Videos by American Songwriter
Paul Simon will headline Bonnaroo 2010, according to a report from Live Daily. This will be the singer-songwriter’s first time playing the massive Tennessee rock festival. Other acts said to be appearing are Paul McCartney and Flaming Lips, who will perform their cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. We’ll know for sure on February 9th, when the official lineup is announced.
In other Simon news, a hapless criminal was arrested yesterday for trying to impersonate Simon at a New York City bank. A-duh.
Australian band Men at Work received some bad news recently. Their song, “Down Under,” a huge 1982 hit, was found to infringe upon the copyright of a popular Aussie children’s song in an Australian court. Crikey!
The court found that the flute riff in “Down Under” was too similar to the melody to “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,” a children’s song written in 1935 by Australian teacher Marion Sinclair for a Girls Guide competition. Thanks to the court’s ruling, Sinclair’s publishing company, Larrikin Music, can seek up to 60 percent of the song’s past and future royalties.
When Bob Dylan wrote “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” in 1979, he must have known it would make a pretty good children’s book. The song, off the Slow Train Coming album, will be turned into just that by artist Jim Arnosky, who will create illustrations to Dylan’s lyrics.
“From the first time I heard it, the lyrics created pictures in my mind of a land of primeval beauty,” Arnosky said in a press release. “I thought this vision would make a dream of a book, and I asked for Bob Dylan’s permission to make this dream come true. Happily, he said yes.” The book is due September 7 from Sterling Childrens’ Books, who previously released a book based on the lyrics to “Puff The Magic Dragon.”
Elvis Costello will appear on Prarie Home Companion today, as part of a live show being simulcast in hundreds of movie theaters across Canada and the U.S. The show will also air on the radio this Saturday. This spring, Costello will tour the U.S. under several guises: solo, with his band the Imposters, and with the Sugarcanes, the band who back him on the Grammy-nominated 2009 album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane.
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