Time does the unthinkable: a top 100 albums list with no Pink Floyd
A list of the 100 greatest and most influential albums compiled by Time magazine has five Beatles selections, but nothing by Pink Floyd.
Sergeant Pepper, Abbey Road, The White Album, Revolver and Rubber Soul are all on the list, published in the current issue of Time.
The 1970 album John Lennon, by the Plastic Ono band also is included, with the comment that "Lennon's writing was never sharper, and his still-underrated singing stands with rock's finest."
But Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, one of the bestselling albums of all time and one that continues to get airplay 33 years after it was recorded, didn't make the cut.
"And that's how it should be," Time scribes write in their introduction to the list, which is categorized by decade rather than by degree of influence.
Other prominent no-shows — The Doors, Elvis Costello and Jay-Z.
Each selection is accompanied by a written justification and a podcast that tells readers how the selection committee decided.
Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has one album, Blue, and Canadian rocker Neil Young has After the Gold Rush.
The list covers a range of musical styles, from Delta blues and country, to rock and hip hop.
Thus The Clash's London Calling appears in the same decade as Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors.
The 1950s has four selections, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Here's Little Richard by Little Richard and two Frank Sinatra recordings, Songs for Swingin' Lovers and In the Wee Small Hours.
But Hank Williams and Elvis Presley appear, inexplicably, in the 2000s, with Elvis at the Sun and Elvis 30 No. 1 Hits, recorded in the 1950s but released in 2004, and The Essential Hank Williams Collection, recorded before the advent of the long-playing album but released in 2005, both making the list.
Similarly, posthumous collections from Bob Marley and Muddy Waters are chosen ahead of albums they recorded in their lifetimes.
In more modern choices for the 2000s, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, Kanye West's The College Dropout and Radiohead's Kid A were also on Time's list.
The greatest number of albums was from the 1970s, with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols bumping shoulders with Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road up against Black Sabbath's Paranoid, which is honoured as "the birthplace of heavy metal."
O.J. Simpson to promote "If I Did It" on Fox
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox said Tuesday it will air a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson at month's end in which he describes the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and her friend that he says he didn't commit.
The interview will be conducted by editor and book publisher Judith Regan. On November 30, her Regan Books is publishing a book Simpson wrote with the working title "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."
Fox said Simpson's book "hypothetically describes" how he would have committed the murders. The special will air at 9 p.m. November 27 and 29 on Fox.
Fox executives declined comment about the show Tuesday. In a statement released Tuesday, executive vp/alternative programming Mike Darnell said: "This is an interview that no one thought would ever happen. It's the definitive last chapter in the trial of the century."
Fox is a subsidiary of News Corp., which also owns Regan Books.
A spokeswoman for Regan Books didn't return a phone call or an e-mail seeking comment Tuesday.
Simpson was acquitted in 1995 of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman; he can't be tried again for those crimes. In 1997, a civil court found him responsible for the slayings and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the victims' families.
Sinatra in Vegas out in CD-DVD box set
NEW YORK - Frank Sinatra was never happier, his daughter Tina says, than when he was working in Las Vegas. Those years are now captured in song by "Sinatra in Vegas," a box set of four concert CDs, and one DVD, ranging from the Rat Pack peak of the early 1960s to the late 1980s, just before his voice and memory began to give way.
As Tina Sinatra remembers it, you could pretty much tell how her dad was feeling on stage by the musicians he chose to sing with.
"If he was happy, he would use a larger swing band, a lot of brass," she said during a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. "If he was feeling melancholy, he might work with something a little more intimate, like the sextet he performed with in Paris in the `50s. He would stick closer to saloon songs."
Sinatra, who died in 1998 at age 82, didn't have a Vegas theme song, the way "New York, New York" and "My Kind of Town" (Chicago is) worked for other cities. But his real home in concert was the desert haven of gambling and other recreation that he as much as anybody made famous. "Those were the magic years, his senior statesman years," Tina Sinatra says. "He was the sassy cat in Vegas."
Working with bands led by such favorites as Count Basie, and Sinatra's son, Frank Sinatra, Jr., he comes on sassy for most the Vegas tracks, camping "The Lady is the Tramp" to the point of obscenity; cracking up during the most sensitive of ballads, "I've Got a Crush on You," and warning "Hold on to your handbags" as the Basie band kicks into the break of "I've Got You Under My Skin." Even on a disc from 1987, when he's in his early 70s, he can open with "I've Got the World on a String" and never hint that he doesn't believe it.
Vegas was hardly the place for protest music, but the box set does include a Sinatra interview in which he recalls his anger that the black musicians in his group were told to stay in a separate hotel.
"I did make some demand on some people and, said, `If they all have to live on the other side of town, then you don't need me,'" he says. "I guess I was the biggest mouth in town."
Listening to the Vegas tracks brought back musical and nonmusical memories for Tina Sinatra, who explains how her dad loved the desert because it was good for his throat, and was bothered when all the hotels became air conditioned and he needed a humidifier to keep the rasp out of his voice.
Tina Sinatra has worked on numerous projects about her father, serving as executive producer of the 1992 miniseries, "Sinatra," and writing a memoir, "My Father's Daughter." She still listens to his music all the time — "he's always one of six CDs I have in the player in my car" — and remembers the calls she would receive at 6 o'clock every night, from Vegas or anywhere else.
"I miss his humor, his way of dealing with things. He had a way of saying, `You're wasting your energy," she recalls. "I know he had that other side, but I remember him being soothing and wise. He gave me room to grow. He understood the meaning of seek and search."
Bond is back for London world premiere
LONDON - Fans lined up in the London rain Tuesday to catch a glimpse of the new blond Bond, as sandy-haired Daniel Craig made his screen debut as suave secret agent 007.
"Casino Royale," the 21st James Bond film and the grittiest to date, was receiving its world premiere before an audience including Queen Elizabeth II. The movie opens in Britain and North America on Friday.
Stars including Elton John and Beyonce Knowles were expected in the audience in London's Leicester Square for Craig's date with double-O destiny.
Craig, 38, is already being praised in some quarters as the best Bond since Sean Connery, who originated the role in 1962's "Dr. No." His debut has restored the buzz around a franchise that many felt was past its prime.
"With `Casino Royale,' we've not only got a new Bond, we've also got a new approach to the genre," said James Chapman, author of "Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films." "It's revisionist. It's going back to the roots of Bond's character."
The buzz is quite a turnaround. Last year's announcement that Craig would be the sixth actor to play Bond triggered gripes from many fans of the franchise, which has earned an estimated $4 billion worldwide. They said Craig — whose recent screen credits include "Munich" and "The Jacket" — was too blond, too craggy, too obscure to play the world's greatest spy.
An anti-Craig Web site — www.danielcraigisnotbond.com — urged a boycott of the movie. Craig supporters hit back with http://danielcraigisbond.com.
An adaptation of Ian Fleming's first-ever Bond novel, "Casino Royale," was previously filmed as a 1967 spoof starring Peter Sellers. It is one of the few Bond adventures not to feature the MI6 gadget-maker Q or the sharp-witted secretary Miss Moneypenny, although Judi Dench is a welcome return as spy master M.
The Sony Pictures film retains many of the essential Bond elements, including sharp suits, gravity-defying chase sequences and spectacular locations that range from the Bahamas to Montenegro.
But the screenplay, partly written by "Crash" writer-director Paul Haggis, provides a grittier-than-usual take on Bond, showing how he earns his license to kill. When asked if he prefers his martini shaken or stirred, he replies, "Do I look like I give a damn?"
Judging by early reviews, many of the doubters have been won over.
"His sex appeal is off the scale," said critic Wendy Ide in The Times of London.
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw praised Craig's "effortless presence and lethal danger."
"Daniel Craig is a fantastic Bond," he wrote.
Craig has already signed up for the 22nd Bond film, due for release in November 2008.