Elvis Costello’s Spinning Songbook will whirl once more. The singer and songwriter will trot out the device he used on tour in 1986 for a new round of shows that allows audience members to select the songs at each night’s performance.

The game show wheel will include the titles of 40 songs and a different audience member will be invited onstage to spin the wheel to determine each successive song. While their song is being played, fans will have a choice of sitting in the “Hostage to Fortune Go-Go Cage” or in the onstage “Society Lounge,” where they will be served light refreshments. His 1986 tour with the spinning wheel remains one of Costello’s most celebrated.

Costello’s tour, dubbed “The Revolver Tour,” will encompass 10 shows in eight cities, starting May 7 in Reno, Nev., stopping May 11 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles and concluding with a pair of shows May 22-23 at New York’s Beacon Theatre.

Costello will be accompanied by the Imposters: his longtime keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas and guitarist Davey Faragher. Costello donated the original Spinning Songbook wheel to the Hartlepool (England) Museum of Showbusiness Machinery. The one he’ll use on the new tour has been reconstructed from the original blueprints.

Tickets for the Wiltern show go on sale Feb. 11; details are on Costello's website.

--Randy Lewis

The concert business was hit in 2010 by some of the same tough economic times that have been gripping other factions in the music industry in recent years, but New Jersey rock group Bon Jovi has reason to pop the Champagne anyway.

The band posted the highest grossing concert tour of the year not only in North America, but across the globe, topping the $200-million mark worldwide, according to figures released Tuesday by Pollstar, the concert-tracking publication.

Bon Jovi posted total concert revenue of $201.1 million, a little over half that figure -- $108.2 million -- from the North American dates on its world tour.

Behind the group on Pollstar's worldwide ranking is AC/DC with gross ticket sales of $177 million, followed in the top 5 by U2 ($160.9 million), Lady Gaga ($133.6 million) and Metallica ($110.1 million).

Looking only at North American tour numbers, Roger Waters and his remounting of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was second to Bon Jovi with a tour gross of $89.5 million, followed by the Dave Matthews Band ($72.9 million), Canadian pop crooner Michael Bublé ($65.7 million) and the Eagles ($64.5 million).

The big guns, however, couldn't bring up the entire concert business over last year's numbers. The top 50 North American tours combined for an overall take of $1.69 billion, down about 15% from $1.99 billion in 2009. The story was only marginally better throughout the world, where the top 50 total tour gross of $2.93 billion was off about 12% from $3.34 billion a year earlier.

Numbers were down almost across the board: total ticket sales dropped 12% in North America, from 29.9 million in 2009 to 26.2 million last year, and decreased 7% worldwide, from 45.3 million in 2009 to 38.3 million in 2010.

The only increase reported by Pollstar was in the average ticket price worldwide, which went up by $2.86 per ticket, or about 4%. Tickets in North America actually dropped by about $1.55 or 2%. Even Bon Jovi's field-leading $108.2 million for North America was the lowest figure in recent years for the No. 1 spot. The record high belongs to the Rolling Stones, who took in $162 million on their 2005 "A Bigger Bang" tour.

"Artists worked fewer shows in a tough business climate and those that overreached suffered the consequences," Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni said in a statement that accompanied the numbers. "In general, the international concert business was stronger than in North America, where overbooked and overpriced shows at outdoor amphitheater venues made it an especially difficult year for Live Nation," a reference to the world's largest concert promoter.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney has received consistent praise for his stamina, still typically delivering three-hour performances while touring at age 68. But he generally worked fewer nights for more money than most of his peers. His average gross of $3.86 million per night over 21 dates in 2010, and an average ticket price of $138.49, gave him the highest per-concert average in North America, followed by Bon Jovi ($2.85 million), Waters ($2.49 million), Alejandro Fernandez ($2.4 million) and Elton John-Billy Joel ($1.97 million).

Popularity-wise, however, Dave Matthews Band reigned, selling 1.27 million tickets in North America for the year. Bon Jovi was second with 1.18 million, Justin Bieber with 987,000, John Mayer with 894,000 and Brad Paisley with 880,000.

Rounding out the top 10 grossing North American tours were McCartney, who took in $61.8 million over 42 shows in 38 cities. Lady Gaga finished No. 7 with total ticket sales of $51 million, followed by the James Taylor-Carole King "Troubadour" reunion tour that nipped at Gaga's 6-inch spiked heels with a $50.7 million total gross, the Black Eyed Peas at $50.5 million and singer-songwriter guitarist John Mayer at No. 10 with $49.9 million.

Bublé also performed well around the world, finishing at No. 6 behind Metallica with $104.2 million, the "Walking With Dinosaurs" animatronics tour ($104.1 million), McCartney ($93 million), the Eagles (92.3 million) and Waters ($89.5 million).

"Walking With Dinosaurs" attracted more patrons than any other tour, logging almost 2.06 million visitors. But the spectacle's overall gross finished farther down the list because the average ticket price was a comparatively modest $50.56.

Billboard's concert business rankings, which cover a slightly different, non-calendar year -- Nov. 22, 2009-Nov. 20, 2010 -- and factor in worldwide tour revenues, also place Bon Jovi at the top of the heap, with a gross during that period of $146.5 million from sales of nearly 1.59 million tickets.

The rest of the magazine's top five touring acts were largely consistent with Pollstar's, with the No. 2 slot taken by U2 ($131.5 million, 1.31 million tickets), then AC/DC ($122.6 million, 1.16 million tickets), Lady Gaga ($116.2 million, 1.36 million tickets) and Black Eyed Peas ($81.6 million, 1.26 million tickets). U2 scored its penultimate finish with only 22 stadium shows, compared to 69 performances for Bon Jovi.

U2 was tops on Pollstar's list of 2009's biggest tours, posting $123 million and another 1.31 million tickets sold. The Irish quartet was the only act to top the $100-million mark last year, with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band coming in second with $94.5 million, Elton John and Billy Joel's duo tour pulling in $88 million, Britney Spears at $82.5 million and AC/DC fifth with $77.9 million.

Among Pollstar's Top 100 North American tours, the crown for highest average ticket price of 2010 goes to Waters, who charged an average of $126.14 per ticket. That's considerably less than last year's high of $173.89 for Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks Live" tour.

Pollstar will release a full Top 200 early next month in its 2010 Year End Special Edition.

 -- Randy Lewis

Top photo: Jon Bon Jovi led the concert word with over $200-million in concert revenue. Credit: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images.

Bottom photo: Michael Bublé also had a good year, including finishing at No. 6 internationally. Credit: Associated Press.

Madison Square Garden, which owns the landmark New York venue of the same name, as well as Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater, among others, "is in the process of finalizing the purchase" of the Forum sports arena in Inglewood, according to Billboard.com. The venue, which was at one point the home to the Lakers and the Kings, was once the preeminent large concert venue in the city. That changed with the opening of Staples Center in 1999.

The Forum has been owned since 2000 by the Faithful Central Bible Church, which has struggled to keep the venue profitable. The concert bookings have slowed to a trickle in the last year. The Times' Richard Verrier wrote about the church's goals when purchasing the property a decade ago:

More ambitiously, church officials envisioned a family entertainment venue with concerts, shops, restaurants and a hotel that would create hundreds of jobs in an underserved area while generating income for the church and its mission.

The dream, however, never came to pass. Today, the Forum sits mostly vacant and silent, a monument to a bygone era when it was known as the Fabulous Forum and hosted such acts as the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. The shops, restaurants and hotel never materialized.

"We're in a challenging situation right now,'' [Bishop Kenneth] Ulmer acknowledged in an interview.

If indeed the purchase comes to pass, it could change the landscape of the concert business in Los Angeles. The Forum holds 18,000 people, compared with the 20,000-capacity Staples Center, which, like the neighboring Club Nokia and Nokia Theatre, is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group. AEG also owns concert promoter Goldenvoice.

 
Taylor Swift’s 2011 “Speak Now” tour will encompass 87 shows in 19 countries on four continents starting Feb. 9 in Singapore and reaching Los Angeles for a pair of shows, on Aug. 23 and 24. She’ll also play in California on Sept. 1 and 2 (San Jose) and Sept. 3 (Sacramento).

Robbie Williams wasn't able to break the U.S. market, but he can certainly wreak some havoc with Ticketmaster's U.K. website. Now back in the boy band in which he got his start, tickets for a Williams-boosted Take That tour of the U.K. and Ireland went on sale Friday, and immediate site crashes led to Ticketmaster releasing a statement apologizing for the agitating fan experience. 

"We have undoubtedly seen an unparalleled level of demand today and whilst hundreds and thousands of tickets have been sold we know that many of our consumers have experienced frustrating delays in securing their tickets," said the company in a statement posted on the Take That website. The site of promoter SJM Concerts, which is also selling tickets, is still experiencing slow loads, and the company announced that more than 1 million Take That tickets had already been sold.

For some perspective as to the furor that was caused by the demand for a Take That seat, Ticketmaster noted that the initial rush to its site outpaced the one that greeted the King of Pop last year. "Across the day Ticketmaster alone has so far received over 20m page views from visitors arriving on the site, far in excess of that experienced for Michael Jackson last March," the company stated, referencing what would have Jackson's comeback "This Is It" residency at London's O2 Arena. "The sheer volume of fans also created problems for the U.K. telephone network."  

French electro-pop group Air has taken its Oct. 23 Los Angeles date at the Shrine Auditorium off of docket, claiming unspecified "government regulations" in a press release. The band's appearance at the Shrine was to be a one-off, following the act's October tour of South America. 

A vaguely worded press release states that the act has "been forced" to cancel the concert "due to new government regulations that have caused insurmountable logistical problems." Tickets are to be refunded at the point of purchase, and the statement notes that the act intends to "perform more U.S. concert dates as soon as circumstances allow." 

As for what exactly those circumstances are, a band spokeswoman said she had no further information. A call to promoter Bill Silva was met with a request to e-mail questions, for which a response has not yet arrived. Calls to the Shrine Auditorium have not yet been returned. 

Air recently appeared in the United States, touring in support of 2009's "Love 2." That included a sold-out show at Disney Hall in March, an event that was reviewed positively in this blog, with writer Chris Barton noting that the band is "rivaled only by countrymen Daft Punk in terms of intermingling its identity with its electronics."

Tickets started at $32 and went up to $72.10, not including Ticketmaster surcharges.  

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Air --  Jean-Benoît Dunckel, right, and Nicolas Godin. Credit: Luciana Val & Franco Musso

Chang Weisberg is aware that the natural thing to do in this situation is count his blessings.

Rock the Bells, the traveling hip-hop festival he founded, is recognized as the most consistently successful tour of its kind: a beacon to fans of indie-leaning and old school rap with a track record of safety and high sound quality that stands virtually alone among hip-hop arena tours. As the annual fest enters its seventh year – at a time when the concert industry has been rocked by declining revenues, cancelled tours and widespread hand-wringing – ticket sales have already exceeded expectations with more than 20,000 tickets pre-sold in each of the major markets Rock the Bells will reach (including San Bernadino’s NOS Event Center, where the tour kicks off on Aug. 21).

But Weisberg, founder and head honcho of the Pomona-based concert promotions and marketing firm Guerilla Union, hasn’t been able to ignore the broadsides from fans outraged by his decision to significantly downsize the tour for 2010.

“We have a lot of fans upset at Rock the Bells this year,” the promoter acknowledged. “Last year we were in eight markets and this year, we’re in four.”

Previous years have seen the festival book as many as three times more dates and travel to smaller cities including Honolulu, Minneapolis, Myrtle Beach, SC and Columbia, MD.  In addition to the NOS Event Center engagement, Rock the Bells 2010 will reach San Francisco’s Shoreline Amphitheater, Governor’s Island in New York and Washington, DC’s Merriweather Post Pavillion.

Live Nation chief Irving Azoff may have taken to Twitter earlier this week to air his grievances with “jerk” journalists, wax philosophical on what the music industry “needs” (um, Mark Cuban? Really?) and get in the proverbial last word.

But Azoff’s online antics weren’t enough to distract from his company’s financial predicament, with Live Nation on Thursday reporting a substantial second quarter loss caused by the Great Summer Concert Ticket Sales Slump of 2010.

Live Nation’s net loss in the three months leading up to Jun. 30 swelled to $36.4 million from the same period a year earlier. But the bad news didn’t end there. The number of concerts staged by the company in the second quarter fell by 2.7% to 5,553 from a year ago, with total attendance down 5.7%. As well, the company’s revenue -- including the yield from Ticketmaster operations -- was down $135.6 million.

On the bright side, the concert-promoting-artist-managing colossus said that it met its own financial targets and that it is staying on track to achieve $40 million in cost synergies this year. And it said that despite a $40-million drop in adjusted operating income announced last month, Live Nation’s revenues grew to $1.27 billion from $1.05 billion (if you exclude the Ticketmaster results, that is).

Speaking of last words, Azoff tried to put a smiley spin on the quarterly report in a statement.

“Key artist tours anticipated during the summer and balance of the year for our artist management business include the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Kid Rock, Kings of Leon and the Scorpions, just to name a few, and it is their success that will help fuel our company’s growth,” Azoff said. “As we look to the future, we are more confident than ever in our belief that Live Nation Entertainment has a unique business model to service artists and fans.”

-- Chris Lee

After noting during an investors meeting that ticket sales for the top 100 touring bands are down 12% this year, Live Nation Entertainment's major executives went on the defensive Thursday, blaming the press for "scaring" artists from touring and arguing that acts need to alter their pricing strategies. 

The company's CEO, Michael Rapino, and executive chairman, Irving Azoff, painted a grim picture for the second half of 2010 yet noted that major artist tours, and a more customer-service-focused approach, were on tap for 2011. 

Journey, Kenny Chesney, Neil Diamond, Van Halen and Fleetwood Mac were among the artists cited by Azoff as plotting outings in 2011. He added that Christina Aguilera, whose 2010 summer tour was taken off the docket, would be on the road next year. He also noted that more dates are on the horizon from the cast of "Glee," the hit Fox musical-comedy.  

Yet the company, a recently merged pairing of ticketing powerhouse Ticketmaster and promotions behemoth Live Nation, would first have to navigate a limp 2010.

"The press has implied the sky is falling," Rapino told Wall Street investors, yet he also noted that the company's operating income for 2010 will be down significantly from that of 2009, perhaps by as much as $80 million, and said Ticketmaster's sales are down about 12% from those of 2009.

"The press," Rapino said, has "scared about every artist" out of touring in the fourth quarter. A number of major tours have struggled in 2010, including the refurbished Lilith Tour, and once-can't-miss artists such as the Jonas Brothers have been canceling dates, as outlined in this front-page story in Friday's Times. Amid rampant reports of a down market, Rapino said, "a lot of artists who had planned to tour are now saying they're going to sit it out."

Yet the company's top brass did more than point fingers at the media, and promised a leaner, friendlier model for 2011. But first, artists would have to budge on ticket prices, executives said. Jason Garner, the company's CEO for global music, acknowledged that "ticket prices need to come down" and directed the second half of his statement at artists and managers: "Your guarantee needs to come down."

To that end, Live Nation Entertainment promised that "dynamic pricing," which would add numerous pricing tiers, would be more widely implemented in 2011.The company's executives said they were months away from introducing a ticketing inventory system that can adjust prices in real time. 

Think of the future of buying a concert ticket not too unlike that of buying an airline ticket, in which the price can go up or down in the days leading up to an event based solely on demand.

For some, the Fourth of July is a good opportunity to re-read the Declaration of Independence, or  the writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams or George Washington to reacquaint themselves with the spirit behind the nation’s founding.

The Hootenanny Festival held each Independence Day weekend serves a similar function for anyone looking to reconnect with the spirit underlying the birth of that quintessentially American musical form, rock 'n’ roll.

This year’s lineup held out the prospect of a summit meeting between two of rock’s titanic figures -- Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis -- along with the usual amalgam of roots-rock, punk and Americana acts spread Saturday over the daylong festival’s three stages in the park-like surroundings of Irvine’s Oak Canyon Ranch.

Unfortunately, Lewis never made it, canceling under doctor’s orders because of an illness that the event’s promoter said wasn’t serious, but enough to take the "Ferriday Fireball" out of the game for the day. (Fest-goers were advised to hold onto their tickets, which will get them into a Jerry Lee Lewis 75th birthday celebration scheduled for September in Pomona.)

That left the elder statesman duties to Berry, who, at age 83, still succeeded in wowing this crowd of several thousand guys with greased pompadours, cuffed Levi jeans and tattoos and women predominantly outfitted like Bettie Page stand-ins.

Rock’s first poet and original guitar hero confessed during his hour-long set to tiring easily these days. So he alternated such rollicking anthems of youthful liberation as “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Days” and “Sweet Little Sixteen” with slower numbers, including “Every Day I Have the Blues” and “Wee Wee Hours,” in which he let his big Gibson electric guitar do most of the singing.

The man who invented much of the musical lexicon for his instrument reeled and rocked with a perplexing string of chord progressions and melodic runs during his solos, the logic of which might have been perceptible only to certain breeds of guitar-loving dogs. Yet just when you thought he’d completely abandoned musical cohesion comprehensible to anyone this side of Thelonious Monk,  those long, limber fingers would slip back into the exhilarating dimension he largely defined more than half a century ago.

Berry was accompanied by his regular bassist, Jim Marsala, and a keyboardist (Andy Hill) and drummer (3 Bad Jacks’ Kyle Helm) he picked up locally, his modus operandi when playing outside his hometown gigs in St. Louis. His appearance capped a day that spanned the earnest, western-soaked solo music offered up by psychobilly band Tiger Army singer Nick 13, the expansive Southern blues rock of Shooter Jennings and the raucous Americana of the Old 97’s on the two side-by-side main stages and off-the-hook second stage acts such as the theatrically cross-dressing thrash punk band Whorehouse Massacre.

The invigorating thing about Hootenanny, beyond the fascinating intersection of roots music, punk attitude and custom-car culture, is the window it offers on the many variations that have sprouted from the seeds that Berry, Lewis, Elvis, Little Richard and their cohorts planted in the '50s. The common thread is raw emotion and visceral energy. The impact of the individual performances hinged largely on the degree to which each act embraced the freedom from formal constraints of musical conventions that distinguished rock’s original class.

Nick 13 seems genuinely inspired by the “Ghost Riders in the Sky” school of western music, with its eerie textures and tales of loners on the frontier, but so far seems too in awe of the genre’s tradition to put much of a stamp on it. Jennings has broken from the tradition bequeathed him by his outlaw country parents, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, and seemed comfortable in his own musical skin exploring the border territory where Southern rock meets roots country.

Rhett Miller was characteristically compelling fronting the on-again, off-agin Old 97’s, the perpetual rock-star-in-waiting a la Gram Parsons, though exhibiting Parsons’ songwriting expertise less consistently. Singer-songwriter Roger Alan Wade fulfilled the don’t-give-a-hoot storyteller role with bawdy and witty songs including “D-R-U-N-K” and the self-explanatory “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough.”

Even with a relatively modest advance ticket price of $35, Hootenanny didn’t escape the doldrums hampering the concert industry across the board this year. Goldenvoice chief Paul Tollett noted backstage that attendance, around 4,000 on Saturday, was down from peak years: “It’s not the best, but not the lowest either, about in the middle,” he said after Berry wrapped up.

Yet from the enthusiasm shown by those who did turn out, the joyfully liberating potential of music rooted in American tradition was a truth that remains self-evident.

-- Randy Lewis

Photos: Chuck Berry (top) and Nick 13 from Tiger Army (bottom) perform at the Hootenanny Festival in Irvine's Oak Canyon Ranch.  Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times.

-- PHOTOS: Hootenanny Festival 2010

After teen's death at the Electric Daisy festival, artists and L.A. promoters seek to distance events like the upcoming Hard L.A. fest from the stigma attached to such massive dance party shows.

In the troubled aftermath of last week's mega electronic music festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, artists and local promoters are confronting a dauntingly familiar question: what to do about the "R" word and the "E" word.

"R" stands for "rave," as techno dance parties have been commonly known since they were birthed in the suburbs of post-industrial Detroit and the underground clubs of Thatcherite Britain in the late 1980s and early '90s. The "E" word, as dance music aficionados know, is Ecstasy, the controversial, euphoria-inducing drug that's used by many ravers to enhance their connection to the frenetically beat-driven music.

Less than 24 hours after a 15-year-old girl died of a suspected drug overdose after attending the Electric Daisy Carnival, a two-day music party that featured some of the world's top DJs and drew 185,000 people to the Coliseum and adjoining Exposition Park, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky called for a rave moratorium. Other public health and safety officials have echoed his concerns.

With multiple electronica-focused events planned in L.A. over the coming weeks, including July 17's Hard L.A. at the Los Angeles State Historic Park, a 36-acre plot just east of Chinatown, what was to be a dance-heavy summer was off to an inauspicious start.

"There's a concern, and I've heard from multiple agencies," said James Valdez, a state park ranger and the lead coordinator for events in the Los Angeles sector who'll be overseeing Hard L.A. "Will we reevaluate our plans and logistics? Yes. In light of Electric Daisy, we will increase our numbers all the way around."

Local producers and promoters, meanwhile, are doing their best to reassure ticket buyers that their shows will go on in an orderly fashion, without the gate-crashing and dozens of teenagers needing medical treatment that marred Electric Daisy Carnival.

Gary Richards, a veteran dance music promoter who's hosting Hard L.A., said in an interview last week that he is working with the LAPD to make sure his event goes off without problems.

But Richards also insists that his event shouldn't be called a rave.

"I do not want to be a rave. I do not want kids in there eating pacifiers," he said, a reference to some ravers' practice of holding pacifiers in their mouths to keep from grinding their teeth, which is a sometimes involuntary side effect of Ecstasy use.

"I'm trying to get to music fans who love this music. I've been involved with electronic music for 20 years," Richards continued, "and I've seen this cycle happen three times. It gets popular, and then something happens and then it goes away. My goal is to do these events with quality artists and make them safe and secure."

The media are  often critical of the concert industry, what with its high ticket prices, unexplained service fees and often an inability to get a decent seat without dealing with the secondary market. But there is one nifty new feature on the Ticketmaster website that deserves some praise, and that's the "interactive seat map." Pictured above as a graphic of the Hollywood Bowl's seating arrangement, the map allows the user to roll over various sections, and see, in real time, how many tickets are still available. 

There is, however, a downside, at least if you're a promoter. Those with time on their hands and the know-how to use a calculator (needling journalists are among that lot), can instantly see how many tickets remain unsold for major events hours before they're supposed to go down. Never before has it been so easy to see how concerts are under-performing. 

Sad news, then, to learn that approximately 10,000 tickets remain, as of Thursday morning, for Sunday's concert with Yeasayer and Baaba Maal, with, as noted in the screen shot above, sometimes more than 500 available in a single section. With a capacity of around 18,000, it's safe to say there's going to be plenty of room for your picnic basket and cheese spread.