Spinner Premieres Precious Things From Montreux

As if the three clips from the Live at Montreux DVD weren’t already whetting the appetite, Spinner has a fourth: “Precious Things” from the 1991 performance at the Jazz Festival. Check it out below:

Additional Details About the North American Live at Montreux

We have received confirmation from Eagle Rock Entertainment that the North American release of the Live at Montreux CD will, in fact, be a single disc with the abbreviated 16 song track list mentioned previously. However, we’re told that the omitted 3 tracks from the 1992 concert — “Crucify,” “Silent All These Years,” and “Happy Phantom” — will be available exclusively as digital downloads from from Amazon.com so folks in the States and Canada will not have to resort to ordering the CD from overseas to get the complete 1992 performance. Of course, at Amazon.co.uk’s current price of £8.98, self-importing isn’t a bad deal for a double-disc release — and other UK and European retailers have the same double-disc edition available for a similar price.

UPDATE: ToriAmos.com and Everything Tori indicate that the 3 tracks will only be available to those who purchase the album — either a physical CD or a digital download — from Amazon.

And to be absolutely clear, the North American DVD, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other e-tailers will have the complete performances of both concerts.

Check Out Live at Montreux!

To promote Live at Montreux, Eagle Rock Entertainment has posted a few songs from the DVD to Myspace and YouTube. Check them out below!

Thank You

Silent All These Years

Winter

Thanks to Eliot Lear, Mike Jones, Jimmy and Peter Smith for the heads-up!

Eagle Rock Announces Details About Live at Montreux

Eagle Rock Entertainment, the company releasing Live at Montreux in North America, has announced details about the DVD and CD. While the release confirms the track list that we mentioned previously for the DVD, they indicate that the CD issue will be a single disc that includes all of the 1991 appearance and a subset of songs from the 1992 concert. The CD setlist is as follows:

1. Silent All These Years
2. Precious Things
3. China
4. Crucify
5. Leather
6. Song For Eric
7. Upside Down
8. Happy Phantom
9. Winter
10. Thank You
11. Little Earthquakes
12. Precious Things
13. Whole Lotta Love/Thank You
14. Me And A Gun
15. Winter
16. Smells Like Teen Spirit

Tracks 11-16 are taken from the 1992 concert, meaning that year’s performances of “Crucify,” “Silent All These Years,” and “Happy Phantom” are excluded from the CD release.

At least in North America.

Even though the European CD is identified as a single disc release on Amazon UK, the back cover image on Amazon UK (at right) shows 2 discs, one for each show, and includes the entirety of the 1992 performance. On the other hand, HMV and Play both clearly indicate that it’s a two disc set in their listings. Unfortunately, there is nothing on the Eagle Rock UK site that addresses this seeming discrepancy, but it would seem that the European market would be getting a double-CD set with both shows complete while North America is getting an abbreviated single-disc release. If anyone happens to have any information about this, please let us know so we can clear it up.

As a reminder, Live at Montreux is released on September 22 in Europe and September 30th in North America. The DVD and CD are currently available for pre-order from all the usual places if you are interested in procuring it online. Although it is not for sale at The Tori Store yet, it should be as the release date near if one prefers to patronize Tori’s official merchandiser.

While we’re on the subject, Little Blue World contributor Alex Ramon reviewed the DVD in the latest issue of Wears The Trousers and certainly whets our appetite for the release!

Thanks to MiMi, Eliot Lear, Mark Bednarz, Melanie, Christoff, and Terry for helping out with this article.

Finally, on a somber note, we’re saddened by the death of Géo Voumard, jazz pianist and one of the founders of the Montreux Jazz Festival. His obituary appeared in the New York Times earlier this week and was passed on to us by Richard Handal.

Happy Birthday, Tori!

It’s that time of year again … another birfday for Tori. We got a kick out of today’s Chicago Sun-Times announcement, which says that Tori is turning 63(!). (Thanks to Richard Handal for spotting that.) We suspect this error is some sort of mix-up arising from the year she was born: 1963. Tori is, of course, only 45. We hope she has a great one!

Legs & Boots Kick Back ... Overseas!

In a somewhat unexpected newsletter from the old Sony/Epic Tori Amos mailing list that appeared today, buried between the news about tonight’s signing at Amoeba and Wednesday’s Meebo chat, was the even more unexpected announcement that all twenty-seven Legs & Boots, the official live recordings from the North American leg of 2007’s American Doll Posse tour, will be available on iTunes in the United States tomorrow, July 22nd.

Other purveyors of digital music downloads will follow suit on August 5th, including iTunes outside of the States. While they do not specify which non-American iTunes stores will have the be included, it’s encouraging to see that they heard the voices of those outside of Canada and the States clamoring for a legal way to obtain these recordings and we’ll see, come early August, where the Legs & Boots become available.

UPDATE

A loyal reader reports that each of the concerts is priced at $13.99. As they are released by Sony, they are lower bitrate, DRMed files. Except for the performance of “Code Red” in San Diego, each song can be purchased individually (to get that “Code Red,” you need to buy the entire concert).

According to this week’s iTunes New Music Tuesday newsletter there are only 26 concerts available:

Tori Amos’ fan base is well-known for being among the most dedicated of any artist, and the veteran singer/songwriter is letting her fans take the memories home with Boots and Legs, an exclusive live bootleg series available exclusively on iTunes. With 26 live concerts from the past year available today, the Boots and Legs series lets you have more Amos than you could dream of.

And sure enough, another loyal reader reports that the West Palm Beach recording is not available on iTunes. We haven’t heard any reason for this unfortunate omission. The West Palm Beach show is now on iTunes!

Live at Montreux Release Details and Pre-Orders

Although we posted the tracklist for the upcoming Live at Montreux DVD, we failed to mention that, per ToriAmos.com, there is a CD of the performance slated for release as well. They have also confirmed the previously-mentioned September 22nd release date for Europe and indicate that the sets will see a North American release on September 30th.

Thanks to Stéphane for noting that the CD and DVD are available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk (though, for some reason, they incorrectly list the title of the DVD as Live at Montreux 1999 — Tori only played the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1991, 1992, 2005 and 2007) and to Paul Rees for sending us the pre-order link for the CD on Play.com. As previously mentioned, the DVD first popped up on CDPlus.nl where it is still available for pre-order. I’ve also found a pre-order listing for the CD at HMV. Undoubtedly, the set can be found at other fine vendors across the European Union and, eventually, North American stores as well.

Montreux DVD Tracklist Revealed

Eil.com has spilled the beans regarding the tracklist for the upcoming Live at Montreux DVD, due out Sept. 22. The recording features material from two shows, one in 1991 and 1992, and shows Tori’s “fascinating progression from one year to the next as she grows in confidence and skill as a live performer, buoyed by the critical and commercial success of Little Earthquakes.” Check it out:

1991 Show:
1. Silent All These Years
2. Precious Things
3. China
4. Crucify
5. Leather
6. Song For Eric
7. Upside Down
8. Happy Phantom
9. Winter
10. Thank You

1992 Show:
11. Little Earthquakes
12. Crucify
13. Silent All These Years
14. Precious Things
15. Happy Phantom
16. Whole Lotta Love / Thank You
17. Me And A Gun
18. Winter
19. Smells Like Teen Spirit

Thanks, bodyelectronic!

Tori at Montreux: Coming Soon To A DVD Near You?

While Tori performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival during both of her last two tours, she also played the festival at the start of her career and it now appears that a DVD collecting both of those early concerts is slated to be released later this year.

Kristof was the first to alert us to a Live at Montreux 1991/1992 DVD appearing at the Dutch store CDPlus with a release date of September 8th on PIAS. While there is no information about this DVD at PIAS (yet?), there is a fair bit about it at eil.com, though that is for a UK PAL DVD release on Eagle Vision with a release date of September 22nd. Further muddying the waters, Kayos Productions, an American publicity company, lists on their release schedule a DVD and CD of this title for September 30th on Eagle, so an American release seems possible as well.

At this time, there is no mention of this DVD on Live at Montreux, the official site for releases of performances from the festival. However, Eagle Vision is clearly affiliated with the Montreux so it seems very likely that this DVD (and possibly a CD) is happening!

For those who are curious, details about both of Tori’s appearances at Montreux are available from Montreux Sounds: 1991 and 1992.

Thanks also to BMac, jaybees and Lauren.

John Philip Shenale To Contribute To The Light Princess, New Album

Composer and Tori’s long-time string arranger John Philip Shenale has ‘fessed up on his Myspace blog to being involved with both The Light Princess musical and Tori’s next record. He also adds that, “more info with a number of other cool projects will be coming when dates are finalized.” Guess we’ll just have to sit back and see what those projects will be…. NOTE: John kindly clarified that this statement was in regards to projects he’s doing with other artists and he assures us he is now aware of the pitfalls of posting at 3am at the end of a long day. (Um…kind of like we’re doing right now?)

Thanks to Robert Schrader, Melissa and Fabz for letting us know about this!