Australian music legend Jimmy Barnes has been forced to cancel upcoming solo shows due to ill health.

Barnes was taken ill earlier today (26th July) and subsequently sought a doctor’s advice.  According to a statement, there were concerns his illness may be heart related, though these have proved unfounded.

How many shows will be cancelled in the near future is unknown, but Barnes is not expected to return to live performance any time over the next month.

He hopes to be fighting fit at the beginning of September when he starts rehearsals for an upcoming tour with his band Cold Chisel.

Courtesy of Hold Tight! PR:

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It may have been over a decade since Cold Chisel released a studio album (1998’s reunion disc, ‘The Last Wave of Summer’), but the Aussie rockers say they’ve been busy writing and recording on and off over the past year.  The recordings will make up the band’s seventh studio disc, due for release sometime in 2012.

The news comes shortly after frontman Jimmy Barnes completed a 2011 tour, which saw him visit the UK for the first time in a decade.

Steve Prestwich, the band’s long-serving drummer, passed away in January 2011.  However, he was present at the recording sessions and will feature on the album.

Between October and December 2011, Cold Chisel will be touring the whole of Australia – their biggest tour in 30 years – and plan on debuting a couple of the new songs during the long run of shows.  Replacing Prestwich at the live shows will be Charley Drayton (DiVinyls, Keith Richards’ Expensive Winos).

Unsurprisingly, Chisel have no current plans to play any shows outside of Australia.

RIP Steve Prestwich.
Read a review of Cold Chisel’s ‘Circus Animals’ here.

AOR legends Journey have released a video clip for their current single ‘City of Hope’.

The clip features footage of the band in performance and visiting Manila, and can be seen here.

‘City of Hope’ is the lead track from Journey’s fourteenth studio album ‘Eclipse’, released on Frontiers Records in May 2011.  The album has been a relative success for the band, despite many fans bemoaning the absence of long-time vocalist Steve Perry, who provided the voice on all of Journey’s biggest and best known hits, including ‘Who’s Crying Now’, ‘Open Arms’, ‘Any Way You Want It’ and ‘Don’t Stop Believin”.

‘Eclipse’ reached #13 on the US Billboard chart, in addition to hitting the top 40 in the UK and the top 20 in both Germany and Japan.

Read a review of Journey’s ‘Eclipse’ here.

In an interview with the BBC, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has stated that when working on their upcoming album ‘I’m With You’, the band wrote seventy songs for consideration. With regards to only a mere fourteen of those making the final cut, the bassist says: “What was important to us when we put the record together was to make sure that each song filled its own space and was not like another song on the record. We wrote 70 songs, so it’s not even necessarily all the best ones that we put on, but just the ones that occupy their own space.”

The final track listing for ‘I’m With You’ (UK release, 29th August) is as follows:

1. Monarchy of Roses
2. Factory of Faith
3. Brendan’s Death Song
4. Ethiopia
5. Annie Wants a Baby
6. Look Around
7. The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie
8. Did I Let You Know
9. Goodbye Hooray
10. Happiness Loves Company
11. Police Station
12. Even You Brutus?
13. Meet Me at the Corner
14. Dance, Dance, Dance