Michael Jackson has confirmed that his July concerts London's O2 arena could be his last, describing it as the "final curtain call."
Hundreds of screaming fans and not screaming media turned up for the announcement, after promoters AEG Live posted a message on the 23,000-capacity venue's Web site inviting people to attend.
"Thank you all... this is it," said the weird gloved one. "I just wanted to say, these will be my final show performances in London. When I say this is it, it really means this is it. I'll be performing the songs my fans want to hear. This is it, this is really it, this is the final curtain call."
Good, I say, good.
===========================
Phish Plans
It's reported in the New York Times that seminal jam-band Phish have recorded demo versions of 20 new songs for their next record. However since they are no longer signed to a major label, the band is mulling an independent release for the to-be-recorded album.
Phish is likely to perform one of the tunes, "Backwards Down the Number Line," at its first reunion concerts this weekend in at the Hampton Coliseum in Vermont.
The band plans to make high quality recordings of all three of this weekend's shows available as free MP3 downloads from its livephish.com website.
===========================
Who's Not A Band Anymore
With half of his bandmates dead, Pete Townshend has said in a recent interview that the rock band is no longer an entity. Here are some of the remarks from The New Zealand Listener:
“I used to be in a band called the Who. It does not exist today except in your dreams. I am a songwriter and guitarist who – if I create the right setting – can walk on to a stage with my old buddy Roger Daltrey and evoke the old magic of the Who in the dreams of the audience.”
“The fact of the matter is that the Who as a band stopped working when I quit in 1982. However, the brand would not die. That was partly a record company hanging on to a catalogue asset, but also partly Roger’s passion for what he believed we had achieved, and could one day do again. I let go, and I think John Entwistle did too, but Roger never gave up trying to bring the band back to harmony with the brand. I might seem to be talking about the name, and just the name. But the brand had been identified very strongly with the technique we stumbled on – which was providing music for people, mainly young men, to use as a kind of therapy. They put themselves into our songs, and sometimes even into us, and we found ourselves acting as alter-egos, or myth figures. We felt quite passive in this role, and focused on our performances most of all."
===========================
This from Rolling Stone:
According to a new study conducted by medical researchers, thirty-three percent of popular songs contain explicit content and forty-two percent of songs hint at substance abuse. Rap was the most frequent offender, with seventy-seven percent of songs making reference to drugs or sex, with country music a surprising silver medalist with a thirty-six percent explicit content rate.
The study also proves the old war cry “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll” to be factually incorrect, as only fourteen percent of rock songs contain offending lyrics. So how did the medical researchers come to their conclusion? They analyzed the lyrics of a total of 287 songs from 2005 that encompassed all musical genres. This reminds us of that Russian study that proved heavy metal’s subject matter is heavy. To further cement how useless this new study actually is, the researchers failed to draw any conclusions on how hearing all these drug references affects young listeners.
My Take: Now, I wonder if they were to back up in time to the 60's, or even the 50's and do the same research. I have a feeling the numbers would be quite similar, or even above what they have reported here.
No comments:
Post a Comment