Odds & Ends: Grammys, Secret Festival, Snocore, Bob Dylan

Christmas will come early for many artists Dec. 5 when The Recording Academy announces nominations for the 57^th Annual Grammy Awards.

Hardly one to miss a marketing opportunity, The Recording Academy has issued a schedule for naming names, saying it will reveal nominations for four categories during a live broadcast on “CBS This Morning” at 8:30 a.m. (all times EST). 

Following the announcement The Academy will turn to Twitter and disclose more nominations from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.  At 2 p.m. the list of almost all nominations will be posted on Grammy.com.  Missing will be the noms for Album Of The Year which will be announced on the TV special “A Very Grammy Christmas,” airing that night at 9 p.m. on CBS.

And finally, a press release and a complete list of nominations will be posted at 10 p.m. on Grammy.org’s Press Room section.  And, yes, there is a difference between Grammy.com and Grammy.org.

Pssst… You wanna know a secret?  England’s Secret Festival, the brainchild of post-Britpop band Embrace, will take place Sept. 5 at an undisclosed location and tickets go on sale Dec. 4 at 9 a.m. GMT.

But the where and who won’t be disclosed for quite some time.  The exact location will  be announced to ticket buyers via email a few days before the festival.  However, Embrace is  dropping hints, saying the event will be in the north of England located within a 30-minute drive of Leeds City Centre.

Honored as best new festival at the UK Festival Awards held Dec. 1, the first Secret Festival grew out of Embrace holding its own “secret gigs.” While Embrace will play a full set Sept. 5, no other acts have been announced.  However, the band is promising music from 4 p.m. until midnight.

A Secret Festival ticket will cost you £50 plus a £3.50 booking fee.  Concession tickets for children 12 and under are priced at £20 plus a £2.00 booking fee. Packages, including travel, camping and glamping, will be available.  Check’ em out via this link.

The 2015 Snocore Tour has tapped Flyleaf to headline, Adelita’s Way for direct support and Framing Hanley and Fit For Rivals to open.

What the annual festival has yet to reveal is the schedule.  However, the first gig has been announced – Feb. 3 in Charlotte, N.C., at Amos’ Southend.  Expect dates to be announced shortly.

The place where Bob Dylan and The Band recorded the now-famous “Basement Tapes” may be a two-hour drive from New York City, but a new film featuring Jeff Bridges narrating a capsule history of the historic recordings compresses the journey into a time-lapse sequence lasting just over three minutes.

“From The Village To The Basement” not only introduces Dylan’s The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11, but shows what one would see driving from New York’s Greenwich Village to the legendary house in West Saugerties near Woodstock dubbed “Big Pink” that served as the location for the 1967 recordings.  At that time Dylan was living in almost near seclusion as he recuperated from a motorcycle accident. 

More than 12,000 photos were used for the film that can be viewed on Facebook as well as at BobDylan.com.

Keyboardist Ian McLagan, the Small Faces / Faces vet who has also worked with The Rolling Stones and has backed artists ranging from Chuck Berry to Jackson Browne to Izzy Stradlin, is reported to be in critical condition in an Austin hospital.

Citing “a source,” television station KXAN is reporting that McLagan is suffering from a head  injury.

McLagan joined Small Faces when he replaced original member Jimmy Winston in the mid ’60s. Although the band broke up in 1969, McLagan and two other members joined with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to form Faces.

McLagan was to appear tonight at First Avenue in Minneapolis as part of Nick Lowe’s Holiday Revue.  No other information was available at post time.