| CMU Daily - on the inside 1 Aug 2002 |
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What was special about Al Martino’s single ‘Here Is My Heart’ back in 1952? Answer tomorrow.
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MEAN FIDDLER BUY INTO GERMAN FESTIVAL
After acquiring a stake in the Glastonbury Festival earlier this year, promoters Mean Fiddler have now turned their eyes to Europe taking a share in the German ‘Bizarre Festival’. The group, whose own UK festival – the Carling Weekend in Reading, Leeds and Glasgow – takes place later this month, have taken a 25% stake in the German event, with an option to increase that to 50% in 2004. The Bizarre Festival takes place annually near Bonn, normally on the weekend before the Carling events. This year’s line up includes The Chemical Brothers, Jimmy Eat World, DJ Shadow, Korn and Badly Drawn Boy. Mean Fiddler yesterday described their move as "part of the Group’s strategic expansion into mainland Europe." A number of festival promoters, Glastobury’s Michael Eavis amongst them, form alliances with Mean Fiddler as much for their festival expertise as their investment.
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FOOTBALL LEAGUE FAIL TO RECOUP ITS TV MILLIONS
The High Court has today ruled ITV Digital's owners, Carlton and Granada, were under no legal obligation to honour their collapsed subsidiary's debts to the Football League - £131.9m in unpaid broadcast fees. Justice Gordon Langley said: "neither company is liable to the football league for any sum due or damages payable for breach of the June contract made between the League and ITV Digital.” The decision followed a three-day hearing earlier this month during which Carlton and Granada rejected liability, arguing that they did not provide any written guarantees to meet ITV Digital's financial obligations. The League argued the two broadcast giants had guaranteed ITV Digital's initial bid for the rights to screen its games, and that when the final deal went through there was an understanding that Carlton and Granada would continue to support their pay TV subsidiary financially. Even though BSkyB picked up the remaining two years of ITV Digital's contract they did so at a knock-down price of £95m, leaving the League with a dire cash shortage. League bosses claim the verdict could force some of the 72 lower division football clubs into insolvency. There is now speculation that the League will sue the law firm that helped it draw up the original contract with ITV Digital.
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FLAMING LIPS CLASSICS RERELEASED
With new album ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ out on Warners, the Flaming Lips are now set to unveil two deluxe, multi-disc reissue packages via Restless Records and Rykodisc. Planned for release just two weeks apart this Autumn, the albums will include much of the band's pre-major label output from between 1983 and 1991, remastered by longtime producer Dave Fridmann. The first is a three-CD set called ‘Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid 1983-1988’ and includes the band's first three full-length albums: ‘Hear It Is’, ‘Oh My Gawd!!!...The Flaming Lips’, and ‘Telepathic Surgery’ plus a total of 16 bonus tracks, including the group's long out-of-print first EP, a previously unreleased demo of ‘Killer on the Radio’ and covers of Sonic Youth's ‘Death Valley 69’ and Neil Young's ‘After the Gold Rush’. The second is a double CD called ‘The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg’ and includes the seminal 1990 album ‘In a Priest Driven Ambulance’, the corresponding ‘Unconsciously Screamin EP’ and outtakes from ‘The Mushroom Tapes’ - a collection of demos of many songs that later made ‘Ambulance’. On top of all this the band are reported to be a third of the way through making their feature length movie ‘Christmas On Mars’ in which the band star.
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NO MORE TEAMTALK
The sports radio station Teamtalk 252, which came out of the ashes of Atlantic 252, has closed just five months after it went on air with the loss of the 40 jobs at the station. Online bookmaker UKBetting bought the holding company behind Teamtalk earlier this year for £14m, interested primarily for its website and mobile operations. Rumours about the future of the radio station had been circulating for a while, and yesterday its owners decided they could no longer justify its continuing losses. The frequency has been sold for a nominal fee to Irish state broadcaster RTE, which already owned a 20% stake in Radio Tara, the holding company that owned the licence. RTE has yet to decide what to do with it, but options include trying to sell it on to another broadcaster or using it to broadcast one of its two Irish stations in the UK. At its peak Teamtalk 252 was getting 400,000 listeners, but this was 600,000 less than the number Atlantic 252 had been getting during its dying days. The Teamtalk brand will still be used for the company’s football website and mobile division.
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SEMINAL NWA DUE FOR RERELEASE
Two seminal NWA albums, 1988's ‘Straight Outta Compton’ and 1991's ‘Niggaz4life’, will both get rereleases in the US this Autumn. Also scheduled is ‘The N.W.A Legacy 2’, a 19-song collection that includes the final two NWA tracks ‘Chin Check’ from 1999's ‘Next Friday’ soundtrack, and ‘Hello’ from Ice Cube's 2000 release ‘War and Peace Vol. 2 (The Peace Disc)’. ‘Straight Outta Compton’ was one of the most influential rap albums ever, of course, many seeing it as the album that steered MCs away from smooth rhythms and boastful rhymes and into the aggressive zone of drive-bys, drug deals and crooked cops that dominated the scene for much of the nineties. It featured the innovative production of a young Dr Dre and wordplay from Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson), Eazy-E (Eric Wright), MC Ren (Lorenzo Patterson) and DJ Yella (Antoine Carraby). The album's centerpiece, ‘Fuck Tha Police’ invoked huge national uproar at the time. ‘Niggaz4life’ was NWA's third and final record, and was created following three years of intense controversy and internal tension. Some critics said its violent and misogynist lyrics overshadowed Dre's creative, inspiring beats.
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GATES CHOOSES LOCAL GIG OVER GAMES
Gareth Gates is reported to have turned down the chance to appear in the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, so he can appear at an outdoor gig in his hometown of Bradford. The free event takes place in the city's Centenary Square this Sunday and marks Bradford's bid to become the European Capital of Culture in 2008, for which Gareth is a Bradford Ambassador. Word is not only will he perform his two number ones, but he will be performing a duet with his sister Nicola.
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ICE-T’S EDUCATIONAL DESSERTS
Ice-T has put his name behind several 'Posse Pops', desserts with educational messages on the wrapper sold to kids in America. Different flavours carry different messages: the Wild Thing flavour promotes safe sex while Blowing Up encourages further education. Ice-T told reporters: "It's basically going to be, you know, anti-drugs, stay in school 'n' just whatever positive is. But spoken from the words of the rapper in our lingo to the kids. The way they understand it”. Now word yet on whether the educational snacks will come to the UK.
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PRISCILLA PLANS ELVIS MUSICAL
Elvis's ex-wife Priscilla has unveiled plans to turn her romance with The King into a musical. The as-yet-untitled musical is expected to run along similar lines as the West End Abba fest Mamma Mia!, where a loose plot is structured around the artist’s hits. That said it is as yet unclear whether the production will actually get permission to use Presley’s original music. "It's a celebration of the music from that period. It may include some Elvis music, it may not, depending on resolution of copyright issues," said a spokeswoman. The Presley show will chart the singer's love life through the 1950s, '60s and '70s. "This is going to be Priscilla's vision. It's her story. It's the king and the queen. It's the birth of rock and roll," David Codikow of producers Immortal commented. Elvis met Priscilla when she was just 14. She moved into Presley's Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, and continued going to high school. The pair eventually married in Las Vegas in 1967 as she reached the age of 21, but following allegations of infidelity and drug abuse they divorced in 1973. Priscilla Presley went on to make a name for herself as an actress, of course, most notably in the Naked Gun comedies.
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MORRISSEY POSTPONES, MARR SIGNS
Morrissey has postponed the first week of his US tour, apparently due to immigration problems. He should have played a gig in Salt Lake City last night, but his promoters have announced his tour won’t now start until his Phoenix gig on 9 Aug. Most of the cancelled dates have been rescheduled.
Meanwhile Johnny Marr (for some, the real talent behind the Smiths) has signed with iMusic, a division of ArtistDirect, and will be recording a debut album with his band Johnny Marr and the Healers. The group features Ringo Starr's son, Zak Starkey, on drums and Kula Shaker's Alonsa Bevan on bass. In a statement yesterday Marr said, "I've been lucky enough to collaborate with people I respect and have really enjoyed all the records I've done. But there's things I want to do and a sound I want that I can only get with my own band."
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BLUR RETURN
Damon Albarn has confirmed that a Blur follow up to 1999's '13' should get a January release. Speaking to MTV last weekend before a Gorillaz live show earlier this week Albarn said he was keen to nail the many rumours about if and when the album would be released. "The record itself will definitely be out in January," he said. "We'll put a white label out in the next couple of months and it won't have our name on it, but it'll take a lot of people by surprise. We're hoping people play it not knowing who it is. Hopefully the record we're just finishing will represent a shift. We're working with some really interesting producers, including Neptunes and Norman Cook." That said, the official line from the band and their label is that no release date has been set, and the NME reports that neither the Neptunes or Fatboy Slim have been definitely confirmed as producers.
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28 DAYS PAY TRIBUTE THROUGH NEXT ALBUM
28 Days have dedicated their new album to their late drummer Scott Murray, whose drumming actually appears on one track. Murray was killed last November crossing Dandenong Road on his way home from band practice at guitarist Hep's house in Melbourne. Bass player Damo told reporters in Australia: "There's one song where we use his demos. The song is called ‘Photos’. We got our producer to beef them up and fix them up so he is actually playing on one track on the album. There's a secret song called ‘January’. It is at track 28. It is the complete band with Scotty, no new guitars or anything".
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LAST CHANCE TO VOTE FOR RADIO 1 KERRANG CATEGORIES
Tomorrow is the closing date for listener votes for the Kerrang Award for Best British Live Act. One of eight awards to have some sort of public vote, the live gong is being picked by listeners to the Radio 1 Rock Show. Listeners can vote at www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/rockshow/kerrang_vote.shtml until the end of tomorrow. The awards take place at a ‘secret’ London location on 27 Aug.
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EVANS TAKES ON THE INDUSTRY
Former Radio 1 and Virgin DJ Chris Evans is lined up to speak at this year's Edinburgh Television Festival later this month. He will feature on the Richard Dunn Memorial Interview on 25 Aug and will be grilled in a one-to-one interview with Kevin Lygo, director of programming for Channel 5. The TV Festival’s Charles Brand told reporters: "Everyone is always interested in what Chris Evans has to say. Amongst other things, he has an amazing ability to know what people want and how to deliver it. He is a key voice of innovation, invention and importance, in television today."
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Answer to Wednesday’s pop quiz:
‘Stay’, ‘Music’, ‘Crazy’, ‘Rise’ and ‘Why’ – each of these words have been the title to two different songs. Can you name the two artists who released songs with each of these titles (ie different set of two artists for each song title)?
‘Music’ by John Miles in 1966, and Madonna in 2000; ‘Crazy’ by Patsy Cline in 1990 and Mark Morrison in 1995; ‘Rise’ by Herb Alpert in 1979 and Gabrielle in 2000; ‘why’ by Anthony Newley in 1960 and Misteeq in 2001; and for ‘Stay’ you could have had The Hollies in 1963, Shakespeare’s Sister in 1994 or Stephen Gately in 2001.