Rush will be making their first U.S. television appearance in more than thirty years on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”
The Canadian band Rush, which hasn’t performed on U.S. television in more than three decades, will play their classic “Tom Sawyer” on the Comedy Central show Wednesday (11:30 p.m. EST). The Geddy Lee-led trio, which is currently on tour, hasn’t played on U.S. television since 1975.
Rush is only the latest act to perform on “The Report,” which has steadily edged closer to “Ed Sullivan Show” territory. With increasingly frequent musical performances, “The Report” has grown a variety-show impulse, evident in other upcoming bookings. The rapper Nas will perform on July 23, Toby Keith will return for a second performance on July 28 and Crosby, Stills and Nash will play on July 30.
The Stephen Colbert-hosted comedy show was originally launched as a parody of conservative political punditry — and shows like “The O’Reilly Factor” do not make a habit of hosting music performances. But “The Report” circus has expanded into musical realms, often with its sonorous host joining in. John Legend, Neil Young, R.E.M., Tony Bennett, Peter Frampton, Willie Nelson, Barry Manilow, John Mellencamp, the Roots and Carole King have all performed on the show.
Cool. Here’s a video of Rush playing “Tom Sawyer,” albeit not on “The Colbert Report.”
Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to have any trouble affording good cigars, having just re-upped with Clear Channel through 2016 for $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus. And you thought pro athetes got paid a lot.
Said to be Limbaugh’s most lucrative deal ever by far, the new agreement runs through 2016 and includes a previously unheard-of nine figure signing bonus. For those of you in Rio Linda, that means more than $100 million, upfront.
[...]
Beyond infuriating the left, that staggering sum is sure to reinforce the widespread industry belief that talk represents one of broadcast radio’s only remaining bright spots. While several other major outfits are struggling to survive, Limbaugh and Premiere have provided a steady revenue stream for Clear Channel.
In fact, while advertisers have begun to abandon music radio for the Internet and other media, Limbaugh has recently added sponsors.
Clearly, I’m in the wrong business. Then again, if I could captivate 20 million listeners three hours a day for a couple decades, I’m sure I’d make more, too.
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin fell in love at a time when lesbians risked being arrested, fired from their jobs and sent to electroshock treatment.
On Monday, more than a half-century after they became a couple, Lyon and Martin plan to become one of the first same-sex couples to legally exchange marriage vows in California.
“It was something you wanted to know, ‘Is it really going to happen?’ And now it’s happened, and maybe it can continue to happen,” Lyon said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. He picked Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, for the front of the line in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.
Along with six other women, they founded a San Francisco social club for lesbians in 1955 called the Daughters of Bilitis. Under their leadership, it evolved into the nation’s first lesbian advocacy organization. They have the FBI files to prove it.
Their ceremony Monday will, in fact, be a marriage do-over.
In February 2004, San Francisco’s new mayor decided to challenge California’s marriage laws by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His advisers and gay rights activists knew right away which couple would put the most compelling human face on the issue: Martin and Lyon.
Back then, the couple planned to celebrate their 51st anniversary as live-in lovers on Valentine’s Day. Because of their work with the Daughters, they also were icons in the gay community.
“Four years ago, when they agreed to be married, it was in equal parts to support the mayor and to support the idea that lesbians and gay people formed committed relationships and should have those relationships respected,” says Kate Kendell, a close friend and executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Lyon and Martin vividly recall the excitement of being secretly swept into the clerk’s office, saying “I do” in front of a tiny group of city staff members and friends, and then being rushed out of the building. There were no corsages, no bottles of champagne. Afterward they went to lunch, just the two of them, at a restaurant run as a job training program for participants in a substance abuse program.
“Of course, nobody down there knew, so we were left to be by ourselves like we wanted to be,” said Martin, the less gregarious of the two. “Then we came home.”
“And watched TV,” adds Lyon.
The privacy was short-lived. Their wedding portrait, showing the couple cradling each other in pastel-colored pantsuits with their foreheads tenderly touching, drew worldwide attention.
Same-sex marriage would become legal in Massachusetts in another three months, but San Francisco’s calculated act of civil disobedience drove the debate.
In the month that followed, more than 4,000 other couples followed Martin and Lyon down the aisle before a judge acting on petitions brought by gay marriage opponents halted the city’s spree.
The state Supreme Court ultimately voided the unions, but the women were among the two dozen couples who served as plaintiffs in the lawsuits that led the same court last month to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage.
They were having their morning coffee when Lyon heard the news on the radio. She rushed across the house to embrace Martin. Not long after, Newsom called to offer congratulations and to ask if they would be willing to be at the forefront yet again.
Feds probing the alleged sale of cancer-stricken Farrah Fawcett’s medical records to The National Enquirer could find a long mole tunnel between the hospitals and the tabloids.
Former UCLA Medical Center staffer Lawanda Jackson was indicted on April 9 after allegedly leaking private info about Fawcett, Maria Shriver and 60 other patients. Now vets at the ‘bloids are wondering how long it will be before other health professionals and reporters are drawn into the investigation.
Staffers at L.A. hospitals favored by celebs have been on the payroll of the supermarket weeklies for years, based on transcripts we’ve obtained of taped conversations among dirt-diggers at Globe magazine.
The recordings, made by former Globe managing editor Jim Mitteager, capture him talking with his reporters and sources about stars who allegedly have undergone cosmetic surgery and abortions, as well as been treated for mental illness, bulimia and AIDS.
Among the celebs mentioned in the conversations are Tom Cruise, Jessica Lange, Liz Taylor, Billy Crystal, Kelsey Grammer, Magic Johnson, Roseanne Barr, Al Pacino, Paula Abdul, Frank Zappa and Vanna White.
Recorded between 1992 and 1993, the tapes suggest the impunity with which hospital workers trafficked in sensitive information.
One reporter is heard telling Mitteager that, “If Liz (Taylor) is in St. John’s Hospital,” his source there will know it. “She takes a special delight on getting s? on Liz,” says the reporter. “She has access to the computer and talks to orderlies.”
On another tape, Mitteager contends that a now-deceased TV actor “has got AIDS. The people who want to sell the story have physical proof. They want $4,000. ? They want to move fast because it’s Christmastime and they want to get paid.”
Equally impatient is the husband of a nurse, who asks if he can get “some good-faith money” for his tip. Mitteager says he’ll pay only “if we run the story.”
Mitteager bequeathed the tapes to private investigator Paul Barresi, who has offered to cooperate with prosecutors and hospital officials.
“I remember the gleeful reaction from a Globe senior editor to the news that Dinah Shore had been diagnosed with cancer,” Barresi tells us. “It made my skin crawl. Nothing has changed inside the tabs.”
A spokesman for American Media Inc., which bought The Globe in 2000, said the legality of the dealings before then “are not our responsibility.” The rep declined to comment on the current Enquirer case.
A lawyer for several celebs mentioned on the recordings told us he would ask his clients if they want to pursue legal action. “The question is whether you can sue on something that happened 15 years ago,” the attorney added. “Also, how reliable is the information the reporters are talking about.”
Publicist Stan Rosenfield, whose clients include Grammer, Robert De Niro and George Clooney, said: “It’s alarming that this criminal activity could go on so long without being detected.”
Man that’s horrible, a hospital selling private medical records — I would be so pissed off!
See the parts bolded above? How much do you want to bet, the mental patient was Tom Cruise?
Former supermodel Jerry Hall’s youngest son is so protective of her, he has banned her from having a boyfriend.
The Texan beauty, 51, admits 10-year-old Gabriel - from her marriage to rocker Mick Jagger - is sickened by the thought of his mother bringing someone home, and has even threatened suicide to persuade her to continue to live her life as a single mother.
She says,
“Gabriel gets very angry with me if I work too much. And he absolutely hates the idea of me having a boyfriend. He says, ‘If you get a boyfriend, I will kill myself.’
I say to him, ‘But darling, you will grow up and get married one day and it would be nice for Mum to have some company.’ And he says, ‘No Mum, I am never going to leave you.’ But that’s what boys are like, isn’t it?”
No… boy’s aren’t like that — him threatening to kill himself is not normal!
And Hall insists she’s in no rush to marry again, because she’s happy on her own:
“I think having a partner is a bonus, but I don’t think it’s a necessity. I’ve always had my own money and worked and looked after myself.
I do see people and have dates and I think love is a wonderful thing, but that hasn’t really happened to me. I haven’t fallen in love. Maybe it will happen one day. But I think it would probably be idiotic to marry again. It seems to me that you do that when you want to have children. And I’ve had mine.”
Hall has three other children with ex-husband Jagger: Elizabeth, 24; James, 22, and Georgia, 16. The couple split in 1999.
A massive fire raged on a back lot at Universal Studios early Sunday, spewing thick smoke as it devoured blocks of movie sets. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Los Angeles County fire Inspector Daryl Jacobs said at least one building had burned and as many as three blocks of movie facades were destroyed. Though the fire was contained, it was still raging, Jacobs said.
“The facades are constructed of heavy timber and they tend to burn quite freely,” he said.
The blaze broke out just before dawn on a sound stage, fire Capt. Frank Reynoso said. A thick column of smoke rose thousands of feet into the air. For a time, firefighting helicopters swept in to drop water.
More than 100 firefighters were trying to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby brush, Reynoso said.
Filming might have been going on at the time the fire broke out and there was at least one explosion, Reynoso said.
For those of you who don’t know, Universal City is nine miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The gang at Rolling Stone has come up with a list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.” But who’s got time for that in the fast-page Internet age? Here’s their top 10 — the other 90 suck in comparison, right?
1. “Johnny B. Goode” Chuck Berry (1958)
“If you want to play rock & roll,” Joe Perry told Rolling Stone in 2004, “you have to start here.” Recorded 50 years ago, on January 6th, 1958, at the Chess Records studio in Chicago, Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” was the first great record about the joys and rewards of playing rock & roll guitar. It also has the single greatest rock & roll intro: a thrilling blast of high twang driven by Berry’s spearing notes, followed by a rhythm part that translates a boogie-woogie piano riff for the guitar. “He could play the guitar just like a-ringing a bell,” Berry sings in the first verse — a perfect description of his sound and the reverberations still running through every style of rock guitar, from the Beatles and the Stones on down. “It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection,” Keith Richards has said of Berry’s playing. “He is rhythm man supreme.” Berry wrote often about rock & roll and why it’s good for you — “Roll Over Beethoven” in 1956, “Rock and Roll Music” in ‘57 — but never better than in “Johnny B. Goode,” a true story about how playing music on a guitar can change your life forever.
2. “Purple Haze” The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
The riff is pure blues — the same kind of guitar figure Hendrix played nightly back on the R&B-club grind, as a sideman for Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. But in “Purple Haze,” Hendrix’s second British single and the first track on the U.S. version of his debut album, he declared himself a free man — “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” — and unveiled a new guitar language charged with spiritual hunger and the poetry possible in electricity and studio technology. “Guitar — you can play it or transcend it,” said Neil Young when he inducted Hendrix into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. “Jimi showed me that. I heard it, felt it and wanted to do it.” Hendrix wrote “Purple Haze” backstage at a London nightclub in December 1966 and recorded basic tracks with his band, the Experience, two weeks later. But the galactic travel came in overdubs recorded on February 3rd, 1967: Hendrix’s solos, swimming in echo and sparkling with harmonics, were put through an octave-boosting effect and played back at twice the speed. In less than three minutes, Hendrix opened a new age of expression on his instrument.
3. “Crossroads” Cream (1968)
Eric Clapton once described Cream’s music as “blues ancient and modern.” This track is what he meant. He was not yet 23 when he played this high-velocity version of the Robert Johnson song at San Francisco’s Winterland on March 10th, 1968. Everything in Clapton’s solos is grounded in the blues vocabulary but pointed to the future. “When Clapton soloed, he wrote wonderful symphonies from classic blues licks in that fantastic tone,” Little Steven Van Zandt told Rolling Stone in 2004. “You could sing his solos like songs in themselves.”
4. “You Really Got Me” The Kinks (1964)
It was, at first, “a jazz-type tune,” said Kinks singer Ray Davies, and the two-chord figure driving it was a sax line. “That’s what I liked at the time.” Then his brother Dave played it on guitar through an amp speaker he had poked with needles and shredded with a razor blade. (”It was a Gillette single-sided blade,” said Dave.) Dave’s solo — a tangle of zigzags and viciously bent notes — heralded the birth of Sixties garage and punk-rock guitar in one fell swoop. “I said I’d never write another song like it,” said Ray. “And I haven’t.”
5. “Brown Sugar” The Rolling Stones (1971)
“Satisfaction” may be the Rolling Stones’ most recognizable riff, but this Sticky Fingers hit — based on a gutbucket guitar part devised by Mick Jagger — is the band’s raunchy guitar pinnacle. Keith Richards’ secret weapon: He’s playing a guitar that’s missing its lowest string.
6. “Eruption” Van Halen (1978)
Eddie Van Halen’s 102-second mission statement was a piece he invented onstage: a solo showcase for his mastery of tone and technique, notably the rush of notes he produced with his fretboard tapping. An army of teens would try to duplicate it, emerging years later in every metal band of the Eighties.
7. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” The Beatles (1968)
This is a tale of two guitar giants at an empathic peak: George Harrison, who wrote this song on acoustic guitar in India, and Eric Clapton, who amplifies Harrison’s vocal dismay with a waterfall of blues fills. It’s the finest examaple of his jagged, late-Sixties tone.
8. “Stairway to Heaven” Led Zeppelin (1971)
“Stairway,” Jimmy Page told RS in 1975, “crystallized the essence of the band.” It’s a masterpiece of dramatic ascension: Page’s acoustic picking rising into chiming chords, which introduce the solo, a brilliant succession of phrases that steadily move toward rock & roll ecstasy.
9. “Statesboro Blues” The Allman Brothers Band (1971)
In 1968, Gregg Allman went to visit his older brother, Duane, on his 22nd birthday. Duane was sick in bed, so Gregg brought along a bottle of Coricidin pills for his fever and the debut album by guitarist Taj Mahal as a gift. “About two hours after I left, my phone rang,” Gregg remembers. ” ‘Baby brother, baby brother, get over here now!’ ” When Gregg got there, Duane had poured the pills out of the bottle, washed off the label and was using it as a slide to play “Statesboro Blues,” the old Blind Willie McTell song that Taj Mahal covered. Duane had never played slide before, says Gregg, but “he just picked it up and started burnin’. He was a natural.”
The song quickly became a part of the Allman Brothers Band’s repertoire, and Duane’s slide guitar became crucial to their sound. “Statesboro Blues” was the opening track on their legendary 1971 live double album, At Fillmore East, and ever since, the moaning and squealing opening licks have given fans chills at live shows. “It wasn’t something that Duane would play the same way every night,” says current Allmans guitarist Warren Haynes, one of many guitarists who have filled Duane’s shoes since he died in late 1971. “But in all of our heads, that’s the way it goes.”
There’s one thing the current band doesn’t try to replicate from the Fillmore East performance: At the end of Duane’s sublime “Statesboro” solo, the guitarist hits an off-key note that Gregg calls the “note from hell.” “He left it in because he knew I hated it,” says Gregg, claiming that the mistake only adds to the song’s legend. “It was live. It was something that happened.” EVAN SERPICK
10. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Nirvana (1991)
Most of “Teen Spirit” came easy — Nirvana nailed it in three takes — but that crucial Kurt Cobain guitar intro required an overdub (”That pissed him off,” said producer Butch Vig). It was worth the effort: That riff, along with the band’s loud-quiet-loud dynamics, defined Nineties rock.
It’s a pretty lame list, if you ask me. “Johnny B. Goode” and “Purple Haze” are certainly top 10 material but most of the others aren’t. A lot of them aren’t event particularly good guitar songs.
Certainly, almost any AC/DC song you’ve ever heard of is better than “Stairway to Heaven” as a guitar jam. Indeed, so are quite a few Zeppelin songs, notably “Rock and Roll.” And where’s Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Freebird”? That’s gotta be in the top 10.
Source: “The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time” [Rolling Stone]
Skin Diseases apparently has a Coalition. Thank God Buffy is willing to strip down to raise awareness. It isn’t exactly a sexy charity that everyone jumps on board to support.
She was photographed in the buff and the nude photos of Sarah Michelle Gellar then went to auction. Over 10,000 bids were placed, but she only raised $2,000 for the coalition. Dave Navaro and Leila Ali also joined in and were photographed in their birthday suits for the charity auction.
Prude. There isn’t side boob or anything. I say, if you are going to do it…do it with gusto and let it all hang out. You know your “Welcome Aboard” tattoo will be air brushed out anyway.
There are many ways to measure talent in Hollywood. But for the authors of “Hollywood Babylon: It’s Back,” size is everything.
Borrowing the title of filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s classic scandal bible, authors Danforth Prince and Darwin Porter have dared to publish the pictures and stories too explicit and actionable for even the pulpiest supermarket tabloids.
Among those featured in full-frontal shots are Mick Jagger, Daniel Radcliffe, Ewan McGregor, John Malkovich, James Woods, Richard Gere and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. We leave it to you to decide whether all the snaps are authentic.
The authors also write about the reputed size of many other stars in the book, due June 1. Johnny Depp was known as “donkey d-”, they say. Sean Connery posed nude for art studies, and one student said:”It was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It made me drop my charcoal pencil.”
Dishing with abandon, the authors spare no one - especially not the dead, who can’t sue. Lack of sources don’t stop them from claiming:
Marilyn Monroe had an affair with Ronald Reagan. The authors also claim Monroe had a tryst with Joan Crawford but refused to make it an ongoing affair. “She had bad breath,” Monroe allegedly told roommate Shelly Winters. “Besides, she wanted to do things to me that no woman should do to another woman.”
James Dean showed a disconcerting interest in a 12-year-old boy in the early 1950s. Director Elia Kazan believed the tale: “I’ve known many actors who have been twisted up in their sex lives, but never anybody as sick and unhealthy as Dean was.”
Elvis Presley had a gay old time with Nick Adams, who played Johnny Yuma in the hit TV series “The Rebel.”
Lucille Ball launched herself into show business as a hooker, and her husband Desi Arnaz had a fling with Cesar Romero.
Cary Grant had an incestuous relationship with his stepson, Lance Reventlow.
Sir Winston Churchill got “musical” with actor and songwriter Ivor Novello.
Strange things happened to Judy Garland’s body (this in the chapter on “Fan Worship and Necrophilia”).
Police believed Bette Davis killed her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth, by hitting him on the head and causing a hemorrhage that lead to his death two weeks later. But a grand jury - six men who confessed to being ardent fans - found her innocent.
Los Angeles County fire Inspector Daryl Jacobs said at least one building had burned and as many as three blocks of movie facades were destroyed. Though the fire was contained, it was still raging, Jacobs said.
