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Lots of Nashville’s finest are taking part in Wal-Mart’s Literacy Day Initiative this weekend. Phil Vassar’s composition “Words Are Your Wheels” is the theme song, and tomorrow Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club locations will celebrate “Words Are Your Wheels” Literacy Day with special guests appearing in stores across the country. Vassar will visit Pittsburgh’s Wal-Mart store, to read to people there and speak about the importance of literacy. Diamond Rio is on tour in North Dakota, so the band’s members will make visit to the Wal-Mart in Devil’s Lake. Billy Gilman will appear in his hometown area at two locations, Westerly… Read more »

Celebrities and artists from the country music and Latino community entertained President Bush and the first lady Sunday evening at the annual presidential gala benefit for Ford’s Theatre. Grammy Award winning country artist LeAnn Rimes, standup comedian George Lopez and the Texas group Lonestar were among those who performed for an audience of senators and corporate leaders in the historic theater. Standing on stage with the Naval Academy Glee Club, Bush praised the theater for having a “place in the history of our country and also a special place in the life of this city.” Bush also paid tribute to… Read more »

Members of the rock group Great White have been subpoenaed by prosecutors and said Tuesday they will appear before a grand jury investigating whether criminal charges should be filed in the nightclub inferno that killed 97 people. The grand jury was scheduled to convene Wednesday, and the band members were expected to testify the same day, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Two band members flew back to Rhode Island late Tuesday. “We’re just devastated by the loss. It’s a devastating situation,” bass player David Filice said after arriving in Warwick.… Read more »

The Grammy Awards return to New York for the first time in five years on Sunday, with songs influenced by the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on the city in the running for the music industry’s top annual prizes. Veteran rocker Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” and country singer Alan Jackson’s emotional “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” are both nominated for Song of the Year. Young singer and pianist Norah Jones with her mellow mix of jazz, blues and country song and album “Come Away With Me,” is among eight stars most frequently mentioned by music critics as… Read more »

From Bruce Springsteen’s breakthrough “Born to Run” to Led Zeppelin’s hit “Stairway to Heaven,” some of the biggest classic-rock titles of the 1970s were inducted on Friday into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The 1975 album that launched Springsteen as a superstar and the 1971 Zeppelin ballad that became one of the most heavily played tracks of the rock era were among 21 recordings to gain Hall of Fame status this year. The eight albums and 13 singles bring to 606 the number of titles recognized since 1973 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for their enduring… Read more »

The biggest winners turned out to be MIAs at the 30th annual AMAs, including Eminem, winner of a leading four American Music Awards. Others absent when their names were called at Monday night’s American Music Awards were the bands Creed and the Dixie Chicks, who won two awards apiece. Tim McGraw, who sang a “Tiny Dancer” duet with Elton John at the start of the nationally televised show, left for Nashville before winning favorite male country artist, and Mary J. Blige – another absentee – was named favorite female hip-hop artist. Eminem won in every category in which he was… Read more »

A Florida man has been arrested and charged with murder after DNA linked him to the death of rising punk-rock star Mia Zapata in 1993, police said Saturday. Seattle police said Jesus C. Mezquia, 48, was arrested late Friday in the Miami area. His DNA profile matched a sample taken from the crime scene more than nine years ago, police said. Zapata, the 27-year-old lead singer of The Gits, was last seen alive July 7, 1993, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Her beaten body was left on a street curb more than a mile away. She had been strangled with… Read more »

Celine Dion will be part of the pre-game festivities at the Super Bowl. She’ll sing “God Bless America” before the game on Jan. 26. The Dixie Chicks will sing the National Anthem. “Anyone who tells you there’s no pressure to sing the national anthem live to one of the biggest television audiences on the planet is not telling the truth,” group member Emily Robison said Wednesday. The trio was nominated for four Grammy Awards this week, including album of the year for “Home.” They already have four other Grammys. The Grammy- and Oscar-winning Dion is to appear at Caesars Palace’s… Read more »

Instead of visiting a bounty on any single artist, the nominations announced Tuesday for the 45th Annual Grammy Awards were sprinkled around in an unusually equitable manner-eight musicians tied for the most nominations with sounds as diverse the elegiac rock of Bruce Springsteen, the gossamer, jazzy blends of newcomer Norah Jones and the whipsaw rhymes of Eminem. In year’s past, a glut of nominations would push as single artist such as Lauryn Hill or Carlos Santana above the fold, but this year the flattened field presented more subtle story lines amid the sprawl of 104 categories. Among those themes: The… Read more »

As the lame duck legislative session begins today, the webcasting community continues the fight to keep HR 5469 from passing in the Senate and becoming law. A year that started with the webcasting industry united in a common goal to work on the CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel) rates and develop reasonable, equitable legislation as an industry standard has ended with the entire U.S.-based webcasting community up in arms over a private deal negotiated between the RIAA (Recording Industry Artists of America) and VOW (Voice of Webcasters). “There is nothing wrong with a group of individual webcasters sitting down at… Read more »