Farrell feared ruining In Bruges & other

Wednesday 6 August 2008

Poesie Noire

Artist: Poesie Noire

   Genre(s):
Alternative

Discography:

Terta plus Extras

Year:
Tracks: 18

Talses of Doom

Year:
Tracks: 13

Love is colder than death

Year:
Tracks: 17

Complicated

Year:
Tracks: 17

'Godfather' Director Speaks Out

Friday 27 June 2008

Nadja

Artist: Nadja

   Genre(s):
Indie
   Rock
   Ambient
   Metal: Doom

Discography:

Thaumogenesis

Year: 2007
Tracks: 1

Corrasion

Year: 2007
Tracks: 4

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Year: 2007
Tracks: 2

Trembled

Year: 2006
Tracks: 4

Truth Becomes Death

Year: 2005
Tracks: 3

Bodycage

Year: 2005
Tracks: 5

I Have Tasted The Fire Inside Your Mouth [EP]

Year: 2004
Tracks: 1

Touched

Year: 2002
Tracks: 4

Faux Real? Star Photos Tweak Obsession

Thursday 19 June 2008

Sharon Osbourne: 'Reality TV Shows Are Train Wrecks'

Sharon Osbourne, who recently quit reality show X Factor, has hit out at the wave of talent shows, insisting they are “train wrecks”.

The former reality TV star is convinced television has taken a turn for the worse, despite her ongoing role as judge on hit U.S. series America's Got Talent, claiming newer shows have become havens for talentless celebrities.

Osbourne, who became a household name after appearing in fly-on-the-wall show The Osbournes, says: "They are all train wrecks.

“All it is now is a lot of lower-rung celebrities that they've turned into bad actors. None of it is real."

Thursday 12 June 2008

Ozzy Osbourne wins damages over 'freak show' slur

Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne has won "substantial" damages from the publishers of the Daily Star newspaper over a report that the singer's poor health had thrown a music awards show into chaos.

Osbourne sued the tabloid for a story titled "Ozzy's Freak Show", which said the 59-year-old rocker and reality TV star had toppled over twice just before the annual Brit Awards, which he and his family presented on live television.

The article also alleged that Osbourne had to be ferried around the February awards show on an electric buggy.

"The claimant is a highly successful touring artist who has just completed a sell out world tour," said John Kelly, a solicitor for Osbourne, who was not at London's High Court to hear the conclusion of the action.

"The publication of false allegations that the claimant was in such a poor state of health that he was incapable of hosting an awards ceremony .... are extremely serious," he added.

Kelly said the allegations had not been put to Osbourne or his representatives prior to publication, and if they had the newspaper would have been informed they were "utterly false."

The undisclosed damages will be donated to the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Programme run by Osbourne's wife.

The Daily Star's lawyer, Kate Wilson, told the court that the newspaper apologised for the distress and embarrassment caused by the article, and accepted the allegations were untrue and should never have been published.

See Also

Friday 6 June 2008

Is Harry Connick's New Musical Already Falling Apart?

Photos: Getty Images
It's not even scheduled to open on Broadway until February, but Nice Work If You Can Get It — the Harry Connick, Jr. musical set to classic Gershwin songs — seems to be hitting a rocky patch. Michael Riedel trains his gimlet eye on the show in this morning's Post, reporting that director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall — who last led Connick to glory in The Pajama Game — has quit the musical, taking her creative team (including producers and the set designer) with her. The usual juicy backstage drama this time has Marshall's boyfriend — who also happens to be Connick's agent, Scott Landis — feuding with Connick's longtime manager, Ann Marie Wilkins.

But is the show as doomed as Riedel seems to imply? (He writes that the musical "may be fatally derailed," and says he's hearing Marshall's departure may be "a lethal blow, largely because she and Connick have such great chemistry as collaborators." The Post also illustrates the story with a hilariously awful photo of Connick.) As Riedel points out, there's big money behind the show, and given that putting Harry Connick Jr. on Broadway is basically a license to print money, we'd be shocked if the show doesn't recover soon — even if, as Riedel reports, it's "a pale imitation of Crazy for You" that needs "tons of work to be done on the book." Hell, given the state of the American musical these days, we'd totally go see a pale imitation of Crazy for You.

'NICE WORK' HAS IT BAD [NYP]

Earlier: Harry Connick and Kathleen Marshall Say ‘Oh, Kay!’ to Broadway

Sunday 1 June 2008

Laura Barton likens the magnitude and awe of the Mississippi river to music

My companion points across the street. "That," he says, his voice a little tarry and dry, "is the spot where jazz was born." The car is nudging onto North Rampart Street in New Orleans, facing Congo Square, on the edge of Louis Armstrong Park. In the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves would congregate here on Sundays to dance and play music, a practice that would eventually evolve into jazz. Today, the square sits empty, a vista of shimmering heat and broad green leaves, and the only sound is that of cars rushing by in a blur of hot metal and warm tyres. I squint through the windscreen. There are squashed bugs on the glass. It is hard to feel anything.

Not far from here are the banks of the Mississippi, and later that afternoon I am driving across the water, listening to Big Bill Broonzy singing his Mississippi River Blues: "Mississippi River/ Is so long, deep and wide/ I can see my good girl/ Standin' on that other side." Broonzy was a Mississippi boy who, like many musicians of his generation, headed upriver to Chicago in the 1920s in search of opportunity. He has a clear, rounded voice, and a teaky guitar style that fills the car. As we roll across the bridge, the water jostling about high and spirited below, I am filled with the strange sense of reverence that proved elusive at Congo Square.

I love the Mississippi. I have travelled on it and over it and around it; I have seen it sulky and grey, curling its lip at the Louisiana sky; spied it winking out from behind the trees in the state of Mississippi, and speckled with rain in Illinois. I have sat on its banks and watched enormous grey tankers drift by; I have stood on its levees and listened to tales of young men's bodies dredged from its silty depths; heard stories of giant catfish, lamprey and meat-eating bladderwort. I have been told, too, of the legend of Jazbo Brown, who sailed up and down the river playing the clarinet, reputedly gave jazz its name, and was immortalised in Bessie Smith's Jazzbo Brown from Memphis Town as "the playin'est fool/ On that Memphis boat."

There is something about the Mississippi's very nature, its wilfulness, and its sheer size - 2,320 miles long, from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, and at its widest point 4,500ft across - that demands veneration. And indeed, the Mississippi is a river that has been sung about often - by Janis Joplin, the Hold Steady, Hank Snow, Mavis Staples, Jimmie Rodgers and many others. It's been the "Ol' Man" that "jus' keeps rollin' along" for Paul Robeson, and it has shined "like the national guitar" for Paul Simon. There is, meanwhile, a song on Smog's 1999 album Knock Knock, a track named River Guard, that makes me think more than any other of the Mississippi - of the sense of independence and freedom the river has come to symbolise in song, in literature, and in our minds. It is the story of a jail guard who takes his prisoners swimming.

"I love to watch them floating on their backs," he sings, "Unburdened, and relaxed." The river, he concludes, is "a way to be free".

To me, the Mississippi is a river inextricably tied to song - to blues and to jazz and to rock'n'roll; I look at the Mississippi and I feel the same sense of magnitude and awe, the same feeling of sheer uncontainability and possibility, as when I think of music. And I listen to, say, the voice of Billie Holliday, or the trumpet-playing of Louis Armstrong, or the guitar of Chuck Berry, and feel not unlike Huckleberry Finn, plunged into the Mississippi as a steamboat crashes into his raft: "I dived - and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a 30ft wheel had got to go over me and I wanted it to have plenty of room."

See Also

50 Cent Denies Fire Involvement

50 Cent's lawyer has slammed accusations that the rapper had anything to do with a house fire that damaged a property his ex-girlfriend and their 10-year-old son lived in on Friday (May 30).

A fire broke out in the house, which is owned by the rapper - born Curtis Jackson - and located in New York's Dix Hills, at around 5am on Friday. The property had been the subject of courtroom drama in recent days as Jackson's lawyers attempted to evict his ex, Shaniqua Tompkins.

Six people, including Tompkins and their son Marquise, were taken to hospital and treated for smoke inhalation.

Tompkins held an impromptu press conference at the burned out house, telling the media that the rapper is obsessed with her saying, "He's like 'If I can't have you, no-one can'."

She claims that the star is planning to murder her - "He said that he's gonna have someone come kill me and watch what he does, and this is what he did," she told reporters - and added that he had made no contact with her regarding the health of their son.

The rapper's rep issued a statement saying that 50 Cent is "filming a new motion picture on location in Louisiana," and that he "expressed deep concern over this fire at his property. He is extremely thankful that everyone including his son, Marquise, escaped the burning house safely."

Jackson's lawyer, Brett Kimmel, also said via press release, "Any suggestion that Mr. Jackson had anything whatsoever to do with the fire at his home is outrageous and offensive."