’70s Band Cans Entire Tour: ‘Blame It on the Weather‘ | By Jen Gidman, Newser | The Steve Miller Band has checked out the meteorological forecast for its upcoming concert tour around North America and cancelled shows because of it—dozens of them, making up the entire 2025 itinerary that was set to kick off in mid-August, reports People. “You can blame it on the weather,” the classic rock band known for ’70s and ’80s hits like “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Take the Money and Run,” and “Abracadabra” said Wednesday on its website, where all concert dates have since been removed. “The tour is canceled.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/70s-band-cans-entire-tour-blame-it-on-the-weather/
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Music History is Littered with Projects Planned, Anticipated, Even Completed — and Then Scrapped
By David Bauder, Associated Press
The idea that Bruce Springsteen wrote, recorded and ultimately shelved entire albums of music may seem odd to the casual listener. Why put yourself through all that work for nothing?
Yet “lost albums” are embedded in music industry lore. Some were literally lost. Some remained unfinished or unreleased because of tragedy, shortsighted executives or creators who were perfectionist — or had short attention spans.
Often, the music is eventually made public, like Springsteen is doing now, although out of context from the times in which it was originally made.
So in honor of Springsteen’s 83-song “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” box set being released Friday, The Associated Press has collected 10 examples of albums that were meant to be but weren’t.
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Of note: “A Story,” Yoko Ono
Written while Yoko Ono was separated from John Lennon during his infamous “lost weekend” in 1973-74, “A Story” had the potential of changing the musical narrative around her. It was a strong album . . .
Maxwell calls it “an emancipation manifesto” that was set aside when Ono reconciled with Lennon. She’s never publicly explained why . . .
Lennon was holding a tape of her composition “It Happened” when he was shot and killed. In it, she sings about an unspecified, seemingly traumatic event . . .
That wasn’t even the most chilling premonition. Her song “O’Oh” ended with firecrackers that sound like gunshots. It was left off the 1997 release.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/music-history-is-littered-with-projects-planned-anticipated-even-completed-and-then-scrapped/
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International Musicians are Canceling Shows in America. Amir Amiri, a Canadian Born in Iran, Illuminates the Struggle
By Parker Yamasaki, The Colorado Sun
July 10 was the perfect night for musician Amir Amiri’s sold out show, one of four he was scheduled to play at the annual summer Green Box Arts Festival in Green Mountain Falls.
The day’s high near 90 had cooled to a balmy 66 degrees. The gravel path leading to James Turrell’s “Skyspace,” a stone cube on the hillside where Amiri would play, was silvery under the full moon. Inside the venue, Amiri’s instrument of choice, an Iranian string instrument called a santur, would vibrate endlessly around the echoey room. There was only one problem: Amiri wasn’t there.
Amiri hadn’t received a visa to play in the U.S. despite seven months of petitioning and paying fees, the standard, though increasingly strenuous, process for international musicians who want to perform in the U.S.
America has maintained a uniquely burdensome bureaucracy for artists, athletes and entertainers for decades, beginning in the early 1990s, when Congress, at the urging of Hollywood labor unions, splintered artist visas off from the standard H1-B foreign workers visa into O and P visas, for exceptionally talented individuals or groups, respectively.
The new requirements came with piles of new paperwork and ever-increasing fee structures, the most recent of which occurred last year, when the standard filing fee jumped to $510 from $460 for some regularly processed visas, all the way up to $1,615 for others, and the expedited fee was bumped up to $2,805 from $2,500.
But the U.S. is also home to huge, culturally hungry audiences and vast market potential, so most musicians hoping to make it big are willing to pay up and get in line.
Until recently, that is, when the typical red tape became tangled up in far-reaching executive orders, including those having to do with immigration, as well as policies affecting transgender people, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric around making Canada the “51st state” and tariffs.
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https://coloradosun.com/2025/07/16/amir-amiri-green-box-arts-show-canceled/