BLACK DOG PRESS

KELLY CLARKSONS NEW TOUR TO BEGIN

Kelly Clarkson, scrapped an earlier tour this summer due to slow sales, but is now heading back on the road in the coming months for the fall.

The Grammy-winning singer, and first American Idol, announced Tuesday she would kick off a theater tour Oct. 14 at New York City's Beacon Theater, wrapping things up as she moves south in Nashville.

"I'm getting pumped to get out there and rock with y'all," she said in a statement. "We intend to blow the roof off these theaters."

The former "American Idol" champ had a difficult few months over the summer creatively and personally. Clarkson split with her manager while she was having disputes with her record label over the direction of her next album, "My December," which debuted at a disappointing No. 2 on the charts.

Last July Clarkson canceled an arena tour due to slow ticket sales. Her organizers said that they planned to re-evaluate the size of the tour given this recent history.

YouTube From Beyond the Grave

Dead Concert Pianist Makes Comeback--Critics Put Oar In:

Pianist David Smith, Sr. did not live to see the advent of YouTube, and therefore never saw a time when a man could be watched and known by thousands, without the aid and approval of big money producers--that is, without participating in the disgusting culture that prompted to him to make an early end of his career decades ago. But now a video made in 1981 of a casual performance near the end of his life is garnering tens of thousands of views on YouTube.

Of course, this kind of resurgence can only lead to one thing: critics. David Smith did not expect to face a global audience with this performance, so it is not a world-class performance equal to his early successes, when it was said of him that he "surpasses Rachmaninoff." Yet the dark side of the egalitarian phenomenon of YouTube is that megalomaniac uncredentialed critics are free to make their comments on an equal footing with more qualified judges, and with the appreciative public, and some commenters on David Smith seem to expect flawless interpretation from an aged and unknown performer whom no one is paying to see, rather than simply marveling that this man existed and played so near mastery for the joy and not for the glory.