AP Ticker’s [Scrapple News] Hiking in Iran
The Battle To Make RATM’s “Killing In The Name” The Number One Christmas Song In Great Britain
BBC: Rock band Rage Against The Machine is ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry in the race for the Christmas number one, early sales figures suggest. A Facebook group aiming to get the band’s 1992 hit Killing In The Name to the top of the festive chart has attracted more than 750,000 members. But McElderry’s debut The Climb, out on CD on Wednesday, is expected to catch up by the weekend. The Official Charts Company (OCC) said it is “a very exciting battle”. It is understood that there is a 10% margin in sales between the two singles after […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For years, the name Tom Ford has been associated with fashion: He was, after all, the man credited with reviving the almost bankrupt Gucci empire, and then he started a couture label of his own. Ford has also earned plenty of attention for his provocative advertising, which often uses erotic imagery (including plenty of nudity) to sell fashion and fragrances. Now the Texas native, a onetime actor and model himself, has put his eye for design and his creative sensibilities to work in the service of silver-screen storytelling, translating a ’60s-vintage novel into an elegantly controlled, eloquently stylish […]
LET IT BLURT: Lester Bangs Speaks
ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Back in the day, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Nick Tosches formed a terrible triumvirate of rowdy, hard-living rock scribblers — angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of rock — feared and loathed by the music industry’s power elite. They didn’t just write about rock ‘n’ roll; he lived it, drank it, smoked it, felt it up, snorted it down and puked it up all over the page the morning after. BOING BOING: So what an incredible thrill it was to come across a 90-minute interview with Lester […]
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
NEW YORK TIMES: Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as “… For the Whole World to See,” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault […]
Khyber Pass Scion Was International Man Of Danger
INQUIRER: One June day in 1988, customs agents at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport pulled aside an intense and striking young man waiting to get on a plane back home to Philadelphia. They suspected he had heroin in his suitcase. They were right — two kilos’ worth from Pakistan, hidden under a false bottom. He wasn’t tough to crack: Before the day was out, Daood “David” Gilani decided to save his own skin, agreeing to betray his drug-dealing partners by helping U.S. drug agents set up a sting. It was the beginning of a complicated, off-and-on relationship as a confidential informant […]
NPR FOR THE DEF: Q&A With Nick Spitzer, Professor Of American Boogie & Host Of NPR’s American Routes
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA Nick Spitzer is a folkorist, ethnographer, professor of American Studies at Tulane University and host of the altogether wonderful American Routes — which can be heard locally on WHYY from 2-4 PM on Saturdays and 4-6 PM on Sundays — a heady Creole gumbo of blues, folk, soul, rock and Cajun stylings. Each week Nick scours the highways and the byways, the juke joints and roadhouses, the coffeehouses and corner bars, of these United States to map the crazy quilt patchwork of regional flavors, customs and musics to, in effect, create an audio […]
SMOKE FAIRIES: Living With Ghosts
MOJO: Smoke Fairies, Britain’s sisterly purveyors of haunted folk blues, have recorded two new songs with their new biggest fan, Jack White. The tracks, Gastown and River Song, were recorded at White’s Nashville HQ and will appear on the Dead Weather man’s Third Man Records this week. White contributed guitar and drums to both songs. MORE
OPEN LETTER: To Liam Gallagher
BY JAMIE DAVIS So you’re in a band with your brother. He writes all the songs, epic earth-shattering tunes that change the face of pop-music, and you sing them. Your immense sibling rivalry takes its toll, your brother leaves the band because you’re an idiot, rejoins, leaves, rejoins, leaves, rinses and repeats. All the while your voice is only getting worse and worse, along with your brother’s songs. However throughout it all, you keep up this ridiculous front of being in the best band in the world, even years after your prime. People put up with it because “Wonderwall” is […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With Your Host, A.P. Ticker
[Video: AP Ticker’s SCRAPPLE NEWS 12.9.2009]
Ex-Khyber Barkeep Charged in Mumbai Attacks
GUARDIAN: Federal prosecutors accused David Coleman Headley, 49, who lives in Chicago, of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people, and to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group. The charges come after Headley, also known as Daood Gilani, was accused of involvement in a plot to kill the editor of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, who published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005 which provoked an angry backlash in the Muslim world. Headley is accused of scouting the three locations in Mumbai – the luxury Taj hotel, a railway station and the Jewish […]
Weezer Cancels Philly Date After Tour Bus Crash
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: “The bus contained Rivers, his wife and daughter, their nanny, and Rivers’ assistant Sarah,” writes Koch. “Both Sarah and Rivers’ wife were pitched out of their upper level bunks onto the floor 5 feet below. Somehow Rivers’ wife was uninjured, but Sarah sustained 2 fractured ribs and a fractured lower vertebrae. The baby daughter was in her crib unit and was fine, as was the nanny who was sleeping near the floor in her bunk at the time. However in the back lounge, Rivers was tossed around violently, waking up as he landed back on his mattress.” Koch […]