Obviously thrilled that the deals with elves paid off.

Thanks to all his middle earth friends and connections, Robert Plant finally has succeeded in fulfilling his dream of being (almost) a knight!  On January 7, The Queen honored Plant with the prestigious CBE, or Commander of the British Empire.  The title does not instill the mandatory “Sir” to precede his name, but more than likely he will receive the prefix due solely to age and not ties with the monarchy.  Also, this does not mean he has any say about skirmishes that arise nor can he command “fire!“  and expect any sort of results.

Undoubtedly, the good Queen must have been a big fan of the ‘Raising Sand’ album he had recently done with Allison Krauss.  One finds it hard to believe that ‘Presence’  would move her to bestow such on honor on the old fellow.  She obviously prefers more ‘adult’-styled music, as she also handed out another honor to fellow musician, saxophonist Courtney Pine.

Too right!  Give us quality stuff and we will buy.

The British press loves their gossip, and catching Mr. Weller in compromising positions is definitely on the agenda.  Look at these for example…

Weller does Howlin' Wolf

Seems as if Paul wanted to whoop it up a bit during the holidays, and did so in grand style, very grand style.  Paul was taking a break in Prague with his sweetie.  Everyone knows that the Czechs have astonishingly good and tasty brew, and Weller decided to go on a sampling spree.  After a bit of sauce, he sits down with the night’s entertainment, and blabbers through an embarrassingly wasted version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor”.   What a surprised it must have been for the punters that night!

Nothing goes better after an impromptu ‘jam’, than a bit more brew and some sexy times with the lady.  So be it.  Who knows what these two had already been up to, or how long they’d been at it, but here is picture proof that these two were wilder than a pair of monkeys with weekend passes.

They could not even make it back to their lodgings without stopping for a concrete and rubble snack.

"..some pavement biscuits love...?"

On a good note…his shoes look smashing throughout it all.

(photos from The Sun)

Right before Christmas, it appeared as if Warner Bros. were set to play some sort of ‘good cop, bad cop’ game with the video site (YouTube).  Feeling shortchanged from a deal cut a year or so back, Warner’s reneged and pulled all their videos from YouTube  until further notice.  originally, the record company giant (who have 21% of all US album sales, by the way) shook hands with YouTube with their sights on making more money from having their goods legally shown on the site.   Warner’s made their move just a month premature of Google buying out Youtube, therefore cutting into could-have-been profits.  They appeared to be the ‘good’ cop at the time of their deal because Universal was suing YouTube over similar grievances.

Their Christmas gift to YouTube was to be the annoying adolescent Indian-giver.

Now, all the big boys of the music biz are wringing their hands over a ‘new deal’ to further their money making schemes once again.  Currently on the table is the possibility of a premium viewing channel on YouTube in which punters will have to buy into to view music videos.  In order to keep the dogs at bay, YouTube is already having to pay a percentage of advertising to the giants.  The new venture is set to be announced before too long.

It gets better.  Not only are U2 releasing a new album, but they are doing it in FIVE DIFFERENT FORMATS! Yes, the obligitory cd and vinyl formats will hit the shelves as expected, but also the digi-pack version chuck full of goodies including a downloadable film from Anton Corbijn, a poster and 36 page booklet!  For those who love glossies, there is the ‘magazine’ version, issued as a glossy mag of Corbijn art as well.  Top it all off with a box set, with the Corbijn film on dvd, another poster and extra songs.

With extravagances such as these, one might think there were some bloated egos around…

Look at me!...and me!...and me!

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/u2-x-5/feed/ 0 intlmusicsnobs Look at me!...and me!...and me! http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/riaa-say-dowloading-ok/ http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/riaa-say-dowloading-ok/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:13:10 +0000 intlmusicsnobs http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/?p=16 Continue reading →]]> Word o’er the airwaves said that the ever bloating RIAA will ‘allow’ kids to download at will.  According to the story, the RIAA will not harass downloaders anymore for doing what they do best.  Instead, they will join in with local cable providers to ‘limit’ those who seem to be abusing bandwidth privileges.

Whether or not this all comes to fruition is yet to be seen.

On second thought…nothing has changed.  What benefits can we possibly receive from our local cable companies being in bed with the RIAA?  Perhaps you won’t get a threatening letter form the recording biz, but you will just log on to an inaccessible cable account.  Time Warner has already had their wrists slapped on limiting bandwidth usage, slowing down data to a steady trickle on suspected bandits.  Now it appears that by combining forces, both companies now have an excuse to hassle you if they choose.

What is ‘abuse’ of bandwidth?  How much is too much?  What are we allowed and who is setting the bar on this one?!

Think about this.  Kid goes nuts in his room, downloads anything he can think of.  Cable company monitors data usage, smells something fishy.  RIAA chimes in and sends out and serach and destroy unit to silence troubled teen.  Under the old ‘law’, RIAA takes kid’s parents to court and sues for ridiculous money to pay for vacationing big shot in Cabo.  Now, picture this.  Movie nut has account with Netflix or whatever dvd rental firm of choice.  Like most lonely souls, he goes home and watches movies every night.  He logs on and clicks the ‘on demand’ button.  he’s single, nothing to do, so he has a double feature.  Cable company notices high bandwidth usage, calls out the dogs.  The same scenario can be used to the guy with the large iTunes account,…or Rhapsody, or whatever music company you download from.  If data is being ‘monitored’, how do they (RIAA, cable co.) know if you are paying or not?

Even if one is paying and watching movies on demand, gaming or whatever he is doing…if he is paying for his consumption of said data, how can the cable company or the RIAA claim it is frivilous?  Cable companies themselves use “faster download speeds” or “lightning fast downloads” to encourage the average person to sign up for their great offer.  Is this entrapment?  Are they luring people in to have faster data access only to harass and monitor them because they are receiving too much data too fast ?

The dashing Heesters in his prime.

The world’s oldest entertainer, 105 year-old Johannes Heesters, lost a libel suit against him filed by a German author, Volker Kuehn.  Herr Kuehn  claims that Heesters performed for the SS at Dachau.

Over the last 12 days Johannes has gotten himself into trouble by his own admission, making no bones about being one of Hitler’s favorite singers in a recent interview on Dutch TV.  Admitting Hitler was a undoubtedly flawed,  Heesters said “…but he was nice to me”.  He openly apologized for “saying something stupid” a few days later on German TV.

Although the allegations occured over 60 years ago, a German judge admitted there was no hard evidence , but there were “…indications of a performance” 67 years ago.  Heester’s claims even though he performed for Hitler, he was never partial to the Nazi Party’s beliefs.  The complainant is happy he won, saying the victory allows the darker side of WW2 to be discussed.  Heesters, has never being officially charge with Nazi allegations, is to still carry on performing.

Heesters was born in Holland and was a popular singer and actor throughout the second world war.  To this day, he still draws crowds and performs, even celebrating his 104th birthday performing in Berlin’s Admiralspalast.

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/21/feed/ 0 intlmusicsnobs Heesters http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/cd-tragedy/ http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/cd-tragedy/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:02:02 +0000 intlmusicsnobs http://intlmusicsnobs.wordpress.com/?p=19 Continue reading →]]> CRIKEY! An alarming fact;  every month over 100,000 cds become obsolete!  True!  Current attitudes towards music show that people care less and less about ‘hard copy’ music formats.  Ask any record store clerk and they too can verify this.  It is not odd for people to buy a cd, take the disc and leave the cover and case at the shops and go home to burn it to their computers and iPods.  As soon as the process is finished, in the bin!

Add to this phenomenon, a record company big whig recently predicted that the cd format will be obsolete by 2010.