The magnificent main stage
News is flooding in!
The Glasto flood of 2005
From this link:
http://www.pr-inside.com/entertainment-blog/2007/02/27/bassey-eyes-chart-comeback/
“Welsh singer DAME SHIRLEY BASSEY is staging a comeback with her first single release in over a decade.
The GOLDFINGER star, who turned 70 last month (JAN07), has recorded THE LIVING TREE with a rock band and hopes the contemporary approach will net her a chart hit.
Bassey is also planning to tape an album of dance remix tracks and has been approached to play at this year’s (07) Glastonbury Festival in England.”
Copyright: World Entertainment News Network
What is Glastonbury? It’s massive, it’s famous, it attracts the best rock and pop musicians
It’s the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world
The site is 900 acres – a mile and a half wide – and includes several stages
Most of the 150,000 Festival-goers accommodate themselves under canvas in tent villages
It’s also known for muddy conditions and flooding when the weather is wet
This year the festival falls on 22nd, 23rd and 24th June 2007
It’s usually televised
Registration deadline for tickets is today via:
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk//index.asp
But please remember it is not certain that DSB will appear -
it’s still speculation
More about Glasto here
Just a small part of the festival
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On LBC Radio
Thanks to Ewan for this exciting scoop:
“Just to let you know that the new single was introduced on the Nick Ferrari show on LBC 97.3 this morning (Tuesday February 27th)
As you may know this is a talk station, but Nick asked the question “which singing legend is making a comeback with an all new sound…here’s a clue!” and he played “Get The Party Started” from the TV ad.
Best Wishes, Ewan”
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And it was a thrill to receive this link:
“Hi Peggy,
Check out this wonderful article about Dame Shirley!
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/news/article2308389.ece
All the best,
Peter.”
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This is so good that I’ve pasted the story below:
Copyright: © 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Bassey aims to be oldest artist to top the pop charts
By Louise Jury, Arts Correspondent
Published: 27 February 2007
It is her 70th birthday year and Dame Shirley Bassey is intent on marking it like a star-studded trouper.
The singer famed for classics such as “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds are Forever”, in a career spanning 50 years, is to release her first new solo single in a decade, “The Living Tree”, working with a rock band, Never the Bride, who previously supported The Who. She is also set to record a full album of remixed tracks in the mould of the Ibizan café bar sound of Café del Mar.
And she has even been approached to appear at Glastonbury Festival where long-established stars from Tom Jones to Rod Stewart have re-established their credibility with a younger audience in recent years.
The return to recording follows a chance near- encounter with Catherine Feeney and Nikki Lamborn of Never the Bride when they were performing in Dame Shirley’s adopted home of Monaco in 2005.
Discovering the legendary Welsh chanteuse used the gym at their hotel, the pair persuaded a concierge to pop a copy of their CD with a note into her pigeonhole.
To their astonishment, back in London a few weeks later, they received a call from Dame Shirley’s management seeking a meeting about the “Living Tree” track, which they had always considered “pure [James] Bond”.
“We didn’t write it with Shirley Bassey in mind, but the way it came out, we always said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if this could end up being a Bond song?’ You know how you have these little dreams?” Lamborn, 36, said yesterday.
After confirming the deal with Dame Shirley over tea at the Landmark Hotel in London, they went into a recording studio last year.
“We just kept pinching ourselves,” Lamborn said. “I just thought, I’m going to drink tequila for the rest of my life, because it was that hallucinatory.
“It was stunning. My heart was in my mouth because I’m such a fan. She really goes for it, sweat was lashing off her [in the recording studio]. I think her voice is even better now than she’s been in the past.”
Release was delayed because Dame Shirley already had a tour planned and was then involved in the Marks & Spencer Christmas television advertising campaign. But now the band, which has been together for 15 years but always just missed the big time, is hoping to help her secure a world record.
If the single tops the charts when it is released in May, they believe she would be the oldest artist to achieve a number one hit.
They are not certain whether Dame Shirley will appear at Glastonbury.
“It is such a huge event and such a cool event, but explaining how brilliant that opportunity is to a lady in the dame’s position is a little bit difficult,” Lamborn said. “She suggested she wants to do a television special.”
Nathan Graves, the label manager for Lock Stock and Barrel Records which is releasing the new single and album, said he had no doubts about working with Bassey when it was suggested. “I’m a fan and working with people you want to work with is always exciting,” he said. “Finding a new audience to re-ignite a legend is a good thing.”
He was responsible for club/dance re-mixes of jazz classics by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, issued as Verve Remixed, when he worked for Universal and is planning something similar for Bassey.
The Belgian DJs The Glimmers have already re-mixed her singing the Grace Jones track “Slave to the Rhythm”, while Mark de Clive-Lowe is remixing the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” in a Brazilian funk vibe. The album should be released this summer.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
BUY THE INDIE!!!!!!
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And there’s more from the Independent…
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2308410.ece
Third Leader: Bring on the dames
By Charles Nevin
Published: 27 February 2007
Entertaining news: Dame Shirley Bassey has been asked to appear at Glastonbury. Some might choose to mark this as the moment when the festival’s claims to counter-cultural listed status, increasingly questioned as hippies have given way to helicopters, were finally rejected and Glasto became Pasto.
They would be wrong. Dame Shirley, or DSB as she is known to her ardent admirers, has always been defiantly counter-culture. There are, of course, her beginnings in Tiger Bay and Splott; but, more to the point, in the Fifties, while the Beverley Sisters were being wholesome, DSB was being banned by the BBC for the suggestiveness of “Burn My Candle”, which had the nerve to mention “sex”, and went on, “Open my door, and spurn the scandal; who wants to help me burn my candle, at both ends!” Not exactly “You’re A Pink Toothbrush”, you’ll agree.
So she has remained, a one-woman trend, imperiously impervious to others and the years: at 70, she is about to release her latest single; judging by it, Glastonbury had better prepare for complaints about the noise. And where better for her to appear than among a lot of people camping? I, for one, can’t wait to clock her wellies. In any case, Glastonbury, having something of the same status, can survive far more initially unlikely visitors. In this connection, one would remind everybody, for example, that the Queen is a great fan of DSB. What a splendid sight that would be! (Helen Mirren would be pushing it a bit, though.) Also, bit of a nudge, Mr Eavis, another Dame, 90 next month, great closer: Vera Lynn.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
Thanks again to Peter
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Expresso…
Rumours that there might be an article in the Daily Express today (February 28th)
So that will be followed up here soonest, meanwhile… BUY THE EXPRESS TOO!!!!!
It’s always been a Shirley-friendly newspaper
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Time off
Photo: In Jamaica – BBC TV Enterprises sent by Rien
I’m going on vacation for two weeks
But don’t worry, I have prepared pages for every day
So the show will go on!
Friends will add any important news that comes through
There should be Something Shirley every day
How could I stop the blog just because of a holiday?
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