Backstage Pass

Hilly Kristal, founder and owner of the influential Lower East Side club CBGB where punk flourished with The Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads, died yesterday. He was 75.

Kristal died at Cabrini Medical Center, after a long battle with lung cancer, said his son, Mark Dana Kristal. Kristal's cancer battle coincided with his high-profile battle to keep his famous club open after a rent dispute with its landlord. That battle ended last year when CBGB lost its lease and closed after 33 years in the same location on the Bowery. 

" He was the mayor of The Bowery," said Scott Goodstein, a former employee and the coordinator of the Save CBGB campaign. "He knew everybody. He was the guy sitting behind the desk, willing to help everybody out. Tourists from overseas would come in and he would give them tours throughout the day so they could see the club. Most club owners you can't even find in the club. He would always be there, eating a sandwich from Katz’s, talking on the phone and giving a tour at the same time. This guy’s New York, man. They don't make guys like this any more."

MORE CBGB: Full obit / Patti Smith's tribute / AP obituary / CBGB dethroned /

Not only does Chamillionaire’s new single “Hip Hop Police” (Universal) show that hot beats can sound even better when accompanied by hot rhymes, but the song’s video may be the best of the year. In the first half of the spot, directed by Marc Klasfeld, Chamillionaire uses the format of a police drama to poke at the idea of blaming hip-hop for violence and crime that existed long before it started and will continue long after the genre is retired in a museum somewhere. The second half, a video for “Evening News,” another track from the forthcoming “Ultimate Victory” album due on Sept. 18, takes on the media for its portrayal of rappers. (The crawl in the video includes some hilarious “news” – including Flavor Flav’s acceptance into Harvard and Lindsay Lohan’s candidacy for U.S. Senate in California, running on a platform that would “make it illegal to wear panties.” Also keep an eye out for a photoshopped Don Imus wearing a Public Enemy shirt.)

[Click on pic to watch video]

TICKETS BEEN GONE: Kelly Clarkson's shows at the Beacon Theater on Oct. 15 and 16 sold out in 20 minutes over the weekend. Her management quickly added a third show on Oct. 14, which also sold out. With that good news under her belt, Clarkson can now roll out the rest of her fall tour. Smart thinking.

BRING YOUR OWN PEN!: Northern State, our favorite female hip-hop group named after our favorite parkway, will sign copies of their new "Can I Keep This Pen?" (Ipecac) album at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square starting at 6:30. Their record release party is tomorrow night at Luna Lounge. (The whole album is now streaming at AOL's Spinner.)

BO DIDDLEY, BO DIDDLEY: Get well soon. The guitar legend suffered a heart attack on Friday. But after emergency surgery, he was moved out of intensive care this morning and is listed in stable condition.

Bruce Springsteen's next album is said to be a return to form, but The Boss is pursuing a new-fangled marketing plan with his first single, "Radio Nowhere," available today as a free download through iTunes.

Of course it's been leaked -- perhaps officially -- to various places. A station in Youngstown, Ohio, was reportedly the first to air the song last Thursday (Columbia Records immediately told the station to stop) and the tune also made its way onto YouTube. Some YouTube links work fine, like the one below, but at least one link was apparently halted by the RIAA. (Does that mean one link is officially sanctioned, but another wasn't? Or did the RIAA just give up?) In the UK, the newspaper The Guardian is offering it as a free download, but it doesn't work -- you can only stream it.

"Magic," Springsteen's first disc with the E Street Band in five years, is due Oct. 2 on Columbia Records. The group plays Oct. 9-10 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, NJ, and Oct 17-18 at Madison Square Garden. Tickets go on sale Sept. 10.

Here's the YouTube posting:

For a singer, few things match the first time they hear their song on the radio and American Idol Jordin Sparks was still buzzing after hearing her debut single “Tattoo” on Z100 when I caught up to her backstage at Nassau Coliseum.

“I was sitting on my bed and I was crying,” she says, laughing. “I was like, ‘It’s on the radio! It’s on the radio!’ After it was done, my nana came running down the hall and we were just jumping up and down and hugging each other. I can’t believe I have a song on the radio.”

Sure, Sparks had her “American Idol” coronation song “This Is My Now” released on radio, but “Tattoo” is the first one she truly feels is her own.

“This song was one of the first songs that was pitched to me,” she says. “I didn’t even get through the first chorus and I was like, ‘I have to have this song. I need it. I want to sing it on the album.’ I think I recorded it in less than three hours. I worked with Stargate, they wrote it and produced it, and we just worked really well together. I finished it right when the tour started so I’ve been going, ‘When is it going to come out? When is it going to come out?’ and now it’s here.”

However, her debut album, which is supposed to hit stores before Thanksgiving, is not. After the American Idols Live tour ends and Sparks gets “one really long nap,” she will hit the studio to focus entirely on it. At this point, she only has four songs done, with a deadline looming – a fact she doesn’t want to think about.

“Yeah,” she says, with another laugh. “No pressure.”

Hear "Tattoo" here 

MORE 'IDOL': Nassau Coliseum concert review /  Jordin signs to Jive Records / Winning isn't everything. Ask Melinda 

The "American Idols Live" tour continues at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford tonight and tomorrow night. PHOTO: Fox

Now I’m not a Fanjaya just yet, but after talking to Sanjaya Malakar in person, his appeal becomes immediately clear.

He’s a sweet, soft-spoken 17-year-old who got caught up in a bizarre publicity whirlwind and rode it out with style and grace and nary a hair on his pony-hawked head out of place. After the tour wraps up, he plans to move to Los Angeles and work on his debut album, which he hopes will be released next year. He said he has some offers to consider, but no deal in place yet, though he does plan to work with his sister on writing for the album.

So what’s the album going to sound like?

“Um, I don’t like to say because it sounds like I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I really do,” he says, laughing, backstage at Nassau Coliseum. “It’s going to be R&B based, with kind of jazz emotion and rock energy and world fusion. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“I’ve always known that I didn’t want to do one straight genre, because if I’m going to express myself through music, I want to express everything about myself and I’m kind of complicated,” he adds. “I’m Indian so I want to incorporate that sound and influence with African and Middle Eastern and all kinds of different sounds.”

He says he’s been listening to a lot of French rap and is looking forward to the new Manu Chao album “La Radiolina” (which is due out next week and actually went up on MTV’s The Leak this morning).

Continue reading "IDOL BACKSTAGE: Sanjaya's world (beat) plans" »