MUSIC NEWS: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
KENNY ROGERS RETIRING FROM THE ROAD
``The Gambler'' Kenny Rogers says he's retiring from touring and will do one last worldwide farewell tour after five decades on the road.
Rogers, 77, says in a video message on his website that he wants to spend more time with his two young sons and his wife, Wanda.
The Grammy-winning singer will be on the road through the end of the year promoting his latest Christmas album, ``Once Again It's Christmas,'' and then will do a final world tour in 2016 with cities and dates to be announced later.
Rogers, whose career has spanned country, pop, Christian and folk genres and over 65 albums, says he's still thinking about making new music.
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SHAWN MENDES - AWARD
Canada's Walk of Fame will give Shawn Mendes a special honour as an up-and-coming artist. Mendes will receive the Allan Slaight Award, given to a young Canadian who is making a positive impact in the music industry. The award comes with 10-thousand dollars. It will be presented November 7th in Toronto.
The walk of fame inductees will be announced today.
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FETTY WAP - INJURIES
Fetty Wap says he broke his leg in three places but he'll be all right. Wap posted a video on Instagram thanking fans for their support after what he calls ``a little accident.''
Wap's motorcycle collided with a car on Saturday in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey. Wap has been cited for driving without a license, not having insurance and failing to provide a vehicle registration card.
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BONNIE BROWN - CANCER
Bonnie Brown of The Browns has announced she has lung cancer. Brown, who is 78, says she has been diagnosed with stage-four cancer in her right lung. She is getting treatment in Little Rock, Arkansas, and she says she is ``determined to live many more years.'' Her brother, Jim Ed Brown, died from cancer in June.
The Browns are due to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame next month.
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SWIFT - ADAMS - DRAKE - CHART SPLASH
Two versions of the same album are in the top ten of the Billboard 200 album chart. Taylor Swift's ``1989'' is number 8, while Ryan Adam's ``1989'' cover version is number 7.
Meanwhile, Toronto rapper Drake and Future's surprise album ``What A Time To Be Alive'' is in the top spot. It's the second number-one album this year for each of them. Drake hit number one with ``If You're Reading This It's Too Late,'' and Future scored the top slot with ``DS2.''
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YEAH YEAH YEAHS - MOTHERHOOD
Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is so overwhelmed at being a mom she speaks in Roberta Flack lyrics. Karen O has posted a photo online confirming the birth of her first child, a boy. She says shortly after she and her husband, director Barnaby Clay, brought the baby home, she heard Flack singing ``The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.'' Karen O says she felt her heart exploding in her chest with a love she can't put into words, so the rest of her posting is the lyrics to the song. She has not announced the baby's name.
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TEMPE FESTIVAL - CRUSH
Authorities say it was a gradual push rather than a crowd surge that created a dangerous situation at the Summer Ends Music Festival in Tempe, Arizona, on Saturday. Medical officials say the growing pressure of fans pushing forward to see the reggae band Rebelution trapped people against a barrier in front of the stage.
Nine people were hurt, including one with a life-threatening head injury. The conditions of the other eight are not known. The festival continued Sunday with no problems as Kanye West headlined.
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BLEACHERS - ALBUM
Jack Antonoff has remade the entire Bleachers ``Strange Desire'' album with female singers. ``Terrible Thrills Volume 2'' features Sara Bareilles , Charli X-C-X, Canadian pop-star Carly Rae Jepsen, Elle King, Susanna Hoffs, Natalie Maines and Sia. Antonoff says he loves female voices and wishes he had one. He says the music in his head is usually in a female voice, so he writes an octave lower so he can hit the notes.
You don't even have to decide whether to spend your hard-earned money to get ``Terrible Thrills Volume 2.'' Antonoff is giving it away for free at Google Play.
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TOMORROWWORLD - REFUNDS
Organizers of the TomorrowWorld electronic dance music festival will offer refunds for Sunday ticketholders after bad weather made it impossible to access the site. Festival officials say Sunday tickets will be refunded automatically, including service, shipping and payment fees. Only fans who had camped onsite at the festival outside Atlanta were allowed in on Sunday because days of rain had made the parking fields, drop-off locations and shuttle system inaccessible. David Guetta was Sunday's headliner. Other performers included Kaskade, Tiesto, D-J Snake and Afrojack.
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ROCK HALL - GRAHAM NASH
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is opening an exhibit about Graham Nash in which visitors can sing with a virtual Nash, and Nash will tell them if they're good or not. The exhibit allows users to try to sing harmony with Nash, and they can email their results to themselves. The exhibit will also include the jeans and belt Nash wore to Woodstock, a painting Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell made of Nash with their cat and Nash's early handwritten lyrics to ``Our House.'' The exhibit opens October 17th.
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CNBC - PITBULL
The rise of Pitbull's career as a businessman will be chronicled on a C-N-B-C special. ``Pitbull: Fame and Fortune'' will explore not just his music career, but his numerous endorsement deals and business partnerships. The show airs October 22nd.
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KASKADE SINGS!
Kaskade believes the theme of his new album, ``Automatic,'' can be summed up in the song ``We Don't Stop.'' It's a different song for him because it's one of the rare times the vocalist is himself. Kaskade says he did that because the song did not call for a precise vocal. Although he doesn't sing a lot, he opened some shows on his last tour by singing, and that blew people away. Kaskade says, ``People flipped out and were pulling their eyeballs out of their heads and throwing them onstage.''
``Automatic'' is out now.
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OBIT-BURGESS
Theatre star Michael Burgess -- who dazzled Toronto audiences as Jean Valjean in ``Les Miserables'' and was known to sports fans for his stirring rendition of ``O Canada'' -- has died at the age of 70. The famed tenor -- who had been battling cancer for a number of years -- died in a Toronto hospice last evening surrounded by family. The Regina-born Burgess played the role of Jean Valjean in more than one-thousand performances of ``Les Miserables'' at Toronto's Royal Alexandra theatre and across Canada.
Burgess was also known for singing the anthem for many years at Toronto Maple Leafs home games and was the first person to sing ``O Canada'' at a World Series baseball game. He also played roles in T-V series such as ``Street Legal,'' ``Border Town,'' and ``E.N.G..''
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(The Associated Press)