Katy Perry climbs up to the top of the Irish singles chart this week with 'I Kissed A Girl'.
Kid Rock's 'All Summer Long', last week's number one, slips down to second place. The Script's 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved', Rihanna's 'Disturbia' and Jordin Sparks's 'No Air' retain their respective positions of third, fourth and fifth in the chart.
Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris move up deuce places to number captain Hicks with 'Dance Wiv Me', while Basshunter's 'All I Ever Wanted' and The Verve's 'Love Is Noise' each fall down one place to seventh and eighth posture respectively.
Meanwhile, The Script's self-titled debut magnetic disc remains at the peak of the album chart this week, followed by Abba's Gold - Greatest Hits at number 2 and Coldplay's Viva La Vida at number three.
The top ten-spot singles in full:
1. (2) Katy Perry: 'I Kissed A Girl'
2. (1) Kid Rock: 'All Summer Long'
3. (3) The Script: 'The Man Who Can't Be Moved'
4. (4) Rihanna: 'Disturbia'
5. (5) Jordin Sparks ft. Chris Brown: 'No Air'
6. (8) Dizzee Rascal ft. Calvin Harris: 'Dance Wiv Me'
7. (6) Basshunter: 'All I Ever Wanted'
8. (7) The Verve: 'Love Is Noise'
9. (10) Coldplay: 'Viva La Vida'
10. (9) Chris Brown: 'Forever'
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Sunday, 17 August 2008
Five Other Great Rejected Bond Themes
Beehived shit-starter Amy Winehouse told a British tabloid yesterday that she's planning on releasing her rejected theme song for the upcoming Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, to "prove that they have made a big mistake" by picking one by Jack White and Alicia Keys. "I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring," she said, presumably while acting in a completely responsible manner. "When I do release mine � and I am tempted to do it on the same day � this would be the bigger hit." Is she right? Probably! In recent years, Bond producers have exhibited pretty terrible judgment when it comes to picking their songwriting-contest winners. After the jump, hear five great passed-on Bond themes better than the ones they lost out to.
5. k.d. lang, "Tomorrow Never Dies"
For 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond producers solicited tracks from everyone from lang to Pulp to the Cardigans. This one nigh beat Sheryl Crow's merely was eventually demoted to the strain played during the end titles, possibly scuttling any chances k.d. lang had of ever geological dating Lance Armstrong.
4. Phyllis Hyman, "Never Say Never Again"
Producers on 1983's Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again � in which Sean Connery reprised his role as Bond
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Glenn Wright and R. Arduini
Artist: Glenn Wright and R. Arduini
Genre(s):
New Age
Discography:
Chasing a Dream
Year: 1994
Tracks: 11
Monday, 30 June 2008
William Clarke
Artist: William Clarke
Genre(s):
Blues
Discography:
Tip of the Top
Year: 2000
Tracks: 14
The Hard Way
Year: 1996
Tracks: 13
Blowin' Like Hell
Year: 1990
Tracks: 11
The heir patent to Chicago's legacy of amplified blues harmonica, William Clarke was the first original new voice on his instrument to amount along in quite some time; he became a sensation in megrims circles during the late '80s and early '90s, stopped up little by an untimely death in 1996. A pupil and lover of George Harmonica Smith, Clarke was a expert virtuoso and master of both the diatonic harp and the more difficult chromatic harp (the signature tool of both Smith and Little Walter). Where many new harmonica players had go content to snitch licks from the Chicago edgar Lee Masters, Clarke highly-developed his own style and vocabulary, building on everything he knowledgeable from Smith and moving beyond it. His four '90s albums for Alligator earned all-embracing critical hail and stay on his signature tune showcases.
Clarke was innate March 29, 1951, in the South Central L.A. suburb of Inglewood; his parents had affected there from Kentucky and lived a wage-earning sprightliness. Clarke spattered in guitar and drums as a youth, and grew up hearing to stone & roll, but finally found his agency to the blues by way of the Rolling Stones' early albums. He took up the mouth organ in 1967, and before long establish his fashion onto the Los Angeles vapors scene while working a day job as a shop mechanic. Clarke's former style was influenced by Big Walter Horton, Junior Wells, James Cotton, and Sonny Boy Williamson II, just he presently began to comprise the influence of '60s soul-jazz, mimicking the lines of the genre's summit sax and organ players. He was a regular in South Central L.A.'s blues clubs, a great deal hopping from one venue to some other in lodge to go on playing all night. In this manner, he met quite a a few West Coast blues luminaries, including -- among others -- T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, Big Mama Thornton, and George "Harp" Smith, world Health Organization in the end became his teacher and wise man.
Adam Smith and Clarke first began to perform and record together in 1977, and kept up their relationship until Smith's decease in 1983. In the meanwhile, Clarke guested on roger Sessions by West Coast artists care Smokey Wilson and Shakey Jake Harris, and released several of his have LPs, all recorded for small labels. The first was 1978's Hittin' Heavy, which was followed by 1980's Blues From Los Angeles; both were released on tiny local labels. 1983's Can't You Hear Me Calling was more of a proper debut, though Clarke smooth hadn't quite a come to his pace in time. That would initiate to materialize with 1987's Tippytoe of the Top, a protection to Smith that was issued by Satch and earned a W.C. Handy Award nominating address. Clarke in conclusion quit his job as a machinist that year, and followed Angle of the Top with a live album, Rockin' the Boat, in 1988. By this time, his reputation was first to bed covering beyond Los Angeles, scorn the fact that none of his albums had yet achieved good national distribution.
Clarke later sent a demo tape to Alligator Records, and was immediately offered a shrink. His label debut was the electric Blowin' Like Hell, which earned rabbit on reviews upon its expiration in 1990 and established him as a new, amply formed voice on amplified mouth harp. Clarke strike the road unvoiced, touring America and Europe over the next year; he also won the 1991 Handy Award for Blues Song of the Year, thanks to "Must Be Jelly." His reexamination, 1992's Serious Intentions, was as blistering in its intensity. 1994's Channel Time added a trumpet section, delivery some of the nothingness and swing undercurrents in Clarke's music forwards. He pursued that management level farther on 1996's The Hard Way, his jazziest and most ambitious picnic yet, which earned potent reviews one time once again.
Alas, Clarke's health was deteriorating; always a great man, strong living on the road was taking its toll on his body. He collapsed onstage in Indianapolis in March 1996 and was diagnosed with congestive fondness failure. Despite losing weight and living clean and sober from and then on, the damage had been done; Clarke resumed his lumbering touring docket a few months afterward and seemed to get cured, until he collapsed onstage once again in Fresno. He was admitted to the hospital with a hemorrhage ulcer and died the next day, November 2, 1996, when surgical attempts to redeem his life sentence failed. He was only 45 and in the prime of his career. Posthumously, Clarke south Korean won trey Handy Awards stemming from The Hard Way: Album of the Year, Song of the Year ("Fishing Blues"), and Instrumentalist of the Year for harp. In 1999, Alligator released a best-of compilation highborn Luxe Edition.
Miriam Stockley
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Shorty Rogers
Artist: Shorty Rogers
Genre(s):
Jazz
Discography:
Shorty Rogers Plays Richard Rodgers
Year: 2000
Tracks: 10
A fine middle-register trumpeter whose style seemed to practically define "cool jazz," Shorty Rogers was actually more significant for his arranging, both in jazz and in the film studios. After gaining other get with Will Bradley and Red Norvo and serving in the military, Rogers rose to fame as a fellow member of Woody Herman's First and Second Herds (1945-1946 and 1947-1949), and in some manner he managed to bring some swing to the Stan Kenton Innovations Orchestra (1950-1951), distinctly enjoying writing for the stratospheric flights of Maynard Ferguson. After that association ran its track, Rogers settled in Los Angeles where he light-emitting diode his Giants (which ranged from a fivesome to a nonet and a large band) on a series of rewarding West Coast jazz-styled recordings and wrote for the studios, serving greatly to take jazz into the movies; his heaps for The Wild One and The Man With the Golden Arm are in particular memorable. After 1962, Rogers stuck nearly solely to composition for television and films, merely in 1982 he began a return in jazz. Rogers reorganized and headed the Lighthouse All-Stars and, although his possess playing was non quite as hard as previously, he remained a welcome comportment both in clubs and recordings.
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
The Love Guru
Unfunny juvenilia that makes one appreciate the subtlety and nuances of Judd Apatow's films. Full story.
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Monday, 16 June 2008
Mike Marshall and Darol Anger
Artist: Mike Marshall and Darol Anger
Genre(s):
Vocal
Discography:
Chiaroscuro
Year: 1985
Tracks: 10
Yeardley Smith Files For Divorce
Actress an voice talent Yeardley Smith, who brings to life the character of Lisa Simpson on the hit Fox cartoon, has filed for divorce from her husband of six years, Daniel Erickson. According to a petition filed Wednesday (May 21) in Los Angeles Superior Court, Smith cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split, TMZ.com reports. Smith, 43, is reportedly requesting that she not be ordered to pay spousal support.This is the second divorce for the diminutive actress, who has provided the voice for eight-year-old Lisa Simpson for almost 20 years years: she married Brit-born, Canadian raised actor Christopher Grove in 1990, but called it quits two years later.Photo couresy of FOX.
A close encounter with Bill Bailey
You've seen British comedian Bill Bailey, haven't you? He played deranged bookshop dogsbody, Manny Bianco, in splendid TV sitcom Black Books.
Funny looking geezer. Extremely bad facial hair. A limp goatee hangs from his pasty chin and a monk's fringe of straggly locks hangs from the back of his otherwise bald head like a hair curtain.
He's not tall, either, and thus quite accurately refers to himself as "part troll".
If you can picture the man I'm talking about, you can perhaps imagine my distress when Bailey picks up the phone and informs me he's in the bath. You know, naked. In all his hairy glory. I am not paid enough to have to cope with mental images like this.
"Nah, mate" he says. "I didn't say 'in the bath'. I said I was "angin' about'. You know, doing nothing, waiting for your call. But I share your distaste for phone calls where the other person is in a compromised position.
"I hate it when I phone someone, talk to them for a while, and then there's a flushing sound. That's just wrong. Worse still, I phone them and in the background I can hear the sound of a small domestic animal slowly being slaughtered."
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the alarming and wondrous world of Bill Bailey, the man British TV network Channel Four recently proclaimed "the seventh-greatest stand-up comedian of all time".
Born 44 years ago in the fair city of Bath in England's West Country, Bailey lives in London with his wife and four-year-old son, Dax. After putting a succession of mind-numbing day jobs behind him, he has been a professional mirth merchant for 20-odd years.
BORN FOR COMEDY
If ever a man was born for this job, it is Bailey. It might be the sight of him that gets the first laugh, but then he opens his mouth and out flows some of the most original and peculiar stand-up comedy you will ever hear.
He's bringing his new Tinselworm show here in a few months, and those lucky enough to snag a ticket can expect an inspired mix of surrealism, mimicry, philosophical monologue and musical theatre.
He is a relentlessly post-modern funny-man one of Bailey's trademarks is deconstructing traditional gags, getting his laughs by messing with the structural conventions of the joke rather than by supplying the usual kind of punchline.
He has endless variations on the "lightbulb" joke ("How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb? One, no two! No, four! No, eight ... ") and barely lets a show go by without coughing up several new versions of the old "three blokes walk into a pub" chestnut.
But the thing that seems to tickle his fan-base the most is when Bailey uses the the format of a geriatric joke as a springboard for a truly ridiculous rant, as in this little snippet from his Bewilderness live DVD: "Three blokes go into a pub. Well, I say three; could be four or five. Could be nine or 10, doesn't matter.
"Could have been 15, 20, 50. Round it up 100. Let's go mad, eh 240. Tell you what, double it up 500. Thousand! Two thousand! Small town in Hertfordshire goes into a pub! Fifteen thousand blokes! All right, let's go population of Rotterdam. The Hague. Whole of Northern Holland and Mainland UK.
"Let's go all the way to the top Europe, all right? Whole of Europe goes I say Europe, but why not go bigger still. All right, continents North America! Plus South America! Plus Antarctica, though that's just eight blokes in a weather station. Not a good example. All right, make it a lot simpler, all the blokes on the planet go into the pub, right? And the first bloke goes up to the bar and he says "I'll get these".
Pause. "What an idiot."
So, what is it that excites Bailey about overhauling traditional jokes?
"I mostly do it to tip my hat to the history of comedy culture that's gone before, but to put my own spin on it," he says. "We have an oral culture, and just like songs or poetry or even advertising catch-phrases, the best jokes get handed down from one generation to the next.
"They have their own life and often exceed the life of their creator. I like to use some of those old jokes as a starting point for elaborate tangential flights of fancy, but it always bugs me when people say, `Oh, he's so trippy and weird and nonsensical and druggy' because really, I'm not. What I do is all about the application of the imagination to everyday things, putting them through my own filter while trying not to underestimate my audience."
OUTSIDE COMEDY
Besides his comedy career, Bailey hosts a lot of TV series, from game shows to wildlife docos, and is also a talented actor, appearing on stage alongside Vanessa Redgrave and in movies such as Hot Fuzz.
He also plays every musical instrument under the sun. He tells me he has done time as a lounge pianist and crematorium organist, and played in everything from classical ensembles and jazz trios to punk and "krautrock" bands.
Somewhere along the way, Bailey discovered a gift for fusing music with jokes and theatre, and spent the latter half of the 80s touring as one half of comedy musical duo, the Rubber Bishops.
Years of slogging around the circuit doing stand-up shows followed, until he was approached by his good friend and fellow stand-up Dylan Moran in 1999 to co-star in Black Books.
The show made him a household name in the UK and Bailey's stand-up career has taken off, to the extent that Tinselworm sold out three consecutive nights at MEN Arena in Manchester, the largest indoor stadium in Europe.
"The thing I love most about stand-up is its hidden depths," he says. "Providing some sort of commentary on contemporary life is the aim of any stand-up who aspires to deliver anything more than jokes. If you're making people laugh, they're also more receptive to a few more profound ideas or elegant deconstructions of modern society."
MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH
In Bailey's view, the best comedy is ultimately a sneaky way of telling the truth. As an example, he points to one of his famous monologues that kicks off with the line "I'm English and, as such, I crave disappointment".
"Now, people laugh themselves silly over that, but it's absolutely true. Growing up in England in the 70s as I did, there was never really a culture of enjoyment. To eat decent grub, or enjoy a nice glass of wine, or go somewhere warm and interesting abroad, these things were all seen as ludicrously indulgent. We English were conditioned for a life just short of pleasure, but at least we were allowed to have a sense of humour."
Bailey is intrigued to hear that one of the guiding principles of my own life is to never trust a person who doesn't like music or has no sense of humour.
"But a sense of humour is a very complex thing, isn't it? It's not just about making people laugh. A big part of having a sense of humour is being acutely aware of yourself, or of the inherent absurdity of social situations. To be honest, I know several comics who have no perceptible sense of humour.
"They can write jokes, and they can get up on stage and deliver those jokes and get laughs, but if you take the piss out of them they just look blankly at you and say, `What do you mean?'. Humour isn't part of how they engage with the world; it's just their job. They tell jokes, someone hands them a cheque, they pay their mortgage that's it."
On the flipside, says Bailey, you go some places and everyone's funny, because their culture encourages that.
"When I play in Dublin, I get the feeling that everyone would have a great old time, entertaining each other, whether I'd turned up or not. New Zealand is much the same. When I was there a few years ago, I was struck how unusually perceptive and intelligent the audience was.
"I was also struck by the food, the fresh air and the greenery. The place felt sheltered from the worst excesses of the wider world, though I daresay New Zealand society has similar sorts of problems to every other modern civilisation."
Indeed, it does. Wherever you live, the world seems to be becoming a far more serious sort of place. If you didn't laugh, sometimes, you would most certainly cry. I wonder how it feels to be a comic when there's so much pain and sadness in the world. Is it hard to be funny in difficult and desperate times?
"Perhaps it is, but it's more necessary as well. People badly need a laugh when things are going tits up. Everyone's walking around in a state of permanent pre-apocalyptic tension, worrying about nuclear war, floods, pestilence, disease, environmental destruction and so on.
"There aren't the same certainties many of us grew up with, so everyone's stressed to the gills. At times like that, a few laughs can be very useful indeed."
*Bill Bailey plays Auckland's ASB Theatre on August 31, Christchurch's Town Hall on September 3 and Wellington's St James Theatre on September 4.
See Also
Martin Roth
Artist: Martin Roth
Genre(s):
Trance
Discography:
Shockwaves Incl Technopunk Mi
Year: 2005
Tracks: 2
Jude Law - Law Heading To Afghanistan
Ed McMahon fighting foreclosure on his Beverly Hills home
LOS ANGELES —
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Ed McMahon, who for decades appeared as Johnny Carson's sidekick on "The Tonight Show," is fighting to avoid foreclosure on his multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home, according to published reports.
The former "Star Search" host was $644,000 behind on payments on $4.8 million in mortgage loans when a unit of Countrywide Financial Corp. filed a default notice Feb. 28 with the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office, The Wall Street Journal first reported late Tuesday.
McMahon, 85, has been unable to work as a pitchman for various products since he broke his neck 18 months ago, said his spokesman, Howard Bragman.
"There are plenty of people affected by the weak economy, bad housing market or bad health," Bragman said.
McMahon has been in "very fruitful discussions" with the lender to resolve the situation, Bragman said. But it's unclear whether McMahon and his wife, Pamela, will remain in the home.
A spokesman for Countrywide declined comment to the Los Angeles Times.
The six-bedroom, five-bath house is in a hilltop gated community overlooking Mulholland Drive called The Summit and is listed for sale at $6.25 million. It has been on the market two years, according to real estate agent Alex Davis, who has the listing.
The house is near that of pop star Britney Spears, which doesn't always work in its favor.
"When we were trying to sell the house one time, there were about 100 paparazzi there," Davis said.
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