Blog Posts by Martin Dio

It's been of the year's most anticipated tours, and it's been one of the biggest.

Britney Spears--who, any way you look at it, is today's Queen Of Pop--has come back with a massive, well-received bang with both her Circus album and the first leg of The Circus Starring Britney Spears, a concert tour spectacular like no other seen before.

With the second leg of the North American Tour now heading for take-off--it's slated to start Aug. 20th in Hamilton, Ontario and finish Sept. 27th in Las Vegas--Ms. Spears and her colorful troupe will soon be heading off to Australia for six long-awaited tour performances, hitting Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane starting in early November. It'll be the first time she's performed in Australia, and fans-from all reports--are drooling in anticipation.

Ticket info for all the tour packages can be found here.

In the meantime, Yahoo! Music is thrilled to be able to showcase this exclusive performance of Britney performing "Circus" onstage while on her

With his latest album Cradlesong making some significant noise in the marketplace, Rob Thomas--known to most as the lead singer of Matchbox Twenty--continues to impress.

Thomas's songwriting ability is growing by leaps and bounds, as witnessed by some of the heavier topics covered on the new album and the melodic hooks in which they are couched. But however strong his ability to craft solid pieces of stirring rock 'n' roll, it may be in the live context--onstage, where the singer has spent much of his public life since Matchbox Twenty's 1996 debut Yourself Or Someone Like You--that Thomas has really made his mark.

Need proof? Check out this performance of "Lonely No More" from Thomas's latest DVD, Something To Be Tour - Live At Red Rocks. It captures him at his finest and shows that today's very best artists are the ones whose talent comes across both in the recording studio and onstage.

Info for his upcoming tour is available here.

From all reports, U2--who've been playing together since 1976--are only improving with age.

And if the video below is any indication, those reports are entirely correct.

This performance of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," shot in Barcelona this June at the start of U2's megalithic 360 Tour, is as good an indication as any that the boys in the band--Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr.--have yet to lose their touch and continue to astound.

As you'll see from the clip, one of the more remarkable aspects of the current U2 show is the structure of the actual stage: It's circular, constructed to be placed at the central point of a stadium floor, around which the audience, at any angle, can see the band perform with an unsurpassed view.

The current tour--on the receiving end of much acclaim--will finish its European leg on August 22nd, then head to the States beginning with a Sept. 12th date in Chicago. Raw numbers? Incredibly, over 3 million fans will see them by

It's rare that one of the largest selling acts in pop history also can offer some of the most aesthetically pleasing and challenging music, but that's been the case since the mid-'70s, when successful Brit rock band Fleetwood Mac was joined by the powerhouse duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and the rest was-as the saying goes-history.

With a series of mega-platinum albums that set worldwide sales records--including Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk and many more-the band also launched successful solo careers for both Buckingham and Nicks, who managed to record on their own and with Fleetwood Mac.

Lindsey Buckingham's solo career officially began with 1981's Law & Order and its 1984 follow-up Go Insane. Since that time,  between solo tours, Fleetwood Mac reunion albums and tours, Buckingham has continued producing top-notch material that keeps pushing creative boundaries.

Prior to releasing his most recent album Gift Of Screws, Buckingham was captured in live performance at Bass

Long renowned for being on the cutting edge of contemporary rock 'n' roll, Linkin Park continue being ahead of the curve when it comes to charitable causes--and their latest crusade via Music For Relief puts a whole new spin on contributing to a worthy cause.

The cause itself? Haitian relief. The troubled country, already in the midst of a years-long food crisis, was pummeled by a hurricane last September which destroyed crops, killed livestock, and raised its overall misery index to near intolerable levels.

Linkin Park hope to raise a minimum of $25,000 to provide support to the country, and is doing so via the site SocialVibe.com, a new "social media" platform that specializes in helping its users support brands and charities via social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Members of SocialVibe can create personalized badges and place them on any of their social network profiles. Advertising revenue that SocialVibe receives from its brand partners is then allocated to the individual

In many ways the band Phishhas represented a cultural phenomenon that has only become evident inretrospect: In their earliest days in the mid- and late-'80s they mostly were spokenabout in terms of their cultural "similarity" to the still-functioning GratefulDead. Both bands consisted of excellentmusicians pursing music for the sake of music, rather than commerce, and bothdeveloped long-term relationships with a continually growing fanbase.

But it was really in the early '90s, when the band playedsome shows on the first H.O.R.D.E. tour, that their status as post-Dead pioneersbecame evident. They were one of the first batch of popular artists to openlyembrace tape-trading among their fans, they played extended performances withan aggressively shifting repertoire, and in short they helped create what wenow refer to as the "Jam Band" phenomenon, a catchphrase used to describe suchdivergent artists as Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, the String CheeseIncident, Gov't Mule, Umphrey's McGee,

As mid-February brings the Valentine season, what better way to celebrate than an in-studio performance by Seal?

Backed by distinguished pianist/producer David Foster, the singer--who recently released a highly regarded album featuring covers of classic R&B songs called Soul--can be seen here covering "If You Don't Know Me By Now" and "A Change Is Gonna Come."

Penned by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, "If You Don't Know Me By Now" first emerged as a Top 10 chart hit by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1972. It later became a hit again for a brand new generation via the version by UK band Simply Red, who reached the Number 1 slot with it back in 1989.

Stripped back to the basics of just voice and piano, the song--and the performers here--really shine.

The next track has an even more distinguished history: Written by R&B legend Sam Cooke in 1963, and filled with deeply personal and political sentiment, "A Change Is Gonna Come" is an all-time classic that first appeared on Cooke's

San Francisco Bay area quintet Thriving Ivory have been making significant noise in various areas of the country since the demo of their "Angels Of The Moon" was picked up by an area radio station early in their career and given a royal reception by local listeners.

Signed to Wind-up Records, the band--consisting of Scott Jason (piano & keys), Clayton Stroope (vocals), Drew Cribley (guitars), Bret Cohune (bass), and Paul Niedermier (drums)--has continuned to garner favor in several West Coast states.

Perhaps most notably, the band's been drawing raves in the Salt Lake City area, where local radio picked up on the "Angel Of The Moon" single and sales of the band's Wind-up debut have topped local charts.

Check out several tracks here from the band's recent live performance at Salt Lake City's Murray Theater, which drew over a thousand fans for their first appearance ever in the area. Do they rock? It would appear they do!