The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Snoop Dogg launches youth football in Chicago Posted: 30 Jul 2011 05:29 PM PDT CHICAGO (AP): Rapper Snoop Dogg launched a Chicago version of his popular youth football league Saturday, saying he hoped the program will give kids in high-crime neighborhoods a positive release for their energy. Dancing and high-fiving his way through a large crowd at the Chicago Indoor Sports Facility, the playful entertainer seemed intent on meeting all the kids involved in the inaugural season of the city's Snoop Youth Football League. Chicago's is a division of the league he established in Los Angeles in 2004. Snoop Dogg spent most of his time interacting with the more than 100 football kids and fans, many of whom waited several hours for his arrival. "When I walked into the building, I felt the spirit," the rapper said of the loud welcome that included non-stop photo flashes. Obviously moved, Snoop Dogg smiled and danced as his songs played in the background. He credited football, a sport he played growing up, with giving many kids in his California league the incentive to focus on their education and other aspects of their lives. He's hoping Chicago youth use the program to figure out what they want to do with their lives, and he's anxious to see how they respond. "I want to give them something to fight for," he said of his intentions with the new league. "At the end of the day, they're our future." The league in California has eight chapters with more than 3,000 participants. Chicago's league will have six chapters with more than 1,500 participants. Snoop Dogg said the league prides itself on a strong support system, anchored by coaches and parents. "We're teaching life skills now," he said, referring to the program's more-than-football approach. The rappers also proud that his league isn't afraid to go into some of the most dangerous neighborhoods to reach the young people who live in them. "We're going to the toughest areas," he said. "We're going to deal with them face to face." Chicago's league starts in August and is open to youth ages 7 to 14. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
| Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:50 PM PDT Despite the many phases and new faces, British rock outfit UFO has kept its legendary standing intact. IT'S not really fair to say that UFO was a group of nearly men. After all, the band has had Top 10 albums, recorded hard rock staples and had some legendary names pass through its ranks. Yet a typical reaction when I play one of their songs is "I know this tune, but I didn't know who sang it." Just go look for Doctor Doctor (covered by Iron Maiden) and you'll see what I mean. In some ways, the confusion is understandable as UFO went through a fair number of phases and switches in style. What's cool is that each of their major phases produced some top drawer hard rock music. Of course, I discovered them in reverse order! The earliest incarnation of UFO centred around the talents of Mick Bolton. That's Mick Bolton the blues-rock guitarist, not Michael Bolton, who spent the latter half of the 1970s with hard rock outfit Blackjack and who would eventually become a schmaltzy pop icon. Mick Bolton was a grizzly bearded guy who had the chops to become a guitar hero. Like T2's Keith Cross, Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Mountain's Leslie West, he could descontruct blues tunes and rework them into epic jams. With the able backing of Pete Way (bass) and Andy Parker (drums), Bolton rather led the line of the earliest incarnation of UFO, this despite the presence of the irrepressible Phil Mogg as vocalist. This incarnation could rock out on shorter numbers too, although the first UFO album had a few too many covers for my liking. Things really took off on the second album Flying. Subtitled One Hour Space Rock, it contained the awesome Silver Bird and a couple of songs that revealed a little obsession with a character named Prince Kajuku. Those smoking tunes weren't the deal breakers on the album though. Weighing in at 18 minutes and 26 minutes respectively, the epics Star Storm and Flying were atmospheric yet contained plenty of fire. A little bit of trimming down wouldn't have hurt though. And then came the dramatic shift that changed the whole UFO script. Teenage prodigy Michael Schenker was poached from The Scorpions and Bolton dropped out. One story is that Bolton forgot to bring his passport for a gig in Germany and Schenker deputised, impressing Mogg and company. But it's also been floated around that Larry Wallis of the Pink Fairies and Bernie Marsden (later of Whitesnake) were in the group between Bolton and Schenker's tenures. Regardless, UFO, already making some headway in Japan and Germany, suddenly became a band with short powerful hard rock tunes that could hit you right in the gut. Schenker was a melodic metal player par excellence and he was able to reel off a string of classic riffs that propelled the likes of Doctor Doctor, Rock Bottom and Only You Can Rock Me. However Schenker possesed a delicate side too. His magnificent playing in the ballads High Flyer (a ballad off 1975's Force It) and Love To Love (off 1977's Lights Out) revealed that like The Scorpions, UFO were capabale of mixing subtle ballads with ballsy rockers. This period, which saw UFO expand to a quintet with the addition of keyboardist Danny Peyronel, culminated in Strangers In The Night, widely considered as one of best live albums of its genre. Sadly, just as UFO were poised to make it to the next level, Schenker quit, going on to form his own Michael Schenker Group. The third phase of UFO saw Paul Chapman of Lone Star drafted in to fill Schenker's considerable shoes. He took a while to hit his stride but the album I first heard him on Mechanix was a fantastic pop-tinged hard rock work. The opener The Writer signalled changes with brass underlined the heavy guitars, but I honestly felt that songs like Terri, Let It Rain and Back Into My Life were miles better than what Def Leppard and other pop-orientated hard rock bands were doing. It actually hit the British Top 10, but somehow instead of building on this, the band began to crumble. Perhaps like Uriah Heep, who reformed with a similarly impressive album Abominog, UFO simply weren't pretty or savvy enough to make it big in the new video age. By the mid 1980s, UFO decided to disband, and even though this was quickly reversed by a string of reunions, UFO would never again capture the magic of its earlier days on record. ■ Martin Vengadesan, a music lover and history buff, combines his two passions in his fortnightly column. If you have any interesting stories you want him to research, do drop him a line. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by Used Car Search. |
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