Quick quips: Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Prince, Alex Steinweiss, Bruce Dickinson, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett

The Beastie Boys video Make Some Noise is up for two MTV VMAs including Video of the Year and Best Direction (Adam MCA Yauch). You can vote at MTV's site.


The Red Hot Chili Peppers had a lot of music to choose from for their new album, I'm With You. According to bassist Flea, they wrote seventy songs from which they picked the final tracks. He told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat "What was important to us when we put the record together was to make sure that each song filled its own space and was not like another song on the record. We wrote 70 songs, so it's not even necessarily all the best ones that we put on, but just the ones that occupy their own space."


Prince is curating the NPG Music and Art Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark on August 6 and 7. Appearing with him will be Chaka Khan, Nikka Costa, Raphael Saadiq, Larry Graham, Maceo Parker and Janelle Monae.


Alex Steinweiss, the man who created the album cover, passed away on Sunday in Sarasota, FL at the age of 94.
Steinweiss was hired by Columbia Records in 1939 as their first art director, mainly to do advertisements; however, he felt that the plain covers in which 78's were sold were boring, so he approached management about designing original covers. He went on to do covers for all genres of music and work for Remington, Decca, London and Everest.




Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is now a doctor, at least an honorary one. He received it from Queen Mary College in London on Tuesday, the same school from which he graduated from in 1979.


Tuesday night was historic as legends Aretha Franklin and Tony Bennett recorded together for the first time. The song was How Do You Keep the Music Playing? and it was produced by Phil Ramone for Bennett's upcoming duets album.


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