Divas Update

Despite the fact that my "News Desk" blog is syndicated, it's this blog, "Jason's Diary," that captures a more diverse audience and oddly enough receives more hits on my site than any other page. Some people read the "Diary" to catch a glimpse of what life is really like for someone who works behind the scenes in adult entertainment. Others read it because they relate to my personal introspection. And then there is this entirely separate group of individuals who read it for the latest news on my many favorite divas.

Yes, it's true, "Jason's Diary" of all blogs has recently been a point of reference on fan pages ranging from Tori Amos to Judy Garland. Even Cybersocket Magazine made mention of this aspect of the "Diary" in their review of the JasonCurious.com blogs in this month's issue.

So I suppose it's time to give you all an update on what our favorite divas have been up to.

Someone asked me recently, "How do you know all of this?!"

Well, I see a lot of concerts. I read a lot of fan sites. And my site can drive a lot of traffic, so mainstream publicists happen to love me. ;-)

STEVIE NICKS - On Tuesday, March 27th, Stevie Nicks will release a CD/DVD set entitled Crystal Visions... The Very Best of Stevie Nicks. This will be the first "greatest hits" CD of Stevie's to combine her work both with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist. Aside from the usual classics, it will include the new Deep Dish remix of "Dreams," a live version of her "Rock and Roll" cover, and two new live versions of "Edge of Seventeen" and "Landslide," both performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Most exciting for fans though is that this will be the first time Stevie's music video collection has been brought to DVD. Stevie's audio commentary is included for each of the 13 videos, plus never before seen footage of her recording her first solo album, Bella Donna, inside her home.

To promote the CD/DVD set, Stevie will be taking to the road with Chris Issak for a summer tour slated to begin in May. Though she is slated to perform a return engagement of her hit show at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas from March 20th - 24th, no dates have been set as of yet for the summer tour. She is, however, currently scheduled for an interview on CBS Sunday Morning for Sunday, March 25th, will perform "Landslide" and "Rhiannon" on The Today Show Friday, March 30th and will perform "Landslide" and "Stand Back" on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Wednesday, April 18th. (Though she will be performing both songs for audience members, it is not certain that both will be featured in the broadcast.)

The track listing for Crystal Visions... The Very Best of Stevie Nicks is as follows:

CD:
1. Edge of Seventeen 5:29
2. I Can't Wait 4:36
3. Sorcerer 4:55
4. If Anyone Falls In Love 4:07
5. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (with Tom Petty) 4:03
6. Silver Springs (with Fleetwood Mac) 4:46
7. Dreams (with Deep Dish) 3:47
8. Rhiannon (Live) 7:02
9. Rooms On Fire 4:35
10. Talk To Me 4:10
11. Landslide (Live with The Melbourne Symphony) 4:14
12. Stand Back 4:48
13. Planets Of The Universe 4:46
14. Rock And Roll (Live) 4:03
15. Leather And Lace (with Don Henley) 3:55
16. Edge Of Seventeen (Live with The Melbourne Symphony) 9:12

DVD
1. Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (with Tom Petty)
2. Edge Of Seventeen
3. Stand Back (Scarlett Version)
4. Stand Back
5. If Anyone Falls In Love
6. Talk To Me
7. I Can't Wait
8. Rooms On Fire
9. Whole Lotta Trouble
10. Sometimes It's A Bitch
11. Blue Denim
12. Every Day
13. Sorcerer (with Sheryl Crow)
*. Bonus: Audio Commentary for 13 Videos
*. Bonus: The Making of Stevie's solo debut, Bella Donna

One of the most anticipated things on Crystal Visions is the "Scarlett Version" of the video for "Stand Back." This was the first version of the video shot, very elaborate, extravagant and high budget, which was discarded and replaced with the more simple version everyone knows well from the 1980's.

As a special treat, I have not only the long-awaited video itself, but Stevie's hilarious audio commentary included. Enjoy!




* HEAR IT HERE? PLEASE PRE-ORDER FROM MY LINK! ;-)




CYNDI LAUPER - Cyndi Lauper has announced that she will launch her True Colors Tour on June 8th where she will be joined by several performers including Rufus Wainwright, Erasure, Debbie Harry and Margaret Cho, making it quite possibly the only tour more gay than Cher's farewell love fest. And with good reason! A dollar from every ticket sold is going to the Human Rights Campaign. Lauper said in the press release, "You shouldn't be treated badly because of your sexual orientation. Come on, we don't live in a dictatorship. This is supposed to be America, the home of the free and the brave. It can't be free for some and not for others." The tour is currently only slated through the end of June, but depending on ticket sales could continue throughout the Summer.

Cyndi sang an acoustic version of "True Colors" when promoting the tour on The View this week.





TORI AMOS - As if Stevie's musical witchery taking to the road weren't enough to bowl us over this Summer, Tori Amos will be touring with a band for the first time in four years to promote her May 1st release, American Doll Posse. The tour begins overseas in late May. American dates not yet set.

The first promotional photo for the album consisted of Tori standing outside of a suburban home looking like the most "desperate housewife" you've ever seen, a woman divided; the picture of perfection with a Bible in her hand on her right, while on the left a picture of total catastrophe with a broken heel, menstrual blood running down her leg, and the word SHAME written in her palm. This along with the first leaked snippet of the song "Big Wheel" in which she tells Jesus, "So you are a 'superstar,' get off the cross, we need the wood!" and calls herself a "MILF" repeatedly may mean Tori's going back to her "Crucify" roots. Tori has been unusually tight-lipped about the album with minimal press release info. So here is what we currently know and what we speculate.

We know: Tori has said the theme of the album is that "the political IS the personal." But before you begin thinking this is a full on anti-war statement with songs like "Yo, George" (leaked lyrics: I salute to you commander and I sneeze cause I have now an allergy to your policies it seems. Is this just the madness of King George?) and "Velvet Revolution" (leaked lyrics: Feeling radical in cotton purified in my satin, but the bomb of the season is the velvet revolution. All you killers of children, there's a new commandment. The true divine creator wants a velvet revolution.), Tori says she's not interested in submitting anything along the lines of Neil Young's album, Living with War. "I love Neil Young," she said in her only interview to date discussing the album, "but I'm not interested in the old farts that Neil Young probably reached with his album. I'm after their teenage daughters. This is about rousing 18-year olds to wake up and make choices. I want them to realize what their future will be in 20 years time unless they start voting for whom they truly want in power." Amos has always been a huge advocate of world change beginning with the self and has hinted that says that this album delves into changing the war against the self as well with songs like "Fat Slut," "Girl Disappearing," "Teenage Hustling" and a look at the scene of youngun's pop music in "Programmable Soda." There are five different sections of the album, divided by interludes, a first for the artist.

We speculate: The few "friends of press" fortunate enough to hear and review the album online have all agreed that it is her biggest rock album to date, sonically most similar to her cover album, Strange Little Girls. There have been rumors of her taking on five different personas for the album and rumors of several "wigs" for not only promotional photos but the tour itself, also in the vein of the SLG album. It has been said that a handwritten letter from Tori was included in the press kits wherein she states, "I, like you, can not just turn my back on this very fragile Blue Ball that is our only known hope of existence," and relays a story of two women approaching her at Starbucks asking her to "tell it like it is" and reminding her, "The war is not just in some far away place, but it's in my life too," that inspired her to write American Doll Posse.

The track listing for the album was announced this week as follows:

1. Yo, George 1:25 *
2. Big Wheel 3:18
3. Bouncing Off Clouds 4:08
4. Teenage Hustling 4:00
5. Digital Ghost 3:50
6. You Can Bring Your Dog 4:04
7. Mr. Bad Man 3:18
8. Fat Slut 0:41 *
9. Girl Disappearing 4:00
10. Secret Spell 4:04
11. Devils and Gods 0:53 *
12. Body and Soul 3:56
13. Father's Son 3:59
14. Programmable Soda 1:25 *
15. Code Red 5:27
16. Roosterspur Bridge 3:58
17. Beauty of Speed 4:08
18. Almost Rosey 5:23
19. Velvet Revolution 1:19 *
20. Dark Side of The Sun 4:16

* = Interludes

There will be a CD/DVD set that includes a brief documentary, "What My Posse Can Do," along with the additional tracks "Posse Bonus Album," "Smokey Joe Album" and "Dragon."

Someone set the first leaked snippet of the songs"Big Wheel" in which she calls herself a "MILF" to YouTube so here's your first look at the sound of American Doll Posse, hitting stores May 1st.



* HEAR IT HERE? PLEASE PRE-ORDER FROM MY LINK! ;-)




MADONNA - You no doubt know by now that Madonna has launched her own line of clothing through H&M. Before, by the way, she was merely the company's spokesmodel. Now she has her own line which she takes a hand in designing herself, called M by Madonna from H&M. If you have not seen the director's cut of the commerical, see it below.

What you may not know is that the writers of the hit TV show Nip/Tuck are writing a role for her upon her Madgesty's request. (They want her to do something with her pal, Rosie O'Donnell.) She is also back in the studio working on a new album with Timbaland as one of the currently chosen collaborators.

And as mentioned here previously, a special edition DVD of her 80's bomb, Shanghai Surprise, co-starring then-hubsand Sean Penn, will be released on Tuesday, April 10th.






BARBRA STREISAND - Remember Barbra Streisand's big tour last year? Well, it's coming to CD and DVD. But first to CD. And then much later to DVD because the bitch wants you to buy EVERYTHING!

Streisand: Live in Concert will be a 2-CD set that, while touted as being live from Madison Square Garden, from what I hear behind the scenes includes a few "better vocals" from a Philadelphia concert or two here and there. Il Divo's mid-set is not included in the CD, though all of their duets with Streisand are. Unfortunately, the only Streisand track cut from the album was my personal favorite, "The Woman in the Moon," but we can remain hopeful that it will surface on the DVD edition as she did perform it during the closing night Los Angeles concert where the DVD was filmed.

Notice some of my notes on the track listing for Streisand: Live in Concert is as follows:

Disc: 1
1. Overture
2. Starting Here, Starting Now
3. Down With Love
4. The Way We Were
5. Ma Premiere Chanson (Streisand playing at the piano)
6. Evergreen (with Il Divo)
7. Come Rain Or Come Shine
8. Funny Girl
9. The Music That Makes Me Dance
10. My Man
11. People (with "We travel single-o" intro from film version)

Disc: 2
1. Entr'acte
2. The Music Of The Night (with Il Divo)
3. Jason's Song/Carefully Taught/Children Will Listen
4. Unusual Way
5. What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?
6. Happy Days Are Here Again (NOT sung with the Bush impersonator)
7. Have I Stayed Too Long At The Fair?
8. A Cockeyed Optimist (with "The Time of Your Life" reading intro)
9. Somewhere (with Il Divo)
10. My Shining Hour
11. Don't Rain On My Parade (the Broadway Reprise version)
12. Smile

It has also been said that Streisand will be making "a big announcement" around the time that the CD is released. My guess? That she is taking the show to Europe. This was discussed at the end of the last tour and what better time to do it than with a CD to promote this time around?

* HEAR IT HERE? PLEASE PRE-ORDER FROM MY LINK! ;-)





KATHY GRIFFIN - Guess what? Here's the thing! I have the date of the season premiere for Bravo's third season of My Life on the D-List! We'll all be tuning in on Tuesday, June 5th at 9:00 pm (PT) to see the season in which Kathy deals with divorce from her husband, the death of her father and, of course, the hosting of The GayVN Awards in San Francisco. Also airing on Bravo! (in all likelihood that same night or the night before) will be Kathy's new stand-up comedy special, Everybody Can Suck It.

Griffin will also be going on tour to promote the show this Summer and while Cyndi Lauper will be performing with the likes of Rufus and Blondie at a smaller venue like The Greek Theater, Griffin is playing to the freaking Universal Ampitheater!

D-List? I think not. But honey, you milk that title as long as you can!


LIZA MINNELLI - Liza Minnelli, who celebrated her 61st birthday this week, will be returning to The Luxor in Vegas for the fourth time in the past year March 29th - 31st. She is rumored to be including as part of her second act a preview of her upcoming Showtime televised concert special, a tribute to godmother Kay Thompson. No date has been set for the special yet, but aside from the Showtime date, there is also a CD and tour in the works. The show includes so much dancing (just incredible for someone with fake hips and knees at 60), Liza wears a headset for a microphone and is accompanied by four male backup dancers and singers.

Here is a short clip of her show's opening song "I Can See Clearly Now/I Can See It" from a performance last month to show you what kind of voice she's in these days. Catch it if you can before she takes to an extensive overseas tour of her current show in April, May and June!



And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my OWN American Doll Posse! ;-)