LED ZEPPELIN, iTUNES TEAM UP FOR SPECIAL PREORDER OFFER, CONTEST
Last week, Apple announced that a special digital boxed set containing Led Zeppelin‘s entire discography, The Complete Led Zeppelin, is now available for pre-order exclusively on the iTunes Store. The Complete Led Zeppelin is a 165-track collection of all 13 of the legendary group’s albums, including the new career-spanning Mothership retrospective, for only $99.
Led Zeppelin’s Mothership, a 24-track collection of the group’s best-known songs, hand-picked by Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, is also available for pre-order. Touching on every studio album, the collection contains defining songs including “Whole Lotta Love”, “Rock and Roll” and “Kashmir”. In addition to The Complete Led Zeppelin and Mothership, the band’s entire catalog of songs and albums will also be available for individual purchase and download beginning Nov. 13.
Fans who pre-order The Complete Led Zeppelin or Mothership will be automatically entered to win a chance to see the band’s reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena on Nov. 26 as part of the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute. The winners will receive two tickets to the show, round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.
Led Zeppelin Official Website and MySpace page
Led Zeppelin on iTunes
The Complete Led Zeppelin Box
Mothership
Concert sweepstakes
Led Zeppelin YouTube Contest
Enter here
Rules
Led Zeppelin YouTube group (where users’ sweepstakes entries will appear)
WIN AN EXCLUSIVE COPY OF JAMES BLUNT’S NEW ALBUM, ALL THE LOST SOULS
MachineGunFunk.com and Atlantic Records have teamed up to mark the release of James Blunt‘s new album, All the Lost Souls, with an EXCLUSIVE contest! For a chance to win a copy, e-mail JF@machinegunfunk.com and put “James Blunt” in the subject line. A winner will be selected next Friday, Nov. 9.1
The way James Blunt sees it, we may get older, but nothing changes much from elementary school. “We seem to be in exactly the same state as when I was 8 years old. In the school playground, children gossiped about who kissed who, who said what about who, who wasn’t cool because they weren’t wearing the right clothes. Now, on a global scale, people write about who kissed who, who said what, and who’s wearing what clothes.â€
In the nearly three years since Blunt released his debut album, Back to Bedlam, it has sold 11 million worldwide, going No. 1 in 18 countries and top 10 in 35. A short list of his accomplishments includes being nominated for five Grammys, landing the first No. 1 single in the U.S. by a British act—since Elton John‘s “Candle in the Wind 1997″—with “You’re Beautiful [Editor’s Note: The editor thinks that this song was immensely overrated and rather sucked, but I digress…] and winning two MTV Awards and two Brit Awards.
That seemingly sudden rush to global superstardom and the attendant experiences make up much of the lyrical content of his second Custard/Atlantic album, All the Lost Souls. The 10-song cycle about life—and death—shows tremendous growth from Back to Bedlam, which Blunt calls “a very honest, slightly naïve collection of thoughts, emotions, and experiences. I wrote them without any knowledge that anyone would hear them.”
This time around, he knows there’s an audience eager to hear his songs about the ups and downs of his journey. Blunt bristles at the notion that his now-lofty perch distances him from his listeners. “Just because I’ve been given the fickle title of celebrity, it doesn’t mean I’m any less human. I go through the same things, only my mother hears about them first now,” he says, laughingly referencing his frequent appearances in the tabloids.
Indeed, one listen to All the Lost Souls and it is clear Blunt is talking about what unites us, not what divides us. We all crave love, comfort, and security, especially in those times when they seem the hardest to find. Those intersections are the ones that interest Blunt the most, and on the new album he brings a focus, clarity and, at times, urgency to our travels.
“We go through this really amazing experience called life, and we’re trying to understand it and understand why the hell we’re here,” he says. “I really love life. I really enjoy it, but it does trouble me. And as it goes and it ticks by—it’s not very long—you kind of wonder what you’re going to get out of it, where to look for greater depth and meaning, and why we do the things we do to fill it. I think we all experience that.”
All the Lost Souls was found as James toured the world in support of Back to Bedlam. He wrote five songs while on the road, testing them before a very willing audience. When it came time to write the remaining songs, Blunt needed to get off the merry-go-round of the last few years and be still. In the summer of 2006, he retreated to Ibiza, off the coast of Spain. After the constant cacophony, the silence took some getting used to. “It was the first minute I had to stop and look around at what had really happened over the past three years and have a think about it,” he says.
James returned again to Ibiza last winter and received songwriting assistance from a most unlikely source: “Someone had stolen my boiler, so there was no heating,” he explains. “I was in the house wearing an overcoat, a hat, and fingerless gloves playing on the piano. The builder said I lived like a monk. When you’re cold, no one’s around, and you don’t speak the language, then you can write the songs: ‘This is a miserable experience.’ The songs I’d written in the summer, having just stepped out of a club, were much happier.”
Seeking some different flavors for the album, Blunt asked his publisher to pair him with “people who weren’t necessarily the obvious writers… to just free myself.” While James wrote the bulk of the album himself, his request led to collaborations with Mark Batson (Dr. Dre, Dave Matthews Band), Jimmy Hogarth (with whom he also wrote for Bedlam), Steve McEwan, Eg (cq) White and Max Martin.
Musically, the album draws much of its inspiration from great artists of the ’70s: “Fleetwood Mac, Don McLean, Elton John, maybe a touch of Steely Dan in there, and if I’m lucky, a bit of [David] Bowie,” he says, before cheekily adding, “and if I’m lying I might as well add Zeppelin as well.”
1 Void where prohibited, which is nowhere, because all readers (regardless of country of residence) are eligible. The only exceptions are InsidePulse writers and their kin.
DAVE GAHAN CONTEST EXTENDED THROUGH NOVEMBER!
“I feel this record has been an amazing opportunity to push the artist in me,” says Dave Gahan of his second solo album, Hourglass. The record follows the Depeche Mode frontman’s acclaimed 2003 solo album, Paper Monsters, that marked his debut as a full-fledged songwriter.
MachineGunFunk.com and Mute Records have teamed up to mark the release of Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan‘s new solo album, Hourglass, with an EXCLUSIVE contest! Win a Dave Gahan gift package—including a 12-inch double vinyl of Hourglass, a special CD/DVD pack of the album and a CD-single with EXCLUSIVE remixes! For a chance to win, e-mail JF@machinegunfunk.com and put “Dave Gahan” in the subject line. Three winners will be selected at random on Nov. 28.
www.davegahan.com
Dave Gahan @ MySpace
Music video for “Kingdom”
Entries will be accepted until Nov. 27, 2007, at 6PM EST. Void where prohibited, which is nowhere, because all readers (regardless of country of residence) are eligible. The only exceptions are InsidePulse writers and their kin.
