeles/Great Western Forum
July 2: Seattle/Key Arena
July 4: Vancouver/General Motors Place
July 7: St. Paul/Xcel Energy Center
July 9: Chicago/United Center
July 13: Dallas/American Airlines Center
July 14: Houston/Toyota Center
July 17: Toronto/Air Canada Centre
July 18: Montreal/Bell Centre
July 21 and 23: New York/Madison Square Garden
July 26: Philadelphia/Wachovia Center
July 27: Boston/TD Banknorth Garden
July 29: Washington, D.C./Verizon Center
July 31: Atlanta/Philips Arena
Aug. 2: Tampa/St. Pete Times Forum
Aug. 3: Sunrise, Fla./Bank Atlantic Center

Iron Maiden Tour Dates - more announced

IRON MAIDEN: More U.S. Tour Dates Announced

From onstage earlier tonight (Friday, March 14) at a packed Izod Center New Jersey, IRON MAIDEN vocalist Bruce Dickinson announced the second and final U.S. leg of their eagerly anticipated "Somewhere Back In Time - World Tour 08".

Tickets for IRON MAIDEN's current dates at the Los Angeles Forum and New Jersey's Izod Centre having sold out months in advance, the band will return for more major USA concerts this summer which will take them to a number of cities they have not played in many years along with a return to the New York area at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey on June 14 and Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 15.

Tickets for these shows will go on sale to the public soon as listed below.

A special pre-sale will be made available exclusively to members of the IRON MAIDEN fan club.

Newly announced IRON MAIDEN tour dates:

June 11 - Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena* (on sale 3/22/08)
June 12 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center (on sale 3/29/08)
June 14 - Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center (on sale 3/22/08)
June 15 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden (on sale 3/22/08)
June 17 - Camden, NJ @ Susquehanna Bank Centre (on sale 3/29/08)
June 18 - Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion (on sale 3/29/08)
June 20 - Mansfield, MA @ Tweeter Center for The Peforming Arts (on sale 28/08)

Ringo Star All Starr Concert

Ringo Starr assembles 'All Starr' summer jaunt according to LiveDaily

The summer concerts of 2008 are getting lined up. Here's a summary on Ring Starrs Concert Tour for 2008.

With a new album under his belt, Ringo Starr is getting his All Starr Band together for a summer tour of North America.

The 10th incarnation of the star-studded group will include returning members Colin Hay, Billy Squier, Hamish Stuart and Edgar Winter, along with with first-timer Gary Wright and drummer Gregg Bissonette.

In addition to performing songs from Starr's hit list--like "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Yellow Submarine" and "It Don't Come Easy"--the All Star Band will play popular tunes from each member's repertoire. Plus, there will no doubt be a good smattering of songs from Starr's new album, "Liverpool 8," which hit stores in mid-January.

The set, Starr's 14th solo studio effort, comprises 12 new tracks co-written and produced by the former Beatle with help from the Eurythmics' Dave Stewart. The title track and a few other cuts from "Liverpool 8" are streaming at Starr's MySpace page.

In addition to traditional pressings, the record is available as a pre-loaded USB wristband including the entire album, a personal video message, behind-the-scenes footage, ringtones, photos, and interview and track commentary from Starr.

June 2008

19-20 - Niagara Falls, Ontario - Fallsview Casino
21 - Bethel, NY - Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
22 - Uncasville, CT - Mohegan Sun Arena
24 - New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall
25 - Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion
27 - Holmdel, NJ - PNC Bank Arts Center
28 - Atlantic City, NJ - Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort
29 - Westbury, NY - North Fork Theatre

July 2008

2 - Clearwater, FL - Ruth Eckerd Hall
3 - Hollywood, FL - Hard Rock Live (Seminole)
5 - Biloxi, MS - Beau Rivage
8 - Kettering, OH - Fraze Pavilion for the Performing Arts
9 - Milwaukee, WI - Potawatomi Casino
11 - Windsor, Ontario - Casino Windsor
12 - Mount Pleasant, MI - Soaring Eagle Casino
13 - Chicago, IL - Charter One Pavilion/Northerly Isle
14 - Prior Lake, MN - Mystic Lake Celebrity Palace
18 - Airway Heights, WA - Northern Quest Casino
19 - Woodinville, WA - Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery
22 - Lemoore, CA - Tachi Palace Hotel & Casino
23 - Saratoga, CA - The Mountain Winery
25 - Reno, NV - Silver Legacy
26 - Primm, NV - Star of the Desert Arena
27 - San Diego, CA - Humphrey's by the Bay
29 - Pala, CA - Pala Casino
31 - Phoenix, AZ - Dodge Theatre

August 2008

1 - Indio, CA - Fantasy Springs Casino
2 - Los Angeles, CA - Greek Theatre

Review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF REVIEW

Yet Another Life for Maggie the Cat

By BEN BRANTLEY

Those eternal adversaries, irresistible force and immovable object, clash with gusto in the first act of the otherwise flabby revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” which opened Thursday night at the Broadhurst Theater.

The irresistible part of the equation is embodied most persuasively by Anika Noni Rose as that determined Southern seductress Maggie the Cat. Taking on the immovable duties is Terrence Howard, in his Broadway debut, as Brick, Maggie’s self-anesthetized husband.

Watching Maggie test her will of fire against Brick’s Scotch-glazed shield of ice sends off such lively sparks that for the show’s first 40 minutes or so you wonder if this might not be the most entertaining “Cat” since Elizabeth Ashley had her way with Keir Dullea more than three decades ago. But as any of Williams’s disappointed characters could tell you, life is full of pretty hopes that fade before your eyes.

It’s starting to feel as if “Cat,” first staged in 1955, has become as frequent a visitor to Broadway as “Rigoletto” is to the Metropolitan Opera. The previous revival, starring Ashley Judd, Jason Patric and Ned Beatty, closed only four years ago. But this melodrama of Southern-fried mendacity, Williams’s personal favorite, is blessed with temptingly juicy roles that larger-than-life actors can’t wait to squeeze.

So there was reason to be excited when this latest incarnation, directed by Debbie Allen, was announced. And not, at least for me, because of the novelty of an all-black cast. (By transporting the play from the 1950s and the age of Jim Crow to a later, unspecified decade, Ms. Allen wisely pushes past the issue of race.)

What sounded promising was the matching of performers and roles. James Earl Jones, of the earth-shaking baritone and overpowering stature, as the tyrannical, filthy-rich Big Daddy; Phylicia Rashad, who won a Tony as the long-suffering matriarch in the recent revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” as his long-suffering wife: it was as if these parts were their birthrights.


Most tantalizing of all was the idea of Mr. Howard as their alcoholic son, Brick. Mr. Howard brought an eye-opening freshness to the perennial screen archetype of the sensitive but manly brooder in his Oscar-nominated turn as a small-time pimp in “Hustle & Flow.” The big question, it seemed, was whether Ms. Rose, hitherto known as an able supporting actress (“Caroline, or Change” and the film version of “Dreamgirls”), would be able to hold her own in such daunting company.

As it turns out, Ms. Rose more than holds her own. She pretty much runs the show whenever she’s onstage, and when she’s not, the show misses her management. Mr. Howard and Mr. Jones have moments that suggest what they might have made (and possibly still could make) of their roles. And Ms. Rashad presents a creditable, if arguably misconceived, Big Mama. But this time it’s Maggie who rules the Pollitt family’s dusty old house of lies.

Ms. Rose’s Maggie is less ornately stylized than earlier versions (including Ms. Ashley’s and Kathleen Turner’s, as well as Elizabeth Taylor’s in the 1958 film), and she more or less ignores Williams’s baroque descriptions of the character’s changes in timber and tempo. But what Ms. Rose grasps, with riveting firmness and clarity, is Maggie’s hard-driving sense of purpose.

Maggie, as you may recall, has an exceptionally clear through line for a Williams character. She has to make her husband, long absent from her bed, have sex with her again. This is because: 1) she really loves him; 2) a woman has her needs; 3) if she doesn’t conceive a child, it’s possible that the estate of the terminally ill Big Daddy will go to his other son, Gooper (Giancarlo Esposito), who has an annoyingly fertile and conniving wife (Lisa Arrindell Anderson).

It’s the hot-and-bothered aspect of Maggie that originally made “Cat” a succès de scandale. But it was her unyielding will to survive that most interested Williams.

Though Ms. Rose wears a slinky slip as beguilingly as Ms. Taylor did, it’s her take-charge energy and unembarrassed directness that make this Maggie such a stimulating presence. When she exclaims, “Maggie the cat is alive!,” you can only nod in admiring agreement.

The play’s first act has always been Maggie’s, an aria of insistence and supplication directed at Brick, who, having broken his leg, is a captive audience. But what a perfect audience Mr. Howard’s Brick is here, doing his best (and understandably failing) to tune out a wife who keeps prodding open wounds — like his suspicious closeness to his best friend, Skipper.

Brick is often played in the first act with robotic disaffection. Mr. Howard is more visibly amused, disgusted and drunk than any Brick I’ve seen. You’re always aware that the click into numbness he aspires to has yet to arrive, lending a livelier than usual dynamic to his avoidance of Maggie.

The problem is that by the second act, when Big Daddy and Brick confront the truth together, Mr. Howard is wearing his character’s pain all too palpably, mopping his eyes and tearfully bleating his lines. This turns Brick into a wounded little boy instead of the willfully numbed creature he must be to challenge Big Daddy into anger.

As a consequence Mr. Jones is forced to play his character as a blustery but affectionate fellow whose vulgarity masks a good heart, not so different from the lovable codger he recently portrayed in “On Golden Pond.” Ms. Rashad, in turn, seems to grow in supportive strength and mother-knows-best wisdom. The production acquires a haze of sentimentality that makes it soft when it should be sharp.

The same might be said of Ms. Allen’s direction. There’s plenty of life in her staging, which keeps an army of Pollitts and servants, assembled for Big Daddy’s birthday, running around Ray Klausen’s standard-issue Southern-mansion set. There is even, for reasons beyond my ken, a saxophone player (Gerald Hayes) who struts across the stage before each act.

The resulting atmosphere is festive, for sure, and the show is never boring. But too often it’s without focus. Ms. Allen tries to resolve the problem by having her principal characters awkwardly spotlighted for their defining soliloquies. (William H. Grant III did the oddly abrupt lighting.) But she needs to rein in her cast.

Mr. Esposito, Ms. Anderson and even on occasion Mr. Jones resort to broad exaggeration more appropriate to a sitcom. And Mr. Howard is allowed to punctuate Brick’s speeches with slackening silences of interior exploration on which the audience is not invited to accompany him.

I will admit that I have yet to see a perfectly balanced “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” What I recall of Anthony Page’s version in 2003 is Mr. Beatty’s magnificent Big Daddy.

But Williams wrote that with “Cat” he was “trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent — fiercely charged! — interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis.” The only fiercely charged element at the Broadhurst is Ms. Rose’s Maggie. This “Cat” cries out for more lightning.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

By Tennessee Williams; directed by Debbie Allen; sets by Ray Klausen; costumes by Jane Greenwood; lighting by William H. Grant III; sound by John H. Shivers; hair design by Charles G. LaPointe; production supervisor, Theatresmith Inc.; production stage manager, Gwendolyn M. Gilliam; general manager, NLA/Devin Keudell; original music by Andrew (Tex) Allen; associate producers, Beatrice L. Rangel and Terrie Williams. Presented by Front Row Productions and Stephen C. Byrd with Alia M. Jones, in association with Clarence J. Chandran, Norm Nixon, Michael Fuchs, Anthony Lacavera, Edward J. Jones, Sheanna Pang, Jovan Vitagliano and Al Wilson. At the Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Through June 22. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Cheap Tickets

WITH: Terrence Howard (Brick), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama), Anika Noni Rose (Maggie), James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Lisa Arrindell Anderson (Mae), Lou Myers (Reverend Tooker), Count Stovall (Dr. Baugh), Giancarlo Esposito (Gooper) and Gerald Hayes (saxophone player).

Dave Matthews Tour Dates

The Dave Matthews Band has launched their 2008 Summer Tour Dates. Here is what we found out.

Warehouse Ticketing Series 2-2008

with State Radio
Fri / May 30 / Post-Gazette Pavilion / Burgettstown, PA
Sat / May 31 / Post-Gazette Pavilion / Burgettstown, PA
Tue / Jun 3 / Susquehanna Bank Center / Camden, NJ
Wed / Jun 4 / Susquehanna Bank Center / Camden, NJ

with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Fri / Jun 6 / Toyota Park / Bridgeview, IL (VIP Packages Available)

with The Black Crowes
Sat / Jun 7 / Busch Stadium / St. Louis, MO (VIP Packages Available)

with Paolo Nutini
Mon / Jun 9 / DTE Energy Music Theatre / Clarkston, MI
Tue / Jun 10 / Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain / Scranton, PA
Fri / Jun 13 / New England Dodge Music Center / Hartford, CT
Sat / Jun 14 / New England Dodge Music Center / Hartford, CT

Warehouse Ticketing Series 3-2008

with Paolo Nutini
Tue / Jun 17 / Six Flags Darien Lake - Performing Arts Center / Darien
Center, NY
Wed / Jun 18 / Molson Amphitheatre / Toronto, Ontario

with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Fri / Jun 20 / Saratoga Performing Arts Center / Saratoga Springs, NY
Sat / Jun 21 / Saratoga Performing Arts Center / Saratoga Springs, NY
Tue / Jun 24 / Tweeter Center for the Performing Arts / Mansfield, MA

With Michael Franti and Spearhead
Wed / Jun 25 / Tweeter Center for the Performing Arts / Mansfield, MA

with Black Crowes
Fri / Jun 27 / Hersheypark Stadium / Hershey, PA

with Michael Franti and Spearhead
Sat / Jun 28 / Nissan Pavilion at Stoneridge / Bristow, VA

Warehouse Ticketing Series 4-2008

with Michael Franti and Spearhead
Tue / Jul 1 / Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre / Charlotte, NC
Wed / Jul 2 / Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek / Raleigh, NC

with Old Crow Medicine Show
Fri / Jul 4 / Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Park / Charleston, SC

with Gomez
Mon / Jul 7 / Lakewood Amphitheatre / Atlanta, GA
Wed / Jul 9 / Ford Amphitheatre / Tampa, FL
Fri / Jul 11 / Cruzan Amphitheatre / West Palm Beach, FL
Sat / Jul 12 / Cruzan Amphitheatre / West Palm Beach, FL

with Ingrid Michaelson
Tue / Jul 22 / Qwest Center / Omaha, NE
Fri / Jul 25 / Verizon Wireless Music Center / Noblesville, IN
Sat / Jul 26 / Verizon Wireless Music Center / Noblesville, IN
Tue / Jul 29 / Crew Stadium / Columbus, OH (VIP Packages Available)
Wed / Jul 30 / Blossom Music Center / Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Warehouse Ticketing Series 5-2008

with Willie Nelson
Fri / Aug 1 / Louisville Slugger Field / Louisville, KY
Sat / Aug 2 / AutoZone Park / Memphis, TN

with TR3
Tue / Aug 5 / Riverbend Music Center / Cincinnati, OH
Thu / Aug 7 / Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater / Virginia Beach,
VA

with The Black Crowes
Sat / Aug 9 / Alpine Valley Music Theatre / East Troy, WI
Sun / Aug 10 / Alpine Valley Music Theatre / East Troy, WI

with Eli Young Band
Wed / Aug 13 / AT&T Bricktown Ballpark / Oklahoma City, OK
Fri / Aug 15 / The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion / The Woodlands, TX
Sat / Aug 16 / Superpages.com Center / Dallas, TX

Warehouse Ticketing Series 6-2008

with TBD
Tue / Aug 19 / Staples Center / Los Angeles, CA
Wed / Aug 20 / Staples Center / Los Angeles, CA

with Robert Earl Keen
Fri / Aug 22 / Coors Amphitheatre / Chula Vista, CA
Sat / Aug 23 / Cricket Wireless Pavilion / Phoenix, AZ
Mon / Aug 25 / Raley Field / West Sacramento, CA
Wed / Aug 27 / USANA Amphitheatre / West Valley City, UT

Warehouse Ticketing Series 7-2008

with O.A.R.
Fri / Aug 29 / Gorge Amphitheatre / George, WA
Sat / Aug 30 / Gorge Amphitheatre / George, WA
Sun / Aug 31 / Gorge Amphitheatre / George, WA

Warehouse Ticketing Series 8-2008

with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Fri / Sep 5 / University of CA, Berkeley Greek Theatre / Berkeley, CA
Sat / Sep 6 / University of CA, Berkeley Greek Theatre / Berkeley, CA
Sun / Sep 7 University of CA, Berkeley Greek Theatre / Berkeley, CA