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Amongst all the bad news, some good: Fats Domino has been located. His daughter reported that Domino was plucked from flood water outside his house on Monday.
In other Katrina-related news: American Idol cancels auditions in Memphis "out of respect for the city's citizens" - not because there's no infrastructure and precious little interest in the singing competition, then; it's a gesture rather than a reaction; nd Celine Dion donates a million bucks to the relief effort.
Amongst the stories coming out of Louisiana, reports that Fats Domino is missing. Domino told his manager on Monday that he intended to "ride out the storm" at home; his home is in the Ninth Ward, which is one of the worst-hit areas of a city that's been really badly hit. Of course, with communications in such a poor state and the rescue effort suffering from lack of direction (wasn't America meant to be on a heightened state of alert to cope with a massive disaster?), it doesn't mean the worst has happened.
Aaron Neville evacuated the city in time to avoid danger, but his home and most of his family's belongings have been destroyed.
Also among the thousands missing are Irma Thomas and Allen Toussaint.
[Thanks to Matthew Best who originally posted the link in the comments section]
Possibly tens of thousands are stranded still in their homes with water lapping the roofs. Most of the affected states' national guards - who could be helping - are stuck in Iraq being shot at. People are starving, dying of dehydration, and desperate. Rumours of society breaking down across New Orleans are spreading like wildfire, closely followed by actual wildfire. The poorest people have had their lives wiped from them. Some gouging gas store owners have stuck petrol prices up to levels which make it almost as expensive to fill your tank in some places in the US as it would be in the UK. And how does the President react at his nation's time of desperate need?
He's having fun dicking about with country singer Mark Wills.
Yes, that's a picture from Tuesday night, when the scale of the problem was already very obvious.
Statesmanlike.
[Thanks to Jim McCabe.]
Things are getting desperate over in the various Carter households as young Aaron approaches his 18th birthday - his mum has taken to sending an open letter to Aaron warning him that she believes his Dad wants to lock him into contracts before he reaches the age of majority.
She chose the National Enquirer as the medium for this letter, presumably because The Onion might not have been taken seriously enough by her son:
"Dearest Son," she begins, "I have always been truthful with you and will continue to be so. Aaron, I know the private jet rides can be thrilling. What is not a thrill is the day you get the bill for them all when you turn 18!
"Everything that has been spent on your behalf until now will come out of your future earnings — if you're not careful."
Jane, 46, is fighting a legal action from her ex-husband Bob, who is seeking full custody of Aaron and his twin sister Angel. "Don't allow your father full custody," she warns in her letter. "Think about it — why at this point? It's because they all have their eyes on the $4 million trust fund I managed to sock away for you. Kiddo, that is yours! You earned it and you worked hard for it."
Actually, you know, we think finding a bill for ten years' worth of jet rides tucked inside an amusing card with a joke about getting drunk on your 18th.
Cheer up, Aaron...
... there's always porn.
We've tried from every angle to get a "growing at the wrong speed" gag to work, but we can't: John Peel is having a tulip named after him. Sheila is pleased:
"All of our family and friends are proud to see John's name remembered in such a fitting way, and I am sure he would be amused by us all coming out to see him `in bed' each spring in our gardens."
According to the Sky News gossip-stick, the US distributors aren't that keen on taking Madonna's new documentary into the cinema - this after she was unable to find a studio willing to back the project, and had to fund the making of it herself.
It seems the movie is a bit light on Madonna doing the stuff people like her for (falling off horses, being taken from behind by Vanilla Ice) and too heavy on the bits that have rapidly made her one of the least liked people on the planet ((kabbalah, really bad children's books, operating a one-woman humility-free festival, being married to that man who makes thug porn.)
What's curious is that while most people seem to have sensed that Madonna has become whatever the opposite of catnip is, some businesses are still pushing ahead under the delusion that people look at her and think "ooh, it's that sassy woman who used to be in the Breakfast Club" rather than "bonkers cult falling-off horse lady: Motorolla have lined her up for the iTunes phone launch ad, although she's there firmly to represent the 80s.
The increasing homogenisation of the UK live music scene continues with the opening of the lager-sponsored Academy chain's new outpost in Newcastle. To mark the event (we're not sure if 'celebrate' is quite the right word) there's going to be a big ribbon-cutting event featuring The Futureheads, Field Music and Kubichek. 14th October is the date to pencil onto your face.
What's puzzling about the man looming out the crowd and attacking Mick Hucknall during a gig in Cuba is: what the hell was Hucknall doing playing a gig in Cuba?
Mick's manager Ian Grenfell is puzzled, too, but for different reasons:
It was bizarre. What is so worrying is that we don't know what the man's intentions were. He was a Cuban American in his twenties and he stormed the stage and tried to attack Mick.”
He added: "Police say the man was stoned but what is unclear is why he took exception to Mick."
It must be difficult trying to isolate what the precise reason was out a potential list of son many reasons someone might have for punching the man responsible for every track on Stars.
After screeching his pretty eyes out at the Reading Festival weekend, Kele Okereke has buggered his throat and his Harley Street doctor has told him he needs to rest his throat. Yes, Harley Street. Get him, eh, there's posh. And so on.
The throat will get its rest through the pulling of a London gig tonight, and the date at the launch of Virgin Digital tomorrow. The US tour and the Mercury appearance aren't thought to be in danger.
Who would have thought that claiming to have a book would leave you open to being thought a little bit of a thickie? Having seen herself on the receiving end of some claims that she might be less sparky that a underwater barbecue, Posh has tried to repair the damage by clarifying her comments:
"I always start them, get distracted, and never seem to get the time to finish - I’m sure all mothers with three boys know what I mean," she said.
Fair enough, with three active boys (do you see? She was counting David) you might find it awkward to work your way through a novel undistracted - if it was us, we'd not be able to get through a chapter without popping out to send the nanny down to the shops. Except, Victoria, originally you said that you'd never read a book, ever. Unless, of course, the magazine had misquoted you?
But, since you find it difficult to get the end of one of those books you start - eventually, it turns into a beautiful butterfly. No wonder he was always eating, eh?
We're sure the waters have started receeding already, as news comes that Britney is praying for the people on the Gulf Coast.
On a slightly more practical level, rock types are pulling together to hold a couple of events to raise money to help with the rescue effort - seeing as Bush flying overhead doesn't seem to have made much difference. MTV and VH1 are planning a concert with Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews and Green Day (haven't these people suffered enough?), while NBC has lined up Harry Connick Jr, and Jerry Lewis is going to give some of his annual Labor Day telethon earnings to help out.
The RIAA is still pushing blindly on with its lawsuit campaign, either not knowing nor caring that, if the "message" it wanted to get through by this behaviour was working, they wouldn't be finding it quite so easy to pick off another 700-odd people, would they?
Still, congratulations to the RIAA - next week they'll have been pursuing this expensive folly for two years, and now they've topped 14,000 lawsuits, they've finally managed to hit the psychologically important 0.1% target of all estimated filesharers in the US. At this rate, the RIAA will have hauled all their nemesises in front of the judge in just 2,000 years time.
No filesharers in 4005, then.
Even although it's not likely they'd be selling out Coldplay-esque Arenas, Starsailor are popular enough to make their plans for a brief tour of smaller venues next month a treat rather than a realistic assessment of potential:
Edinburgh, The Venue - October 3
Manchester, Jabez Clegg - 4
Birmingham, Irish Centre - 6
Bristol, Bierkeller - 7
The lease at CBGBs has run out - but the club isn't budging. Or so owner Hilly Kristal told a rally:
"We intend to stay. This is not a eulogy. There's no reason why we shouldn't come to an understanding."
The executive director of the homeless charity which owns the building, Muzzy Rosenblatt, doesn't seem to be in any mood to reach any sort of understanding:
He believed the it was in the "best interest of our clients - the homeless and neediest New Yorkers - to sever this relationship." He called on CBGB's to "vacate the premises both voluntarily and expeditiously".
Miami Steve Van Zandt out the Sopranos and the E-Street Band suggests that there's going to be a huge scrap:
"We're not going without a fight," he said. "If the eviction proceedings start tomorrow, which I hope it doesn't, we'll fight it in the courts."
It's not totally impossible, of course, that if the surviving members of the BeeGees really were foolish enough to sink - and we choose that word carefully - twenty million quid into a Saturday Night Fever remake, that they'd decide Robbie Williams would be perfect to play the Travolta role. Slightly tubby, gurning bloke from Stoke on the cusp of early middle age pretending to be a teenage disco king from New York? It seems unlikely.
But then, the BeeGees did do this:
Outrage might have decided on behalf of British gay men that they don't have a problem with Sizzla any more, providing he just doesn't do the silly calling for queers to be shot with a gun again. Lesbian and Gay groups in Cleveland, Ohio, though, aren't quite so happy with the terms of the supposed truce, and are fuming that Sizzla's been invited to play the House of Blues, a few weeks after holding a series of PR events designed to promote the venue as gay-friendly:
Earlier this summer the Cleveland House of Blues organized a series of events to position the club as an accepting and tolerant place for LGBT people.
"Sizzla’s appearance not only contradicts those efforts but devalues the local LGBT community," said Doerfer, Executive Director of the Lesbian/Gay Community Center of Greater Cleveland.
"If we were valued enough to be customers, why are we not valued as concerned citizens? Refusing to cancel the Cleveland show is a gesture of intolerance that makes the company’s outreach to our community very patronizing.”
House of Blues seems to be remaining quiet on the subject.
We had been holding off posting this until we'd had a chance to listen ourselves, but it disappears in 48 hours or so, so we thought we'd better bring the wise words of Simon from sweeping the nation out of our inbox and onto the blog:
As BBC7 forgot to advertise it, I must bring their Purely Peel three hour special to your attention - Lamacq fronting a load of speech based memorial shows, chiefly him and Walters remembering their entry to rock'n'roll in 1987 series Peeling Back The Years, him looking back through his career in 1986's Radio Radio, two editions of Radio 5 chat show Chain Reaction wherein he's interviewed by David Gedge and interviews Ian Rush, and a remarkable five minute trail with Walters' assistance only made for broadcast during the preceding programme. All on Listen Again, obviously.
Chain Reaction, of course, is notable for being one of the programmes the proper Radio 5 would put out when it had to fill the mornings up on days there were no schools programmes...
The timing of the story that festival message boards are suddenly buzzing with the news that Glastonbury attendees have got trench foot is curious - could the sudden discovery of this condition be because journalists spent yesterday reading the efestivals.co.uk boards in search of some other story?
Of course, while it's astonishing that people get trench foot while watching the Kaiser Chiefs, the truth is a little less gobsmacking - trench foot is, in effect, chillblains that don't get proper treatment. But then 'Glasto Fans Get Chillblains; fail to take care of them' doesn't have quite the same grab-factor, does it?
Interesting goings-on over at the EFestivals.co.uk message board today - a post appeared from someone who claimed to have been a steward at the Reading festival, detailing a couple of incidents - one where a boy was hit by an exploding gas canister in the genitals, another where an ambulance was toppled by fans. Drowned In Sound had picked up on the story, but both their news page and the original thread had disappeared by teatime. A spearate thread debated the veracity of the original message, especially in light of the lack of any news coverage of this serious alleged maiming. It all seems to have been an elaborate hoax.
On the other hand... over on the official website of DC Site services, there's this message:
Message to all DCSS staff: Please find below an email sent to DC Site Services Admin on 31st August:
hi there. i would pleeeease like to have this email forwarded to the security stewards that helped at reading festival this year. i was there this year, and on the last night i was up till about 5am just innocently dancing and playing music with my friends, and some stewards came along and made my friends and i stop. the stewards were very humourless at the time, and quite angry - and i thought what spoilsports they were, seeing as we weren't really doing anything wrong. however, i have recently found out what a lot of them went through on that last night (therefore explaining why they appeared angry!) - having to sort out fires, riots, and people with exceptionally serious injuries - and as a result i would to apologise to them all on behalf of everyone who behaved badly. you all did a terrifc job, and who knows where we would be if you weren't there. most probably dead with what was going on. i hope this doesn't stop you from doing your job in the future, as a lot of us are honestly very grateful for your work! so a huge huge thank you to you all. rachel x
That this appears to have been posted by the company charged with security for the event would suggest there was some sort of trouble that has been largely unreported. Curious, and more curious.
As has now become mandatory, music">tickets for the 2006 festivals have gone on sale straight after the end of this year's event - a limited number for both Reading and Leeds, at 2005 prices. Of course, you are punting on the licence being granted.
It's been a happy way to idle away a few minutes in the pub for the last few months - what would come first, official announcement of the new Kate Bush album or the confirmation that iTunes was going to leap onto mobile phones?
As it turns out, they both broke at roughly the same time.
Kate Bush finally follows up 1993's The Red Shoes with Aerial, out worldwide on November 7th, with a single, King of the Mountain, on October 24th.
Meanwhile, in what's now the worst-kept secret this side of Steve Coogan's baby, Motorola will be showing off its iTunes-enabled phone in San Francisco on September 7th.
If you really want to drag yourself down during the festive season, why not build your celebrations around a Coldplay mini-tour?
Earls Court Arena - Dec 14th
Newcastle Metro Arena - 18th
Manchester MEN Arena - 19th
Belfast Odyssey Arena - 21st
Support for all dates will come from Richard 'what are, you, man, Chris Martin's bitch or something' Ashcroft on every date.
Unless she's changed her mind again, the last we heard Courtney Love has done another 180o turn and confirmed, that, yes, actually she is pregnant, and actually, yes, it is Steve Coogan's.
We're sure this will have changed again in the next 24 hours or so, so we'd suggest holding off in trying to get to the front of the christening queue.
If Ken Clarke thought that being on the board of a tobacco company was proving tricky to balance with his Prime Ministerial ambitions before, the announcement by Mariah Carey that she owes her over-octaved voice to cigarettes is going to make it damn nigh impossible:
“It’s true. The two lowest octaves are probably there because of the smoking,” a champagne-sipping Carey told Swedish mag Groove, according to a translation. “But of course it’s not good to smoke. I always had a cold and constant throatache.” So she quit, she said. “One day I promised God that if he would give me my voice back I would never smoke again. I got three octaves back after quitting.”
What sort of deal are you cutting there, God? Since not smoking is good for you, making a deal that you'll quit if God does something nice for you is like saying "if you let me win the lottery, I promise I'll buy myself a pair of comfy slippers and a nice hat." Besides, God probably wants you to smoke - he's got a consultancy role at British American Tobacco, hasn't he?
The Carey interview then gets a little snippy:
But Carey was drinking alcohol, pointed out the interviewer. “Doesn’t alcohol dry out your vocal cords?” she was asked. “Well, what dries the cords out isn’t the … do you sing? I have a feeling that you are a singer.” The interviewer said no. “Okay,” replied Carey. “Let’s stop the tape and rewind.”
We wonder what the "are you a singer" bit was - could Mariah have been hoping to communicate "you and I both know it's all down to what the producers do, all I have to do is turn up in a push-up bra with my undercarriage primed" by a series of nods and winks?
We bet it seemed like a great idea at the time: stage a zombie invasion of the American Idol auditions in Austin. And it would have been an amusing stunt satirising the whole TV talent show ethos - except... well, the zombies couldn't help but be flattered by the TV crew to get involved with the programme:
"We've been on 24-hour zombie watch," said coordinating producer Patrick Lynn. "We thought it would be fun to have them on the show."
And that is how the zombies ended up squatting down on the concrete of the Erwin Center's second level, signing release forms to allow their images to be broadcast by Fox TV.
"Zombies, I need you back here!" Lynn shouted. "All you zombies, I need to get a group shot!" The undead complied, waving their bloodied limbs about for the TV cameras.
Of course, turning a bunch of the clinically dead into teatime TV fodder is nothing new to Cowell. We've not forgotten One True Voice.
We're not sure the "chavs" that the Guardian report have been encouraged to relocate their street turf war from Peterborough town centre to a outdoor activity centre really are chavs - they sound more like townies to us. But we know sure as hell that the supposed Goths the local council are taking out there aren't goths at all - what self-respecting goth would run around in the woods with a plastic ball gun?
The council's idea is that the teenagers can run around and burn off that excess energy in the forest instead of Cathedral Square. But...
Mr Mayes admits there is one small problem: most of the goths were so laid-back they couldn't get up in time for the war games. Six cried off yesterday morning. "We've got more chavs than we have goths because they couldn't get out of bed," he said. "They've probably been smoking too much pot."
Either that, or they're afraid running about in the hot weather will play merry hell with their make-up.
We're guessing Liberty X are as puzzled as we are by the sudden hacking attack on their website by Turk Hackers. We wonder if, from a Turkish perspective, Liberty X represent the peak of Britain and British culture in a similar way to which Craig David (apparently) is Egypt's idea of the most popular singer in the Western world? Or - just possibly - Liberty X's record label have hacked the pages themselves, in a bid to have something interesting on the site for the first time in ages?
Having heard that some chap got himself mauled by a bear in Manitoba, Ted Nugent was straight onto the email to offer to go there to shoot bears. This would, uh, help, apparently:
"I hope to come to Manitoba soon to put my 'hands-on' some precious bear renewability, spending massive amounts of money and untold family conservation time in the wonderful wilds of beautiful Manitoba as a clear benefit to the wild and the people," he wrote.
It's thought Ted is also planning to offer to head down to Louisiana to shoot that damn Katrina. "Guns. It's the only language these natural threats understand," he grunted.
Trouble over at Journey's Jones Beach show on Long Island at the weekend, where Jonathan Cain needed hospital treatment after he came off stage. The Journey guy had his appendix whipped out in a hurry; dates this coming week have been cancelled to allow him to recover.
We know you'll have been worried because, boy, does that man have a knack for trouble finding him. After his narrow escape from the London Bombings, poor old Omarion found himself in Miami waiting for his MTV goody bag when Katrina made its first land hit. He was scared, but - and here you might want to offer up a small prayer - not injured:
"I was a little skeptical coming here. I'm from California. We do earthquakes, no Katrina."
Surely it's time somebody - perhaps the President - could ensure that there's a 24/7 team close by to Omarion's every move to keep this plaent's most shining jewel safe from the many threats that snap at his heels every day?
We're not sure who came up with the idea of getting The Who to record with McFly to push this new HMV download store, but we did wonder why they think that Pete Townshend is the best choice, what with his history of filling his hard-drive with dodgy material. The two bands have re-recorded My Generation to demonstrate that every man has a price, and it's not that high these days ("to promote the service which goes live next Monday").
Meanwhile, and there's nothing cartelly about Virgin launching at virtually the same time - we're sure their prices will be totally different, Richard Branson has also come up with a lame stunt. He's going to appearing in virtual form:
"Seeing as Virgin is going digital, I thought I'd do the same."
Yeah, we couldn't be arsed to turn up, either, Branno.
