Tag: mitn

Big Boi’s one that got away

Outkast rapper Big Boi’s upcoming album Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors boasts an all star cast of collaborators, with big names like Ludacris, Kelly Rowland, Kid Cudi and T.I. having already lent their talent to the rapper’s second studio album. As Big Boi told The Village Voice, though, there was one noticeable exception to the A-list roll call; his Outkast mate, Andre 3000.  “He could’ve been on any song he wanted to. I gave the motherfucker about five songs, but I guess he was just too busy,” said Big Boi. “He said he had to do some Gillette shit.” Though the comment, referencing the series of Gillette ads the Hey Ya! hitmaker starred in, spawned laughter during the interview, Big Boi made sure they knew he was serious. “No for real. He said he had some contractual obligations.” Vicious Lies And Dangerous Rumors is set to drop on Dec. 11.

Did they try to shake him out?

In terms of embarrassing reasons to miss a gig, this one’s way up there. Florence and the Machine drummer Chris Hayden nearly missed his band’s BBC Radio 2 In Concert show because he couldn’t get himself out of the bathroom. “I didn’t know whether to say it on stage because I didn’t want to embarrass him, but he got trapped in the loo. He was screaming,” said singer Florence Welch. “He got really freaked out. We could hear him trying to bash the door down, and they had to take the door off its hinges, so my Dad did offer to stand in. But he did escape.” Thankfully, the band was able to play on time for presenter Jo Whiley’s Radio 2 show, but the question still remains: if you didn’t want to embarrass him, why did you tell the media about it?

Will it feature little pink haunted houses?

After more than a decade of working on the project, John Mellencamp and Stephen King’s musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County will soon reach completion. The musical deals with two sets of brothers fighting over a woman, 30 years apart in the same cabin. Mellencamp originally hatched the basic idea in the late nineties while spending time in his cabin in Bloomington, Indiana — which he claims is haunted. As far as splitting duties goes, each man has a clear idea of what they contribute to the project.  “It was Steve’s job to tell the story,” said Mellencamp. “It was my job to develop the characters through songs. That’s different than most musicals. The best example of that is My Fair Lady. They had a story with Pygmalion, so they just stuck songs in there.” Though an early version of the show ran in Atlanta earlier this year and there was a recent table reading in New York for investors, there are no plans to put the show on Broadway just yet. “John believes in reaching for the stars in everything he does,” said King. “But a lot of Broadway these days is fucking Disneyland. It’s blue-haired ladies from Westchester County. They come in buses and they want to see Aida or the Lion King. It’s almost like an amusement park.” If you’re interested in seeing the early version of the show, a CD/DVD deluxe edition, which will feature the soundtrack, handwritten lyrics and a mini-documentary about the making of the musical will go on sale March 19.

Moore makes musical “murder” musing

Last week, thousands of masked protesters observed Nov. 5 by protesting at Britain’s House of Parliament, re-enacting the final scene from the 2005 movie V for Vendetta, and Alan Moore, creator of the graphic novel that inspired the masked mobs, decided to provide them with a soundtrack. The graphic novelist released a song in support of the group on the Occupation Records label entitled “The Decline of English Murder.” The title is a nod to a 1946 George Orwell essay, and the song itself features Moore sing-talking over sparse instrumentation provided by Joe Brown. The lyrics deal with the greed of the banking industry and the failings of government. Those lucky enough to have purchased the track online on Nov. 5  were entered into a draw to win a Guy Fawkes masked signed by Moore himself. Though the draw is over, the track can still be downloaded from Occupation Records’ website for about $1.60, with all proceeds going to the Occupy movement.

Brace yourselves, musicians are coming

If you’ve ever looked at the drummer from Coldplay and thought to yourself “Now there’s a guy I’d like to see in a gritty, medieval television series,” your prayers have been answered. Will Champion is set to have a cameo appearance in the upcoming season of HBO’s fantasy show Game of Thrones. As Champion is a drummer by trade, his cameo will consist of him, well, drumming. Though we don’t yet know how this will come up in the show, fans are speculating that he might be drumming in a band at a wedding. Another musician to enter the world of George R. R. Martin next year will be Snow Patrol singer Gary Lightbody, though we don’t know under what capacity he’ll be appearing.

But how will I know who’s cool?

Composer Thomas Bergersen, who has worked on several movie trailers and films, came out in defense of dubstep and other “unpopular” music forms in a lengthy Facebook post last week.

“People identify themselves through music, and express themselves through their taste in music. Sometimes people get so caught up in the attributions of genres that they forget what music is about in the first place,” he writes. “They limit themselves to certain styles because their mind is not free. Music can and should be enjoyed across all genres, regardless of social value, political statement, mainstream success, stigma and so on, because great talent is to be found in every aspect of art, from the popular to the most obscure and unknown.” He ends his post by asking readers to reject the herd mentality when it comes to music and “cultivate that which resonates within you, not what resonates with others.”

May the pants be with you

Through the constant campaigning, speech giving and handshaking across the country is probably what won Barack Obama his second term in the White House, Katy Perry admitted to having tipped the odds in his favor by giving the president elect a pair of lucky Y-front briefs with his face on them. Perry reportedly spent nearly £200 on the underthings at a store in Hampstead in north London. “She was delighted when she got to hand him a pair at a political rally just before he won, “ a source told the UK Sun. “Katy’s been saying he won because of the lucky pants.”

“Don’t blame Yoko!”

In an hour long interview set to air on Al Jazeera English this month, Paul McCartney has finally cleared up something that has been pestering Beatles fans for decades; did Yoko Ono cause the fab four to break up? “She certainly didn’t break the group up, the group was breaking up,” says McCartney, who took the opportunity to offer some praise for Ono’s influence on former bandmate John Lennon. The former Beatle claimed that if it wasn’t for the avant garde outlook she introduced him to, Lennon might never have penned such classic songs as his 1971 hit “Imagine.” “I don’t think he would have done that without Yoko, so I don’t think you can blame her for anything. When Yoko came along, part of her attraction was her avant garde side, her view of things, so she showed him another way to be, which was very attractive to him. So it was time for John to leave, he was definitely going to leave [one way or another].” Though he did admit that he found Ono’s presence during recording vexing, he says the real wedge driver for the group was Allan Klein, the businessman who tried to take over after their manager Brian Epstein died in 1967.

Couldn’t find an actual fan, I guess

In a new interview with Men’s Health Magazine, Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger related a cringe-inducing story from his band’s early tour days. The anecdote involves a tour stop in Germany, boredom, roughly $375 in cash, genitalia and metal fan blades—the exact combination of which you’d best read straight from the source. “In a back room in the venue where we were playing, there was an old fan with a metal blade. I don’t remember the last time I saw a fan with a metal blade. And we paid the drum tech…. Oh god, I forget the exact amount. I think we got the pot up to about 600 deutschmarks.” That pot, Kroeger goes on to intimate, went towards convincing their unfortunate drum tech to “stick his johnson in the fan,” to the delight of band and crewmembers, who reportedly filmed the incident. “I can still hear the ‘bleh-bleh-blehhhhhhh’ of the blade slowly sputtering to a stop, and this blood-curdling scream. It was fantastic.”

For sale: one bass, slightly destroyed

Are you a fan of Nirvana? Bass guitars? How about stuff broken by famous people? If you answered yes to all three questions, Christie’s London auction house has the perfect item of music memorabilia for you; Kris Novoselic’s smashed up bass guitar, as seen in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. The bass, a Zen-On which was purchased by Novoselic from a pawn shop with the express intent of smashing it on screen, is estimated to sell for between $25,000 and $40,000 at auction in Christie’s entertainment memorabilia sale on Nov. 29. Also up for auction is a personally inscribed copy of Bob Dylan’s High school yearbook and the original whip used in the Indiana Jones movies.