MARK RONSON

The Grammys and the Hyundai Veloster teamed up to present and release a one-of-a-kind documentary film entitled "The Re:Generation Music Project." The film played at select theaters nationwide for only two dates, February 16th and 23rd.

After attending an exclusive screening on the 23rd, viewers were entertained as well as educated on what goes into the creative process of making music. For the 90-minute running time, viewers got to experience the creative and collaborative process of five producers, as they set out to work with some of the greatest artists in their assigned genres. The likes of The Dap Kings, Trombone Shorty, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Ralph Stanley, and Martha Reeves graced the screen to collaborate with today's top DJs to bridge the musical gap between different genres and generations!

Heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio celebrated his 37th birthday this past Friday at hotspot Avenue. It seems like just yesterday he was 23 years old and stealing everyone's hearts in Titanic. Oh, how the time flies. In typical alturistic Leo fashion, he donated proceeds (some $1.3 million) of the party to his non-profit, The Leonard DiCaprio Foundation. The foundation funds protection projects for wildlife as well as clean water and disaster relief in third world countries. By adding fees to drinks and bottle services he was able to collect funds from the well-endowed crowd that included billionaires Stewart Rahr and Len Blavatnik along with a slew of Hollywood heavy hitters such as Benicio Del Toro, Robert DeNiro, Naomi Campbell and Ed Norton. Additionally he auctioned items off, which included a 15 liter bottle of Veuve Cliquot painted by Peter Tunney. The bottle sold for a whopping $50,000!

Tomorrow, June 7th, Vice Records will release the Black Lips' newest LP, Arabia Mountain. The self-proclaimed "Flower Punkers" have been working on the album for the past nine months, releasing two videos in the process. "Go Out and Get It" was debuted on March 5th, while "Modern Art" was dropped in the public domain on April 5th.

Arabia Mountain is the sixth studio album from these hard-working, psychedelic rockers and for the first time in the Black Lips' discography, they've commissioned outside help. Famed Brit producer/dj, Mark Ronson, produced nine of the sixteen tracks and recorded them with the group in Brooklyn's MetroSonic Recording Studio while Deerhunter guitarist, Lockett Pundt, lended a hand on a few others.

Amy Winehouse's back from the undead. We already knew she was finally back in the studios for the almost divine Quincy Jones after a long, long, long period of self introspection I should say. You now have the opportunity to discover her new song. I will let you judge the song. Please don't be too difficult after those four years of debauchery.

"It's my party" is her first studio recording since a while and is produced by the usual Mark Ronson. This song will appear on the next Quincy Jones compilation named "Q: Soul Bossa Nostra." The original version of the song was procuded by Quincy Jones in 1963 and number on the Billboard for two weeks.

"Q : Soul Bossa Nostra" will be released on next Tuesday. Mary J. Blige, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Wyclef Jean and Ludacris and others will be on the record. Have a look at the song now.

Mark Ronson's status as a solo musician is a topic frequently subjected to scrutiny. After all, he's known as a 'celebrity D.J.' and comes from a famous family (sis Samantha is Lindsay Lohan's infamous lesbian dalliance and other sis Charlotte is a successful fashion designer). Although Ronson relies heavily on the famous talent he showcases, his own musical prowess never wavers.

Like a scientist, extracting the best of each artist he works with, Ronson helped thrust Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen into the international spotlight, producing their debut albums and featuring them prominently on his own breakthrough record: 2007's Version.

Who would agree that our digital revolution has birthed this Digital renaissance of music, blending all genre’s into a somewhat primordial soup of rhythmic consciousness? World renowned producer, Mark Ronson, enters the Galaxy of raw tunes with his latest album “The Record Collection”. Ronson has always brought a lot to the table whenever dropping new material, but this time he really goes in when it comes to this albums “casting call”. Collaborating with Q-tip, Ghostface Killah, London Gay man’s Choir, Andrew Wyatt and many more. It's not your average road call, which speaks volumes for the albums content. Ronson offers an 80's new wave reminiscent sound with a touch of soul and pop freshness.The message of love acts like a family crest, pulsating nearly every track. The dance floor spins produced on this album are majorly impressive and in the end overcomes being more than a homage to vast alternative sounds, but a dedication to diverse artistic input, as well as output, without over saturating the “shock value” of todays corporate assembly line of products vs. artists.

Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again Last summer, a very dear friend of mine let me raid her CD collection because I was bored with almost everything on my iPod and wanted to introduce some new music into the mix. She had a lot of 80s/early 90s albums of bands like INXS, New Order and Duran Duran. I sifted through the selections and sound-tested the ones I was not too familiar with, like Depeche Mode. I suppose I was always aware of Depeche Mode - probably since I was younger - because my mom is a big advocate for music of that time period, but I don't think I actually acquired one of their songs for my own until senior year of high school, when I stumbled upon a remix of "In Your Room" that I loved, then lost and have never been able to find again. So when I saw the Depeche Mode albums in my friend's CD binder, knowing that their New Wave sound would more than likely appeal to me, I slipped it out of its protective plastic cover and uploaded the songs onto iTunes to better familiarize myself with their music. And, as it turned out, a good handful of their stuff did appeal to me. Songs like "I Want You Now," "Get Right With Me," and "I Feel You" particularly struck my fancy and landed themselves a spot on my iPod, along with my hands-down favorite, to date, Depeche Mode song: "Never Let Me Down Again." And, I know, here I go again with the enjoyment of all things dark and sinister, but what drew me to this song was its seemingly under-worldly baleful trance of an opening - a devilish tango of guitar and synthesizer. It opens up the song perfectly, preparing your ears for the equally ecstasy-infused eeriness of lead singer David Gahan's baritone voice, then spiraling into the chorus', "We're flying high, watching the world pass us by..." that's cushioned with light, tenor vocal back-ups. It's a texturally-perfect mixture of contradicting extremes: high and low, soft and loud, dark and light and heavenly and diabolical. Mark Ronson featuring Alex Greenwald (of Phantom Planet) - Just This past Sunday, at the dormitory where I live, was move-in day for incoming freshman. As a Resident Assistant for one of the floors in my building, it was my job to check in the newbies, answer any questions that frantic, overbearing parents might have and make the youngsters feel at home. Going through this highly self-reflective process, I couldn't help but rewind my life three years and see everything that their eyes were seeing and remembering the way I saw it when I first moved in. The rooms that, at first, seemed depressingly small and cold have now become my safe haven and bit of earth to stake as my own. The other new residents at that time that I wrote off as people never worthy enough to match up against my best friends in high school have now become more than just friends, but family, dear souls I cherish with a devotion perhaps thicker than most people would consider themselves to be with their actual blood families. And the city, daunting and exciting in all of its concrete intimidation - that seemed a bit too fast, harsh and unsympathetic - now cradles me wherever I go. While I was slowly digesting the spicy excitement of living on my own in the city, music became, as always, an ally against the unknown. If I was in my room, alone, afraid to make human contact outside of the safety of my thick, wooden dorm room door, then music would fill the space between loneliness and fear. If I was out exploring the neighborhoods that speckled Manhattan, music led the way through the numbered streets and avenues, tour-guiding me to my soon-to-be favorite street vendors, pizza parlors and clothing boutiques. Though this lifestyle is now my constant, music stepped in and substituted in the time between, bridging any gaps of uncertainty or trepidation, and paving down roads of confidence, familiarity and companionship. One album that I remember listening to NONSTOP during that time was Mark Ronson's Version. The summer before college, I became very aware (read: obsessed) of the Ronson siblings (Producer/musician Mark, DJ/musician Samantha and designer Charlotte), and so purchasing Version was an offshoot of that new-found interest. The album, all covers of artists ranging from The Smiths to Britney Spears, was in high rotation that summer before I moved to New York. It rode with me in my car, it soundtracked my morning routines before work and then, when I moved to Manhattan, it held my hand through the first few months of being a friendless, dumbass, wide-eyed frosh in the big city. "Just," a Radiohead cover, is probably my favorite off of the record. It was the first work I had ever heard by Mark Ronson, and the opening guitar chords, followed by the unexpected big band orchestral milk shake of sound, kept me hooked and infatuated for days and days, as it replayed constantly on my stereo in my car, laptop at work and speakers at home. When I finally went to see Mark Ronson in concert in October of 2007 at Webster Hall, my front-row seat garnered a new appreciation for not only the album, but the seasoned handful of featuring artists that collaborated with Ronson on it. Getting to enjoy the live-and-in-living-color vocal stylings of Santigold, Tiggers and Daniel Merriweather, the album took on a new life for me - fleshed out and alive with physicalities, movement and a surge of impassioned fans from the crowd. Hearing "Just" live was also very sensory - literally - as I clearly remember seeing and feeling and smelling the sweat from singer Alex Greenwald as he crowd-surfed the audience, as we, in turn, obediently held him up.

Between the newness of sound, experience and place in my life, this song (and the entire album) will always be thought of as my departure from high school and my entrance into college. It will also remind me that, even as I graduate and become a newbie for the next stage of my quarter-lived life, music will be there to usher me through whatever mountains and valleys of change I encounter. Led Zeppelin - Ramble On Is this my first Zeppelin entry? Oh word. My love for this band could quite possibly still be in its infancy, as I have been enthralled with them since middle school and I'm still discovering new (old) songs of theirs that are finding warm and cozy places in my life to cling to. But even still, I feel such a strong devotion and admiration to their complete renegade of sound, content and impact as if I had been around when they first hit the rock scene in the late 60s. Thankfully, for you and me, music has that uncanny ability to soar through decades and decades of new sound, new people and new trends and still arrive, unscathed, at the end - still pure, still original and still widely-adored. "Ramble On" has been flirtatiously winking at me since the spring of my senior year of high school. I was in a rut of a relationship, having major problems at home with my family and the fears of graduating and leaving behind the familiarities and friendships that I had been building from grade school were all getting to be too much to handle. They were starting to kidnap my sleep, deplete my grades and chip away at my sanity. I hated change (still do), I hated the unstoppable, inevitable force of falling out of love with someone (still do) and I hated the unhappiness and destruction that filled my home (still do). Once again (and I'm starting to sound like a broken record), music stepped in and reached me with a slow and unassuming gesture, as it airbagged me back to safety in a way that still surprises me to this day. It's a force - this weird, bizarre, all-knowing force that talks, reasons and coddles you in a way that no tangible human being can. "Ramble On" spoke to me during that time - the lyrics highlighting the importance of a journey filled with unwanted change, forward movement and the relinquishing of regrets. It promoted this thought process of: Hey, you know what? Things break, people change, new stages and untraveled roads of life will almost always collide with you and you just have to ramble on and work through them. It's not bad and it's not good, it just is. And things that just are - like the hotness of the sun, the coldness of winter, or the pangs of a migraine - just have to be weathered and dealt with. They're not forever - nothing is. You just have to keep moving.
So, my music minions, keep moving through your week. Ramble through Zeppelin, get dark and brooding with Depeche Mode and just listen to Mark Ronson. Report back next week! QUIZ TO FOLLOW.

Working with an eclectic blend of internationally renowned artists, Dubset is rapidly establishing itself as the foremost authority in the world of online DJ music. Founded in 2009, Dubset offers its users both exclusive offline mixes and live sets recorded at the most notorious clubs and events from around the globe. By whom? How about, Felix Da Housecat, Junior Sanchez, Steve Aoki, Tommie Sunshine, Mark Ronson, Afrojack, Mia Moretti, Jesse Marco and Jus Ske. The list goes on and on… and is growing daily.

Winehouse kalamu.com

It’s hard to believe that a singer could go four years without releasing new material and still be in the media spotlight, but that’s exactly how it’s been for Amy Winehouse. She scored a mega hit with Back to Black in 2006 and has been riding that wave ever since. She’s hit a low point on the roller coaster of fame, but fans remain eager to hear what the years of tabloid overkill and scandal have done to her songwriting. Unfortunately, they may have to wait a bit longer.

According to 411mania.com, her producer Mark Ronson says Winehouse doesn’t have enough songs ready for the new album that her father and her label speculated would be out by the end of this year. If anything, she may get an EP out by December.

If you're looking for a little extra something to get you over the hump that is the Wednesday of a long work week, look no further than LIV at the Fontainebleau tonight. DJ Samantha Ronson will be performing starting at 11pm. Ronson is probably better know as Lindsay Lohan's ex-girlfriend, but that doesn't mean she is lacking as a musician. Ronson has been spinning for the past decade (well before the Lohan years) and is the younger sister of famed producer Mark Ronson. Ross One, Contra, and Jessica Who will also have sets tonight.