The festival experience - for all its glory and its port-a-johns - was on full display at this years Bonnaroo.More than 75,000 endured days that frequently topped 100 on the heat index. Heavy rain fell when the festival gates opened on Wednesday night, muddying the grounds. Bodies splayed out in exhaustion across the grass were common, as were umbrellas to shield the sun.How do you do it? marveled singer-songwriter Regina Spektor just one number into her Sunday afternoon set You guys are like heat superheroes.

She told The Associated Press that he had some health problems but was still functioning well, so his death came as a shock. She said he was eating in front of the television. She left the room for a time and came back and he was unresponsive. She said he was pronounced dead at 754 p.m.Born in 1928, Dean was raised in poverty in Plainview, Texas, and dropped out of high school after the ninth grade. He went on to a successful entertainment career in the 1950s and 60s that included the nationally televised The Jimmy Dean Show.In 1969, Dean went into the sausage business, starting the Jimmy Dean Meat Co in his hometown He sold the company to Sara Lee Corp in 1984.

Everybody has a unique sound thats the beautiful thing with the human voice, group musical directorbaritonerapper Roger Thomas says. He and brother Warren -- a tenor whose voice also plays percussion, guitar and clarinet -- began singing a cappella in church. The pair teamed with five other a cappella-loving singers in 1999 Rod Eldridge tenor, DJ scratching, trumpet, Jamal Reed tenor, electric guitar, Hops Hutton bass, Garfield Buckley tenor, harmonica and Dwight Stewart baritone.Inspired by Take 6, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau and Doug E. Fresh, Naturally 7 won several local and national a cappella competitions before hiring an agent. Booked on a series of college tours averaging 230-240 shows per year, the group came to the attention of a Swiss label.Recalling the reaction to the group on its first overseas tour with Buble, in 2008, Thomas says, Seeing seven black guys walk onstage -- considering what Michaels audiences look like -- they had no clue what we were going to do Then theyre hearing instruments but only seeing us with seven mics to our mouths And you see theyre wondering, OK, where are the instruments? But by the third song, you see the transformation that they understood we were singing as instruments.

For Stemme, taking on the role of Wagners warrior maiden was a gamble, since its a part that has brought many an otherwise sturdy soprano to grief. She started off sounding just a bit tentative in her opening Ho-jo-to-ho battle cries, but she quickly gained her footing.In the scene in which she brings the doomed hero Siegmund word of impending death, she filled out the low-lying phrases with imposing weight. Then she really took flight during the great Act 3 encounter with her father, Wotan, whom she has disobeyed by trying to save Siegmunds life. Though her voice is not huge, it has a bright, urgent quality that makes it seem bigger than it is. She hurled out her high notes with thrilling, fearless intensity, then scaled back for passages of melting lyricism as she pleaded for leniency.Westbroek, as the abused wife of the brutish Hunding, also began the evening modestly, but she soon unfurled a warm, supple voice of surprising power Her rapturous phrases as she declared her love for Siegmund who happens to be her long-lost twin brother filled the house with waves of golden sound.

Sara Lee has said that it chose not to renew Deans contract because the brand was going in a new direction that demanded a shift in marketing.Dean grew up in a musical household. His mother showed him how to play his first chord on the piano. His father, who left the family, was a songwriter and singer. Dean taught himself to play the accordion and the harmonica.His start in the music business came as an accordionist at a tavern near Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC, where he was stationed in the 1940s After leaving the Air Force in 1948, he fronted his band, the Texas Wildcats, and drew a strong local following through appearances on Washington-area radio.

M.I.A. says touring will play a more prominent role in the campaign than it has for previous albums. This time around Im slightly more prepared, she says. It just seems more solid. Last time, because I had visa issues, I didnt prepare myself enough.Shell debut her new live show at a pair of festivals presented by Los Angeles-based Hard Events Hard LA on July 17 and Hard NYC on July 24. Ive been trying to book her for one of my shows since I started doing this, Hard chief Gary Richards says. Shes definitely at the center of whats cool in our universe. Both concerts will also feature performances by two acts signed to N.E.E.T. young Baltimore MC Rye Rye and New York noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells.MIA is also scheduled to play Englands Big Chill and Underage festivals this summer, while an extensive North American tour is tentatively set to launch in September.

Work on the 12-track set took place mostly in Los Angeles, where M.I.A. settled in early 2009 with her fiance, Ben Bronfman son of Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. and their young son, Ikhyd. Her collaborators included many of the musicians M.I.A. has been partnering with for years, such as Diplo, Switch and Blaqstarr Rusko, the latest addition to the crew, is signed to Diplos label Mad Decent.We really dont have any kind of formula, Switch says. All the records come around by watching something on YouTube and an idea comes, or by going out to the clubs or something. We basically just mess around till something makes us excited enough for her to jump on the mic. Well have her run on the track for 10 or 15 minutes, then Ill come and edit the bits and bobs she likes together. Then well flip it, reverse it, turn it backward and build a song from there.Maya is very careful about who she works with, says Mark Williams, who signed MIA to Interscope and worked in an A&R capacity on both Kala and Y Williams is no longer with the label, but Interscope Geffen A&M Records chairman Jimmy Iovine asked him to assist MIA on the new album Theres a comfort zone and a familiarity in the creative experience that she gets from working with Diplo and Switch Even though there have been documented tensions at times -- Diplo, a former boyfriend, made several seemingly critical remarks about MIA in the New York Times Magazine piece -- all sides agree that its productive They know where shes at, but at the same time they push each other.

Jack Johnson claimed his third No. 1 album on the anemic U.S. pop chart on Wednesday, despite suffering a large slide in sales.Johnsons To The Sea sold 243,000 copies during the week ended June 6, according to Nielsen SoundScan. His last studio set, Sleep Through the Static, debuted at No. 1 in 2008 with 375,000 copies.Still, the album breaks an eight-week long streak of No 1s selling less than 200,000 -- where five of those weeks were sub-100,000 frames.