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Posted: 21 Jun 2011 05:10 AM PDT

LONDON (AP): Troubled diva Amy Winehouse has cancelled the rest of her European summer concert tour and scrapped all public performances after an embarrassing appearance in Serbia, her spokesman said Tuesday.

Chris Goodman said Winehouse "is withdrawing from all scheduled performances."

Winehouse's show in Belgrade on Saturday kicked off what was supposed to be a 12-stop European tour. But she was jeered and booed as she erratically stumbled around the stage, unable to remember the lyrics to her songs.

The next day, management canceled her shows in Istanbul and Athens this week. The rest of the tour - which was due to end in Bucharest, Romania, on Aug. 15. - has now been scrapped.

Winehouse's breakthrough album, 2006's "Back to Black," won her five Grammy Awards and brought her worldwide stardom, but her music has been overshadowed by her alcohol and drug use and run-ins with the law.

The 27-year-old British singer has sought rehab therapy in the past and last month spent a week in London's Priory clinic, which offers treatment for psychiatric problems, drug and alcohol addiction.

"Everyone involved wishes to do everything they can to help her return to her best and she will be given as long as it takes for this to happen," Goodman said.

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Happy with synths

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 01:11 AM PDT

British act Noah and The Whale break out of the folk mould and smile.

British band Noah and The Whale rose to fame as part of the new London folk scene which produced Brit Award winners Laura Marling and Mumford and Sons, but they have broken out with their innovative third album.

Just weeks after the Brit success confirmed the resurgence of the genre, the quartet produced the electronically influenced Last Night On Earth, confirming a move away from their early folk-drenched sound.

Speaking on their global tour, singer-songwriter Charlie Fink explained how the new record retains the band's love of lyrical richness, and is influenced by the ballads of US songwriters Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Tom Petty.

"Those were the bands I was listening to," he said. "Obviously I was aware of Springsteen and Tom Petty but didn't quite understand the full extent of their work and didn't quite have the respect I now have."

The album's balladic style represents a lyrical change from the band's second record, The First Days Of Spring, which was written on the back of a painful break-up between Fink and Marling, a former bandmate and now a highly successful solo artiste.

"The nature of this album is about people making a change in their lives, and then their lives are against the backdrop of the night-time," said Fink.

"You're always on the precipice of making a change in your life, you can always take the opportunity to do something differently."

The band recorded the album in Los Angeles so they could work with producer Jason Lader, who has collaborated with artists as diverse as Jay-Z, ex-Strokes singer Julian Casablancas and veteran crooner Neil Diamond.

"I heard the Julian Casablancas record he did and I really loved it," said Fink. "I wanted someone who was equally as adept at making guitar records and programmed records, and he's someone who can do both of those."

Fink co-produced the album, and told of his increasing appreciation for the technological side of the creative process.

"It's amazing with synthesisers, the more you know, the more depth you see in it," argued Fink, who has recently written and produced a song for Anglo-French singer Charlotte Gainsbourg.

"It's like Brian Eno said, 'they've got less baggage'. A guitar has so much history you are immediately assigned to a memory, but I still strongly believe that the song has to be able to stand up when it's just played with an acoustic guitar or a piano."

The development of Fink's technical skills partly reflects how young he and his fellow London folk artistes were when they began to attract attention in the late 2000s.

"When we were starting out we were all about 18," Fink recalled of the movement's unplugged beginnings. "It was just much lazier, an acoustic guitar was easier to carry than an electric guitar and an amp."

The crowning of Marling and Mumford and Sons at February's Brit Awards completed the scene's journey to the mainstream, but Fink, as the latest album suggests, is reluctant to be defined by a genre.

"I don't think there's any genre I would restrict myself from visiting if it felt right, but who knows," he said.

When asked why folk has enjoyed a resurgence, Fink replied: "I've no idea, maybe people were looking for more honest music.

"If I recorded the album exclusively with an acoustic guitar, people would say 'it's a folk album' but as soon as you put a drum machine on it's not any more."

Fink described Marling's success as "fantastic", adding: "She is phenomenally talented and it's good that everyone's finally realised that."

And he can afford to be magnanimous: Noah and The Whale recently played a string of European and US gigs, including the South by South West festival in Texas, and next month they play in Japan and Australia as part of a global tour.

"The shows were crazy," Fink said of the US gigs. "They were some of the most receptive audiences we ever played to." – AFP

> Noah and The Whale's Last Night On Earth is available at selected Rock Corner outlets.

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Giving a second listen to McCartney's first disc

Posted: 20 Jun 2011 09:02 PM PDT

NEW YORK (AP): It is hard to think of how Paul McCartney could have given his first solo album a bigger publicity hurdle to overcome, unless he had been arrested for some vile crime on the week of its release in April 1970.

The newly ex-Beatle distributed a questionnaire that was treated by fans and the media as definitive word that the world's most beloved rock band, true today as it was then, had broken up. The music in "McCartney" was quickly overshadowed by anger and disappointment.

Forty-one years later, McCartney is asking for a second listen with a remastered disc that includes some alternative song versions, live cuts and film clips. "McCartney" is revealed for what it was: a warm, do-it-yourself project with one genuine classic ("Maybe I'm Amazed"), a couple of Beatles outtakes and a good dose of filler from a newlywed who sounds ready to cut loose from his musical moorings.

Approaching his 69th birthday this month, McCartney is a busy man. He is preparing for a concert tour that will take him to Yankee Stadium. He is preparing for his third marriage, to longtime girlfriend Nancy Shevell, although he is keeping the details of that impending wedding private.

"We're just starting to make plans at the moment," he said.

Back in 1970, things were less pleasant.

McCartney had completed the album at the London home he shared with his wife, Linda, and growing family. He did not feel like doing interviews when the release date approached, so he asked Apple Records' Peter Brown to draw up a list of questions that he would provide answers to. It was included in advance copies of the disc sent to journalists.

When McCartney answered "no" to Brown's question of "are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?" it was seized on by the media as proof that the Beatles were done.

The reaction distressed McCartney at the time because other statements he made in the questionnaire were actually less definitive about the group's future, said Peter Ames Carlin, author of "McCartney: A Life."

Indeed, elsewhere in the questionnaire McCartney said that he did not know whether the break from the Beatles was temporary or permanent, and when asked if the solo album was a rest from the Beatles, he replied, "Time will tell."

"He didn't intend it to be the breakup of the Beatles," Carlin said. "He was the one guy, maybe aside from Ringo, who wanted to keep the group together."

In a private meeting a month earlier, John Lennon had informed his fellow Beatles he was leaving the group, McCartney recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press. Skittish management had advised members to lie when asked if the group was still together, he said.

Today, it sounds like McCartney regrets that questionnaire. It is nowhere to be found in the rereleased "McCartney" package.

"It's possible to read all sorts of other things into it, read all sorts of motives of mine into it, which is I think what happened," McCartney said. "For me, it was simply a way to answer some questions I might have been asked if I had done interviews."

The atmosphere with his fellow Beatles was poisonous enough at the time.

McCartney was battling with Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr over management issues. The other three wanted McCartney to put off release of his solo disc for a couple of months so it would not conflict with the Beatles' "Let it Be" album, itself a project dripping with bad feelings, and McCartney refused. "Let it Be" came out a few weeks later.

Lennon was furious with McCartney about the questionnaire because it meant Paul, not John, who started the group, had scooped him with the announcement that the band was ending, author Bob Spitz wrote in his book "The Beatles."

Echoes of those bad feelings could be seen in the questionnaire. Asked if he missed the other Beatles, or wished Ringo had been there for a drum break on "McCartney," Paul answered, "No." He gave the same one-word reply when asked if he could see a time when Lennon-McCartney would become an active songwriting partnership again.

McCartney says now that he was excited about the music he made and wanted to get it out quickly.

"I've been accused of not thinking things through enough," he said. "I get enthusiastic about something and say I'd like to do it, so let's do it. And that's mainly a good thing, because you get things done. It can occasionally create difficulties because you don't think of the implications. And to me, I hadn't thought of the implications. I was just putting out an album of some stuff that I liked."

The atmosphere made people mad and unwilling to accept his new music, McCartney said. "I was not a popular bunny," he said.

That is plainly evident in a Rolling Stone magazine review of "McCartney" by Langdon Winner, published May 14, 1970: "If one can accept the album in its own terms, 'McCartney' stands as a very good, although not astounding, piece of work. My problem is that all of the publicity surrounding the record makes it difficult for me to believe 'McCartney' is what it appears to be."

"If I had been entirely honest, I just would have said that John has folded the group," McCartney said. "But I'm not sure that would have gone down well, either."

"Maybe I'm Amazed" was written after the Beatles had stopped working together, but would have fit seamlessly into the series of McCartney-penned singles like "Let it Be," "Hey Jude" and "The Long and Winding Road" that was part of the group's later work.

The "McCartney" songs "Junk" and "Teddy Boy" were both written with the Beatles in mind and rehearsed with the group, but never finished. The lovely tribute to domesticity, "Every Night," something of a theme song for the disc, stands up to the test of time.

That is a pretty strong backbone for a disc, even one filled out with song fragments and instrumentals.

McCartney handled all of the instruments, with some harmony vocal help from Linda. He released a similar DIY album, "McCartney II," in 1980 after Wings broke up, and that's also being rereleased with bonus material this month. He will not rule out a "McCartney III," although that would take far more free time than he can see on the horizon.

At the time of "McCartney," the author considered it an experimental work.

"It's easier in retrospect to look back and say I was doing something that laid the ground rules for people to follow," he said. "When you think about it, that's how an awful lot of records get made now - people are in their bedrooms or their garages - because the equipment's better. So I was actually starting a bit of a trend, without knowing it or really intending to."

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Selasa, 21 Jun 2011

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

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