20
Carlton Street, Suite 1032, Toronto, ON
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677-5883
langfieldent@rogers.com
www.langfieldentertainment.com
June 19, 2008
First day of summer comes this
weekend. Summer? Not rainy, cold spring? I'm sure things will turn around shortly in
my beloved Toronto .... right?
What can I say, this week we lost a top American journalist
to a heart attack and R. Kelly is acquitted. Life sure can draw some
interesting conclusions ...
Lots of great Canadian news below mixed with lots of global
entertainment news!
Scroll down and find out what interests you - take your time and take a walk
into your weekly entertainment news!
::TOP STORIES::
Speakers Corner Given The Gag
Source: www.thestar.com - Rob Salem, TV
Columnist
(June 12, 2008) Speakers Corner has been silenced.
Rogers Television, current owners of the local Citytv station and its
cross-country cousins, has effectively pulled the plug on the venerable Toronto
institution, a conduit for the community for the past 20 years.
The street-corner public-access video booth, established in the late
1980s, has provided a platform for anyone with a loonie and 120 seconds to
spare, from former prime minister Jean Chrétien to the Barenaked Ladies, to
vent or praise or promote their issues – or themselves.
The original Speakers Corner at Queen St. W. and John St. was shuttered
within days of the CTV purchase of CHUM almost two years ago, before the Citytv
franchise was split off by government decree and sold to the Rogers
conglomerate last year.
Even last night, the City website was still touting the booth's
temporary relocation to the Rogers Centre and, eventually, to the new Citytv
storefront studio in Yonge-Dundas Square, now under construction.
That would appear to no longer be the case. "No, it isn't,"
confirmed Citytv vice-president and general manager Jamie Haggarty. "But
our plans are evolving every day. The (Speakers Corner TV) program will
stay on the air till August, so we're not pulling the plug right away. But the
plans for Dundas Square were just that, plans. We have nothing committed,
nothing announced."
Back on Queen W., the Barenaked Ladies got their earliest exposure by
cramming themselves into the tiny booth to sing "Be My Yoko Ono" (the
1990 clip can still be seen online, at tinyurl.com/56p772).
A decade later, then-prime minister Jean Chrétien made an election-year
appearance to promote the vote, which he subsequently won by a considerable
margin.
A young Mike Myers travelled frequently from Scarborough to the Corner
to refine his act.
An unknown Scott Speedman, with no prior performance footage, drove down
from Thornhill to use the booth to audition for TV's Felicity, the role
that kick-started his career.
Madonna, Harrison Ford, Timothy Leary, Irving Layton, Stephen Baldwin,
Kim Campbell, Pinball Clemens, Maury Povich ... all have stopped in at some
point to speak their piece.
Even the elusive Prince, when he was living in Toronto, became an avowed
enthusiast: "I love Speakers Corner," he told The Canadian Press in
2004. "I just love the idea of it. I am so tempted when I go by to stop
the car and go into the booth and say what I have to say."
He never did. And now it's likely he'll never get the chance.
An internal announcement yesterday informed Citytv staff that the weekly
Speakers Corner compilation show would not be renewed for fall. Should
the concept be revived, it will likely be as an online entity.
"We like the brand," insisted Haggarty. "It's a great
brand. It's just that viewership isn't coming through on TV. Our wireless guys
and our digital team are looking at how we can evolve it to the digital media.
We may still have the booth, but it'll be more of a Web presence than a
television presence."
The Speakers Corner controversy is the second in as many weeks for the
Rogers-run Citytv news operation, which just as abruptly announced the
immediate cancellation of Silverman Helps, the station's 19-year viewer
advocacy unit, fronted by veteran broadcaster Peter Silverman.
"I told them, time and time again, that I wanted to do one more
year," protested Silverman, calling in from the cottage. "Twenty
years of Silverman Helps had a nice ring to it. That would have been
August of 2009, which would at least have given us the chance to tell the
audience, `Look, he's retiring. He's an old crow now. He's done his bit. Don't
write in any more, because the program is ending.'
"That would have been the decent thing for the people who relied on
us to help them, and we had about 20,000 requests a year. That would have been
the dignified way to go. Instead, we were called downstairs into the boardroom
and told that, as of that moment, we were closed down.
"When we asked what the rationale was, we were told, `We don't have
to give you a rationale.'"
A cloud of helpless resignation now hovers over what's left of the
Citytv news team. Many despair over what they see as the abandonment of
everything that originally defined the station and its two-way connection to
its audience.
"We have more user-generated content than ever," argued
Haggarty. "We're not any less committed to defending the consumer. We're
reviewing and relooking at everything. This is all just a part of the
process."
Wet And Wild At MuchMusic
Video Awards
Source:
www.thestar.com - Ben Rayner, Pop Music Critic
(June 16, 2008) The red carpet swiftly turned into a red river,
but we knew it would take more than a soggy strip of flooring material to put a
damper on the MuchMusic Video Awards.
An early-evening deluge timed perfectly to truncate the annual, big pre-show
build-up to last night's MMVAs ceremony at Much headquarters on Queen West
nevertheless added a new urgency to the usual hysteria that splays around Queen
and John at this time of year.
There was a real sense of brewing terror in the air on the carpet while
everyone who'd gathered outside the old CHUM-City building – the performers
ambling to the entryway in ludicrously expensive outfits, the publicists and
label folk nervously clutching armloads of umbrellas at the ready behind them,
the dozens of journalists and hundreds of fans jockeying for position around
the barricades – pretended not to notice the maelstrom brewing in the western
skies.
As the storm grew closer and several shades of roiling purple darker, and
moisture started to spackle the crowd, it became clear this wasn't blowing
over. Lightning crackled in every direction at once, thunder rattled the bowels
and suddenly the biggest, coldest raindrops of which the mind can conceive came
hurtling out of the sky in full "biblical deluge" mode, sending
everyone from Flo Rida to Girlicious and Simple Plan diving for the same
entrance all at once.
Former Kid in the Hall Dave Foley was asked as we dashed for the main entrance
together if he'd expected to witness the apocalypse from the red carpet at the
MMVAs.
"I didn't know," he conceded. "I'm going to start gathering
musicians two by two.
Inside the lobby, sweet Toronto pop singer Skye Sweetnam expressed some
disappointment that her planned red-carpet intro atop the same tractor she rode
in the video for "Human" – which was up for Best Cinematography at
the awards, but lost to Hedley's "She's So Sorry" – had been scuttled
to make way for mad dashes to the door by more famous, more international
guests.
"It's okay. Maybe I can bring the tractor again next year," said
Sweetnam. "It never goes out of fashion."
Nevertheless, the scene remained jovial, if somewhat damp.
The guys from Hedley came out of the evening smiling, taking four of the six
categories in which they were nominated – Cinematography for "She's So
Sorry," Best Video and Best Director for "For the Nights I Can't
Remember" and MuchLOUD Best Rock Video for "She's So Sorry" –
and trying very hard not to let their dominance over the proceedings contribute
to their collective ego.
"We've never dominated," said front man Jacob Hoggard on his way to
face the press after the show. "This is the first time we've come so close
as to touch something we could call domination. We're really excited. We're
really lucky. We've never dominated. I like to think you could call us forever
underdogs."
Simple Plan were playing similarly modest. Drummer Chuck Comeau, for instance,
refused to agree before the show started that he and the Montreal band
"owned" the People's Choice award for favourite Canadian group. Which
they officially do now, since they won their fifth trophy in a row last night.
"I'm not gonna say that because we might just lose it. We're going for
five-for-five, knock on wood, but we're pretty humble about it," he said.
"We got stoked every year when we win. If we get five, that's great, but
if we lose it, we've already got four already."
The big draws of the night were the recently reunited New Kids on the Block –
the former 1990s boy band that might better be described now as Aging Men on
the Block – and Rihanna, who won Best International Video Artist.
The Kids, dressed in white suits, were off-key at times, doing a medley of
their hits while busting out some decidedly tame dance moves to close the show.
With files from The Canadian Press
'Meet The Press' Host Russert Dies Of
Heart Attack
Source: www.thestar.com
- The Associated Press
(June 13, 2008) WASHINGTON – Tim
Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press'' and
its Washington bureau chief collapsed and died at work Friday after suffering
an apparent heart attack. He was 58.
Russert, of Buffalo, N.Y., took the helm of the Sunday news show in December
1991 and turned it into the most widely watched program of its type in the
nation. His signature trait there was an unrelenting style of questioning.
Washingtonian magazine once dubbed Russert the best journalist in town,
and described "Meet the Press" as "the most interesting and
important hour on television."
He also wrote best-selling books, Big Russ and Me, in 2004, and Wisdom
of our Fathers, in 2006.
This year, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people
in the world.
Russert also was a senior vice president at NBC.
Canadian Creator And Music Industry Groups Applaud
Introduction Of Copyright Bill
Source: CRIA
(June 12, 2008) Toronto – A broad coalition of Canadian
creator and music industry organizations today applauded the introduction of copyright reform legislation
by the federal government.
The eight groups, which represent approximately 21,000 professional performers
and 15,000 musicians in Canada, Canadian artist managers, music publishers,
music retailers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers of musical
instruments, and record labels of all sizes, jointly thanked the government for
recognizing the need for copyright reforms.
The organizations are united in seeking balanced legislative measures that
better protect the rights of artists, songwriters and other rights holders in
today’s digital world while also respecting the needs of consumers to fully
enjoy music and other digital products that they have legally acquired.
Copyright reforms sought by the organizations should reflect the right of
creators to earn a living from sales of their work, and to be protected from
theft and unauthorized use of their property over the Internet. At the same
time, Canadian consumers deserve a wider array of choices to obtain and enjoy
digital music, in line with the choices available in other countries where
modern copyright rules are in place, along with flexibility in how the music
they buy is enjoyed.
The organizations have long sought a legal framework for these rights in
accordance with the 1997 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Internet treaties, to which Canada is a signatory. Such a framework would put
Canada on a level playing field with its major trading partners throughout
Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America.
The organizations also recognize that, in today’s global information economy,
properly implemented copyright reforms are essential to innovation and Canada’s
future economic prosperity. Underlying this is the economic principle that
people will be more likely to invest the time and money required for
innovation, from cutting edge software to new online distribution models, if
they can be confident their rights to those innovations are adequately
protected.
To maximize the benefits for all parties – consumers, creators, businesses and
other stakeholders – the legislation must provide clear rules so that all Canadians
can understand what is acceptable on the Internet and other digital media.
The organizations supporting these principles include the Alliance of Canadian
Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), American Federation of Musicians
of the United States and Canada (AFM Canada), Canadian Independent Record
Production Association (CIRPA), Canadian Music Publishers Association (CMPA),
Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), Music Industries Association of
Canada (MIAC), Music Managers Forum Canada (MMF) and the Retail Music
Association of Canada (RMAC).
About the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists
ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) is the
national organization of professional performers working in the
English-language recorded media in Canada. ACTRA represents the interests of
21,000 members across Canada - the foundation of Canada's highly acclaimed
professional performing community.
About the American Federation of Musicians of United States and Canada
The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM
Canada) is the largest organization in the world representing the interests of
professional musicians, with approximately 15,000
members in Canada. AFM Canada is committed to raising industry standards and
placing the professional musician in the foreground of the cultural landscape.
About the Canadian Independent Record Production Association
The Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA) is the trade
organization representing the independent sector of the Canadian music and
sound recording industry. For 30 years CIRPA has been the collective voice of
independent music in English-speaking Canada.
About the Canadian Music Publishers Association
Since 1949 the Canadian Music Publishers Association (CMPA) has ensured the
views of music publishers working in Canada and its members are heard. It is
our mission to promote the interests of music publishers and their songwriting
partners through advocacy, communication, and education.
About the Canadian Recording Industry Association
The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) promotes the interests of
Canadian record companies.
About the Music Industries Association of Canada
The Music Industries Association of Canada (MIAC) is a national, non-profit,
trade association representing Canadian manufacturers, distributors and
retailers of musical instruments and accessories, keyboards, sound
reinforcement products and published music.
About Music Managers Forum Canada
The Music Managers Forum (MMF) is an international not-for-profit association
that was founded in 1992 in the U.K. Its formation was intended to give
managers an opportunity to discuss, educate each other and create a much-needed
voice within the industry. Inspired by the UK example, the MMF Canada was
launched as an ad-hoc organization in 1994, and was federally incorporated as a
not-for-profit association in 2000.
About the Retail Music Association of Canada
The Retail Music Association of Canada (RMAC) is a non-profit trade association
founded in 1985. Its member companies represent the retailers, wholesalers and
distributors of pre-recorded music in Canada.
R&B Star R. Kelly Acquitted In Child Porn Case
Source: www.thestar.com - The Associated Press
(June 13, 2008)
CHICAGO – A jury acquitted R. Kelly on all counts of
child pornography after less than a day of deliberations Friday, ending an
ordeal for the R&B superstar that began when he was charged six years ago.
The Grammy award-winning singer dabbed his face with a handkerchief and hugged
each of his four attorneys after the verdict was read. The singer had faced 15
years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors had argued that a graphic sex tape showed Kelly having sex with a
girl as young as 13 at the time. Both Kelly, 41, and the now 23-year-old
alleged victim had denied they were on the tape. Neither testified during the
trial.
The prosecution's star witness was a woman who said she engaged in three-way
sex with Kelly and the alleged victim. Defense attorneys argued the man on the
tape didn't have a large mole on his back; Kelly has such a mole.
The month-long trial centered on whether Kelly was the man who appears on a
sexually graphic, 27-minute videotape at the heart of the case, and whether a
female who also appears on it was underage.
Over seven days presenting their case, prosecutors called 22 witnesses,
including several childhood friends of the alleged victim and four of her
relatives who identified her as the female on the video.
In just two days, Kelly's lawyers called 12 witnesses. They included three
relatives of the alleged victim who testified they did not recognize her as the
female on the tape.
Kelly's hits include "I Believe I Can Fly,'' "Bump N' Grind'' and
"Ignition.''
::TRAVEL NEWS::
Braving A Dip In Halifax Harbour
Source: www.thestar.com - Kelly Toughill, Special
To The Star
(June 08, 2008) HALIFAX–I am swimming across the
harbour when I spot my deepest fear: a bundle of semi-translucent white bits floating
just below the surface.
Oh God. Is that a mass of shredded toilet paper? Have I been duped into taking
a dip in what is still an open sewer?
Nope. It's just a pocket of tiny undulating jellyfish. I laugh, amused that the
sea life I usually fear and avoid suddenly seems so benign.
There is much to laugh about in Halifax Harbour these days. For the first time
in a generation, the beaches of this port city are safe for swimming.
It is a breathtaking change from just months before, when underwater pipes
belched 200 million litres of raw sewage into the harbour every day – enough to
fill Toronto's Rogers Centre 45 times over every year. The sheer disgust-level
of the harbour was hard to overstate. On the wrong tide and the wrong wind, the
stench could gag. The shoreline was littered with condoms and beach whistles –
the euphemism for plastic tampon applicators.
Clubs that sailed in the harbour rinsed their boats down with a solution of
bleach every day. And the water itself? Filled with brown fuzzy floatables.
Yep, those are just what you think they are.
Three years ago, the city launched a $300 million project to build three sewage
treatment plants – in Halifax, Dartmouth and the suburb of Herring Cove. Each
is designed to strain the sewage to remove particles, and then disinfect the
liquid with ultraviolet light. It doesn't eliminate chemicals and metals, but
gets rid of the icky stuff, and kills bacteria that make people sick.
The biggest treatment plant – in Halifax – started up last November. Suddenly
two notable sights along the waterfront were gone: the spout they called the
"bubbling crude" in the heart of downtown, and the ripple off Point
Pleasant Park dubbed the "seagull buffet" for the permanent cluster
of birds feasting on the disgusting mess.
The water cleared, the smell went away. It wasn't hard to spot the difference.
Ewa Szudek is one of hundreds of people who walk dogs in Point Pleasant Park.
She also gathers rocks from the tip of the park for her garden.
"I can feel the difference," she said.
"Before the rocks were slimy and slick; I had to scrub them before I put
them in my garden. Now the rocks feel clean, healthy. And the dogs, when they
get out of the water they don't smell any more."
Two months ago, testing started to show that the bacteria levels at three
former beaches in the city had dropped dramatically, that the water was now
safe for swimming. The city has not publicized the tests. In fact they refuse
to release the actual results until a report goes to city council later this
month.
But CBC commissioned its own testing, which duplicated the city's rumoured
results, and both Mayor Peter Kelly and James Campbell, spokesperson for the
project, confirmed the good news.
"Halifax Harbour is swimmable," Kelly said in a phone interview.
He said the city still wants to test bacteria levels during a heavy rainstorm,
and may wait until the Dartmouth sewage treatment plant is turned on in July
before formally issuing the all-clear, but a declaration will come soon.
(Dartmouth still puts raw sewage into the harbour, but currents take it away
from the three tested beaches.)
"This summer we will be able to have a few beach parties," Kelly
predicted.
I decided to get a jump on the crowds and plunge in this week.
It seemed like a good idea when I pitched the story to the Star, but
standing on the dirty sand of Black Rock Beach was another thing. The sign is
still up warning people not to swim, and the shoreline has not been completely
cleared of the trash left from before the sewage treatment plant was switched
on.
I brought a friend, Alan Jean-Joyce, for encouragement, and a surfboard for
safety, not knowing what the currents or the tides are like at that spot. And a
wetsuit – for the water is still only 8C.
Alan was way ahead of me, slicing through the water while I was still staring
at scummy yellow bubbles near shore. I had to remind myself that even pristine
shorelines have bubbles. I was three strokes into the harbour when I spotted a
small brown fuzzy thing dead ahead.
Eee gads! A floatable!
Nope, just seaweed.
Alan was soon cavorting and frolicking in the water, dipping his head and even
taking huge mouthfuls of the stuff and spouting it toward the sky like a whale.
I began to relax as the deliciously cool seawater seeped inside my wetsuit,
began to savour the scent of salt on the air, the play of diamond light on the
tiny waves. Black Rock Beach is tucked into the east end of Point Pleasant Park
at the tip of the Halifax peninsula. It is flanked by an industrial port, and
is just a short walk from downtown. I lay back in the water and stared at a
giant crane loading containers on to a ship bound for who-knows-where, then
glanced back at a hawk circling over the park's forest. A tugboat churned past
us, headed toward the open ocean, its bow pushing a wide wake of white water
toward shore.
What a beautiful day.
Think I'll go for another swim tomorrow.
::MUSIC NEWS::
For
Singer-Guitarist-Songwriter Alex Cuba, Finding His Musical Self Meant Leaving
His Island Culture
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Guy Dixon
(June 12, 2008) Alexis Puentes has done it all wrong and succeeded
wonderfully.
A Cuban expatriate, he left his burgeoning career as a jazz-fusion
bassist to come to Canada, where there is next to no market for Latin music. He
has since reinvented himself as a Spanish-singing guitarist-songwriter with the
stage name Alex Cuba, even though his
intimate voice isn't the clarion call typical of Cuban front men. His
classically trained guitarist father even discouraged him from singing, in
favour of Alexis's brother, Adonis, who possesses a sharper salsa voice.
And then there's Alexis's decision to relocate to remote Smithers,
B.C., not exactly known as the epicentre of Latin culture.
"I was doing really well as a bass player. It's not as though
I chickened out of that. I left just when I was gaining recognition. On one of
the pieces [recorded in Cuba], I did a bass solo that was being studied at the
highest school of music in Cuba, the ISA [Instituto Superior de Arte],
in the improvisation class." Even over the phone from Smithers, the trills
and cadence of his voice, like most Spanish speakers with heavily accented
English, is itself worth setting to CD.
But a life playing jazz-fusion bass in Cuba's competitive hothouse
of musicians wound up not being enough for Puentes, once the opportunity arose
to come to Canada. And his counterintuitive path is paying off. His second,
Juno Award-winning solo CD, Agua del Pozo, has recently been rereleased
by EMI and is winning him wide acclaim and ever-larger audiences in Canada and
internationally (he's in Toronto this week for performances at both the North
by Northeast Music Festival and Luminato). Gratifyingly, he's also on the cusp
of breaking back into the Cuban market on his own terms.
But this success meant having to leave Cuba. In a country so rich
in music, where musical education is free and easily available, the skill level
is very high, possibly too high.
"At this point, there is a lot of great Cuban music being
made outside of Cuba," Puentes says. "Because of the amount of
musicians all concentrated in one spot, competition there gets tight. We say
that, you know, if you kick a rock, you'll find 20 musicians underneath the
rock, saying, 'Hire me, hire me!' and they're all great!
"When you make it too accessible, then the chances to allow
the real genius of music to come through get compromised, in my opinion. ...
Every time they put in front of you a chart and it says, for example, C minor -
as a chord, you have to find the best way, the most complicated way to play
that C minor, so that people know in town that you're playing. And that really
gets in the way of real creativity."
Puentes stresses repeatedly, though, that he isn't trying to put
down musicians in Cuba, or to sound political with his comments. He describes
his own state-sponsored education as "a feast of art," studying
everything from music to painting to theatre. He also didn't grow up in a Cuban
cultural bubble. By 14, when he had taken up the bass seriously, "it was
Michael Jackson, [progressive jazz bassist] Jaco Pastorius and Guantanamera,
all of that together. And I believe that sound is what makes who I am
today." Still, he feels that much of the highly technical music produced
in Cuba today is coming from the mind rather than from the heart.
In 1995, Puentes performed across Canada with his father as part
of tour celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations between Cuba and Canada.
That's when Puentes met his Canadian wife in Vancouver. They spent a couple of
years living in Cuba, in an extension to his parents' house, but then, being a
young couple and feeling like they needed space, moved to Victoria. That's when
Puentes's musical transformation started in earnest.
"I realized that jazz wasn't what I wanted to do in Canada. I
realized that there was something else in there for me. And what it was is the
fusion of everything I've done into one identity."
But as his career began taking off internationally, and as his
second child arrived, his wife wanted help taking care of the family while
Puentes was away. Hence Smithers, where she grew up. It became perhaps the best
move he could have made, allowing him to break completely from the Latin
market, while giving his songwriting the space to reflect and diversify within
its Cuban roots.
"What happens is that I don't aim for a market. And I don't
have to manipulate my sounds or my composition so that the Latin market likes
it. I just go with the feel of it, what comes to me, and put it out. So as a
result, it's giving to Latin music something fresh. If I was in Miami, I would
get sucked right away by what's on the radio right now," he says.
"In these concentrated markets, if someone has a hit on the
radio, in the next four weeks you'll hear songs that sound just like it. I'm
happy that I don't have that in Canada. The end result is that it has given me
a lot of satisfaction. Because maybe from the way I was raised listening to a
wide range of music, I've really paid attention to the Anglo world. From the
beginning, I was always tempted to do something that will cross over, without
you having to speak my language."
But he has also learned that his new music is starting to be heard
back in Cuba, even though his popularity back home will take time to germinate.
"I want to focus on what I'm doing. And hopefully - hopefully! - once I
get recognition, then I will go when Cuba already knows who I am. But now, it's
too hard for me, for some reason. It's one of those things. You need to leave
your country to become somebody and then your country will embrace you."
Alex Cuba performs tonight at midnight at Toronto's Tattoo Rock
Parlour, as part of NXNE, and on Sunday at 5 p.m. at Toronto's Distillery
District, with the Alex Cuba All-Stars, as part of Luminato (information: http://www.nxne.com and http://www.luminato.com).
Canadian Idol Top 24: Omar Lunan
Source: Sandy Caetano, Metro
(June 18, 2008) Having already gotten a taste
of how the music business operates, Omar Lunan figured he would try something new.
After having deals with two record labels that both went nowhere, Scarborough’s
29-year-old singer and single father felt he had nothing to lose by auditioning
for Canadian Idol. He wasn’t even supposed to be at the auditions, but went
with his younger cousin for moral support.
“I had a show the night before, so I met her there at 7:30 a.m. and she was at
the front of the line so I had to find my way through to her (through) about
1,500 people,” says Lunan. “So we got inside and she got to a certain point and
I got past, which is not bad for somebody who didn’t expect to be here.”
Lunan has been singing professionally since he was 17, when he was in a group
called The Show. His biggest accomplishment musically occurred when he was 17
or 18, when he got to open up for artists like 98 Degrees, Usher, Foxy Brown,
Genuwine, Sugar Jones, Soul Decision and more. He and his group were even
nominated for a Juno.”In the same year I got my high school diploma, so that
was a big year for me … I just love music and performing is awesome.”
All that matters at this point in the game is providing a stable home and
future for his two-year-old son, which is why Lunan says he’s in this
competition.
“Me and mom are really good, though we’re not together, but I’ve made sure that
we’re both really active with our son. We do everything we can for him,” he
says.
Lalah
Hathaway Shares Her 'Self'
Source: www.eurweb.com -
(June 18, 2008) *Pictures may be worth a thousand
words, but the music of Lalah
Hathaway’s “Self Portrait” says more about soul music than a
musical dictionary.
Her fifth studio album, the disc is a 12-song collection of jazz-infused
R&B that she fashioned herself.
The singer, daughter of the legendary soulman Donny Hathaway, is now on the
legendary label Stax Records – home to Booker T and the MGs, Sam and Dave, and
Isaac Hayes.
It’s been four years since her last disc and like many artists, she’s had her share
of label contracts and label contrasts, but she told EUR’s Lee Bailey that her
new label home is a great fit.
“It’s about finding the right record label that will pay for you to express
yourself,” she said about her sabbatical from the studio. “The industry is
changing so much. [Artists] are out trying to find someplace that they feel
comfortable doing their art and their craft. I hope that it will become a more
frequent occurrence that I get to make records.”
And while she hasn’t ruled out going the independent distribution route in the
future, Hathaway is quite pleased with working with the celebrated Stax name.
She reiterated that being an artist looking for a deal is something most
artists of longevity have experienced, along with bouncing from label to label.
“It’s kind of like dating,” she compared. “It’s like Match.com when you’re
signed to a label. You go out with a guy and it’s all nice. First they pick you
up and open the door for you, and then something goes horribly wrong. It seems
that’s been my experience with record companies, until now.”
So what makes this time different? Well,
in a word, “self.”
“I can honestly say – and I don’t even have to say it; you will say it once you
listen to it – it is my most coherent, cohesive body of work,” she said. “I
made the record from front to back in such a short period of time and I’ve
never done that before.”
Just a teen when she first scored a
record deal, Hathaway said her 1990 self-titled debut album whizzed by without
much of her input.
“I don’t really understand how it got made,” she said. “I didn’t pick out most
of the songs; I didn’t see the artwork until it was done. It was a blur.”
She said her second disc, on a new
label, wasn’t a much better project process as the record company was going
through a “major upheaval”. Hathaway went through three or four A&R people
and she fired her manager.
“In addition to that, the music industry really began to change and I was at a
label that didn’t anticipate that. The third record was kind of an amalgamation
of all the songs that I had been writing and working on and I was really just
trying to struggle to get a deal. I call that time in the ‘90s vortex of time
where a lot of us got loss.”
But the past has passed. Hathaway’s “Self Portrait” was created in a new
process for the talented singer.
“I feel really proud of my record. I’m
happy with my experience in making the record. I feel like this is my best
piece of work yet. I’m excited about being at Stax because they are so
synonymous with the concept of soul music around the world. I think it’s a good
match,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve ever gotten a deal, wrote the
whole record and sang it, and put it out within a year.”
No surprise to Hathaway fans, the singer is incredibly impressive on
“Portrait.” But the expectation of excellence, Hathaway said, can be a curse.
“Sometimes you tend to lay back and be complacent because on a bad day you’re
still probably better than a lot of people,” she modestly explained. “With this
record I have stretched. I feel [with] the writing on it, the sentiment behind
it, the musicianship, the way the record aurally sounds, the mix, the mastering
of the work – I’m really happy with the way it came out.”
Hathaway said she’s very content about the disc and satisfied that she’s done
an impeccable job in sharing a bit of herself with fans of good music.
“I would love it if 10 million people buy the record, but I feel really
successful already,” she said. “It is what I intended it to be and it’s better
than I thought it could be. I’m very proud of myself in a way that I have never
been before for a record.”
The first single, "Let Go," an up-tempo track co-written by Rahsaan
Patterson, is already making waves at radio. The disc also features the penwork
of singer-songwriter Sandra St. James and the production help of
Grammy-nominated Rex Rideout. But even with an outstanding supporting cast,
“Self Portrait” is all Lalah.
“It is absolutely a self portrait of me as an artist. From the music, the way
that the credits read, the packaging, the colors, the way it was recorded, the
musicians, the producers, the concept of the videos shoot and everything is
mine. Everything I had my hand in, so I really do think that it’s a very good
portrait of me as an artist right now.”
For more on Lalah Hathaway and “Self Portrait” – available now – go to her
official website at www.lalahhathaway.com.
The
Many Faces Of Alanis
Source: www.globeandmail.com - Simon Houpt
(June
13, 2008) NEW YORK — There's a diamond ring on Alanis Morissette's hand and a story behind how it got there.
A few years ago, it seems, the singer's friends were teasing her about her
claim that she could manifest things into physical form. “I said, I can do it
with anything,” she recalled on a recent stop in town. So as her friends
guffawed, Morissette proclaimed, “I'd like to welcome diamonds.” The very next
day, during a last-minute check of a hotel room, what should she discover in
the safe but a ring, sitting all alone. She left her number with the
management, requesting that they call if anyone should claim to have lost the
jewellery; no one did. Ever since then she's worn it, as she says, “to kind of
remind myself of the whimsy of thinking I can manifest.” Besides, the ring –
eight smaller diamonds encircling a large single stone, and appraised at
$10,000 – looks awfully pretty, even if it is on her right hand.
Of course, for a couple of years, she wore a different ring,
an emerald-cut platinum number, but she traded it, you might say, for this new
album.
If you want to fully understand the story, you must wade into the sometimes
icky intersection between art and tabloid chatter. (You can do so guilt-free by
recognizing Morissette has occupied the intersection before.) Back in the
summer of 2006, rumours began surfacing that Morissette's two-year engagement
to Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds ( Definitely, Maybe), whom she had met
at Drew Barrymore's birthday party in 2002, was melting down. They made a few
appearances together, but by February, 2007 representatives of both celebrities
announced the two had gone their separate ways.
One month later, showing impressive resiliency, Reynolds turned up in the
company of dewy actress Scarlett Johansson, then 22. (The two are now engaged.)
Meanwhile, Alanis did what Alanis does best: She dove deep and emerged with
nuggets of raw emotional truth. Flying off to London to meet with the producer
Guy Sigsworth (Seal's Crazy, Bjork), the two wrote 12 songs in as many
days. Two months later, they spun off another dozen, then whittled them down
into what became Flavors of Entanglement, Morissette's first studio album in
four years, which dropped on Tuesday.
The album reasserts Morissette's status as the musical Martha Gellhorn, an
unusually adept war correspondent who has forged a career reporting from the
front lines of her own turmoil. Across 11 songs that take in swirling tabla and
cello, a menacingly metal buzz, and soothing piano ballads, Morissette gives an
intimate blow-by-blow of her state of mind in the aftermath of the breakup. She
declares a ban on commitment in Moratorium, is “reborn and shivering /
spat out on new terrain” in the mournful Not As We, tentatively regains
her footing in Giggling Again for No Reason, and turns a wistfully
self-satirizing new page in the final sing-songy tune Incomplete.
“At that time I just needed to stop the insanity, so to speak,” reflects
Morissette, sitting in a tiny meeting room of the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue
that is still littered with the used water glasses of Goldman Sachs employees
who had been conducting recruitment interviews an hour before. (We were
supposed to have met for lunch in the hotel's restaurant, but after the maitre
d' accidentally seated someone right next to the quiet table that had been
reserved in Morissette's name, her manager, recognizing she might not be
comfortable opening up with potential eavesdroppers a few feet away, insisted
on the relocation.)
“I needed to step away from the addictive aspect of it – love addiction, and
frankly co-dependence, and all the muck and mire of the version of commitment
that I was entertaining,” she says. “The kind of marriage that I aspire to is
not what I was doing.”
Does she blame herself for the breakup? “I do believe it always takes two to
tango, so I don't take 100 per cent responsibility,” she replies. “But someone
else's, whether it's my ex-fiancé or anybody, their 50 per cent is not my
problem. Whether they own it or not, I have no control over.” She has a
debilitating tendency to accept responsibility for anything bad. “If someone
punches someone a mile away, it's my fault. That was how I used to operate. So
now it's about stopping at that 50 per cent point – in all areas, frankly. So
that's made for more mature interactions, not only in my romantic life but in
my professional life and everything.”
Speaking with Morissette can be a strangely giddy experience. While most actors
and singers become brittle and guarded after a few years of prodding by the
press and the public, in person Morissette maintains a remarkably open mien;
she even speaks with an occasional uptick. It may be that she has been doing
this for so long – a one-time child actor, she recorded her first album of
dance tunes at age 17 – that she knows no other way. But it may also be that
the New Age patois she deploys – her speech is littered with mentions of
phoenixes rising, of the need to “esteem myself from within,” and of being
ambivalent about career success offering an “egoic thumbs-up from the outside”
– conceals as much as it reveals.
Still, she laughs frequently, is a rare Canadian celebrity who retains specks
of her Ottawa-area accent, and exudes genuine warmth, even when handily
deflecting questions about Johansson's recent album of Tom Waits covers. (But
then, the album bombed.)
Her aggression stays in the music, safely out of her personal encounters,
whether romantic ones or interviews with the press. “It's not considerate to
myself if I don't express my anger,” she explains. But, “it's not very popular
to walk around admitting you're depressed or admitting you're suicidal, or
admitting you're really, really vitriolically angry,” she says. “But it's not
inappropriate in art to be angry and flailing, and physicalize all that
emotion. It's actually welcomed.
“Because ultimately I'm still Canadian, and I'm still very concerned about
being respectful and that kind of stuff.”
In the new album's final tune, Morissette sings, “I have been missing the
rapture this whole time,” and at 34 she says she's reached a point in her life
where she's no longer willing to endure torment in the hope of some far-off
goal. “For a long time, the managers that I was working with would say, ‘Tough
it out' – the theme is always suck it up – at the cost of myself. Suck it up,
because if you do this tour, I know you're burned out, but if you do this tour
you'll be – fill in the blank. Laying out the groundwork for the future. What
future? I might be dead in five years.” She laughs. “What if I want to enjoy my
life now? So that song is to me the most philosophical, spiritual song on the
record.”
She's starting to take her own advice. About a year ago, she got a pair of
tattoos, one on the inside of her right forearm that reads, “breathe” (she
often forgets to take deep breaths, especially when concentrating), and one on
the outside of her left forearm that reads, “gentle.” “People have shown me
that, you put it on that side of your arm, you're ultimately asking other
people to be gentle with you,” she giggles.
There are those willing to take up the challenge. She has a new boyfriend, who,
as it happens, is neither a celebrity nor a Canadian.
A few years ago, an episode of the squirmy sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm
revolved around Morissette secretly revealing to Larry David the identity of
the former lover about whom she had written her angry hit single, You Oughta
Know. In real life, though, she says she has no intention of outing the ex.
“When I write songs, I don't write it for the sake of seeking revenge,” she
explains. “I write it just to get it out of my body, so I don't get sick. So I
think if I were to write it and then speak about who it's about, that would be my
version of being offensive.
“I know it's torturous for people who are curious,” she nods. “Some people are
really excited to find who these songs are about, but that's not why I write
them.” I suggest to her that people may feel if they learn the identities
behind the songs, the world might make sense to them. “Right, and God bless
them,” she laughs, “maybe the world isn't supposed to. What's that Pema Chodron
title, Comfortable with Uncertainty? If only we could all be more comfortable
with uncertainty,” and here she emits an urgent whisper, “I think we'd all be a
little bit more relaxed!”
MuchMusic Goes With The Flo
Source: www.thestar.com
- Daniel Dale, Staff Reporter
(June 14, 2008) Before Japanese women threw bras
at him, before Bulgarians and Brazilians and Swedes were aware of the existence
of Apple Bottom jeans, before the hush-hush movie projects and the houses and
the cars, Flo Rida sat in a Miami strip club, studying the women on the stage.
Market research, yo.
When you're Tide, you get middle-aged women to test your new products. When
you're Molson, you focus-group 21-year-old men. When you're a little-known
rapper peddling an unabashedly sexual party song whose chorus includes the
words "gave that big booty a smack," you see if it works for the
strippers.
"I already had notoriety 'round the way from other records I'd put
out," said the 28-year-old, real name Tramar Dillard, in a phone interview
from Los Angeles last week.
"But this record in particular – the girls, they requested it over and
over again."
So, soon, did people wearing clothes.
The song, "Low," which features that infuriatingly catchy chorus by
T-Pain – "Apple Bottom jeans/Boots with the fur" – spent 10 weeks at
the top of the Billboard Hot 100, selling more than 3 million copies; 32 weeks
after it first hit the charts in late 2007, it still sits at No. 24.
"Low" enjoyed particular success on the Internet: No. 1 on iTunes for
14 weeks, it became the best-selling digital song ever.
No joke: the song went platinum as a ringtone. Dillard, like hundreds of
thousands of teenage girls around the world, used it as his own ringtone.
"Of course," he says. "I gotta promote my own situation."
Like so many so-called overnight successes, Dillard's came slowly. He began
rapping as a teenager in Carol City, Fla., where he formed a group with
friends. They released several mixtapes, earning them moderate local notoriety,
and opened a show for the celebrated rapper Scarface.
In 2001, Dillard went to Hawaii and elsewhere as a "hype man" for
Fresh Kid Ice, a member of the raunchy group 2 Live Crew. ("It reminds me
of `Low': a lot of the girls, they tried to come on stage, they got their bras
off and everything.")
And, early this decade – he doesn't remember the year – he boarded a bus to
California, $200 in his pocket, planning to knock, uninvited, on the doors of
record companies.
"And I don't have the dollars to get around town," Dillard recalls.
"I'm just going by faith in God."
Death Row Records was closed. He got nowhere with Capitol Records. When he
tried to approach potential star-makers in a mall, he nearly got arrested.
"I had this 60-pound bag, and I decided I was going to go inside the mall,
the Beverly Center, because I heard a lot of times a lot of celebrities be in
there, television, radio, magazines. So I throw my bag on a bench, go inside
about an hour, and all the while, I'm hearing sirens and things, but I paid no
attention to it. Come back out, my bag's missing. I go across the street to the
gas station, ask the clerk, `Have you seen someone with a bag?' And they're
like, `That was your bag, man? We called in a bomb threat.'"
Short of cash, he worked in construction – making "less than minimum wage,
like $3 an hour" – and for a T-shirt company. Then, in Las Vegas, he
worked for the MGM Grand hotel-casino, "digging through the trash, trying
to restore the silverware that people may have thrown away."
He released an EP, Florida Streets, in 2003. In 2006, the owner of
independent label Poe Boy Entertainment encouraged him to return to Florida:
major labels, he was told, were beginning to notice him.
Dillard signed with Poe Boy, then with Atlantic Records. "Low," the
first single from his March album Mail on Sunday, made him famous, and
Timbaland-featuring "Elevator," the second single, reached No. 16.
Then Mail on Sunday itself came out and hit No. 4.
Since then, he has toured in Asia, worked on a movie he won't talk about,
fended off the solicitations of countless new "friends," and dealt
with phone calls from bewildered fans – to the cellphone number he listed on
MySpace – "every 15, 20 seconds."
Forgive him, then, if he's been too busy to figure out why he's flying to
Toronto in a few days.
"I gotta go to Canada and ... um ... perform at the ... um ... what it is
... the MTV..."
He'll perform at the MuchMusic Video Awards tomorrow night.
George Clinton Gets 'Radio Friendly'
Source: J'ai St. Laurent-Smyth, Inque Public Relations, inquepr@comcast.net
(June 12, 2008) *George Clinton, ringmaster of
the longest running funk circus since James Brown's golden age, had a dream - a
dream of taking his favourite R&B, doo wop and slow jams to re-create the
sexy-steamy vibe of an ol' school "blue lights in da basement"
session.
So he sent out invites to his rainbow coalition of musical
friends. Before long, rock icons Sly Stone, Carlos Santana and the Red Hot
Chili Peppers, soul crooner El DeBarge, hip hop producer The RZA, gospel star
Kim Burrell, and Shavo from the alternative band System of a Down were ALL
laying down grooves "on the 1!"
Members of the P-Funk All-Stars also came to the party, including
Gary Shider, Belita Woods and others. The result: RADIO FRIENDLY, a mash
note to richly righteous and soulful courtship of days gone by, slated for
release on Shanachie Records - September 3, 2008.
"I've been waiting for years to do this record," George proclaims.
"I knew that funk would come back. I knew that Motown would come back. And
I knew, eventually, doo-wop would come back. I just felt I should be the one to
usher it back in!"
Those who know George Clinton - the funk master who actually came up during the
vocal group era - know that long before the funk mob known as
Parliament-Funkadelic, he fronted a stand-up vocal group known simply as The
Parliaments in 1955, which later morphed into a soul group of the same name
that scored a minor hit in 1967 with "I Wanna Testify." At the
core of George's latter days funk there was always a lot of heart, so no one
should be surprised by the top choice classics he hand-picked for his sacred
detour back through music's soul music's tunnel of love. Just a few of the
songs near and dear to Grandpa Funk's heart are the late, great Johnny Ace's
"Pledging My Love" from the `50s (the original of which was recorded
shortly before the singer killed himself playing Russian Roulette), Motown
master Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar" from the `60s, and dearly
departed Maestro of Love Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You
Up" from the `70s. In addition to these decades- spanning gems, Gangster
of Love also features two original Clinton
compositions: an early Parliaments tune entitled "Heart Trouble" as
well as the brand new "Mathematics of Love."
George Clinton has a way of not only crossing musical boundaries
but also generational boundaries. As a result, the musicians on Radio Friendly
came of age in different eras and come from different worlds. "I
want to get all the young musicians together with all the old school
musicians," George
George Clinton / Radio
Friendly - press release - page 2 notes. "We need to come together! There
shouldn't be any division in music.
Soon as we got Sly and Santana, everyone wanted to get on the bandwagon."
Some might question how the hip-hop generation relates to romantic old school
R&B, but George isn't one of them. "Rappers have been flirting with it
all along, "he says. "Even Snoop Dogg is singing! They just
call it R&B now. This is only one step back from what they are
doing. The simplicity of it is the connection.
Anything simple is funk."
It's all part of George's
program to re-insert more humanistic and musical values into the contemporary
landscape of today's pop-soul music. So - once again - do not attempt to adjust
your radio. There is nothing wrong. George Clinton has taken control to
bring you a special show - a reminder of finer and funkier things, most
righteously dubbed Radio Friendly.
Sawnhey Ready To Let Loose
Source: www.thestar.com
- Raju Mudhar, Entertainment Reporter
(June 13, 2008) Nitin Sawhney wants people to boogie tomorrow night at Revival on College St.
The musician and composer is one of Luminato's artists in residence; while he
has been busy giving chats and workshops so far this week, it's been a while
since he rocked the decks at a club and he hopes people are looking forward to
it as much as he is.
"It's the first one I've done in ages, and if people are prepared to
expend a lot of energy and get into it, then they'll enjoy the evening,"
he said. "I haven't deejayed for a while, I was a resident at Fabric (the
renowned London nightclub) and did a live CD there a few years ago. It's
something I really enjoy, but I haven't done it a lot, probably because I want
to protect my ears while I've been working on my latest album. Because when I
do deejay in clubs, it does get very full on."
That's a warning to people who only know his recent recorded output as mellow
and atmospheric: it's a much faster thing he does in dance clubs.
Sawhney is best known for being part of the deejays and producers dubbed the
Asian Underground in the '90s, who caused a sensation by mixing traditional
Indian sounds with modern electronica. Since arriving on the music scene, he
has branched out into several genres, scoring more than 40 movies, composing
video-game soundtracks, and getting involved with cultural initiatives at home
and abroad.
He's bringing one of his acclaimed projects to the Molson Amphitheatre tonight,
where he mounts his live soundtrack to the 1929 Frank Osten silent film classic
A Throw of Dice, which he'll perform with members of the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, along with long-time collaborators Ashwin Srinivasan on
flute, Aref Durvesh on tabla, and vocalists Tina Grace and Reena Bhardwaj.
"This particular film, it is literally East meeting West, so it's quite
interesting from that point of view," Sawhney said. "It's such an
inspiring film, and the archetypal characters really, in a way, almost write
their own music. "
For the past year-and-a-half, he has been working on his latest album, London
Undersound, which he just finished mastering last week. He said it's about
how he feels London has changed over the past few years.
"I suppose there's a zeitgeist feeling about what London is, and it's
trying to examine that zeitgeist and what that's all about. It's quite
mad," he said.
Sawhney said he has been enjoying Luminato, adding it has allowed him to get
reacquainted with Tim Supple (he did the soundtrack to Supple's film version of
Twelfth Night). He has also met with Indo-Canadian director Deepa Mehta
– the two are talking about possibly collaborating together.
Vancouver Duo Called The Pack A.D. Rock With A Force And
Confidence Well Beyond Their Years
Source: www.thestar.com
- Ben Rayner, Pop Music Critic
(June 12, 2008) The Pack A.D.'s Becky
Black and Maya Miller are the two coolest, most no-nonsense rock chicks in the
country, I swear.
Seemingly within days of their signing to Mint Records late last
year, awestruck tales of the gals' shared appetite for booze-stoked mayhem had
drifted eastward from the label's Vancouver office. They've pretty much been on
tour ever since, wreaking dirt-blues havoc on squalid clubs around Canada, the
U.S. and the U.K. and sleeping in their van in Wal-Mart and Arby's parking lots
between gigs.
They spend nearly every waking hour together, but fortunately,
singer and slide-guitar firebrand Black and drummer Miller exude exactly the
easygoing sorts of personalities required to maintain such a dogged two-person
work ethic. Upon our initial meeting in Austin during this year's South by
Southwest festival, they gamely agreed to knock back a few pints and accompany
a stranger to a suburban-Texas gun range, revealing a shared passion for
ultra-violent videogames on the drive out. They agreed Manhunt 2 was
grossly inferior to the original because all the gore got cut out. I was
charmed.
Charm will only get you so far, though, and the Pack A.D. has
something much more important going for it: Lord almighty, do they rock – in a
gritty, unhinged, kind-of frightening manner that's no doubt tightened up
another few notches and grown more daunting since the band left several SXSW crowds
feeling somewhat seared back in March.
Proof of the Pack's growing prowess as white-hot primitivist
players is already in the can, and will arrive on Aug. 12 in the form of the
pair's savage second album, Funeral Mixtape. The new disc comes a mere
eight months after the Mint reissue of the band's impressive, self-released
debut, Tintype, but the pair have been itching to get some new stuff out
there because they feel the first disc doesn't properly represent where they're
at.
"We started recording that album after we'd played, like, one
show," says Miller.
"And after I'd been singing for about half a year,"
interjects Black, during an interview with the pair this week in advance of
their North by Northeast showcase tomorrow night at Sneaky Dee's, plus two
other appearances.
"We wanted the new record to sound as close as we could get
it to how we sound live," says Miller. "That's one of the big
differences on Tintype – it's just two different animals. The first
album was all digital and really clean sounding and really restrained, and
we're a little bit messier than that. In a good way, not a bad way. We just
wanted to get across how we feel when we play it and make it..."
Black finishes for her: "Dirtier."