The 3rd Annual William Clarke Tribute is being held this February 20th at the Crown Plaza in Downtown Hartford CT. This is a great event featuring some great music, it celebrates the blues of 4 time W.C. Handy Award winner, William Clarke. This year the bands are D. Smith Blues Band, Gina Gunn & the Bullets, Gene Donaldson & the Stingrays, The Houserockers & Garry & The Moodswingers. Another great aspect of the event are the guest Harp players. This year it will be Jr. Krauss, Gary Segal, Andy Grey, Bob Orsi & Eddy Peabody. Their are rooms available, a buffet and raffles. So try and make the event, remember "if you ain't got the blues in your heart, you gotta hole in your soul."

Lycos site boasts 500,000 digital audio files, but some say many of them are unauthorized. Website operator Lycos launched a new search engine Monday (Feb. 1) that looks only for downloadable MP3 audio files and offers access to more than 500,000 examples of the digital music, according to the company. Steve Grady, vice president of marketing for GoodNoise, an Internet music label based in San Jose, Calif., called the development of the search engine and RioPort.com exciting for enthusiasts of the format. Others, however, argue that the files are illegal. "Overall, it continues to be a sign that MP3 is sweeping the Internet," Grady said. "It certainly has become the trend of the year." Still, one downloadable-music expert claimed a lot of the files available through the site (MP3.lycos.com) are unauthorized, meaning that they have been posted without the artist’s consent. That is "absolutely unfortunate," Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com, a San Diego company that offers more than 17,000 artist-approved MP3 files through its website (www.MP3.com), said. Robertson, who said he familiarized himself with the Lycos site Monday, claimed to believe that 95 percent of the files in its database were unauthorized. "It’s actually a disappointment to the people who go there," he said. Officials at Lycos Inc., based in Waltham, Mass., could not be reached for comment late Monday.

Iggy Pop, the notorious rocker who once checked himself into a psychiatric institution and spent years living — in his own words — "from flophouse to flophouse," is again proving himself to be a rock survivor via his latest musical endeavor. But the onetime Godfather of Punk and pioneer of Marilyn Manson-style onstage antics clearly has mellowed over the years — a fact made evident by his decision to recruit a jazz trio to help out with his new album. "Everything you know about Iggy and the Stooges is true," said the album’s producer, Don Was, referring to the ’60s proto-punk band that launched Pop’s career. "At 50, he doesn’t want to be confined to one portion of their thought process. They were out there puking on stage every night, but obviously he’s a really bright guy and there’s more to him than that." Besides choosing to work with uber-producer Was, Pop tapped jazz trio Medeski, Martin and Wood to back him up on a few tracks. "They all sounded different, they all sounded unlike what I’ve heard Iggy Pop sound like before," bassist Wood, 29, said. "One of the tunes was very mellow and grooving and another one was hard-hitting rock meets merengue ... I loved it. I thought he was a really smart, funny guy, really into working with the moment and improvising and doing what feels good." Iggy Pop first emerged in Detroit in the late ’60s with the Stooges and quickly became legendary for wild, over-the-top stage antics that reportedly included writhing around on broken glass, smearing himself with peanut butter and having sex with a fan during a show. Pop’s new material spotlights a side of the singer that’s not widely known.

Neil Young’s life is shaping up to be an unusually prolific period in a career that has spanned decades and musical genres. In addition to a series of live performances by the iconoclastic singer/songwriter, there will be an album of new material and the first installment of a multi-CD career retrospective. Young will kick off a solo acoustic tour March 3 with a show at Queen Elizabeth Hall in Vancouver, Canada. The month-long string of U.S. West Coast and Canadian dates is being billed as "An Evening With Neil Young," according to Elliot Roberts, the folk-rocker’s long-time manager. "It will be a mix of some new stuff and older material," Roberts said of the tour, which will feature dates in Seattle, Wash., as well as Portland, Spokane and Eugene, Ore. Young also recently re-entered his Northern California home studio to lay down additional tracks for his 29th studio LP. The album is currently untitled and without an official release date, but Young is expected to debut songs from the project during his upcoming tour. Originally due March 23, the new album is on hold until Young completes work on two new tracks. Among those who have contributed to the recording are: bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, pedal-steel guitarist/producer Ben Keith, star session drummer Jim Keltner and keyboardist/songwriter Spooner Oldham.