The 27-year-old hotel heiress, who recently moved to an exclusive gated community in Beverly Hills, loves the new property because it gives her more privacy.
She wrote on her official blog: ‘As most of you know, I moved away from my old - and very accessible - house because I was sick and tired of constant invasion of my private life.
Last summer, an ‘enormous’ number of people living in Paris’ former West Hollywood neighbourhood reportedly complained about the helicopters, cameramen and paparazzo constantly camped outside her house.
Paris, who is currently dating Good Charlotte rocker Benji Madden, also revealed she has extensively refurbished her new house and is delighted with the results.
Gwen Stefani is set to reinterpret Dorothy’s famous ruby slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
The No Doubt singer is one of 19 designers who have been chosen by Warner Bros. Consumer Products and CRYSTALLIZED(TM) - Swarovski Elements to create their own version of Dorothy’s footwear in honour of the 70th anniversary of the classic movie next year.
The 19 pairs of shoes – designed by fashion icons including Alberta Ferretti, Christian Louboutin, Diane von Furstenberg, Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, Moschino and Oscar de la Renta - will then be displayed as part of New York Fashion Week, in the city’s Bryant Park, before being taken around the US on a tour and then being auctioned off, with proceeds going to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
Not all artists have created a body of work as rich like Prince. During the ’80s, he emerged as one of the most singular talents of the rock&roll era. Not only did he release a set of groundbreaking albums; he toured frequently, produced albums and wrote songs for other artists, recorded hundreds of songs that still unreleased in his vaults.
His music can be maddeningly inconsistent because of this eclecticism, and his experiments frequently succeed. No other contemporary artist can blend so many diverse styles into a whole.
With each album he released, Prince has shown remarkable stylistic growth and musical diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds, textures, and genres.
Blondie was the most commercially successful band to emerge from the much-vaunted punk/new wave movement of the late ’70s. The group was formed in New York City in August 1974 by singer Deborah Harry (b. July 1, 1945, Miami), formerly of Wind in the Willows, and guitarist Chris Stein (b. January 5, 1950, Brooklyn) out of the remnants of Harry’s previous group, the Stilettos. The lineup fluctuated over the next year. Drummer Clement Burke (b. November 24, 1955, New York) joined in May 1975. Bassist Gary Valentine joined in August. In October, keyboard player James Destri (b. April 13, 1954) joined, to complete the initial permanent lineup. They released their first album, Blondie, on Private Stock Records in December 1976. In July 1977, Valentine was replaced by Frank Infante.
With dementia setting of sleep deprivation, and many couples exhausted eardrums ringing in the heads of listeners, on the fifth day show concluded with a mega showcase at Pianos, where a dozen bands performed. What was expected to be relatively mellow Saturday night (bearing in mind that there is no punk and metal groups who are) especially loudly, it may be one of the most high-profile show of celebration.
In PA has been cranked and distorted, but that did not stop the crowd from filling space, and the oppression of the entrance to the majority of the night - with the exception of Ted Nesseth Heavenly States whose unreasonable amount drove most of the people in a scurry. Most presentations were less memorable than sparkling sets North (a poppy-LA shoegazer boy / girl group with serious sex appeal), Nouveau Riche (collision R and B and indie-rock, sort of like teenage fan club of swing Brand New Heavies and the role of guest Jay-Z), and the war on drugs (anti-hipster folk duo, which led to mind an acoustic set of Mercury Rev songs performed by suicide).
Those people with enough endurance to adhere to it through nine hours of music have been rewarded with one of the strangest acts of the festival (and this is saying a lot).
We rarely speak of such things in public, many of the word’s foremost upright peoples spend the darkest days of night curled in the fetal position praying to the Gods for the release of the definitive concept album. Check out “To Holmgard and Beyond” (sample) and then “get learned” with this sneak peek inside Thor’s tunic for a little Nordic history. Because October and Viking Metal go together like a Morningstar to the head.
Indie-pop heroes Tullycraft released their 5th album, Every Scene Needs a Center, this week. With help of animator George Pfromm II, the Tullycraft made a video for the super cute and Halloween-friendly “Georgette Plays a Goth.” Turns out it fits with the whole Halloween thing. Very nice!
Strutting somewhere between Goldfrapp and Pat Benatar, Dragonette has such a way playful, much danceable electronic-rock. Before Dragonette, Sorbara used to play sensitive singer/songwriter fare she now calls “tampon music,” while Dan Kurtz played in the New Deal, an experimental, improvisational electronic trio. That it’s no surprise that the band shares a manager with the Scissor Sisters, or that singer Martina Sorbara was sought out by Basement Jaxx to sing on Crazy Itch Radio’s “Take Me Back to Your House.”
When the pair met, creative and romantic sparks flew, and Dragonette was born. Now based in London, the band’s glamorous vibe extends to their theatrical live show, which will no doubt add some sparkle to CMJ.
It’s practically November, which means a nip in the air and colorful leaves — or no leaves at all — for lots of people, but you’d never know it from Panda Bear’s new video, “Comfy in Nautica.” The clip for Person Pitch’s opening track is dappled in sunlight and sunny harmonies, lapping waves and overlapping sounds, and zooming sound effects echoed by the tricks the skateboarder pulls off as the video unfolds. The haze and lens flares just add to the feeling of endless summer — whether it’s actually here, or just a memory.
As one of the legendary acid casualties of psychedelic rock, it once seemed unlikely that Roky Erickson would ever make a triumphant comeback, the way such other damaged ’60s legends as Brian Wilson have. Roky, of course, never completely went away, continuing to record into the ’90s and experiencing periodic revivals, but he’s never had a full-fledged, well-oiled comeback as he has this past year in the wake of the release of a feature-length documentary about his life.
The Explosives, the band that has been working with him sporadically since 1979, has taken him on a tour that’s run through the European festivals and made it here to Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend, and they certainly should take a good deal of credit for making this the hardest-rocking set heard at this three-day festival Certainly, the Explosives’ guitarist is leading the band, playing a lions share of the leads and taking over stage-patter duty for Roky, whose only words to the crowd were spirited variations on “Thank you!” This ceding of the spotlight and repetitive appreciation was enough for anybody that knew something was wrong to think that Roky might not all be there, but if you didn’t know anything was wrong with Roky, you’d never know from his performance, which was vigorous and vital.
In the plethora of artists out there, Miranda July stands out as an original. A woman whose repertoire includes music, fiction- and screen- writing, acting, performance art, and directing, July has created her very own empire, a world where simple events take on extraordinary meaning, where people are as equally concerned with conforming to societal roles as they are breaking them. Her two most notable pieces, the 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know, which she wrote, directed, and starred in, and her recent book of short stories, No one belongs here more than you, present an artist whose strengths lie in her ability to communicate our idiosyncrasies understandably, to convey our patheticalness without making us feel sorry for ourselves.
Her characters are flawed, and often embody the extreme — excess zeal or shyness, sexual promiscuity or deprivation — speaking at the wrong moments about the right things, excessively self-aware but too distant from their own selves to connect with others, but wanting desperately that bond. “And although I was genuinely scared about this epileptic seizure I was in charge of, I slept… I slept and dreamed that Vincent was slowly sliding his hands up my shirt and we kissed,” the protagonist explains in “The Shared Patio”, unable to do the thing that logic and sense requires, succumbing instead to fantasy, even when it is the logical move that may give her the results she desires.
The descent into Memorial Stadium where Wu-Tang Clan was ending their North American tour with a closing spot at Bumbershoot was almost something out of a movie, that overdone, cheesy scene of 25th Century “urban party”, lights flashing, bass pounding, and an unmistakable smoke rising up in large clouds. That was until you got down on the floor, where things were decidedly calmer, concertgoers watching attentively, but not aggressively, talking to their friends and trying to figure out where Ghostface Killah was. Method Man, who acted as the MC (as in the Master of Ceremonies) of the evening, worked the crowd, inquiring about the quality of their drugs and promising them a good show, and the audience, ecstatic, roared and flashed their Ws with abandon, but the energy that was building with each record DJ Mathematics spun was tempered by the group’s decision to, as is common but unfortunate procedure at rap concerts, cut their songs short, performing choice verses and the hook, just enough to get the crowd moving and excited before ending, rather abruptly, a scratch and stop.
Thankfully for Wu-Tang, those in attendance were a forgiving bunch, so eager to see and hear the hip-hop luminaries live and in person, speaking, jumping, and rapping in front of them, that the occasional awkwardness was overlooked as they stood there anxiously waiting for the next piece to begin.
Mayhams Records / Mayhams Collegiate Records, 12 W. 117th St., Morningside Station, PO Box 46, New York, NY 10026.
Norridge Mayhams was a first-class card. In a half-century-long career in which he toiled as songwriter, performer and record company executive, Mayhams authored a body of work that is staggering in its scope, quality and general strangeness, with a fast-and-loose approach to crediting his work that confounds discographical comprehension.
Mayhams’s songwriting career stretched from the mid-’30s up until his death in 1988. His early songs, cut at various New York sessions between 1936 and ‘38, were lively but fairly conventional gospel and novelty blues. Even back then he was apparently subsidizing the recording of his own material; since song-poem companies had yet to evolve from sheet music to records, it seems that these early recordings were made with Mayhams’ hands-on participation, as opposed to the strictly mail-order nature of the true song-poem companies.
Who is action records?
Action Records has been established since 1979, starting off on a stall in Blackpool just as the independent music scene was emerging. From there we soon opened a site in Preston, where thay have been ever since, continually expanding into a main shop with a warehouse behind.
Thay are members of The Chain With No Name, The Knowledge, The Network and other specialist chains, therefore thay are offered all limited editions and special offers. Thay have always been at the forefront of music trends throughout the years, and it have also established our own record label, releasing records by bands such as The Boo Radleys, Dandelion Adventure, Big Red Bus, Genocides, Tompaulin, Fi-Lo Radio, Monkey Steals The Drum amongst others.
Our biggest project so far has been with The Fall and Mark E Smith as a solo performer.
Century 21 Records & Tapes (a division of World Wide Music, Inc.), 6760 Selma Ave. #11, Suite 1422, Hollywood CA 90028
1981: 7080 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 114, Studio A, Hollywood CA 90028 .
Albums:
CTO-0167: The Trendsetters — The Super Sounds Of Today
A Smile Will Cheer The Way (Lottie A. Lederer)
Sweet Love Of Mine (Bessie Williams)
Time Machine (Kevin Springer)
Reflection Of Your Love (Nelson N. Byfield)
A Long Road (Polly Fay Allen)
Road Back Home (Helen M. Flippo)
I Fell In Love With A Stranger (Mary M. Brewer)
Give Me Trust (Philip M. Tarbell)
Clementine (Cliff Hanger)
My Brother (Theresa Ann Serna)
Truck Driver Paul (Bobby J. Saucier) Read the rest of this entry »
Reprinted from the liner notes to the song-poem compilation CD, The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?
Anyone remotely famous, whether or not singing was previously on their resume, has made a Christmas album — from Bing Crosby to RuPaul. (She called hers Ho Ho Ho.) In the giving tradition of the holidays, Bar/None offers yet another: The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six-Foot Four? We’re certain you haven’t heard these tunes on anyone’s holiday TV special or sung them yourself while caroling with friends and neighbors. But you might, next season, once you’ve gotten to know these oddly enchanting numbers. As you’ll discover, they embody the wishful spirit of Christmas. Each one is an improbable bid to be the next great holiday classic, a new “Jingle Bells” or “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”
Talent Incorporated, 17 Longwood Rd., Quincy MA 02169
then: East Coast Record Productions, 299 Newport Ave., Wollaston MA 02170; 617-328-5057
currently: New World Publishing, 129 Pleasant St., Weymouth MA 02190; 781-331-8848
In running his Halmark label as a perverse parody of a legitimate record company, Ted Rosen went beyond the constrained thinking of other song-poem entrepreneurs. Lesser minds in similar positions sought to foster the illusion of legitimacy via the inclusion of, at minimum, the recording artist’s name amid the printed information on their labels. But Rosen ignored such trifling conventions, reserving the space instead for the listing of the song-poet’s home address, an appeal to vanity one step beyond that of his competitors. You might equally think that a company that operated entirely through the mails[1] might prefer to publish its own postal address on the labels. Bah! There again, Ted Rosen scoffed.
Reprinted from the liner notes to the song-poem compilation CD, I’m Just The Other Woman (Carnage Press).
I hereby state my case, of which I am certain: “song-poem” music is one of the richest motherlodes of pure unfiltered glorious wrongness to be found in any field of human endeavor. I believe in that statement so firmly that I am willing to die for it.
By now most of you are familiar with what this “song-poem” thing is all about. For the benefit of those who are not, I will briefly explain (the rest of you can just skip ahead):
Unwitting “dupes” are solicited, via tiny ads in pulp magazines, to have a poem they’ve written set to music. Almost everybody in the world has written at least one poem in their life — check your own kitchen junk drawer, there’s probably one or two sitting at the bottom of it right now. So there’s clearly a vast market of unpublished poets out there. The advertisers imply there’s a realistic chance that your poem, which they will turn into a song (hence the phrase “song-poem”), might actually make it up the pop charts, and you can then settle into a life of ease and plenty. Remember, these song-poets are the same people who habitually play the lottery (in fact, there’s a number of song-poems about playing the lottery), so getting rich quick is definitely in their life’s plan.
Reprinted from the liner notes to the Rodd Keith compilation CD, I Died Today (Tzadik)
This music is the result of those “send us your lyrics” come-ons that you’ve probably seen in magazines. Lately there’s been a growing interest in this type of music, now being recognized as a genre wholly unto itself. People from all over the world sent in lyrics and poems about popular topics of the day: astronauts, politicians, love, hippies, dance crazes, exotic locals and revisionist history. These lyrics were then set to music, recorded and pressed into records by companies that offered to “send them around.” For a fee, of course.
Rodd Keith (aka Rod Rogers) wrote music, sang and played keyboards for several of these companies on and off during the ’60s and early ’70s. You may already be familiar with Rodd’s astounding recording “Beat of the Traps.” Thanks to the efforts of Tom Ardolino (drummer for NRBQ), who has been collecting these kinds of records for years, “song-poem” music has finally come to light. Tom’s collections Beat of the Traps and The Makers of Smooth Music (both on Carnage Press) contain some of the most bizarre examples of this type of music ever heard. Over the years Tom tried many times to find out just who Rodd Keith was, but to no avail. Rodd remained an elusive figure.
AIRCO - The Association of Independent Record Companies - congratulates all the nominees of this year’s Radio Metro Awards. AIRCO members – most of whom are independent record company owners, call on the public, the artists and the media that support them to spare a thought for the generally silent but hard working record labels,
that have put their best efforts into making sure their artists reach their ultimate potential with releases that are worthy of awards and acclaim such as this one. Noteworthy of this year’s Metro Awards nominations is the number of independent record companies and labels with artists spanning every category! Their dominance is a source of pride for AIRCO.
Radio MetroFM is also to be congratulated for their role in acknowledging local product and building a prestigious award ceremony that celebrates excellence in South African music.
AIRCO wishes the station every success with this, their 8th annual awards event.
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