Singer Natalie Cole on Wednesday night gave her first show since her kidney transplant, in a Los Angeles performance backed by an orchestra.

“I never thought I’d be standing here healthy, whole and 100 percent again,” Cole told the crowd, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Cole, a nine-time Grammy winner and the daughter of the late U.S. crooner Nat King Cole, received a new kidney on May 19, after suffering damage to her original kidney from the disease Hepatitis C. The R&B singer has said she probably contracted the disease from drug use decades ago.

Cole’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles featured her hit songs “This Will Be,” “Inseparable,” “Mr. Melody” and others. In the coming weeks, Cole is scheduled to perform at a tribute show for singer Lionel Richie, and at another event later this month honoring Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. She is scheduled to go on tour next month, starting with a show in Indiana, with later stops to include Detroit, Michigan; Bucharest, Romania; and Warsaw, Poland.

Pop star Madonna was booed during a concert in Bucharest, Romania, on Wednesday night when she urged the Eastern European crowd to be tolerant of Roma, otherwise known as the Gypsy population.

The Roma have recently been the victims of targeted killings in Hungary, and they face discrimination in many parts of Europe.

In an effort to bring attention to that, Madonna took a break from performing during her concert in Bucharest to say, “I’ve been paying attention to news reports, and it’s been brought to my attention that there’s a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in Eastern Europe, and that makes me feel very sad,” she said. “Because we don’t believe in discrimination against anyone, we believe in freedom and equal rights for everyone, right?”

In reaction, Madonna got boos from the crowd, although some fans also showed support for her comments by applauding. Many Roma in Eastern Europe live below the poverty line, and in parts of Eastern Europe it has been common for some to show their hatred of the Roma by displaying the swastika and other Nazi symbols. Many Eastern Europeans have also bristled at any criticism of the way the Roma are treated in their countries, especially if it comes from someone who is not from that part of the world. As a visitor on tour  from the United States, Madonna no doubt ran into that obstacle with the crowd in Bucharest.

See the reaction from a member of the audience with a handheld camera, in the video link below.

Hallelujah, indeed. Leonard Cohen, in all his sartorial splendor, will kick off the second and final leg of his North American tour in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on Oct. 17. 

The 74-year-old Canadian singer/songwriter has scheduled 15 dates through Nov. 13 in San Jose, Calif. It was not immediately clear if there would be any additional stops.

Cohen is currently on tour in Europe, with dates on tap through Sept. 21 in Barcelona. He has been on the road since May last year, forced out of retirement after a former manager made off with his life savings.

The first North American leg, marking his first Stateside tour in 15 years, ran for two months through early June, and was one of the hottest tickets in town.

Here are the dates:
    
Sat, Oct 17 — Ft. Lauderdale (BankAtlantic Center)
Mon, Oct 19 — Tampa (St. Pete Times Forum)
Tue, Oct 20 — Atlanta (Fox Theatre)
Thu, Oct 22 — Philadelphia (Wachovia Spectrum)
Fri, Oct 23 — New York City (Madison Square Garden)
Sun, Oct 25 — Cleveland (Allen Theatre)
Tue, Oct 27 — Columbus (Palace Theatre)
Thu, Oct 29 — Chicago (Rosemont Theatre)
Sun, Nov 1 — Asheville, N.C. (Thomas Wolfe Auditorium)
Tue, Nov 3 — Durham, N.C. (Durham Performing Arts Center)
Thu, Nov 5 — Nashville (Tennessee Performing Arts Center (Andrew Jackson Hall)
Sat, Nov 7 — St. Louis (Fox Theatre)
Mon, Nov 9 — Kansas City (The Midland by AMC)
Thu, Nov 12 — Las Vegas (The Colosseum at Caesars Palace)
Fri, Nov 13 — San Jose (HP Pavilion)

Fresh off her announcement that she would tour Australia for the first time ever, Britney Spears on Wednesday revealed that she will also come back to North America for an extension of her  “The Circus” tour.

Spears will play arenas in 20 cities, starting with an Aug. 20 show in Hamilton, Ontario, and ending on Sept. 27 in Las Vegas. In between, Spears and company will touch down in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles, amid other stops.

Before Spears opened her “Circus” tour in March with a show in her native Louisiana, some had questioned whether she was ready for the stress of hitting the road again. The 27-year-old singer is under the conservatorship of her father, Jamie Spears, following a high-profile meltdown in 2007 and early 2008 that included stints in psychiatric care, an ugly divorce, shaving her head and partying without panties.

But the comeback tour seems to be going all right for the pop diva, who is currently performing in Europe. Concert trade publication Pollstar says her elaborate revue is one of the hottest tickets in North America this year with ticket sales of $61 million. The show features 50 dancers, magicians, clowns and acrobats and a production budget of $50 million and it travels in 34 trucks, her Jive Records label said.  

So with the November release of her chart-topping album “Circus” and with her song “Womanizer” scoring the singer her first No. 1 single in almost a decade, Spears seems to have proven that, if nothing else, she can still sell albums and pack music venues.

Does the tour prove that Spears is all the way back? And if you saw one of her shows, what did you think?

Summer’s almost here, and the time is right for Aerosmith’s first North American shows in almost two years.

America’s rock ‘n’ roll bad boys, sidelined last year by singer Steven Tyler’s rehab stint and guitarist Joe Perry’s bad knee, said Monday they would begin a three-month amphitheater tour in St. Louis on June 10. 
    
The trek will take the band to 33 cities, including Washington on June 21, Houston on July 17, Chicago on Aug. 28, Toronto on Sept. 3, and finally Detroit on Sept. 16. Opening act ZZ Top will join the tour on June 16, when Aerosmith play to a hometown crowd in Boston.

The band is taking a break from recording its first album of new material since 2001’s “Just Push Play.” A band spokeswoman said there was no scheduled release date yet.
    
Aerosmith last toured in 2007, playing 20 countries between April and September. It was forced to scrap a planned festival show in Venezuela this past February because Perry, 58, had to undergo emergency knee surgery caused by unforeseen complications from a total knee replacement in March 2008.
    
Tyler, 61, went into rehab last May, saying he needed “a safe environment” to recover from a series of foot surgeries that proved to be more painful than expected. He will be the top draw at the upcoming Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, which allows civilian rockers to jam with and learn from their heroes. It runs from April 29 to May 3 in Hollywood.
    
Both Perry and Tyler — nicknamed “the Toxic Twins” — and their bandmates were infamous for their hard-partying ways during the 1970s. Since a carefully engineered comeback in the late 1980s, they have largely been models of sobriety.

Britney Spears walked off the stage early during her concert in Vancouver on Wednesday, leaving stunned fans to boo and chant for half an hour while her handlers dealt with what they later delicately described as “a ventilation issue.” Translation: some of her crew members were reportedly sickened by the cigarette – or perhaps another sort of – smoke.

According to the Vancouver Sun review, the pop princess sang a few songs after taking to the stage at GM Place a little after 8:17 p.m. local time. But soon the stage mysteriously went dark, inspiring a few outbursts from impatient fans. A voice eventually came over the loudspeaker: “It’s become uncomfortable and unsafe for the performers, including Ms. Spears,” according to the report. “The show will resume as soon as the air around the stage is clear.”

The fans were not impressed, chanting and howling. The mood was “sour,” the Sun report said.

Spears returned to the stage about 9:05 p.m., performing for another hour or so as if nothing had happened. And the crowd’s spirits also appeared to lift, the report said.

Spears’ camp later issued a statement, saying: “We want to apologize to all the fans who attended our Vancouver show tonight for the brief pause in Britney’s set.  Crew members above the stage became ill due to a ventilation issue.”

Blogger Perez Hilton said Spears’ people were concerned that technicians high above the stage could become dizzy from fans’ marijuana, and he said Spears jokingly warned the crowd, “Don’t smoke weed!” as she left the stage at the end of the concert.

A spokesman for Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, which owns the venue where the show took place told E! Online that early reports about dope smoking were unfounded and that the smoke was believed to be from cigarettes.

But, without being there, one wonders. Pot smoking has been taking place at concerts since the 1960s, and if it is true, one big mystery remains: Do Spears’ young fans roll their own, or get their parents to do it for them?

Will Jacko really do it this time?  And after almost four years as a virtual recluse, will the self-styled “King of Pop” prove worthy of his crown?

News that Michael Jackson is flying to London this week to make a “special announcement”  on Thursday sparked a flurry of expectations that he is planning a series of comeback concerts in the British capital later this year.

Such a comeback has been much talked about since the pop superstar’s acquittal in 2005 in California on charges of molesting a young boy.

But Jackson’s last attempt, in London in 2006, fizzled out in embarrassment after he managed only a few lines of “We Are The World” at a music awards show.

Hard-core Jackson fans around the world, particularly those in Japan, have remained faithful to their idol.  But at the age of 50, and more than 25 years after reaching the apex of his career with the album “Thriller”, can Jackson still put on a full-scale show?

And, more to the point, would you pay to go and see it?

Singer Jessica Simpson has left some concert goers feeling like they paid good money for a bummer of a show, after she told an audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday that she felt like walking off stage.  An entertainment editor at the Grand Rapids Press reported that Simpson took a swig from a water bottle while her backup singers took over lead vocals on one song, and that she had the band start over on another tune. 

Simpson’s poorly received performance at the show, where she opened for country band Rascal Flatts, comes as the pop star recovers from last week’s media storm over photos that gave the impression she had gained weight. Even though stars like the curvaceous Kim Kardashian came to her defense, it was a rough week for Simpson.

Several callers to a Michigan radio station, linked to by entertainment site Radaronline.com, said they were disappointed with her show. One female caller said that Simpson “wanted to cry, she wanted to leave the stage, she was terrible.” A male caller said “she’s getting paid an arm and a leg … and she’s telling us while she’s up on stage that she wants to walk off stage right now.”

Simpson started her career as a singer, but ventured away from that endeavor to star in Hollywood movies, where she has had mixed success. Her turn in the 2005 movie “The Dukes of Hazard” generated strong buzz, and the movie made more than $111 million worldwide. But her latest movie “Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous” went straight to DVD on Tuesday.

John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made powerful speeches directed against the Berlin Wall from inside the capitalist enclave of West Berlin during the Cold War and the two American presidents have been given their due credit by historians for the roles the two famous speeches in 1963 and 1987 might have played in the events leading up to the collapse of the Cold War barrier on Nov. 9, 1989.

But it’s quite possible that another American may have actually had a more direct influence on the Berlin Wall’s demise — Bruce Springsteen . He may well have played a more important role in galvanising a generation of East Germans fed up with living behind a Wall, a contribution that I would argue has been largely overlooked by historians.

The American rock icon put on a stirring concert in front of a record-breaking crowd of 160,000 in East Berlin 20 years ago — on July 19, 1988. That was 16 months before the Wall collapsed and at a moment when Communist East Germany was in the throes of change — Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” reforms had been let out of the bottle in the Soviet Union but hardline East German Communist leaders wanted little to do with those reforms.

The East German Communists had nevertheless let Springsteen in for his concert in 1988 after his earlier attempts to perform had been thwarted. But they angered the American by putting the label “concert for Nicaragua” on tickets and posters. So half-way through his three-hour concert, which was broadcast on tape delay by East German TV, Springsteen stopped for a short speech:

“It’s great to be in East Berlin,” Springsteen said in German as he introduced “Chimes of Freedom”. “I want to tell you, I’m not here for or against any government. I came here to play rock ‘n’ roll for you East Berliners in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.”

And the crowd went wild after he made his bold appeal, according to newspaper reports at the time.

His speech fits into the tradition started with Kennedy’s “”Ich bin ein Berliner” www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH6nQhss4Yc  that carried on with Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWDrTXMgF8 And Springsteen even spoke his words inside East Berlin. When you see the East German TV broadcast of the concert, you see a myriad of young East German faces full of emotions — they look to the same faces that the world saw 16 months later dancing on and around the Berlin Wall after it was finally breached.

Unfortunately I wasn’t at that Springsteen concert (though I’ve been to many before and after) but I’ve been hearing people in east Berlin talk about it for many years. It marked a turning point in East German history even if the revolution might not have started on that warm summer evening. I think the Springsteen concert marked the beginning of the end for East Berlin and East Germany. With the 20th anniversary of that concert looming this week, I think it’s time Springsteen got some credit for helping bring down the Berlin Wall.