Real Music People

Shock rocker Marilyn Manson is being sued by a bandmate for using their earnings to buy Nazi paraphernalia, African masks made of human skin, the full skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl – and ex Dita Von Teese’s $150,000 engagement ring. Rock stars have which interests that range from the really stupid to the absolutely bizarre things. And that is why most art galleries and auctions have these thing on display, cos they simply know that if they have something ridiculous at an even more ridiculous price then they are also are assured of a ridiculous buyer. Yet we just do not stop adoring them for a reason that is simply alien to me. Well in the come days we should have more on this piece of news which can really lead to the break of this band, hopefully nothing bad comes out of this story but with such allegations it seems inevitable.

John Mayer took the time to post a blog that was made to greet his sound engineer Chad. In the entry, John shows some of his humor as he wrote what could be assumed to be a song for Chad and ratted out some trivia about the guy.

The lyrics were quite interesting as John writes:

“Happy Birthday, Chad.
You are my sound engineer (hence the sound board birthday cake)
and together we share a house.
You keep me warm on those cold nights
by making sure the thermostat is functioning properly.
And if it’s not, then we lovingly embrace
the fact that it will be cold
and pile on extra blankets
in our respective beds
that are located next to one another
at our local Serta mattress dealer.
I long to feel your caring touch
on the production of the next CD
And look forward to showering again with you soon.
Your sister looks lovely with that pregnant glow, and I hope the gift will go to good use.”

Kiss lead singer and guitarist Paul Stanley had to bow out of a Southern California concert because of heart problems before the show, according to his Web site.

Band-mates Gene Simmons, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer played the Friday night gig at Soboba Casino, about 90 miles east of Los Angeles, as Stanley was taken to the hospital.

“During sound check yesterday, my heart spontaneously jumped to 190 plus beats per minute where it stayed for over an hour necessitating paramedics to start an IV and give me a shot to momentarily stop my heart and get it into a normal pattern,” Stanley said in the Saturday Web site posting.

“Not knowing if this episode was life threatening made it even more exhausting,” the statement continued.

Phone and e-mail messages for Kiss manager Doc McGhee seeking comment about Stanley’s condition were not immediately returned Saturday night.

It was Kiss’ first ever appearance as a trio, according to the band’s Web site.

As famous for their makeup, stage mayhem and wagging tongues as their music, Kiss recorded the 1970s hits “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “Detroit Rock City.”

The 55-year-old Stanley, born Stanley Eisen, released a solo album, “Live to Win,” in 2006.

Brian May, the lead guitarist from rock band Queen, is close to earning his doctorate in astrophysics — more than 35 years after quitting his studies to become a rock star.

May arrived on the island of La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands several days ago to conduct astronomical observations in support of his thesis, according to a statement by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.

His thesis, “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” is the last component of his PhD studies, and May expected to complete his work on Wednesday.

“Maybe you’d like to see the Telescope we are working in,” May, 60, wrote on his Web site on Wednesday.

“Galileo … Galileo … how full of coincidences life is,” he added, referring to the lyrics in Queen’s hit song “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

After submitting his thesis at Imperial College, London, he will have to wait until university assessors approve his work to be granted his PhD next year.

May was studying astrophysics at Imperial College when he formed Queen with singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor in 1970. He dropped his doctorate research into interstellar dust as the band met with increasing success.

After Mercury’s AIDS-related death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums and set up the Brian May Band.

But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote “Bang! The Complete History of the Universe” with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, which was published last year.

Earlier this month, the writer of such Queen hits as “We Will Rock You” and “Fat Bottomed Girls” was granted an honorary doctorate from Exeter University in Devon, England.

Blues singer Etta James is in stable condition in a Los Angeles hospital, suffering from complications following abdominal surgery, her manager said on Wednesday.

The 69-year-old rock ‘n’ roll pioneer was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, following the mid-June surgery, Lupe De Leon wrote in an email to Reuters.

James hopes to be well enough by the end of August to join blues icon B.B. King and soul veteran Al Green on a tour that began in Florida on Tuesday.

“If it had been left solely up to her, she would have checked herself out of the hospital and started the tour regardless of her delicate health,” De Leon said. “However, her doctor advised that were she to do so, it would put her at very great risk.”

R&B singer Chaka Khan is substituting for James on the tour.

James helped pioneer rock ‘n’ roll in the mid-1950s with tunes such as “The Wallflower” and “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She diversified into mainstream blues, soul and R&B during the 1960s, after signing with Chess Records. The three-time Grammy winner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, and remains an active recording artist.

Pearl Jam will play a private show for fan club members in Chicago on August 2, three days before its headlining stint at the city’s Lollapalooza festival, the rock group said on Tuesday.

Tickets for the show at the Vic Theatre will go on sale on Thursday, priced at $150 per pair (plus applicable fees). The Vic’s capacity is about 1,400 people, according to the venue’s web site.

Lollapalooza is Pearl Jam’s only U.S. appearance planned for 2007. Apart from a three-week European tour last month, the group has been laying low this year. The Seattle quintet spent much of 2006 on the road in support of a new self-titled album, its first studio release in almost four years.

Most of these buyers are not fans but merely investors who want to lay there hands of a piece of Beatle history and cash it 20-30 years later. John Lennon’s trademark ‘granny’ spectacles, which the late Beatle wore during the band’s tour to Japan in 1966, have attracted a bidding of $1.5m at an online auction so far. I could see better without any glasses on what the buyer do with a $1.5m spectacles would. Everyone is bidding to get their hands on the gold-rimmed glass less spectacles that he had gifted to the Fab Four’s Japanese translator Junishi Yore. Yore had removed the dark lenses from the frame by pushing them out with his own thumbs when Lennon was murdered in 1980. He did so because he wanted Lennon to be able to see in death. Whatever the memories and facts associated with this spectacle $1.5m is really exorbitant and let us see that when the final bids are opened will this be the figure for the glasses.

Paul McCartney has offered 20 million Pounds to his estranged wife Heather Mills in divorce settlement, but the latter is adamantly demanding more than twice the offered money at 50 million Pounds. Earlier, it was believed that the couple settled their matter in the range of somewhere between 25 to 30 million out of McCartney’s fortune of estimated 825 million Pounds. But the lady got greedier and yesterday I heard a final figure of some 70 million pounds, it could be plain rumors or it could be true as well. The whole matter could well end up for a trail and this could be a lot murkier than Paul ever thought of. She wants the money and shall not leave him in peace until she has what she wants. The couple’s case is scheduled for a five day hearing next February and by that time she will be dragging about the whole issue and keep harassing the former Beatle all the more longer. If she had a chance then she would have robbed Paul of his money in a whisker.

Editors frontman Tom Smith contemplates the huge anticipation surrounding the British band’s imminent sophomore set, “An End Has a Start,” and shivers. “I get nervous thinking about it,” he says.

No one else around the band seems concerned, however. Editors’ debut, “The Back Room,” was a slow-burn success in the United Kingdom after its bow in 2005. It’s certified platinum, with total British shipments of 450,000, according to Rob Whitaker, who co-manages the band for Zoot Music.

Whitaker says expectations for the follow-up released June 25 in the UK, two days after a high-profile appearance at the Glastonbury Festival, and set to bow July 17 in the United States are even higher.

“The shipment on the new record is Sony’s biggest of the year” in the United Kingdom, he says. “They’re looking at about 170,000.”

That’s in contrast to the steady progress of “The Back Room,” which earned comparisons to gloomy post-punk bands Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen, spawned several hit singles and was nominated for the 2006 Nationwide Mercury Prize.

Since its U.S. release in March 2006 via Fader/Epic, “The Back Room” has sold 47,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

First single “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors” became the band’s first commercially available single June 26 in the States, with a three-track EP of album songs available via iTunes.

The next single, “An End Has a Start,” will coincide with a month long American tour in September.

Smith is happy enough to be compared to the biggest UK band of recent years, although he was more excited that R.E.M.’s Peter Buck turned up to watch the band perform at a Seattle in-store during the last album campaign.

Singer/songwriter James Blunt is lobbying his favorite beer brand for a sponsorship deal. The You’re Beautiful singer is a huge fan of bottled brew Corona and is confident he’d be a great global ambassador for the company - in return for free drink. “I’ll drink anything. Absolutely anything. But I’m trying to get a sponsorship from Corona, so if I say ‘Corona’ enough times, maybe I can persuade Corona to help me out. Oh Yeah, even I love beer and if I were in his shoes I would already have contacted the beer makers and written a real nice rhyme or slogan or something or their choice to land the lead. Where ever he will tour the company has keep a nice chilled stock of the company’s beers for him to unwind. He can call over his friends for a beer party every night in each town he is and have a ball. He won’t have to spend a dime on his favourite beer too, great thinking pal.
Once more with feeling: ‘Corona’. Can you put ‘Corona’ in capitals, please?”

I guess that I had good ground by saying that Courtney Love was hardly recognizable. It’s not just her choice of clothing, it really is just her.

It was only months ago that Courtney showed off her new slender frame that represented herself in a healthy manner but it seems that she hasn’t gone off whatever diet she had. What remains of Courtney performed for a packed crowd at Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan a few days ago.

The 43-year old rocked the show with a few new tracks that is reportedly for a new album without her band Hole. One of the songs was even entitled ‘How Dirty Girls Get Clean’.

I have a song for her. It’s called ‘How Courtney Turns to Bones’.

4500 fans ended up being disappointed when they found out that Amy Winehouse canceled her July 4 show in Liverpool. It doesn’t help when you find out that she was seen drinking out later that evening.

The ‘Rehab’ singer called off the concert due to a supposed illness. It’s not good to know that the supposed illness was a bad case of a hangover. Then she goes out that night to have some drinks at a London Pub with her hubby. She was also seen drinking the previous day.

I think Amy is over wanting to sing for a living. I think she wants to drink for a living.

Avril Ramona Lavigne Whibley is the biggest poser around. She says she’s punk rock and glam but all she really is, is this generation’s Tiffany. She’s not just a poser now, she’s become a clone!

Her ‘hardcore rocker’ self performed in Germany on Monday… at a mall of all places! Punk schmunk. There’s never been a bigger poser than Avril unless you count Paris Hilton at any event (or just her everyday life) with paparazzi buzzing around.

I say, she’s on the list of people that I want to disappear from the face of the earth. She’s joining Paris, Lindsay, KFed and Jessica Simpson.

US rock singer Lenny Kravitz has been revealed as the headline act for the Brazilian leg of Live Earth.
Other acts confirmed for the concert on Rio’s Copacabana Beach include Pharrell Williams and Macy Gray.
Eight cities will be holding concerts across 24 hours on 7 July to highlight climate change.
Madonna and Duran are playing the UK concert at Wembley Stadium, while the US leg will see The Police, Alicia Keys and the Smashing Pumpkins perform.
Brazil is the only country hosting a Live Earth concert that is entirely free and open to the public, and organisers are hoping to attract up to one million visitors.

Aside from the US acts, Rio will play host to a number of native performers, including singer Xuxa, reggae rock band O Rappa and rapper Marcelo D2.
Other countries hosting concerts include Germany, Japan, Australia, China and South Africa. Linkin Park and Rihanna are headlining the Japan concert, while UB40 and Joss Stone will be playing in China.
The Istanbul concert was recently scrapped because of a lack sponsorship and interest in the Turkish event.

Former US Vice-President Al Gore, who is one of those involved in organising the events, said he expected Live Earth to attract “an audience of billions”.

Bon Jovi deciding to go country for their latest album ‘Lost Highway’ proved to be the right choice. The record just jumped to the #1 spot on the US album chart’s for this week. This is the first #1 for the band in twenty years! The last time they reached the top was in 1988 with the ‘New Jersey’ album.

Other chart movers were the White Stripes whose ‘Icky Thump’ was deemed as the highest charting album and having the best sales week ever for the band. Brad Paisley’s ‘5th Gear’ debuted at #3 while other notable debuts came from Mandy Moore, Shop Boyz, Huet, Chrisette Michele and Lifehouse.

60-year old rock legend Iggy Pop helped Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers a glimpse at his future when he took the stage at the Glastonbury Festival.

Iggy & The Stooges killed the second day of the British music festival with songs from their new album ‘The Weirdness’. I’ll say.

The weirdness of having to see his sagging skin is enough to terrify me from a picture. I can’t imagine what the live concert goers felt after seeing that. Honestly, I respect the man for his music and continuing to rock it, but he needs to learn to put a shirt on.

When the Smashing Pumpkins reunited after seven years to plan a U.S. concert series, they made a surprising choice for their first shows: a small club in the mountains of North Carolina.

The Orange Peel, which has a capacity of 942 people, will host the alternative rock band when they open Saturday for a nine-show run in Asheville.”It’s a legendary band in a small setting,” said Cory Gates, 33, of Asheville, a longtime fan who saw the Smashing Pumpkins play in New England in the mid-1990s. “I don’t know if you can get much better.”

More bands reject rather than accept invitations to play at the club, said Karen Ramshaw of Public Interest Projects, which owns and operates The Orange Peel.
But the Smashing Pumpkins sought it out, said Tennessee-based music promoter Ashley Capps, who helped coordinate the band’s U.S. return.

There stripes and then there are White Stripes, hehe. The singing duo from England, The White Stripes has entered the UK album chart at number one with their latest release, Icky Thump. Meg and Jack White’s new album replaced the Traveling Wilburys’ Collection at the top of the sales chart. The White Stripes are currently on tour in the US and Canada after promoting Icky Thump, their sixth album, at gigs across Europe, including the recent Wireless festivals in London and Leeds. The UK charts are as competitive as in the US and let see how long they can fight of competition from the likes of Rihanna other music bands. Some really cool bands are just at the tip of their one number slot and being there won’t be easy.

When you are a millionaire and have wealth exceeding that of your father, then probably you never need you father’s wealth. Every father hopes to leave their son some savings when they die. But when your son is multi-millionaire Rolling Stone singer Sir Mick Jagger it does not seem appropriate. Instead, Joe Jagger, who died in November last year at the age of 93, left almost everything to Mick’s younger brother Chris, 59, whose career as a musician has never hit the same heights. Despite not receiving a penny, Mick, 63 - who is worth a reported 215million pounds - was made executor of his father’s £253,000 estate. Well this should not be a dampener for Mr. Jagger as a worth 215 million pounds is enough to live out at least a hundred years and we hope Sir Mick Jagger does live more than his father did.

Pete Doherty plans to marry Kate Moss this summer — providing he stays off drugs, his diary says. London’s The Times newspaper has printed extracts from the journals of Babyshambles/Libertines rocker Pete Doherty. The troubled singer gives insight into his tempestuous relationship with the supermodel in “The Books of Albion: The Collected Writings of Peter Doherty.”

He writes that he hopes to marry her this summer, provided he is “smack and needle-free. I become (sic) 10 times happier than any given smack head. Huzzah!” The entries also detail the fights between the couple, many of which appear to be about Doherty’s addiction to heroin and crack cocaine.

Doherty is booked to play Glastonbury over the weekend with Babyshambles. Rumors are rife that he will also perform at the festival with ex-Libertines band mate Carl Barat

Klaxons have just announced their biggest ever tour in the UK. It will take place this winter and is scheduled for eight appearances that culminate to a big gig at Brixton Academy in London. The tour will start in November and will finish in December. A new single signed Klaxons is set to be released at the end of this month (June 25 to be precise) and will be called “It’s Not Over Yet”. The thing that few people know is that this track will actually be some sort of remix after Justin Timberlake’s hit “My Love”.

The new Tour dates are:

November

26th - Manchester, Apollo
27th - Edinburgh, Corn Exchange
28th - Newcastle Academy
30th - Southampton Guildhall

December

01st - Leeds University
02nd - Cardiff University
04th Birmingham, Academy
05th London, Brixton Academy

Maroon 5’s new album, “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” will not be promoted through a tour until this fall. On the other hand there was a show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom that showed some new material. Fans present were able to hear and see the band perform some of the album, which debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 in May.

The show was very good with 11 tracks played. “Harder To Breathe” was the first on the list and the current single (“Makes Me Wonder”) continued the program and created a great atmosphere. This was easy to notice as Maroon 5 were asked for an encore that saw them go old-school with two of their hits from the “Songs About Jane”: “This Love” and “She Will Be Loved”

Three shows are also scheduled around June 25 in a three shows session in Osaka and as the opening act for The Police’s gig at the Miami Dolphin Stadium on July 10.

U2 is in the middle of a special songwriting and recording session with usual collaborators Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. This takes place in Marocco and different sources have reported that the bind has a lot of plans and many ideas. Bono on the other hand stated on U2.com that there is no talk of an album yet as it is still not planned. He said that:

“We have no plans for the music yet. We’re just going to make it until we can’t not put it out!”

Different events are planed for U2 this Summer and this looks like a relaxation session before a full schedule. The Live Earth concerts and different June sessions plus their concert film “U23D” are all big projects. Fans will still have to wait a little more for the next U2 studio album.

John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York City apartment after deciding he wanted to return home to see his son rather than go out for dinner, Yoko Ono said in an interview broadcast Sunday.
“We were returning from the studio, and I said: ‘Should we go and have dinner before we go home?’ and John was saying, ‘No, let’s go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep.’ And it was like he wasn’t sure if we would get home before he (Sean) went to sleep and he was concerned about that.”
Ono, 74, the wife of the late Beatle, made the comment on “Desert Island Discs”, the British Broadcasting Corp. radio program that interviews famous people and plays their favorite songs.
She said Lennon uttered no dying words when he was shot and killed by deranged fan Mark Chapman outside their Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980.
Ono also said that when she became pregnant with Sean shortly after the couple reunited in 1975 following a two-year separation, she let Lennon decide whether she should have the baby or abort it.
“I thought that I should let John decide whether to keep it or not. We’d just got back together and I became pregnant very soon, and I didn’t know if it was the right moment to have a child. I just didn’t want to burden him with something he didn’t want”, Ono said.
The songs Ono played on Sunday’s show included Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” (about Sean); “Liverpool Lou”, which was written by Scaffold, a Liverpool group that included Paul McCartney’s brother, and “Magic” a song composed by Sean.

Vancouver was the first town to be chosen as a part of The Police’s reunion tour. The band performed in front of a sold out crowd of 20,000 people. It was the first time they played in a stadium for a long time; around 20 years. “Message in a Bottle”, a smash hit in 1979, was the first song sung, quickly followed by “Synchronicity”.

Fans were delighted to be able to see The Police on stage and while some were not even born when the band had its biggest success, others were happy to get to see them again. It’s always good to see an old success comeback and future plans for The Police also include a super reunion line up that will include Van Halen, Genesis and Eagles. More shows are already planned and if all will be like this first night maybe we will even see a new album soon. Fans around the world would love this or at least a special collector’s edition of the tour.

Wow! U2 in Cannes! I hope Cannes was prepared when U2 performed at the Cannes Festival. These guys are great at their music. I liked their song Vertigo which also has a great music video. I bet the people in Cannes were also blown away by the performances of lead singer Bono. The festival was packed with thousands of visitor, movie fans, and party goers. Their new concert movie, U2 3D was shown in the festival.