Anatakikou & other: June 2008

Monday, 30 June 2008

Gene Loves Jezebel

Artist: Gene Loves Jezebel

   Genre(s):
Rock
   Rock: Gothic
   Other

Discography:

Promise

Year: 2005
Tracks: 10

Immigrant

Year: 2005
Tracks: 9

The Best Of

Year: 1999
Tracks: 14

The House of Dolls

Year: 1996
Tracks: 10

Kiss of Life

Year: 1990
Tracks: 10

Shaving My Neck

Year: 1982
Tracks: 4

The Cow

Year:
Tracks: 3

Shame 12 inch single

Year:
Tracks: 3

Discover

Year:
Tracks: 10

Desire(Come And Get It)

Year:
Tracks: 4

Twin brothers Jay and Michael Aston began performing music in 1980 when they formed Slav Arian with guitar player Ian Hudson and a drum motorcar. Though the Astons grew up in Porthcawl, South Wales, they touched to London in 1981 and renamed the goth-influenced mathematical group Gene Loves Jezebel. The triple played several live shows and was quickly signed by Situation 2. In May 1982, the label released Gene Loves Jezebel's demo individual, "Shavin' My Neck." The band then added bassist Julianne Regan and drummer Dick Hawkins. Regan left field soon after to form All About Eve, leaving Ian Hudson and Michael Aston to alternate on bass until Peter Rizzo united in 1984. Hawkins too schism for a time -- replaced by John Murphy and later Steve Goulding -- simply returned in 1983.

Gene Loves Jezebel released deuce more singles in 1983 before their debut album, Call, shoot figure one in the U.K.'s indie charts. In 1984, the mathematical group recorded a John Peel wireless school term for BBC and toured America with John Cale. After reverting to England, Gene Loves Jezebel released the singles "Influenza (Recidivate)" and "Shame (Whole Heart Howl)," simply then waited a full year before sec album Immigrant appeared in mid-1985. (It's non identical surprising that the album was recorded with a card change, this time drummer Marcus Gilvear rather of Dick Hawkins.) Immigrant also hit number unitary on the indie charts, simply during a tormented American tour, foundation member Hudson left, and was replaced by other Generation X guitarist James Stevenson.

The year 1986 brought a contract with Beggar's Banquet and, after, popular-chart success for the group. "Sweetest Thing" hit the Top 75 in England, and the resulting album, Name (which included a limited edition live record album called Beaming to Be Alive), reached the expected indie-chart top spot and besides did good with college radio receiver in America. Chris Bell became the band's fifth drummer after that year, and Gene Loves Jezebel's fourth album, The House of Dolls, was released late in 1987, yielding a single, "The Motion of Love," that grazed the U.S. charts. The Astons sour their attention to dance with the individual "Heartache," but Michael distinct to allow the band by mid-1989.

In a little twist of fate, Gene Loves Jezebel gained its highest-charting American unmarried the following class, when "Jealous," the major single from Kiss of Life, reached number 68 in August 1990. Two old age afterwards, Jay Aston and co. released Celestial Bodies, which did well in Europe and on American college wireless; the group's American label folded one class by and by though, and afterward a few sporadic live shows, Gene Loves Jezebel called it quits.

As early as 1992, Michael Aston had been working with a new band called the Immigrants. Two old age afterwards, he re-formed the band as Edith Grove and released a self-titled album. Michael and Jay began working together again that same yr, and afterward recorded two songs with Stevenson, Bell, and Rizzo for a GLJ best-of compilation, released in September 1995. While Jay performed episodic acoustic shows under his own call, Michael played with members of Scenic and released a solo album, Why Me Why This Why Now, in 1995. Gene Loves Jezebel re-formed in 1998 for Septenary, released in 1999 on Robinson Records. It was followed that same class by both Love Lies Bleeding and Live in the Voodoo City. Giving Up the Ghost appeared in early 2001. The two-disc Anthology, Vols. 1 & 2 arrived in 2006.

Arthur Alexander

Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Mars Lasar

Artist: Mars Lasar

   Genre(s):
New Age

Discography:

Panorama 11.04

Year: 2004
Tracks: 11

Final Frontier

Year: 2003
Tracks: 10

When Worlds Collide

Year: 2000
Tracks: 12

Karma

Year: 2000
Tracks: 11

11:02

Year: 1998
Tracks: 15

The New Born

Year: 1996
Tracks: 1

The Music of Olympic National Park

Year: 1996
Tracks: 11

Safe in Sound

Year: 1996
Tracks: 1

Mindscapes, Vol. 2 - Moonlight

Year: 1996
Tracks: 1

Mindscapes vol. III

Year: 1996
Tracks: 1

Mindscapes vol. I

Year: 1996
Tracks: 1

Escape

Year: 1995
Tracks: 13

The Eleventh Hour

Year: 1993
Tracks: 16

Olympus

Year: 1992
Tracks: 13

Australian-born New Age composer and producer Mars Lasar first-class honours degree attracted attention in 1991 for his work on Seal's monster pop strike "Crazy; " his 1992 solo debut, Olympus, reached the Top Ten on the Progressive Adult Contemporary wireless charts thanks in big portion to its wide manipulation during CBS' broadcast of that year's Winter Olympic Games. Its followup, The Eleventh Hour, proven even more successful; Lasar side by side turned to interactive amusement, composing the music for Sega's remove CD-ROM take a chance game Tomcat Alley. After 1995's Escape, he issued the three-volume Mindscapes series a twelvemonth later; subsequent releases included Olympic National Park, 1997's Song of the Manatee and 1998's 11:02. Karma appeared in fountain 2001. In addition, Lasar produced scores of production euphony CDs for companies across the globe.

Monday, 16 June 2008

Wahlberg's Daughter Not Happy With Another Brother

Actor Mark Wahlberg and his longtime girlfriend Rhea Durham are delighted they are expecting a baby boy - but the couple's four-year-old daughter is not so impressed. Durham is due to give birth this autumn to the couple's third child and they have just found out the sex of the unborn tot. But Wahlberg admits not everyone in their household is happy at the news - because young Ella wanted a baby sister to dress up. He tells Usmagazine.com, "My daughter was extremely disappointed when she found out that we were having a boy - she wanted a little sister. "She already had all these plans of dressing a little sister up in clothes. But I told her, 'Honey, that means you'll be more spoiled than the boys.' She goes, 'Oh, daddy, I didn't think of that!'" Wahlberg and Durham also have a two-year-old son together, named Michael.

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Friday, 13 June 2008

Posh brands her jeans range Noami

London (ANI): Victoria Beckham and Naomi Campbell have shown that their eight-year feud is finally over by working together on a jeans range. Posh Spice announced that the latest design in her dVb denim range has been inspired by the British supermodel, and will fittingly be called 'Naomi'. On her part, Campbell could also not help gushing about the new range. "I love the fit, model and cut of the Naomi jeans Victoria Beckham has designed," the Mirror quoted her, as saying. "I have already worn them many times and people always stop and ask me the make of my jeans," she added. Fans of both Posh and Naomi will have to shelve out a packet on the jeans though, for the denim comes attached with a price tag of 250 pounds a pair.

Thousands of tickets for Glastonbury remain unsold

There may be just over two weeks to go before the first act strikes up from the Pyramid Stage but thousands of tickets still remain unsold for this year's Glastonbury Festival.

The event, which saw a desperate scramble for the 177,000 weekend wristbands last year, has been hit by an unexpected decline in demand.

Today, up to 10,000 remaining wristbands costing £155 each will go on sale at HMV stores at seven cities across Britain. The festival's promoter, Emily Eavis, whose father Michael founded the summer institution 38 years ago at his Somerset farm, blamed quagmire conditions at recent festivals for poor sales.

"It's almost certainly down to bad weather," she said. "We've had three years of quite heavy conditions and people are kind of making their minds up according to the weather I think. You can really notice that when it's warm weather the tickets do go faster."

But Glastonbury has also been hit hard by negative publicity surrounding some of its headline acts – not least the rapper Jay-Z, the highly commercial star who recently signed a £75m promotion deal and who some critics say flies in the face of the festival's founding hippie ethos.

Glastonbury has also suffered from the increasing number of festivals across Britain, though other big events were yesterday reporting buoyant sales. Glastonbury staff were still hoping that a final burst of publicity would help shift the tickets. Potential festival-goers will still be required to bring photo ID to the HMV stores and at the gates to prevent passes falling into the hands of the touts.

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Hulk, Shyamalan seek second chance at the movies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - This weekend's lineup at the U.S. box office might well be called a showdown between two Hollywood second-chances -- a remake of a superhero flop and a new film from an acclaimed director whose last movie bombed.

But if early reviews are any indication, the hands-down favorite to dominate megaplexes heading into the seventh week of the lucrative summer movie season is "The Incredible Hulk," a revival of the oversized green brute Marvel Studios first brought to theaters in 2003.

Critics say the new version, emphasizing action over introspection, is markedly superior to the brooding "Hulk" forerunner that got off to a strong commercial start but quickly fizzled as comic book fans found it lacking.

Reviews are less than kind to the only other wide release this coming weekend, "The Happening," the first offering from filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan since his "Lady in the Water" drew critical sneers and sputtered at box offices in 2006.

Still, industry watchers say Shyamalan, whose 1999 sleeper hit "The Sixth Sense" made him a filmmaking sensation, will likely give the Hulk a run for his money with his latest thriller about the outbreak of a mysterious plague.

"There's a lot of interest in this weekend because these two films have a lot to prove for very different reasons," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office tracking service Media By Numbers.

Much is at stake for Marvel, which is seeking to build on the recent blockbuster success of "Iron Man" with what it calls a "re-boot" of another one of its most popular superhero characters, the Hulk.

BIG BUCKS AT STAKE

Big Fat Snake

Artist: Big Fat Snake

   Genre(s):
Other

Discography:

More Fire

Year: 2004
Tracks: 11

3 Doors Down tops Billboard 200

Bub B, Julianne Hough follow in 2nd, 3rd spots

NEW YORK -- A trio of new releases top the Billboard 200 this week, with 3 Doors Down's self-titled Universal Republic effort leading the charge at No. 1. The effort moved 154,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, making it the band's second chart-topping album.
3 Doors Down's last effort, "Seventeen Days," also started in the penthouse in 2005. So far, all four of the group's releases have reached the top 10 and have collectively sold 11.4 million copies.
UGK rapper Bun B's "II Trill" debuts at No. 2 with 98,000. The Rap-A-Lot/Asylum set is led by the single "That's Gangsta" featuring Sean Kingston and comes on the heels of the appropriately titled "Trill," which debuted and peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in 2005 with an opening sales frame of 118,000.
"Dancing with the Stars" champ-turned-country-singer Julianne Hough's self-titled Mercury Nashville debut enters at No. 3, moving 67,000. The single "That Song In My Head" rises 32-29 on the Hot Country Songs chart this week.
Reprise's retrospective Frank Sinatra collection "Nothing But the Best" falls from No. 2 to No. 4 with 54,000, a 45% slip in sales. Last week's No. 1, Death Cab For Cutie's "Narrow Stairs" (Atlantic), descends to No. 5 with a 63% dip to 53,000. Leona Lewis' Syco/J set "Spirit" falls a notch from No. 5 to No. 6 with 50,000 (a 20% decline).
Selling 45,000, Mariah Carey's Island Def Jam album "E=MC2" is down from No. 6 to No. 7 with a 23% sales hit, while Duffy's "Rockferry" (Mercury) endures a 38% sales decrease, moving 44,000 and falling from fourth to eighth. Madonna's "Hard Candy" (Warner Bros.) descends a notch from No. 8 to No. 9 with 39,000 (a 28% decline), and Neil Diamond's "Home Before Dark" (Columbia) slips from No. 7 to No. 10 with 36,000 (a 33% drop).
Five other efforts bow in the top 50 on the chart this week. Jesse McCartney's third studio set, "Departure" (Hollywood), starts at No. 14 with 30,000. The new album was preceded by the single "Leavin'," which recently became his first top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. He also earned a No. 1 this year on the Hot 100 as a co-writer of Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love."
Other debuts include Donna Summer's "Crayons" (Burgundy) at No. 17 with 23,000, the not-so-secret Green Day side project Foxboro Hot Tubs' "Stop Drop and Roll!!!" (Reprise) at No. 21 with 19,000, the compilation "Disneymania 6: Music Stars Sing Disney ... Their Way" at No. 33 with 16,000 and the John Williams soundtrack to "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (Concord) at No. 39 with 14,000.
Album sales this week are down 3.1% from last week's sum with 7.2 million units and down 13.3% from the same week last year.

Keith Caulfield contributed to this report.

Dennis Farina charged in LA airport gun incident

LOS ANGELES - Dennis Farina has been charged with illegally having a gun in his luggage at Los Angeles International Airport.

The city attorney's office on Wednesday charged the "Law & Order" actor with three misdemeanor counts involving possession of a concealed and loaded weapon. The charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 2� years in jail and $3,000 in fines.

Farina was arrested three weeks ago when a .22-calibre handgun was found in his carry-on luggage. He publicly apologized and told police he forgot the weapon was there.

County prosecutors declined to charge Farina with felonies and referred the case to city prosecutors.

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Chasing Adele

At first viewing, 19-year-old Adele Laurie Blue Adkins' performance last August on popular U.K. music program "Later... With Jools Holland" is the picture of composure and grace. Only after repeated viewings can a viewer catch the occasional glances of awe and panic in the young woman's eyes, as well as the palpable sense of relief as she finishes the song to loud applause. Her slightly jangled nerves are understandable; after all, how many teenagers would be cool and collected sharing a stage with Björk and Paul McCartney, let alone a teenager who had just signed a record deal a few months before?

The way Adele tells it, her rise to the top of the U.K. charts was a rather charmed experience. "I went to the BRIT School [a performing arts magnet school that boasts alums like Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis and Kate Nash] because I was bored at my regular school and wanted to be productive," she says. "I recorded some songs and my friend set up a MySpace page for me in early 2005. At that point, MySpace wasn't that big of a deal in the U.K., but about a year later, all the record companies got on there to look for the next Lily Allen."

One of those record companies was XL, whose overtures Adele -— as she is known —- initially ignored. "XL e-mailed me and invited me for a meeting, but I ignored them to focus on finishing school and planning my 18th birthday party," she says with a giggle. "They just kept hassling me, and so I finally talked to them, and they offered me a deal."

Deal in place, Adele ran into a snag: writer's block. For eight months, she says, she had nothing to write about. "I was overwhelmed by the deal, because it came out of nowhere," she says. "Then I met and broke up with my ex, and the songs just poured out."

Once the record was finished, XL started the promotion process by pushing her first single, "Hometown Glory," to U.K. radio. National stations Radio 1 and Radio 2 also played a big role in making her second single, "Chasing Pavements," peak at No. 2 on the U.K. singles chart.

Another early adopter was TV host Jools Holland, who brought her on his show before her record was even released. The buzz around Adele continued growing throughout the fall of 2007, and on Dec. 10 she was awarded the first BRIT Awards Critics' Choice prize.

With all the acclaim came one name that Adele couldn't seem to shake: Amy Winehouse. The famously troubled singer seemed to follow Adele, as many of the articles written about her contained some form of the phrase "the next Amy Winehouse." A few members of the press even took to lumping Adele in with Duffy and Kate Nash, calling the young women "the next Amys."

To establish an individual persona, XL and Adele's management have steered clear of trying to sell the artist as a personality or build a brand around her. "I only want to be known as a singer," Adele says. "I'm not interested in writing columns for the Guardian or being a star with my own TV show." Adele's album has sold approximately 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom since it was released Jan. 28, according to the Official U.K. Charts Co.

Building awareness of Adele in the United States has only been ongoing for a short period of time; she played her first shows here in March, the same month she signed to her U.S. label, Columbia. Her first real tour kicks off May 21, and, according to promoter Kirk May, "they sold out instantly." Plans are already under way to bring Adele back stateside in August and do bigger shows, like the Bumbershoot and Austin City Limits festivals.

In meantime, Adele is already thinking forward. "I don't think you come into your own until your second or third record," Adele says. "I don't want to get too big too fast and then have to deal with the sophomore curse. It's more important for me to be able to make a lot of good records than to just have one hit and be forgotten."

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