News from the darkest corners...

Quincy Jones is spearheading a 25th anniversary recording of the charity hit composed by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, “We Are the World”, with proceeds going to Haiti relief.

The new version will be recorded on Monday in Los Angeles, reports E! Online, and the line-up is rumored to include Jennifer Hudson, Will Smith, Jason Mraz, Sugarland, Sheryl Crow and teen star Justin Bieber, among others.

Jones, the legendary producer who made “Thriller” with Michael Jackson, is being coy about exactly who will appear on the CD. “I want to get a final list before I put it out,” he says.

Director Paul Haggis will likely film Monday’s recording session, a source confirms.

DEVO are to perform at the official 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

The new wave band, who have recently been working on new material produced by Santigold, will play at the Whistler Medals Plaza venue on February 22, with the performance set to be broadcast on NBC.

Singer Mark Mothersbaugh hinted that fans could expect to hear new material from the band at the gig.

DEVO’s performance is part of the Whistler Victory Ceremonies, which runs from February 13-27 and features the likes of Feist, Usher and The Fray.

Memphis musician Jay Lindsey, better known as Jay Reatard, was found dead in his Midtown home this morning, according to family and friends.

Memphis police have opened a death investigation, spokesman Jennifer Robinson said. Lindsey was found around 3:30 a.m. in his bed, Robinson said.

On the Web site of Goner Records, the following statement was posted this afternoon: “It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard. Jay died in his sleep last night. We will pass along information about funeral arrangements when they are made public.”

We just learned that New York street/performance poet Bingo Gazingo died on january 1st.

Bingo Gazingo (June 2, 1924 – January 1, 2010) was an elderly poet and former postal worker from New York City. Two versions, each also titled Bingo Gazingo, have been released of the only single-artist album ever released by WFMU — the first on cassette, the second on CD.

The album consists of Bingo’s reading his poems to an improvised musical accompaniment by WFMU DJs R. Stevie Moore, Bob Brainen, Dennis Diken, Dave Amels, Chris Bolger and Chris Butler, and engineered by Amels. Often, while performing live, the background music to his frantic, poetic incantations is nothing more than a cassette tape inserted into a cheap cigar-box tape recorder and miked.

Bingo’s poetry often contain hilarious rhyme schemes and crude language, with titles like “Up Your Jurassic Park” and “I Love You So Fucking Much I Can’t Shit”. In the past he has penned hyper-caffeinated odes to Madonna, Tupac Shakur, and Beavis and Butthead, and had his “Everything’s O.K. at the O.K. Corral” (a dreamy remniscence of the cowboy movie serials by an old nurse-attended man) featured on a 1996 CD produced by the famed Greenwich Village coffeehouse Fast Folk Cafe.

Born Murray Wachs in Queens in 1924, Bingo Gazingo wrote music for most of his life, struggling on the edge of obscurity. He continued to actively write, record and perform perverse, edgy music until the day he died at 85 years old, struck down by a cab on his way to perform at the Bowery Poetry Club in late 2009.

More Frank Zappa dvd news:

200 Motels, the legendary Frank Zappa film, is due for release in early February. The film which was written by Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer and directed by Tony Palmer features Frank Zappa and the Mothers alongside guest appearances by Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. The film was groundbreaking at the time as it was filmed on videotape. The film has now been restored using the original source material and the work overseen by Tony Palmer who has also recorded a director’s commentary as a bonus feature. More details can be found here:

www.frankzappa200motelsdvd.com

When an artist, regardless of his significance, lists his favourite musicians and performers it is usually met with little fanfare, as over time the names mentioned are almost certainly going to change. But when Frank Zappa did likewise, and actually published a record of his most important influences on the inside cover of his debut album, it became a road map to the music he was to make over the following forty years. Even in the early 1990s, when asked about his most-loved composers, musicians and artists, he would repeat names from this, by then legendary, index.

This film explores the musical roots of Frank Zappa by putting The Freak Out List under the microscope and tracing the lineage from the most pivotal names thereon to the recordings and performances of the man himself. Featuring rare footage of Zappa and the Mothers plus archive film of Freak Out List artists, exclusive interviews with The Mothers Of Invention’s Ian Underwood, Don Preston and George Duke, 1950s Doo Wop legends, The Cadillacs, contributions from Zappa biographers Ben Watson and Greg Russo, Edgard Varèse biographer Alan Clayson, experimental modern music historian Professor David Nicholls, soul and R’n’B expert Robert Pruter, and many others.

Also features numerous seldom seen photographs, news archive, radio spots and a host of other features which all together make for a fascinating, unique and hugely watchable programme.

Extra features include: extended interviews; featurette ‘Frank Zappa’s Record Collection’; illustrated contributor biographies; and more.