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MUZU TV PICK OF THE WEEK: GLASVEGAS |
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CURRENTLY PLAYING ON THE CMU-TUBE, with MUZU Selected for your viewing pleasure on the CMU-Tube with MUZU TV this week, check out new videos from Atomic Hooligan, Frightened Rabbit, Kraak & Smaak, IAMX, G Love & Special Sauce and The Robocop Kraus, plus old favourites from Ben Folds, Scouting For Girls, Coldcut, Leftfield and Fiona Apple plus live performances from MGMT, The Futureheads and Glasvegas. Set the CMU-Tube in motion by heading to www.cmumusicnetwork.co.uk. |
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BECOME A CMU/MUZU COLLEGE CORRESPONDENT MUZU TV has joined up with CMU and the College Media Network to set up a team of College Correspondents at universities across the UK and Ireland. We are looking for students interested in gaining skills and experience in music and media to work with the CMU team to help manage their local MUZU TV college channel. Correspondents will get to network with local music and media people, and influence the music played and artists featured on their local channel. They will also get loads of free training, and make lots of great contacts for a future career in the media or music industries. For more details and an application form go to www.collegemedianetwork.co.uk/muzu. |
GUT RECORDS NO MORE
After all that speculation regarding the future of Gut Records we can confirm what the future of the UK indie involves. Nothing. After much reporting of financial difficulties at the label there was confirmation yesterday that Gut had gone into administration and that the label's assets were up for sale.
The liquidation involves all of Gut's assets except its compilations company GTV. So that's Gut Records, Institute Recordings, Gut Recordings, GI Recordings, Gusto and even the firm's regional promotions outfit Intermedia. The PR business' General Manager, Stacy Scurfield, has set up her own promotions company and is expected to take on some of Intermedia's plugging contracts.
Gut was launched in 1998 by Guy Holmes and released music from the likes of Space, Tom Jones and Tears For Fears over the years, and was also the label behind the Crazy Frog's short pop career.
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DOORS LEGAL DISPUTE END IN SIGHT
A long running legal dispute between the surviving members of The Doors, the parents of Jim Morrison and the parents of Morrison's deceased wife Pamela Courson could soon be over after the California Supreme Court refused to take up an appeal over an earlier ruling in the case.
As previously reported, the dispute stems from a tour in 2003, when keyboardist Ray Manzerek and guitarist Robby Krieger went on tour together, playing songs by their former band, with The Cult's Ian Astbury on vocals. Drummer John Densmore declined to take part but agreed to let the duo play the songs, provided they didn't call themselves The Doors. So far, so reasonable. However, Manzerek and Densmore called themselves The Doors Of The 21st Century and then made the words "Of The 21st Century" very small in many of their press adverts, which made Densmore, the Morrisons and the Coursons a little annoyed. It didn't help when the $3.2 million net profit from the tour went to a new company called Doors Touring, either.
Under a 1970 agreement, signed by all four members, all business deals relating to the band require a unanimous vote from all band members, after Morrison was angered after the others agreed to allow 'Light My Fire' to be used in a Buick TV advert. After 1971, when Morrison died, Manzerek, Krieger, Densmore, Morrison's parents and his widow Pamela Courson split the sales of Doors music and memorabilia. Courson's parents received an stake after her death.
In 2005, a US court ruled that Manzerek and Krieger had improperly used The Doors' name and ordered them to stop immediately, and to pay $3.2 million to their accusers, as well as $2 million dollars in costs. However, the pair appealed, as the judge had actually overruled the jury's decision. In May, an appeals court upheld the ruling for damages, but is still considering an appeal that the charge of $2 million in costs is excessive. Now that the California Supreme Court has refused to consider a further appeal, it looks like the whole case may soon come to a close, with Manzerek and Krieger left footing a rather large bill.
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BARENAKED LADIES MAN SURVIVES PLANE CRASH
Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson and three other passengers survived after the singer's Cessna 206 aeroplane crashed in Canada on Sunday afternoon. The Transportation Safety Board Of Canada are investigating the crash.
In a message on the band's official website, Robertson said: "I want to thank fans and friends for all your support and good wishes throughout this crazy experience. As has been reported, my plane crashed shortly after take off. There's a lot to figure out, but there's a team of experts currently figuring it out! The important thing is that none of us were harmed and we all walked away unscathed".
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DR DRE'S SON DIES
Dr Dre's Son, Andre Young Jr, was found dead at his Woodland Hills home on Saturday morning. The twenty year old went out on Friday night, returning home at around 5.30am on Saturday morning. Reports state that he was then found unresponsive by his mother at around 10am, when she called the emergency services. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed but foul play is not suspected.
In a statement, Dre's spokesperson said: "Dr Dre is mourning the loss of his son Andre Young Jr. Please respect his family's grief and privacy at this time".
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LED ZEP WORKING ON NEW MATERIAL
Jason Bonham, son of original Led Zeppelin drummer John and his father's stand in at the band's reunion gig at the O2 Arena last year, has revealed that the band are working on new material.
He told Detroit radio station WCSX: "I've been over [to England] a couple of times. I've been working with Jimmy [Page] and John Paul [Jones] and trying to do some new material and some writing. I don't know what it will be, but it will be something. At the moment, all I know is I have the great pleasure to go and jam with the two guys and start work on some material. When I get there, I never ask any questions. If I get a phone call to go and play, I enjoy every moment of it. Whatever it ends up as, to get a chance to jam with two people like that, it is a phenomenal thing for me. Lots of politics [would need to] get ironed out [if an album was to be recorded, but] the possibility of doing something is in the cards. I really felt it was on the cards from the moment we walked offstage at the O2".
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MADONNA TO EXHIBIT PERSONAL EFFECTS
Over 300 personal items belonging to Madonna will go on display in a exhibition at The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane in London next year. The items on display will include costumes worn in videos, films and on stage.
Curator, Ted Owen, said: "These are museum-quality pieces - but they will be presented in-keeping with the glamour and sense of theatre that the queen of pop has made her trademark - and Madonna fans should be very excited indeed".
The exhibition opens on 21 Feb and will run for a month.
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JACK OSBOURNE TO SHOW OZZY'S TRUE NATURE
Jack Osbourne says that his family's hit TV show 'The Osbournes' "tarnished" his father's reputation. So, he has set out to show the public that he's not just "a senile, funny, bumbling guy" by making a new documentary about him, which will feature interviews with Ozzy himself, as well as members of Black Sabbath, his solo band, friends and family. Filming apparently began in January and there is no fixed date for finishing. However, parts should be previewed next summer.
Jack Osbourne told Rolling Stone: "I'm trying to paint a realistic picture of who my father is. I think The Osbournes, to a degree, tarnished the public's perception of my dad as a bit of a senile, funny, bumbling guy. Yeah, my dad can be that guy, but it's not him. I think that almost discredited who he is as an artist. My dad's not an idiot - he's nothing short of a genius, in my opinion. He does have huge flaws, and we're trying to really paint an honest picture of that. Next year at Ozzfest we're talking about doing a traveling museum. It's something we were talking about after the show, having a museum at the gig where fans can go in and look at old photos and old memorabilia, and at the end of it, it would have a five-minute clip of the doc just to start to get it out there".
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BJORK CORRECTS AND EDUCATES JOURNALISTS
Bjork has written on her official website to clear up confusion over who exactly produced and wrote the music on her album, 'Vespertine'.
She said: "I saw in the last issue of Iceland's newspaper in English, Grapevine, that Valgeir Sigurdsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album 'Vespertine'. Could I please offer a correction. I have noticed [over the] last seven years that Mr Sigurdsson has often been credited for either writing or producing that album. I'd like to say that he didn´t write it or produce. He was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third. The [rest was] done by other engineers and programmers".
She goes on to debate how this confusion may have arisen, deciding that it's either laziness on the part of music journalists, sexism on the part of music journalist, the fact that she doesn't play any instruments when she performs live or that she just hasn't bothered to correct it before.
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ARCTIC MONKEYS WORK WITH JOSH HOMME
Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme will produce new material by The Arctic Monkeys next month. The band will fly out to California to begin recording their first new tracks since their 'Favourite Worst Nightmares' album.
Homme told The NME: "I think it's going to work out great. They want to submerge themselves in a place that's the opposite of where they're from and what they're used to. I think we're just going to start by doing a couple of tracks. No pressure. The goal is to make something that they dig so much that everyone else can too".
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GIRLS ALOUD DENY HUNT FOR NEW MEMBER
Girls Aloud have denied claims made by The Sunday Mirror that they are set to launch a new reality TV show search for a sixth member of the group. In a statement, they said: "The story which ran in the Sunday Mirror claiming that Girls Aloud are going to take part in a reality TV show to find a sixth member is totally ludicrous. The story is completely fabricated. As Girls Aloud, Nicola Roberts, Sarah Harding, Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl Cole and Nadine Coyle have become one of the country's best-loved groups. They have no desire to change the line up. Over the last six years they have scored a record breaking 17 top ten singles and performed 3 sold out arena tours around the UK. Girls Aloud are currently in the studio putting the finishing touches to their fifth album due for release in November".
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SINGLE REVIEW: Saint Saviour - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Bang The Box)
Just when you thought you'd seen 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' covered by just about everyone, from the haunting (Susanna & The Magical Orchestra) to the Gallic (Nouvelle Vague) and the strange (Squarepusher), along comes Saint Saviour with her tuppence worth. "Let's give it a go", I thought to myself, expecting not very much at all. Hmm... note to self - do not underestimate the power of the newcomer. Singer Becky Jones dissects the song and turns it into a heart-wrenching ballad. Sparse piano lines intertwine with a vocal which shows impressive range, delicate timing and wonderful intonation, sending chills down this listener's spine and making me look at the song in a completely new light. If the measure of a good cover version is making the song your own and singing it as if you'd written it, then Saint Saviour have achieved the best cover version I've heard since Johnny Cash's 'Hurt'. DEG
Release Date: 25 Aug
Press Contact: The Incubator [all]
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METALLICA STREAM NEW SONGS
Metallica are now streaming two full songs from their new album, 'The Death Magnetic', on their official website. 'The Day That Never Comes' went online last week, while 'My Apocalypse' arrived on Monday. New songs will be posted every Monday until 12 Sep.
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JACK DANIELS BIRTHDAY GIG
Jack Daniels has announced a month of celebrations to mark the 158th birthday of the company's founder next month.
It will all culminate in a very special gig at the Jack Daniels brewery in Lynchburg, Tennessee on 18 Oct. The gig will feature collaborations between Roisin Murphy, Tim Wheeler of Ash, The House Of Lords of The Young Knives and Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, with The New Silver Coronet Band, a group formed in honour of the original Jack Daniels Silver Coronet Band set up by the man himself in 1892 and featuring six of Tennessee's finest session musicians. The performance will be watched live by just 200 people.
The House Of Lords said: "I am really looking forward to coming to Tennessee and playing with the Silver Cornet Band. It is a real honour to be asked and I am looking forward to standing on stage with some actual real musicians for the first time ever, I just hope I don't expose myself for the great pretender that I am. As the bassist and second most important vocalist in The Young Knives it is also a really flattering to be asked to take the front seat for a whole gig rather than just a few of the songs. I have only played a few times in the US before and have never visited Tennessee so I am really excited about travelling to such a musically vibrant city and maybe soaking up some of that musical history. Maybe something will rub off on me. Who knows".
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ICELAND AIRWAVES COMES TO LONDON
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Iceland's Airwaves festival will transplant itself to East London for a special all-night event spread across eight venues next month. The date of the event is currently a closely-guarded secret, but we can reveal that amongst the bands and DJs playing will be The Whip, Teenagers, Metronomy and Florence And The Machine.
Airwaves Festival Director Thorsteinn Stephensen, said: "Iceland Airwaves has become an incredible annual music showcase with some of the world's most creative and well established bands headlining year upon year. We are delighted to celebrate our 10th anniversary by bringing the festival to London for the first time and providing a platform for some of the best international talent around today, this is the start of a fantastic annual showcase in one of the world's most multi cultural and musical cities. It celebrates a decade of Iceland Airwaves as champions of international, cutting edge music".
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FRIGHTENED RABBIT TOUR
Frightened Rabbit have announced details of new tour date to coincide with the release of their new single, 'I Feel Better'/'The Twist', released via FatCat on 22 Sep.
Tour dates:
4 Sep: Leeds, Brudenell Social
5 Sep: Manchester, Night & Day Cafe
6 Sep: London, 229
7 Sep: Brighton, Freebutt
8 Sep: Southampton, Orange Rooms
9 Sep: Reading, South Street
10 Sep: Leicester, Firebug
11 Sep: Newcastle, End Bar
13 Sep: Dublin, Andrew Lane's Theatre
16 Sep: Dundee, Students Union
18 Sep: Aberdeen, Barfly
19 Sep: Loopallu Festival
25 Sep: Edinburgh, The Cave
30 Sep: Glasgow, Arches
2 Oct: Concrete & Glass Festival
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ALBUM REVIEW: Heartbreak - Lies (Lex Records)
Oh, this is more like it. Following Neon Neon's 'Stainless Style', comes another album on Lex indebted to the sounds of the 80s (and the decade's key cultural icons too, if the lyrics about Molly Ringwald are anything to go by). The duo (Brit Ali Renault on keyboards and Argentinian vocalist Sebastian Muravchik) create pulsating, unashamedly impassioned Italo-disco dancefloor epics, built around Renault's electro mastery and the astonishingly versatile vocals of Muravchik; think Jake Shears getting it on with Giorgio Moroder amid the chrome and neon of a Rimini discotheque back in 1985. Redolent of Tiga's 'Sexor' in its single-minded vision and similar to some of the stuff on Relish (e.g. Franz & Shape), but with a more POP! edge, 'Lies' is an immensely assured debut, full of life-affirming euphoric pop. MS
Release Date: 22 Sep
Press Contact: Lex IH [NP, RP], Bang On [O]
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PRS WINS LEGAL DISPUTE WITH BUMA
The Performing Right Society, or PRS to its close friends, has won its legal dispute with Dutch collecting society Buma over a licence the latter had given online music service Beatport.
Buma provided Beatport with a licence back in July which gave it rights to distribute globally an extensive catalogue of songs, including those represented by PRS. However, PRS argued that Buma only had the right to offer the rights to its catalogue within the Netherlands.
With that in mind PRS went to the Dutch courts to have the licence revoked, and the judge hearing the case ruled that Buma offered "no convincing arguments" to prove they did have the right to grant the Beatport multi-territory licence.
Commenting on the ruling, PRS MD International Karen Buse told reporters: "We are disappointed that Buma decided to act in the way it did but pleased that the judge has upheld the contract terms between PRS and Buma, confirming that no society can issue licences without the express agreement of the other. PRS welcomes fair and healthy competition for members across Europe and we look forward to working with all collection societies in the future to provide the best possible service to songwriters and music publishers. We shall also continue to operate our own successful and legal pan-European licensing scheme; making it easy and efficient for online music services across Europe to access the music they need to support and grow their businesses".
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JAPANESE RECORD COMPANIES DENY RINGTONE FIXING
Four Japanese record companies, including Sony Music Japan and Universal Music Japan, have gone to the courts to try and overturn a ruling by the country's Fair Trade Commission that said they had violated Japanese Antimonopoly Law by acting to prevent other companies from entering the so called master-ringtone business. The FTC made the claims because the four labels have exclusivity deals with a ringtone aggregator called Label Mobile in which they all have an equity stake.
Ahead of its legal appeal to the FTC ruling, Sony Japan told reporters: "We have not been in conspiracy with the three other labels to block chaku-uta [master ringtone] service firms' [market] entry but have made our own decisions to reject the chaku-uta service firms' requests. We hope that our assertion that there was no such conspiracy will be proved through the court procedures".
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ITUNES RETURNS TO CHINA
The iTunes Store is back online in China, though without the controversial pro-Tibet songs that had been causing concern among the Chinese government. As you'll remember, athletes with a conscience (though not too big a conscience to stop them going to the Beijing Olympics in the first place) had been encouraged to download the protest songs via the Apple download store and listen to them while competing in China. Chinese chiefs weren't impressed and stopped all access to iTunes as a result, just as Apple were busy launching the iPhone in the territory. The latest news is the Apple download service is now working again in the country, though without the protest tunes. Chinese authorities haven't formally commented on either the blocking of access to iTunes, or the subsequent unblocking.
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GLOBAL PLAN TO INTEGRATE SALES DIVISIONS BY NOVEMBER
Global Radio founder and GCap boss Ashley Tabor has announced a plan to have the advertising divisions of the two merging radio firms fully integrated by 1 Nov. The integration is sure to lead to more redundancies at the radio major - and GCap's National Sales Director Simon Daglish has been confirmed as the first to go. Global's ad execs will move into GCap's offices on London's Leicester Square - leading to speculation all of Global's London operations will ultimately be moved to the GCap HQ. Elsewhere in Global news, the radio firm has announced it has appointed Mail On Sunday MD Stephen Miron, the tabloid boss who oversaw all those controversial covermounts, to be their CEO.
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ZANE SUSPENDED BY XFM
Alex Zane has been suspended from presenting the Xfm Breakfast Show after playing a song he wrote about rape on the air. 'I Won't Take No For An Answer' was written in the style of sixties artist Mike Sarne, a guy who recorded risqué songs that probably wouldn't be approved of today, including 'Come Outside', 'Dodgy Looking Bird' and 'Code Of Love'.
In a statement, the station said: "On Wednesday morning, the breakfast show broadcast an item that, in the view of station management, was distasteful and likely to cause offence. As a result, the breakfast team has been suspended, pending a formal disciplinary process. A full apology was broadcast on air at 7.20am on Thursday. We are sorry for any offence caused".
Dave Berry will stand in for Zane until 1 Sep.
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KASABIAN MAN AVOIDS EXPLOSION
Builders working on a house that Kasabian's Serge Pizzorno is due to move into shortly discovered an unexploded grenade in the back garden recently, it has been revealed. The entire street around the west London house had to be evacuated while bomb disposal experts diffused the device.
Pizzorno, a little melodramatically, told The Sun: "All it could have taken was the vibrations from a kickabout in the garden or some loud music and we would have been blown to pieces in a pile of rubble and smoke. I'm 27 as well and there's a tradition of musicians meeting their end at my age. It's all sorted now and we should be moving in there in a few weeks".
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