Archive for September, 2005

HIM - Dark Light

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JR
on September 29, 2005
in Album of the Week and Music
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HIM - Dark Light

For the better part of a year now, I have been clamoring for the release of HIM’s fifth studio album - Dark Light. So much so I pre-ordered the ’special-editon’ version from the band’s official website close to 2 months ago and began counting down the days for it’s designated global release. (September 26). Yesterday evening when I got home from work, - the deluxe boxed CD had arrived! The sheer speed at which the package was ripped open astounded not only me, but my ever curious cat who looked at me with a confused inquisitive look. I’m sure she was thinking this is really not the way for a grown man to behave.

With caution, I put the CD in to play with feelings of trepidation. Everytime I eagerly await something so bad - it always ends up being a big disappointment. My fears were certainly short-lived. I’ve played this album from start to finish close to 15 times and with each listen, I’m liking it even more.

Dark Light was originally supposed to be produced and mixed by Andy Wallace, (Slayer, Sepultura, Springsteen, Faith No More etc), but vocalist Ville Valo said he made HIM sound ‘too American’ so they fired him, and hired Tim Palmer who they worked with before on the Love Metal and And Love Said No albums.

Dark Light is an incredible slab of music delivered as only HIM can. Featuring 10 tracks (12 on the deluxe version) all with infectious vocal melodies interwoven with competing guitar melodies overlapping subtle and oh-so tonal keyboard undertones - and a rock steady bottom end that is sure to shake the foundations! Just fuckn incredible! Album of the year? Quite possibly… quite possibly!

Ladies & germs, believe the hype!

HIM - Dark Light

Saw 2 Blood Drive

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JR
on September 28, 2005
in Cinema and KillFuckDie
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Saw2 Blood Drive

Marketing movies can often make or break a cinema release. Last year, the makers of ‘Saw’ discovered a new way to market their suspensful and bloody film - by donating blood to the American Red Cross. Not only did you get the satisfaction of doing something damn good for your fellow man, you also got a free movie screening and the obligatory tee-shirt!

Last year’s blood drive generated 4,200 pints of blood - enough to help save over 585 lives in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in two days, according to Sandi Sundquist Lesh, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross.

This year, with the 2nd Annual Saw 2 Halloween Blood Drive, I’m sure they are looking for even more help. Now, we don’t know all of the specifics yet.. but I’m sure Lions Gate will hook up all those who help dontate. Better yet, if the nurse at the Blood Drive looks like the one in the poster above, I am sure that last year’s record of 4,200 pints will be doubled(!) (incidentally, gosh the model in the poster looks a helluva lot like porn starlet Briana Banks!)

Diamanda Galás Australian Tour

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JR
on September 28, 2005
in Gigs and Music
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Diamanda Galas Australian Tour

The completely enigmatic Diamanda Galás with her three-and-a-half octave voice will be touring Australia throughout October. My girlfriend and I saw her on her last Australian tour in 2001 and were transfixed and mesmerized at the stunning performance of this avant garde performer. Now we just gotta decide which of the two Melbourne shows to attend. I’m kinda leaning towards the October 7 performance as that is the night of my birthday and it will be the performance of ‘Defixiones: Orders From The Dead’ - an operatic sacred mass dedicated “to the forgotton and erased of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek genocides that occured in Asia Minor, Pontos, and Thrace between 1914 and 1923,” genocides that the American and Turkish governments refuse to recognise to this day. Like the Eumenides - the mythological creatures charged with administering justice - Galas seeks to pursue the criminal with the memory of his crimes. Note her inclusion of the Turkish poem Hatred published by Hurriyet on the eve of the 1974 invasion of Cyprus, which advocates the large-scale decapitation of the Greek giavouri (infidels).

Defixiones draws its title from the “curse tablets”, the small lead charms engraved with curses that were laid on graves throughout the eastern Mediterranean to discourage desecration. With her fifteenth concert creation, Galas directly engages the Greek heritage that has always - occasionally directly, more often obliquely - informed her work.

The rest of Australia will be treated to the ‘Guilty, Guilty, Guilty’ performance - a mixture of blues, jazz and song-spiel techniques exploring the darker side of life.

Cannot wait!

Continue reading ‘Diamanda Galás Australian Tour’

Hey Ho Let’s Go (to Berlin)

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JR
on September 25, 2005
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Ramones Museum Opens in Berlin

Earlier this month Dogmatic commented on the Ramones museum set to open in Berlin. Today, the New York Times reports on the museum’s opening.

Billed as the world’s first Ramones museum - the museum opened to the public on September 15. A project of a die-hard German fan, Florian Hayler, (pictured above) it houses more than 300 photographs, records, news clippings and other memorabilia. That includes an unwashed pair of jeans owned by the guitarist Johnny Ramone, the drummer Marky Ramone’s sneakers and an autographed black leather jacket.

The museum had the blessing of the living members of the group, Marky and C. J. Ramone, Mr. Hayler said. Marky Ramone, speaking from his home in Brooklyn, said, “I’m very flattered that another country will help keep the Ramones legacy alive.”

Dee Dee Ramone, the songwriter and bassist who died in 2002, spent much of his childhood in Berlin, a connection made evident by Ramones songs like “Born to Die in Berlin” and “It’s a Long Way Back to Germany.” Referring to the deceased band members Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee, Marky Ramone said: “Knowing them, they would have been flattered, because they worked very hard. Luckily, they saw most of the punk bands naming the Ramones as an influence. At least they saw that.”

Admission to the Ramones Museum is free. “It’s a museum for fans, by fans,” said Mr. Hayler, 32, whose personal collection, which includes 170 Ramones T-shirts, supplied most of the museum’s holdings. Mr. Hayler, who said he attended 101 Ramones concerts, opened the museum because “I didn’t have any more space at home.”

Traces of vintage New York are everywhere in the museum - issues of the magazine New York Rocker, now defunct, and photographs of the Ramones on the subway and posing on the Bowery near CBGB. “The first time I went to New York, I took a cab to CBGB’s at 6 a.m. and waited in front of it until it opened,” Mr. Hayler said. The New York-based sociologist Donna Gaines, who has crusaded to keep CBGB open, said: “We need an American Ramones Museum. Seattle has the Experience Music Project, and Cleveland has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; what do we have in New York?”

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The Exorcist Convention?

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JR
on September 20, 2005
in KillFuckDie and Occult
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Orthodontists have national conventions, as do lawyers and computer salespeople. So why not exorcists? At the end of his weekly general audience Wednesday Pope Benedict greeted Italian exorcists who, he disclosed, are currently holding their national convention.

The Pope encouraged them to “carry on their important work in the service of the Church.”

Problem was that until the Pope spoke few people outside the inner circle knew that a convention of Beelzebub-busters was going on, presumably in Rome.

And where were they holding it? In a church, a hotel, a graveyard?

“They try to keep these things quiet,” said a Catholic professor who has dealings with exorcists. The Roman Catholic Church has shown growing interest in exorcism in Italy. In 1999, the Vatican issued its first updated ritual for exorcism since 1614 and warned that the devil is still at work.

The official Roman Catholic exorcism starts with prayers, a blessing and sprinkling of holy water, the laying on of hands on the possessed, and the making of the sign of the cross. It ends with an “imperative formula” in which the devil is ordered to leave the possessed. The formula begins: “I order you, Satan…” It goes on to denounce Satan as “prince of the world” and “enemy of human salvation.” It ends: “Go back, Satan.”

A Vatican university announced last Thursday that for the second year running it will hold a course on exorcism and Satanism for Roman Catholic priests.

The course starts next month at the Regina Apostolorum, one of Rome’s most prestigious pontifical universities, and this year participants can take it not only in person at the Rome campus but via videoconference from other Italian cities.

This, a university statement said, was because of great interest after last year’s course, which was attended by nearly 130 people.

The four-month course, which begins in October, is what the university calls inter-disciplinary. It includes medical, psychological and religious aspects of Satanism and exorcism.

According to some estimates, as many as 5,000 people are thought to be members of Satanic cults in Italy with 17-to 25-year-olds making up three quarters of them.

Interest in the devil and the occult has been boosted by films such as “The Exorcist” in 1973 and last year’s “Exorcist: The Beginning.”

Last year, Italy was gripped by the story of two teenage members of a heavy metal rock band called the “Beasts of Satan” who were killed by other band members in a human sacrifice.

The deaths horrified Catholic Italy, with pages of newspapers given over to descriptions of the black candles and goats’ skulls decorating one victim’s bedroom and witness statements of sexual violence.

Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio?

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JR
on September 17, 2005
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Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio?

Former Ramones drummer Marky will become a Sirius Satellite Radio host on Tuesday, October 4 with the launch of ‘Marky Ramone’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg’.

The new weekly, two-hour show will feature punk music from its inception through its current incarnations, and will be heard live each Tuesday on commercial-free Sirius music channel Faction 28 from 8 to 10 p.m. ET. The show will be re-broadcast on Saturday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight ET on Sirius Disorder 24.

“I’ve certainly been a radio guest many times, but now I get to do something I’ve always wanted to do — be a radio DJ,” said Marky in a statement. “I’m going to play the music I love, and the opportunity to do it on Sirius is fantastic,” he said, adding that he wants the show to feature live, rare and archival Ramones material in addition to some of the music that influenced the legendary band, such as the British invasion of the 1960s, as well as classic and contemporary punk, live in-studio guests and calls from listeners.

Marky joined the Ramones in 1978 and continued with them until 1983, returning to the lineup four years later, and remaining in the band until they disbanded in 1996. Starting in 1987, Marky shot more than 400 hours of video of the Ramones, some of which appears in the definitive Ramones home video released in 2004, “Ramones Raw”. Today he tours the world playing Ramones music as MARKY RAMONE & FRIENDS. He’s been working on a video of live Ramones shows, due from Warner Brothers in April 2006, which will be followed by the publication of his autobiographical book, “Faith in the Backbeat””, next summer. He is also involved in the development of a movie and a play about the Ramones.

Ramones Museum to Open In Berlin

Published
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JR
on September 11, 2005
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Ramones Museum Opens in Berlin

The finishing touches were being put on a museum in Berlin entirely dedicated to New York’s seminal punk rockers, the Ramones.

The museum, set to open Tuesday, has more than 300 items collected from the time of the band’s genesis in 1974 to the final concert in Los Angeles in 1996, RollingStone.com reported Friday.

The exhibits include hundreds of newspaper clippings, concert flyers, a pair of sneakers that once belonged to the late Johnny Ramone, the late Joey Ramone’s old stage glove, a leather jacket signed by the band’s original lineup and a vintage early `70s Ramones T-shirt.

Joey died of lymphoma in April 2001 just short of his 50th birthday. Guitarist Dee Dee Ramone died of a drug overdose in June 2002 at age 49. Leader Johnny Ramone died of cancer in September 2004, a month before his 56th birthday.

Ozzy Cheats On Sharon With Nanny

Published
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JR
on September 10, 2005
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Ozzy Osbourne
pic: Ozzy in 1984 arrested in San Antonio, Texas for pissing on the Alamo whilst wearing a dress

In her forthcoming autobiography, ‘Extreme’, Sharon Osbourne reveals a drunken Ozzy “celebrated” the birth of Jack in 1985 by jumping into bed with their child-care assistant.

Sharon says, “Ozzy was loaded when he got to the hospital. Then he collapsed and went home.

“My assistant popped in to see if he was OK and found him in bed with the nanny. She wasn’t a beautiful blonde, she was an ugly old cow.

“Ozzy was a raging drunk. I don’t know if he actually got it up.”

Despite Ozzy’s infidelity, Sharon has forgiven his bad behaviour, blaming it on his drug and alcohol abuse.

She explains, “I forgave him. If my husband was sober and having a mad, passionate affair, that would be different… I have been faithful in my marriage.”