Maroon 5 making moves thanks to 'Jagger,' 'Voice' (AP)

NEW YORK – Before joining NBC's "The Voice," Adam Levine says some folks assumed he was some "singing bimbo that likes girls." So he's grateful to the show for providing a bit of clarification on his image.

"It was a nice opportunity to show my personality — that I have a brain," said the lead singer of Maroon 5. "It's also true: I am a bimbo and I like to sing and I like girls, but there's more to my personality; it's a little more dynamic than that, and I like to show that on the show. It's cool."

The singing competition — which also features Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton as music coaches — was a hit in its first season. The four coaches chose teams of eight after an audition process that allowed them only to hear the contestant's voice, but not to see them. Once teams were whittled down to one contestant for each coach, Levine's mentee — the crooner Javier Colon — was crowned the winner.

"The Voice" helped showcase the playful and sillier side of the heavily-inked Levine. Band keyboardist Jesse Carmichael says Levine's presence on the show "was so positive for him definitely as a person, but for us as a band, too."

Now, the group is taking advantage of the buzz: They recently released "Moves Like Jagger," which features "Voice" co-star Aguilera, and it will be the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 charts Thursday. It also hit No. 1 on the European and Canadian charts.

The dance song is a departure for the pop-rockers, and they say they're rushing to get a new album out this fall. In the past, the group released an album every three or four years.

"We're going to make it as quickly as we can (and) ride this wave of momentum," Levine said in an interview last week.

"That's too long," he explained about past breaks between records. "We can't do that anymore. We've got to keep moving."

The Grammy-winning group's 2002 debut, "Songs About Jane," sold 4.7 million units and they followed that with another multiplatinum-seller, 2006's "It Won't Be Soon Before Long." Last fall, they dropped their third album, the gold-selling "Hands All Over," which was re-released to feature "Jagger."

On Maroon 5's upcoming album, the group says they want to take a new direction. "Jagger" was produced Benny Blanco and Shellback, hitmakers for acts like Katy Perry, Ke$ha and Britney Spears.

"We can definitely stand to take more risks," Levine said. "It's awesome to have that little feeling in your stomach like, `Oh, this isn't safe, this isn't normal for us' ... (and) if you don't do that, I think you're dead a as band."

The second season of "The Voice" premieres after the Super Bowl on Feb. 5.

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Online:

http://www.maroon5.com/

http://www.nbc.com/the-voice/

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Mesfin Fekadu covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/musicmesfin

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James Franco drops out of making Broadway debut (AP)

NEW YORK – James Franco can't make time for Broadway.

Publicist Robin Baum confirmed Tuesday that the workaholic actor has dropped out of a planned production of the steamy Tennessee Williams play "Sweet Bird of Youth."

It was to mark Franco's Broadway debut and would have created one of the hottest tickets of the season because he was to be paired with Nicole Kidman, who is still on board.

The play tells the story of an aging actress and the gigolo paramour who uses her as he tries to help her get back into movies. David Cromer is scheduled to direct.

Franco, last seen in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Your Highness," is shooting the film "Oz," appearing on "General Hospital" and earning a doctorate in English at Yale.

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Making beautiful music from recycled junk (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It's all junk -- until it's not.

Clay flowerpots, a washtub, garbage cans, assorted kitchenware, an old futon frame, circular saw blades, cast iron skillets and more.

What may look like clutter piling up on a small stage at Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is junk that has been given a second life as finely tuned, amplified musical instruments played by the New York-based group, Electric Junkyard Gamelan.

"Believe it or not, the frying pans are all pitched," musician, composer, and instrument maker Terry Dame said, pointing to a black cast iron skillet standing upright on its handle near the front of the stage.

Dame is the leader of the veteran musicians who have been performing together as the Electric Junkyard Gamelan since 2000. The band members, ranging in age from 31 to 51, include drummer Lee Free, bass player Mary Feaster and Julian Hintz, a classically trained percussionist.

Dame built all of the band's unusual instruments.

"I'm a fabricator... I just love to make things with my hands," she told Reuters as the group prepared for a recent concert on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage.

Most of strange-looking contraptions taking shape on the stage bear little resemblance to musical instruments as we know them, although some of the names may sound vaguely familiar.

There's the Sitello -- a combination electric cello and sitar; the Terraphone -- a horn made from copper pipe; the Clayrimba -- a marimba made from garden-variety clay pots; a Big Barp and a Rubarp -- electric harps made with rubber bands.

Except for the clay pots, which Dame used to purchase but now makes herself, the instruments are made with recycled objects.

"That stringed instrument...that's wood from an old futon frame I found on the street," she said. "The hanging base instrument -- that's an old folding table base. A lot of the hardware I got from tag sales and stuff like that."

Everything on the band's percussion rig is "found stuff," she added, referring to an arrangement of frying pans, garbage cans, aluminum wash tub alongside an assortment of pots, pans and lids suspended from a rack.

Asked whether there was a story behind an instrument made of circular saw blades, Dame said: "They just make a beautiful sound."

"I don't care what it looks like, it if makes a beautiful sound, I'll figure out a way to play it," she added.

ECLECTIC SOUND

The band's eclectic music does not fit neatly into any category and often sounds nothing like what audiences might expect to hear, Dame said.

"Some venues are kind of scared of us because it seems like it's going to be a lot weirder than it is. In actuality, the music is pretty accessible," she said. "We always get invited back if I can get my foot in the door."

Originally inspired by Indonesian music, Electric Junkyard Gamelan's (EJG) song list includes hints of familiar styles such as jazz, funk, pop, world music, and even hip-hop.

The term gamelan refers to musical ensembles from Java and Bali in which gongs and metal xylophones are the predominate instruments, explains gamelan scholar, Sumarsam.

"Traditionally, gamelan is an essential accompaniment to puppet shows, dances, feasts and ceremonies," he said in an email describing the music.

The sound is distinctively percussive with layers of complex rhythms and melodic tones, said Sumarsam, a music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He said he can hear the Balinese influence in EJG's music.

The group's sound -- as much as its unique instruments -- caught the ear of the organizers of the "Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival" in Oakland, California, where EJG is booked to play in late September.

Festival spokesman Edward Schocker said even in the small world of artists who use found objects of recycled materials to make instruments, Dame's group stand outs.

"What was really great about Terry and the Electric Junkyard Gamelan was that they found a way to make non-musicians interested in what they do," Schocker said. "She's able to take these instruments and create music with it that is open to so many different people."

Dame, who composes EJG's music, was first attracted to gamelan as a graduate student at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. She also built her first instrument there as part of a graduate thesis project.

She has been experimenting with objects and sound since then and says her instruments have been evolving.

"Things get tweaked. Things get added occasionally. I've tried to stop adding, because you can't fit anything else in the van," she said, laughing.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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The making of 'Rome' a twisting tale of its own (AP)

By CHRIS TALBOTT, AP Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott, Ap Entertainment Writer – Fri May 27, 8:55 am ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – It seems just right that the making of "Rome," Daniele Luppi and Danger Mouse's homage to Italian film soundtracks, should unfold like one of those improbable, flamboyant and whimsical old movies that still fascinate decades later.

The screenplay would start with Luppi, the Los Angeles-based Italian composer who scores films, and Brian Burton, the outrageously creative producer known as Danger Mouse, crammed into a van, careening around the labyrinthian streets of Rome, bartering for the use of vintage gear from the 1960s. They needed to match instruments and equipment used by the masters like Ennio Morricone in films by Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone and others.

Luppi, a few bottles of wine under his arm, would knock on a door not knowing who he would meet. One time it was an 80-year-old man in his pajamas. The next a Vespa mechanic.

"He was wearing a jumpsuit and all that," Luppi said. "In between Vespa parts and stuff like that, he had vintage microphones and guitars. It's really weird. At the end of this meeting, he actually came up to me with a microphone and said, `I stole this from Ringo Starr when The Beatles played in Rome ...' So we had these characters. It was almost a Felliniesque experience."

Over five years and multiple stops and starts, Luppi and Burton outfitted their project, hired vintage musicians to go with the vintage instruments and reassembled the surviving members of Alessandro Alessandroni's Cantori Moderni, the choral group known for those haunting and powerful harmonies that punctuate Spaghetti Westerns like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

After recording the basic instrumental tracks they added a male star, the at-turns menacing and conflicted Jack White, and were missing just one last piece. Every good Italian film of the period had a strong female character, smoldering sometimes with desire, sometimes with anger.

They chose against type and asked Norah Jones to be their femme fatale.

"It was a different style of vocals than what she usually sings, but I knew she could do it and really wanted to hear her voice do it," Burton said. "She has such a beautiful voice. So when we went to record it, she was really, really open. Right away she sang the first couple of lines of `Season's Trees' and I thought, `This is exactly it. This is the last piece of this long, long puzzle we've been doing.'"

The silky-voiced Jones was drawn to the project because of its unique approach and the chance to work with Burton and White. Burton, who wrote the words for her three entries, sang the songs to her in a shy way and gave her one piece of advice: "He wanted me to just kind of deliver it like I was speaking a little more — a little less singy."

Though there's no script or story on "Rome," released last week, Jones and White take on personas through their songs. Backed by sinewy bass, Jones explores darker territory than she's known for. She's yearning in "Season's Trees" and dealing with the mess she's made in "Problem Queen." And in "Black" she says "I'm the disease" and sings: "Someday they'll punish my deeds and they'll find/All the crimes."

"It was like nothing I'd ever sung before," Jones said.

White saw the possibility to create complex characters with his three entries as well, and seems to play the victim to Jones' heartbreaker. His doubletracked vocals on "The Rose With the Broken Neck" add a strange sense of loneliness. He mirrors the interior conflict in those Spaghetti Western heroes of yore on "Two Against One" and is left to bleed to death of a broken heart on album-ending "The World."

"I did write the lyrics to the songs but I forgot to tell Brian what they were about," White joked in an email to The Associated Press. "Probably some girl."

Once White, a fan of Italian film scores "and sometimes Italian women," made his contributions, Burton finished off the parts that would go to Jones and a project that seemed to take forever finally wound down after five years and three trips to Italy.

Burton's preference would have been to knock the project out in five weeks long ago, but like a Leone Western that sets its hero against impossible odds in the second act, the album went in directions no one could have foreseen.

When he started the project with acquaintance Luppi, he had yet to release his calling-card mash-up, "The Grey Album," and was certainly not the bankable producer and songwriter he is today. They couldn't immediately overcome some obstacles along the way and each had to deal with increasingly busy schedules, meaning the project had to be dropped and picked up again.

It was frustrating at the time. But looking back it turned out to be an adventure. A head-scratching, quixotic tale told nonetheless with great beauty; just like those old movies that fired Luppi's imagination as a child and spurred Burton to buy instruments and write his first song.

"Sometimes I still think about how odd (it is)," Luppi said. "I'm Italian, but again it's not like all the people my age and younger they have that appreciation, at least not like I do. But then to find an American man who also has that kind of thing, it's really odd. The fact that the two of us somehow met, it's an odd thing."

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Online:

http://www.romealbum.com

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Bret Michaels -- Making An 'Amazing Recovery'

5/3/2010 12:30 AM PDT by TMZ Staff   Bret Michaels continued to make tremendous progress in his recovery this weekend -- and one source close to the singer tells us the whole thing is nothing short of "amazing."

We're told Bret was "very aware" and in a "good mood" this weekend during an evaluation with a specialist -- the singer was even described as "somewhat talkative."

It's a major improvement from the "critical" state Bret was in after suffering a massive hemorrhage near his brain stem back on April 23 -- a condition that can often be fatal if not treated quickly by experienced professionals. 

Tags: Bret Michaels, Exclusives

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