Parenthetical Girls Cover Jackie's Strength

Pitchfork reports (you decide!) that Parenthetical Girls recorded a cover of “Jackie’s Strength” for a split 7” (remember those?) on Obsolete Vernacular Records. The single will be available for sale on their tour with The Dead Science but you can stream the song now on Obsolete Vernacular’s myspace.

Tori Goes Pink

Tori wrote the forward for a charity photo book called The Pink Project. The book, released today, is available through the site. Proceeds will benefit RAINN and the Los Angeles Breast Cancer Alliance.

Tori Tributed in Second String Quartet Release

According to the Amazon.com site, String Quartet Tribute to Tori Amos Vol. 2: Pieces will be released on April 3, 2007. This tribute comes from Vitamin Records, the same folks who made Precious Things: The String Quartet Tribute to Tori Amos. The tracklist includes:

Jackie’s Strength
Sweet the Sting
China
Cars and Guitars
Spark
Snow Cherries From France
Me and a Gun
1000 Oceans
Professional Widow
A Sorta Fairytale
Taxi Ride

Evil Needles Reinvents The Tori Tee

This is the coolest thing to come down the pike since sliced bread. Okay, a mixed metaphor perhaps, but an appropriate way to describe this creative concept: with the blessings of the folks at The Tori Store, Evil Needles has taken stock of some old Tori tour t-shirts, deconstructed them, and reinvented them as completely new works of art. T-shirt mash-up!

Go get ‘em! (Thanks to Destiny for passing this on.)

Tori On Mary and Ahmet

While Tori’s been busy working on her new album, she’s also been busy contributing essays and quotes on some of her favorite topics: religion and Atlantic Records.

A new book, The Secrets of the Mary Magdalene, edited by Dan Burstein and Arne J. De Keijzer, includes a passage by Tori focusing on “sinsuality” and Mary and the Muse. The passage is taken from the section on Mary Magdalene in Piece by Piece.

In Rolling Stone issue 1018 (James Brown on the cover), Tori is quoted talking about the late Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records:

“He would say, ‘just because you’ve sold millions of records doesn’t mean you’re good. McDonald’s sells a lot of hamburgers.’”

Roxanne, Richard and Kendra, you’re the bomb.

L Tunes To Include a Tori Track

“A Sorta Fairytale” will be included on L Tunes, a collection of songs featured during and inspired by the Showtime television series The L Word. The compilation includes “new and classic music from lesbian artists as well as ‘lesbian adjacent’ female artists”. (Hey! If I stand next to a lesbian, can I be lesbian-adjacent too?) Specifically, the other musicians featured are Kirsten Price, Goldfrapp, Fiona Apple, Prototypes, Johnny Boy, Pink, Kelis, Da Brat featuring Cherish, PJ Harvey, Nina Simone, The Cliks, Peaches, and BETTY. The record will be released on January 2, 2007 by Music With A Twist.

Read on for the full press release about the compilation.

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Ballerina Has Fins That You'll Never Find

Following up on our previous article about Leona Naess’s song “Ballerina”, here’s what we have (and haven’t) been able to sort out…

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Tori Produces "Ballerina" For Leona Naess

Back in February of 2004, the following item was reported on the Dent:

I earlier reported that a trusted anonymous source confirmed that Tori had been in a Los Angeles, CA studio producing and playing keyboards on a single by artist Leona Naess. This has been completely confirmed by Leona Naess herself in her diary on leonanaess.com. (Be sure to read that Feb 18th diary entry. Leona says some interesting things about Tori!) The song is called “Ballerina”. There is some confusion about the fact that Tori worked on this song, because this song is already a track on Leona’s new self-titled album “Leona Naess”. It appears that Leona has recorded it again with Tori, and the new version of Ballerina will be released soon as Leona’s new single. The version currently on the album apparently does NOT include Tori. Tori produced and played keyboards on the new version of the song, but does not sing.

This song appears to be finished and ready to go. Estrella pointed us to Leona’s website, where the song was announced (as having been produced by Tori) on the entry page with a link to the MP3. Unfortunately, as I was writing the story up — and I do mean AS I was writing it up — Leona’s entire website changed and the song file disappeared completely; it’s nowhere to be found on the redesigned site or her MySpace page. I managed to get in a quick listen before it went poof and can confirm that it is indeed a new version of the song that appeared on Leona’s 2003 album. I can also confirm that it sounds VERY Tori … so much so that I’m certain Tori herself is likely playing piano on it.

We don’t yet know whether this version of “Ballerina” is slated to be on Leona’s forthcoming album, Thirteens, or whether it will be released separately, perhaps only digitally, or even at all.

If anyone sees an MP3 of “Ballerina” turn up anywhere else, please let us know.

"Jackie's Strength" in "Sisters in Song" Compilation

Get out your Lilith Fair t-shirts! Die-hard Tori collectors will want to know about “Sisters in Song,” a compilation produced by Somerset Entertainment and Rhino Special Markets and sold exclusively by Hallmark (yes, the greeting card company) in its stores. The collection includes “Jackie’s Strength” along with a boatload of other lady songstresses. The tracklist is as follows:

1) Lisa Loeb, “Fools Like Me”
2) Sarah Harmer, “Don’t Get Your Back Up”
3) Shawn Colvin, “Matter of Minutes”
4) Kathleen Edwards, “Good Things”
5) Vanessa Carlton, “Ordinary Day”
6) Aya Peard, “This Mess”
7) Natalie Merchant, “Kind and Generous”
8) k.d. lang, “Helpless”
9) Tori Amos, “Jackie’s Strength”
10) The Corrs, “Runaway”
11) Antigone Rising, “Don’t Look Back”
12) Cherie, “I’m Ready”
13) Kasey Chambers, “Not Pretty Enough”
14) Jane Siberry, “Calling All Angels”
15) Toby Lightman, “Everyday”

“Sisters in Song” came out in June, but we didn’t find out about it until an anonymous fan tipped us off in September. It then took Hallmark’s peeps more than a month to dig up the tracklist and cover art for us.

Through The Flint Glass: New York's PS22 Chorus

Toriphiles everywhere are fast becoming fans of the marvelous PS22 children’s chorus and their covers of Tori’s songs. Undented focuses the lens on this talented group of kids and their director, Gregg Breinberg.

Catch the kids’ rendition of “Carbon” on New York’s WVOX 1460 AM at 6:50PM Eastern (23:50 UTC) tonight. This will also be streamed live over the Internet at wvox.com.

You can keep up with the kids — including watching videos and listening to MP3s — at the PS22 Chorus blog.

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