Month: June 2009

Categories
People

May he rest in peace!!

Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkok
BANGKOK ñ Much like the character that made him famous, David Carradine was always seeking, both spiritually and professionally, his life forever intertwined with the Shaolin priest he played in the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu.”
Just as the character, Kwai Chang Caine, roamed the 19th Century American West, Carradine spent his latter years searching for the path to Hollywood stardom, accepting low-budget roles while pursuing interests in Asian herbs, exercise and philosophy, and making instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.
Carradine was found dead Thursday in Thailand. The 72-year-old actor appeared to have hanged himself in a suite at the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel, said Lt. Teerapop Luanseng, the officer responsible for investigating the death.
“I can confirm that we found his body, naked, hanging in the closet,” Teerapop said. He said police were investigating and suspected suicide, though one of his managers questioned that theory.
“All we can say is, we know David would never have committed suicide,” said Tiffany Smith, of Binder & Associates, his management company. “We’re just waiting for them to finish the investigation and find out what really happened. He really appreciated everything life has to give … and that’s not something David would ever do to himself.”
Carradine had flown to Thailand last week and began work on “Stretch” two days before his death, Smith said. He had several other projects lined up after the action film, which was being directed by Charles De Meaux with Carradine in the lead.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday.
“I was deeply saddened by the news of David Carradine’s passing,” said director Martin Scorcese. “We met when we made ‘Boxcar Bertha’ together, almost 40 years ago. I have very fond memories of our time together on that picture and on ‘Mean Streets,’ where he agreed to do a brief cameo.”
Carradine came from an acting family. His father, John, made a career playing creepy, eccentric characters in film and on stage. Half-brothers Keith, Robert and Bruce also became actors, and actress Martha Plimpton is Keith Carradine’s daughter.
“My Uncle David was a brilliantly talented, fiercely intelligent and generous man. He was the nexus of our family in so many ways, and drew us together over the years and kept us connected,” Plimpton said Thursday.
Carradine was “in good spirits” when he left the U.S. for Thailand on May 29 to work on “Stretch,” Smith said.
“David was excited to do it and excited to be a part of it,” she said by phone from Beverly Hills.
Filming began Tuesday, she said, adding that the crew was devastated by Carradine’s death and did not wish to speak publicly about it for the time being.
The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid Thursday morning. It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a curtain cord and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.
Police said Carradine’s body was taken to a hospital for an autopsy that would be done Friday.
Carradine appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his early film roles was as folk singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby’s 1976 biopic, “Bound for Glory.”
But he was best known for “Kung Fu,” which aired from 1972-75.
Carradine, a martial arts practitioner himself, played Caine, an orphan who was raised by Shaolin monks and fled China after killing the emperor’s nephew in retaliation for the murder of his kung fu master.
Pursued by revenge assassins from China, Caine wanders the American West in search of his half-brother Danny. His conscience forces him to fight injustice wherever he encounters it, fueled by flashbacks to his training in which his master famously refers to him as “Grasshopper.”
Carradine left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.
“I wasn’t like a TV star in those days. I was like a rock ‘n’ roll star,” Carradine said in an interview with Associated Press Radio in 1996. “It was a phenomenon kind of thing. … It was very special.”
Actor Rainn Wilson, star of TV’s “The Office,” said on Twitter: “R.I.P. David Carradine. You were a true hero to so many of us children of the 70s. We’ll miss you, Kwai Chang Caine.”
Carradine reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine’s grandson in the 1990s syndicated series “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”
He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga “Kill Bill.” Bill, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003’s “Kill Bill ó Vol. 1.” In that film, one of Bill’s former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates, including Bill.
In “Kill Bill ó Vol. 2,” released in 2004, Thurman’s character catches up to Bill. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.
Bill was a complete contrast to Caine, the soft-spoken refugee serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West.
“David’s always been kind of a seeker of knowledge and of wisdom in his own inimitable way,” Keith Carradine, said in a 1995 interview.
After “Kung Fu,” Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick “Death Race 2000.” He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg” in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western “The Long Riders.” But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films.
Tarantino’s films changed that.
“All I’ve ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago … is just to be in one,” Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.
“There isn’t anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn’t do,” he said. “All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin’s courage to take and put me in the spotlight.”
In the 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes.
“You’re probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions,” Carradine said. “Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.
“It’s time to do nothing but look forward.”

Categories
Games

Twenty-five years…already?!?

At 25, `Tetris’ drops into place as gaming icon
With its scratches and sticky brown beer stains, the “Tetris” arcade machine near the back of a Brooklyn bar called Barcade has seen better days. Which makes sense, given that the machine was made in the 1980s.
Even today, though, it’s not hard to find 20- and 30-somethings plucking away at its ancient controls, flipping shapes made up of four connected squares and fitting them into orderly patterns as they descend, faster and faster as the game goes on.
“You could just play infinitely,” said Michael Pierce, 28, who was playing against Dan Rothfarb, also 28. Both have been fans since they ó and the game ó were young. “Tetris” has its 25th birthday this week.
Pierce recalls playing “Tetris” on a Nintendo Game Boy that was on display in a department store when his family couldn’t afford the unit. Rothfarb played on his Nintendo until the game wouldn’t go any faster.
Completed by a Soviet programmer in 1984, “Tetris” has come a long way from its square roots. It’s played by millions, not just on computers and gaming consoles but now on Facebook and the iPhone as well.
“Tetris” stands out as one of the rare cultural products to come West from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And the addictive rhythm of its task-by-task race against time was an early sign of our inbox-clearing, Twitter-updating, BlackBerry-thumbing world to come.
In her book “Hamlet on the Holodeck,” Georgia Tech professor Janet Murray called “Tetris” the “perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans.” The game, she wrote, shows the “constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught.”
Many people who grew up with “Tetris” haven’t stopped playing.
“I’d stay up, wait for my parents to go to bed, smuggle my Nintendo into my bedroom, hook it up to my television and play this game until all hours of the morning,” said John Clemente, another player at Barcade. “Tetris,” he says, was the only game to drive him “to the point of insanity.” As a child, he once kicked his Nintendo across the room.
“It was a very love-hate relationship,” he said.
“Tetris” is easy to pick up. Rotate the falling shapes so that you form full lines at the bottom of the screen. Fit the shapes so there are as few open spaces left as possible. Aim for a Tetris: four lines completed in one swoop. Repeat. Watch your score zoom.
But Tetris is hard to master. Because the shapes ó technically known as tetrominoes ó come in a random order, it is hard to predict the best way to organize them so that they can form neat rows.
In fact, in 2002, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers determined that the potential combinations are so numerous that it would be impossible even for a computer to calculate the best place to put each falling shape. Erik Demaine, an associate professor of computer science, praised the game’s “mathematical elegance,” which perhaps stems from the background of its developer.
Alexey Pajitnov was 29 and working for the Moscow Academy of Sciences when he completed “Tetris” on June 6, 1984, for a Soviet computer system called the Elektronika. A computer programmer by day who researched artificial intelligence and automatic speech recognition, Pajitnov worked on the game in his spare time.
“All my life I liked puzzles, mathematical riddles and diversion,” Pajitnov said in a recent interview from Moscow. “Tetris,” he said, was just one of the games he made back then. The others are mostly long forgotten.
Pajitnov’s creation spread in Moscow through the small community of people who had access to computers. Word filtered through computer circles to the West, where the game drew the interest of entrepreneurs. A company called Spectrum HoloByte managed to obtain PC rights, but another, Mirrorsoft, also released a version. Years of legal wrangling followed, with several companies claiming pieces of the “Tetris” pie ó for handheld systems, computers and arcades.
Complicating matters, the Soviet Union did not allow privately held businesses. The Soviet state held the “Tetris” licensing rights and Pajitnov had no claim to the profits. He didn’t fight it.
“Basically, at the moment I realized I wanted this game to be published, I understood that Soviet power will either help me or never let it happen,” he said.
It wasn’t until 1996 that Pajitnov got licensing rights. Asked whether he made enough money off the game to live comfortably, he says yes, but offers no more details. Today, he is part owner of Tetris Co., which manages the game’s licenses worldwide.
Nintendo Co. was an early and big beneficiary of the game, which stood out from its mid-’80s peers because it had no characters and no shooting.
When Nintendo was preparing to release its Game Boy device in 1989, the company planned to include with it one of the games that are also classics today: “Super Mario,” “Donkey Kong” and “Zelda.” But Nintendo wanted something everyone would play ó a “perfect killer game” that would sell the Game Boy, said Minoru Arakawa, the president of Nintendo of America from 1980 to 2002.
The solution was “Tetris” ó though Nintendo needed help from Henk Rogers, a U.S. entrepreneur.
Rogers had spotted “Tetris” at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and bought the rights to a PC version of the game in Japan from Spectrum HoloByte. In February 1989, he went to Moscow on a tourist visa to try to get the rights for Nintendo. He spent his first day in a taxi with a driver who didn’t speak English, communicating by gestures and trying in vain to find the ministry of software and hardware export. The next morning, he hired an interpreter and things went more smoothly, and “Tetris” got bundled into the first Game Boy.
Since then, “Tetris” has expanded to all kinds of devices and inspired a generation of knockoffs. Tetris Co. says 125 million copies have been sold in various incarnations.
Pajitnov says “Tetris” could stick around another quarter-century.
“I hope so, why not?” he said. “Technology changes a lot, but I can’t say people change a lot.”

Categories
Concerts

Coolio!!

McCartney to play first show at Shea’s replacement
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ñ Forty-four years after he and the rest of the Beatles played the first major arena show in rock history at New York’s Shea Stadium, Paul McCartney will perform next month at the new baseball field that replaced it.
Tickets go on sale next Monday for two McCartney concerts set for July 17 and 18 at Citi Field, marking the first musical performances scheduled at the new home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, organizers said on Wednesday.
The concert is being touted as the latest performance linking Britain’s McCartney, 66, with New York City and the Mets, starting with the Beatles’ landmark appearance at Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965.
That performance, attended by more than 55,000 fans, many of them hysterical, screaming teenage girls, was the first ever concert at Shea and launched the era of outdoor stadium rock shows. The Beatles’ first live U.S. show actually took place more than a year earlier, in February 1964, at the Washington Coliseum, an indoor venue in Washington, D.C.
McCartney returned to Shea last July for a surprise guest performance at Billy Joel’s “Last Play at Shea” concert, closing that show with a rendition of “Let It Be.”
“The Beatles were the first to play at Shea Stadium and along with Billy Joel, I was the last to sing at the old Shea,” McCartney said in a statement. “I am really looking forward to a buzzing show.”
Organizers said McCartney’s set list for Citi Field would feature hits from his days with the Beatles, Wings and his solo career, as well as selections from his latest album, “Electric Arguments,” released under his musical alter ego, The Fireman.

Categories
Awards

It was funny because it was funny!! Staged or not!!

MTV’s Eminem-Bruno Stunt Was Completely Staged, Says Host Andy Samberg’s Head Writer
Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno gave Eminem a “new moon” preview of his own.
The “face-off” between Sacha Baron Cohen’s bare backside and Eminem’s mug came as a surprise to the viewers of Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards, but just how shocked was the rapper also known as Marshall Mathers?
To hear host Andy Samberg’s head writer, Scott Aukerman, tell it, not at all.
Ending nearly 24 hours of silence from all involved parties, Aukerman took to his blog to set the record straight: “Yes, the Eminem-Bruno incident was staged. They rehearsed it at dress [rehearsal] and yes, it went as far as it did on the live show.”
As previously reported, Cohen’s “Bruno” alter ego landing in Eminem’s lap was of course a prearranged stunt. “There’s no way it was an accident,” an industry insider who was seated a few rows in front of Eminem told TVGuide.com. “You don’t let two stars collide without a detailed plan.”
As such, Bruno’s airborne entrance was purposely detoured by speakers that were lowered into his path during the previous commercial break. That bit of equipment manipulation ó coupled with the director’s cut to Eminem several seconds before Bruno’s “fall” ó made for the first “smoking gun.”
What about the appearance that tensions escalated when Cohen thrust his bare derriere in Eminem’s face? While a spokesperson for the recording artist has not yet responded to multiple requests for comment, head writer Aukerman’s blog now confirms that it was all for show. (When considering Eminem’s compelling performance, remember that he did collect the occasional accolade for his acting debut in the semibiographical 2002 film 8 Mile.)
“Everyone was laughing about it during the next break,” says our eyewitness, “especially the MTV staffers.”
While it is true that Eminem, after “storming out” in disgust, never returned to his seat, that was the M.O. of many a star who shone at the awards show.
“Most of the big celebs came, did their thing and left,” reports our onlooker.
MTV reps declined to comment on the incident.

Categories
Music

New Tunage – Love that Chickenfoot CD!!

New CD Releases, June 2: Dave Matthews Band, Neil Young, Rancid, Elvis Costello, Ryan Bingham, Chickenfoot and more!!
Dave Matthews Band “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King” (RCA)
The multi-platinum rock act is on an impressive run: Its last four studio outings have all debuted in the No. 1 slot on the US album charts. Now, the Dave Matthews Band is looking to make it five in a row with the release of “Big Whiskey and the GooGrux King.”
The set, which follows 2005’s “Stand Up,” is DMB’s first release since the death of founding member LeRoi Moore. The saxophonist died in August from complications resulting from an ATV accident that occurred on his Virginia ranch. The second part of the album’s title, “GrooGrux King,” is said to be a reference to Moore.
The album was produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance) and its first single is the track “Funny the Way It Is.”
The Dave Matthews Band is currently on tour in support of the album. Currently, the group has shows booked through the start of October.
* * *
Neil Young “Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972” (Reprise)
Nearly two decades in the making, the first volume of Young’s ambitious “Archives” project is finally ready to hit shelves. The multi-disc collection will be available in three different formats: Blu-ray, DVD and CD.
This volume–which spans 10 discs in the Blu-ray and DVD configurations, and eight discs in the CD version–covers the first 10 years of Young’s legendary body of work. An interactive-timeline feature allows the viewer to follow the singer-songwriter during this period of his career, beginning with his high school band The Squires and continuing up through his landmark albums of the early ’70s.
The release of the first volume of “Archives” quickly follows a new studio offering from Young. The Northern California resident can be heard singing the praises of eco-friendly transportation on “Fork in the Road,” which hit stores in early April.
* * *
Rancid “Let the Dominoes Fall” (Epitaph)
The San Francisco Bay Area punk rockers are back with the long-awaited studio follow-up to 2003’s “Indestructible,” a work that peaked at No. 15 on The Billboard 200 and spawned the modern-rock hit “Fall Back Down.” The band’s most recent offering was 2007’s “Rancid B Sides & C Sides,” which included previously unreleased material alongside songs that have been featured on compilations, soundtracks and B-sides.
“Let the Dominoes Fall” is the group’s seventh studio album, and it was produced by longtime collaborator Brett Gurewitz. “Let the Dominoes Fall” is available in several different formats, including a single-disc CD, a double-vinyl LP set and an expanded multi-CD/DVD combo, which offers such bonuses as an acoustic version of the album.
Rancid will let the “Dominoes” fall while serving as the main support act on Rise Against’s North American headlining tour. The trek gets underway June 4 in Vancouver, BC, and is currently scheduled to run through a July 31 date in Toronto.
* * *
Elvis Costello “Secret, Profane and Sugarcane” (Hear Music)
The Grammy-winning singer/songwriter is set to drop his 25th studio album, which trails last year’s “Momofuku.” The 13-track record was produced by the legendary T Bone Burnett, who also co-wrote two of its numbers, “Sulphur to Sugarcane” and “The Crooked Line.”
“Secret, Profane and Sugarcane” also features guest-star vocalists Jim Lauderdale, Emmylou Harris and Loretta Lynn. The album was recorded over three days at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studio, and will be sold at participating Starbucks locations in the US and Canada, as well as through traditional music retailers.
Costello will tour with the musicians who backed him in the studio for the new album. Dubbed The Sugarcanes, the lineup includes Jerry Douglas on dobro, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Mike Compton on mandolin, Jeff Taylor on accordion and Dennis Crouch on double bass. The run begins on June 9 in Red Bank, NJ.
* * *
Ryan Bingham “Roadhouse Sun” (Lost Highway)
The alt-country troubadour returns with a follow-up to his 2007 major-label debut, “Mescalito.” “Roadhouse Sun” was produced by former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford, who was also at the dials on the singer’s previous record.
Bingham spent the spring helping to create a buzz about the new album’s release. Notably, he appeared on both the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Also, his song “Southside of Heaven” was featured in an “ER” episode.
* * *
Chickenfoot “Chickenfoot” (Fontana)
Exiled from Van Halen in favor of David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen’s teenage son, singer Sammy Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony have gotten themselves another guitar legend and powerhouse drummer–this time in the form of Joe Satriani and Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers). Originally a just-for-fun trio featuring Hagar, Anthony and Smith–who joined forces a couple of years ago during an impromptu jam at Hagar’s Cabo Wabo nightclub in Mexico–the group went legit by recruiting six-string wizard Satriani and recording an album with legendary producer Andy Johns (Led Zeppelin, Van Halen).
Hagar raised eyebrows when he commented in an interview last year that Chickenfoot’s music could rival that of Led Zeppelin; Smith recently defused that bomb while making an on-camera Zeppelin reference during a track-by-track, “Chickenfoot” video documentary that is available at the group’s website.
“I know we’re not supposed to talk about Led Zeppelin since Sammy got drunk and said that we were better than Led Zeppelin,” Smith joked. “We’re not better than Led Zeppelin, and Sammy was drunk when he said that, OK? So let’s put that s— to rest.”
* * *
More new releases:
Stephanie J. Block, “This Place I Know” (PS Classics)
Jeff Buckley, “Grace–Around the World” (Sony)
Crosby Stills & Nash, “Demos” (Rhino)
Eels, “Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire” (Vagrant)
IQ, “Frequency” (Inside Out)
Paolo Nutini, “Sunny Side Up” (Atlantic)
Iggy Pop, “Preliminaires” (Astralwerks)
Eros Ramazzotti, “Ali E Radici” (Sony)
Taking Back Sunday, “New Again” (Reprise)
311, “Uplifter” (Volcano)
UFO, “The Visitor” (Steamhammer)
Soundtracks and scores:
“The Story of My Life” (PS Classics)
“West Side Story: The New Broadway Cast Recording” (Sony)

Categories
Games

Cool!!!

Beatles Reveal ‘Rock Band’ Details At E3
The surviving members of the Beatles unveiled new details about their upcoming “Rock Band” videogame at the E3 videogame conference in Los Angeles.
Joined by Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr disclosed 10 of the 45 songs expected in “The Beatles: Rock Band” when it comes out Sept. 9.
The tracks are “I Saw Her Standing There,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “I Feel Fine,” “Taxman,” “Day Tripper,” “Back In The USSR,” “I Am The Walrus,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “Here Comes The Sun” and “Get Back.”
Additionally, they said the entire “Abbey Road” album will be available for purchase and download, as will other tracks from the band’s catalog, after the game’s release, and “All You Need Is Love” will be released exclusively for Xbox 360 users as a downloadable song the day the game hits retail shelves. The proceeds of the single will be donated to Doctors Without Boarders.
Different venues played by the Beatles will be recreated for the game, including the Cavern Club in Liverpool (where they got their start), the Ed Sullivan Show, Shea Stadium and the Budokan in Japan.
The game will take fans into the studio experience after the band stopped touring through “artistic visual expressions known as Dreamscapes, intended to transport players to the imaginative environments that capture the essence of The Beatles’ genre-busting musical and fashion transformations during their later years,” according to the release.
From a gameplay perspective, the release will break from existing music-based games that allow for only one singer, and add three-part vocal harmonies. Content will also include previously unreleased recordings of the bandmates talking between takes during studio sessions recorded at Abbey Road.
A demo version of the game is available for attendees of the E3 conference to play.

Categories
Television

I agree with Ferrell, he still can’t interview people, so this thing is “…a crapshoot at best!!”

Conan O’Brien makes debut on ‘The Tonight Show’
NEW YORK ñ Conan O’Brien debuted as host of “The Tonight Show” Monday with a “run” across the country to Los Angeles and other comedy bits emphasizing his entry into a strange new culture.
He joined a line of predecessors ó Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno ó on television’s most historic late-night franchise.
“I think I’ve timed this move perfectly,” he said in his opening monologue. “I’m on a last-place network, I moved to a state that’s bankrupt and ‘The Tonight Show’ is sponsored by General Motors.”
O’Brien spent 17 years as host of NBC’s “Late Night” in New York, and the move up one hour has been in the works for five years. Leno, his immediate predecessor, will do a weeknight prime-time show on NBC. The workaholic Leno will start “in two days, three days tops,” O’Brien joked. Actually, it’s in September.
O’Brien christened a new studio on the Universal City lot with a handsome art deco look. The stage has a blue glass background for the opening monologue, before O’Brien retreats to a desk in front of a sparkling backdrop of Los Angeles.
From the top, O’Brien showed the silly comic style that sets him apart from Leno, with more comedy skits filmed earlier and less reliance on jokes in front of the studio audience. The first one showed O’Brien marking off a to-do list with “move to L.A.” left undone, as a camera panned a New York skyline outside his window.
A frantic O’Brien went out in the street to find a cab. When he couldn’t, he began running. He ran out of New York, and sprinted through various spots across the country ó across Wrigley Field in Chicago, past the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, by the Rockies and through the desert to Las Vegas. Finally he arrived at the locked door to his new studio, only to realize he’d left his keys behind.
In other segments, O’Brien commandeered a tram filled with tourists on a Universal Studios lot tour and took his used green Ford Taurus for a ride into the car-obsessed culture. Fabio complimented him on his ride.
O’Brien appeared nervous at the long-awaited opening night, pacing onstage during his monologue and mugging with his red pompadour.
“I remember watching Johnny Carson when I was a kid and thinking: That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” O’Brien said. “I’m sure right now in America there is likely a kid watching me, thinking: ‘What is wrong with that man’s hair?'”
Longtime sidekick Andy Richter slid smoothly into the role Ed McMahon once played for Carson, standing at a podium to the side of the stage and loudly laughing at his boss’ jokes.
Over at CBS, David Letterman slyly made mention of NBC’s transition.
“I’m still here,” he said. “I knocked off another competitor.”
He said he got a call from his mom and she said, “Well, David, I see you didn’t get ‘The Tonight Show’ again,” a reference to Letterman losing out to Leno to become Carson’s successor.
Comic Will Ferrell was O’Brien’s first guest, his appearance less manic than some of his memorable “Late Night” visits. He offered O’Brien some “tips” for L.A. living, including a good burger joint in Pasadena “called Burger King.”
Pearl Jam was the musical guest, debuting a song off an upcoming album.
Ferrell sang his own song in tribute to O’Brien, a version of “Never Can Say Goodbye” that “bewildered” the host. Why sing a goodbye song on the first night?
“Don’t get me wrong,” Ferrell said. “I’m pulling for you. But this little thing is a crapshoot at best.”

Categories
Concerts

Poor, poor Nas!! Poor baby!!

Get professional, Nas tells promoters after failed St. John’s gig
U.S. rapper Nas laid the blame for his no-show at a St. John’s-area gig on the Canadian promoters, who left him unpaid hours before the start of a St. John’s-area gig.
Nas refused to take the stage Thursday night at an arena in Torbay, just north of St. John’s, after promoters informed him they did not have enough money to pay his $47,000 fee.
Fans rebelled when local promoter ODC ó which is blaming a Halifax company for failing to come up with its share of Nas’s payment ó told them Nas would not perform, with the police arresting several rowdy fans.
In a message posted this weekend to the hip-hop site Global Grind, the New York rapper fired back at the promoters who lured him to make the trip.
“Bad business is bad business,” Nas wrote. “Now, I don’t usually leave my crib unless all the business is handled first. But I love my fans in Canada so I said cool. But of course it wasn’t cool.”
Nas cooled his heels at the bar at St. John’s International Airport after he was informed there wasn’t enough money to pay him. He wrote that the promoters also cancelled the hotel rooms for his party.
“So we what we had to do and did was get up out of there. But to all of Canada make sure u know I roll with ya hard!” Nas wrote. “It’s all love.”
Craig Cantwell of ODC Productions told CBC News that the company paid Nas about half of his fee, and thought that Lux Entertainment of Halifax had paid the rest. Instead, he learned that the money was not available. As well, Cantwell said that Lux even failed to procure return air tickets for the show’s opening act, Canadian hip-star Kardinal Offishall.
Nas said he had little time for what happened.
“My advice to wannabe promoters anywhere they are [is to] take business serious,” he wrote.
“Learn about being professional. Always. It’s very important to be real with people. Don’t continue to pull these 1950-style ways of doin’ business. It’s wack.”

Categories
Games

This game could be cool…I guess…

Jay-Z and Eminem spin a musical game out of ‘DJ Hero’
The upcoming DJ Hero video game just landed two heavy hitters as MCs: Jay-Z and Eminem.
Both rappers are bringing their music to the newest offshoot of Activision’s successful $2 billion Guitar Hero franchise. The game, played with a turntable-shaped controller, is due out this fall for PlayStation 3, PS2, Xbox 360 and Wii (no price or rating yet).
A special edition comes with the rappers’ new greatest-hits CDs, possibly including previously unreleased tracks, plus an advanced version of the controller, a DJ stand and metal traveling case. Jay-Z and Eminem will serve as consultants to Activision and the game’s developer, FreeStyleGames.
The complete list of tracks the rappers are providing is still being worked out. Jay-Z plans on including Izzo (H.O.V.A.) and Dirt Off Your Shoulder for sure. Also possible: tracks from his in-the-works Blueprint 3 album. “I have a ton of content, I just need the pipeline,” he says. “I love the freedom of (DJ Hero). I could wake up tomorrow morning with the idea for a song and call the guys at Activision and start working on getting it out.”
Eminem is more cryptic about his contributions. “I don’t want to give away any surprises yet,” he says in an e-mail interview. “DJ Hero will include my music, and I’ll be providing additional material as downloadable content by the end of the year.”
Players use the features on the game’s controller ó a rotating record platter, sampling buttons, an effects dial and a cross fader ó to match streams of song tracks, create effects and add personal touches to score points.
“You actually get lost doing it,” says Jay-Z, who has played the game. It creates “a DJ’s universe,” he says.
In addition to single-DJ action, two players can compete or play cooperatively. Special mixes will let players use the Guitar Hero controller. The game spans hip-hop, electronica, R&B, soul and pop/rock with songs by 50 Cent, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, Blondie, N.E.R.D., Gorillaz and David Bowie. Superstar DJs such as DJ Shadow, DJ Z-Trip and DJ AM will contribute, too.
“You are going to get over 100 songs from 80 artists and 80 brand-new mixes that have never been heard before, including one with Eminem and Jay-Z (together),” says Guitar Hero president and CEO Dan Rosensweig.
“This is a game I can see myself actually playing,” Eminem says. “DJ’ing is fundamental to rap music, so it’s a great fit.”