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“You gotta bring some extra ammunition when you play a town like this,” said Dave Grohl, lead singer of Foo Fighters, during their sold-out Nashville performance on Saturday, Jan. 26. The band not only brought ‘extra ammunition,’ they brought a powder keg of high octane, fist-pumping rock ‘n roll.

Opening the show with “Let it Die” off their 2007 release Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, the band’s energy and the crowd’s enthusiasm never slowed down.

“There’s a lot of stuff we have to try and fit into this rock ‘n roll extravaganza,” said Grohl. The near two-hour performance featured songs off all seven albums released by the band since their inception in 1995. 

The band played several hard hitting sing-a-longs such as “Breakout,” “The Pretender” and “Stacked Actors” from the main stage, before relocating to a smaller stage at the opposite end of the auditorium to play several acoustic tunes.

The stripped-down versions of the classic Foo Fighters’s songs “Everlong,” “Times Like These” and “My Hero” seemed to transform the sold-out auditorium into an intimate club with every voice passionately singing along.

The acoustic portion of the concert shifted the spotlight to drummer Taylor Hawkins during the song “Cold Day in the Sun,” on which he sings the lead vocal. This song was another high point of the evening, with Hawkins’ gravelly voice harkening back to pure 1970’s classic rock. 

“All My Life,” the first single released off the band’s 2002 album, One by One, served as the final song of the night with Grohl growling, “It’s the last song. Let’s dance!” The crowd obliged with arms raised and heads banging.

In addition to stellar live performances, Grohl, Hawkins, guitarist Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel recently received five Grammy nominations for Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Rock Song, Best Rock Album and Best Hard Rock Performance.

The band is scheduled to play “The Pretender” during the 50Annual Grammy Awards. The performance will be part of “My Grammy Moment,” a contest in which unsigned musicians can enter for the chance to perform onstage with Foo Fighters during the award show. John Paul Jones, of Led Zeppelin, will conduct the orchestra comprised of winners.

To view submissions and vote for the winner, log on to

Boosey & Hawkes boss John Minch has revitalised the staid music publisher in his seven year stint - and a bid is in the air

John Minch is talking excitedly about the chickens and bees he keeps in his Sussex garden. Last year’s wet summer, it seems, killed his swarm. Fortunately for his employer, the choir-singing, cider-pressing boss of Boosey & Hawkes, one of Britain’s biggest classical music empires, is just as passionate about classical music as he is about the fauna in his garden.

Minch changed his life when he quit the advertising industry to take an MBA, majoring in corporate finance. “I specialised in that only because I thought it was hard and I was paying for it myself,” he says.

But he has had good value from it. Most of his seven years as chief executive have involved takeover bids - and the tune is the same now. When you consider that Boosey is that rare thing in the music industry - a profitable enterprise - interest from suitors is hardly surprising.

Almost as soon as he arrived the company received an approach from a rival. It rejected the offer and decided to auction its parts instead. Minch knew the company was in a bad way. He had been told of a £2m black hole in its accounts when he accepted the job: by the time he arrived that had exploded to £20m thanks to its factory making unplayable instruments and its star US sales team faking the figures.

As profit turned into loss and the dividend was axed, Minch set about closing factories and selling assets to cut debt. But, as an insider, he was barred from bidding for the publishing division that interested him. A buyer was found for the instruments division - the maker of Sir Paul McCartney’s left-handed Hofner guitars - but Minch carried on with the publishing business while EMI and venture capitalists spent more than two years battling over the company.

Minch backed EMI but it was gazumped by Hg, Warburg’s former private-equity arm. However, Hg immediately asked him to join its bid. The MBA was back in use two years ago when Hg asked bankers at Bear Stearns to seek an exit - and news this weekend of fresh overtures from suitors suggest another change of ownership is close.

“The corporate finance has been a huge amount of use,” he says. During his time at the helm Minch has had the confidence to make half a dozen acquisitions. “With an MBA you do not feel that there are any areas you do not understand,” he says.

Founded almost 250 years ago, Boosey & Hawkes continues to shun pop music - but Minch is determined to make the classics more popular. On a giant screen in his London office he shows John Lewis’s recent Christmas advertisement with its soundtrack of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet - just one of the scores in a catalogue that includes Bartók, Britten, Bernstein and Birtwistle.

“We knew we were not selling to the advertising and film industry very well so we’ve got to know the right people in those sectors and made friends with choreographers, so that when they want to license a bit of music they come to us,” he says. Next he flashes Carling’s “spacemen” lager advert on the screen: that one is accompanied by music written by American Chris Rouse.

Next up is Lloyds TSB’s cartoon-based ad whose high-tech backing by Australian Elena Kats-Chernin adds to Minch’s royalty income. “We nearly sold it to Marks & Spencer,” he says, illustrating how competitive the advertising market is for music.

TSB was one of the accounts Minch worked on in his own career in adland. After university he spent a year in telesales. Surprisingly, he says he enjoyed selling ads but when a client, the giant J?Walter Thomson agency, suggested he join them, he jumped at the chance. “I thought advertising was terribly trendy,” he says.

Advertising did not think that of him, however. He progressed to Saatchi & Saatchi but says: “I was treated with contempt. I was a suit. I did not fit the culture at all.” He recalls being shown the surreal Silk Cut ads - a purple slash in a swatch of silk - and says: “I did not understand it at all. My wife had to explain it to me. I realised I was not cut out for it.” Ironic, then, that he should end up thriving with another, altogether different, B&H.

So he went to Manchester to take his MBA, buying a house in the Peak District with the loan Lloyds gave to finance the two-year course. The second degree got him a job at Reed where he spent 11 years acquiring the publishing skills he would later bring to Boosey. “It’s a completely different sort of publishing but I realised I could add value. “

Minch licensed Boosey’s retail outlet and outsourced the sheet-music printing to concentrate on its intellectual property business. He has 800,000 works by 120,000 composers in his catalogue and is seeking new ways to exploit them.

That Lloyds TSB ad has been remixed in the company’s studio and given vocals by Sarah Cracknell, for instance. “It’s A-listed for Radio 1 and it’s going to be released as a single on February 4,” says Minch.

However, the impending chart release has not encouraged Minch to move into pop. “Pop is expensive,” he says. “And the pop publishing business is pretty crowded. We’ve gone into jazz, some Latin and areas like musicals, but we’ve not tried to find unpublished superstars. The key task for us was making the most of what we had, not trying to diversify.

He dismisses myths that classics are a shrinking business while pop booms. Classical CDs sell while pop publishers wonder how to make money from downloads - though Minch’s music is available for ringtones too and his iPod, bursting with 60,000 tracks, includes The Killers and Joanna Newsom besides all of Shostakovich’s string quartets.

“I listen to a lot of music,” says Minch, who also sings in a local choir. “My main taste is romantic classical - music of the late 19th century - but I also like the kids’ music. I like to be experimental in the pop music I listen to,” says Minch, who turns 51 this week.

It will be his MBA skills, not his classics degree, he needs as he negotiates with potential new owners, however. His 6 per cent stake could be worth £5m but if the new owner wants to keep him, Minch is keen to continue. “If the agenda of the new owner is to rocket-propel this business, then I’ll definitely stay,” he says. “I’m hoping the next chapter is going to be fun. You could make a lot more out of this business: it’s probably the best brand in music.” Pump up the volume: Minch has expanded the business into new areas

Jan. 29, 2008 (Investor’s Business Daily delivered by Newstex) —

John Lennon did more than compose when he wrote songs such as “Help” with the Beatles and “Mother” as a solo artist.

In “Help,” Lennon revealed his insecurities about unwanted weight gain and depression amid the crush of the Beatles’ popularity; “Mother” was about his fractured family life, says Larry Kane, author of “Lennon Revealed,” a biography. “These were not just rock songs,” he told IBD. “John told me that everything he wrote was basically letting his life bleed out into the public.”

Lennon’s work with the Beatles on albums such as “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and as a solo artist on the record “Imagine” introduced a level of counterculture that had been lacking in pop music, says Steven Rosenblatt, an attorney and Beatle memorabilia collector.

“The Beatles changed the way people thought, they were rebellious, they were inquiring and innovative and Lennon was at the cutting edge,” he told IBD.

Lennon wrote “Sexy Sadie” to criticize Maharishi Mahesh Yogi after visiting the guru in India.

Other songs, including “Give Peace a Chance,” promoted social consciousness.

Lennon’s willingness to sing his mind made him an enduring historical figure, says Tom Erlewine, senior pop music editor for All Media Guide, an entertainment information database acquired in December by Macrovision (NASDAQ:MVSN).

“People see him as being very honest in his music,” he told IBD. “He searched for answers through his music and art, and that makes him very relatable.”

Lennon And McCartney

What made the Beatles as huge as they were was Lennon’s collaboration with Paul McCartney, according to Peter Brown, who co-wrote Lennon biography “The Love You Make” with Steven Gaines.

“Paul’s mellow, pretty melodies in turn complemented John’s strident rock riffs,” wrote Brown, former director of Apple Corp., the Beatles’ financial parent company. “Their voices complemented each other perfectly, with Paul’s sweet, round tones softening the edges of John’s strained nasality.”

The combination worked.

The Beatles still rank as the No. 1 selling recording group in the U.S. Their album sales topped 170 million in America through 2007, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Lennon’s solo LP sales reached 13.5 million.

Lennon was born Oct. 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England. His mother, Julia, was a housewife, comedian and singer. Lennon barely knew his father, Freddie, a seaman.

When he was 18, Lennon met Paul McCartney, his future Beatle collaborator, at a gig. Also in 1958, Lennon watched helplessly as his mother died in a traffic accident.

By 1960, John had formed the Silver Beetles. The name changed soon after.

The group played everywhere from church functions to strip clubs in Liverpool before leaving for Hamburg, Germany.

Playing 12 hours a night in German nightclubs helped the band become professional, Lennon said in Hunter Davies’ book “The Beatles.”

“It was Hamburg that had done it,” Lennon said. “That’s where we really developed. We had to try anything that came into our heads in Hamburg. There was nobody to copy from. We played what we liked best.”

In 1961, the Beatles built a large following at Liverpool’s Cavern Club.

A year later, the group, with McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr teaming with Lennon, got its first recording contract with Parlophone, a unit of EMI.

Many bands and singers at the time relied on professional songwriters. But Lennon and McCartney knew they had to follow a new crop of artists such as Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochrane, who were writing their own songs, says Terry Burrows in his book “John Lennon.”

“This inspired a highly competitive period that saw John and Paul each writing new songs as if their lives depended on it,” he wrote.

The Lennon-McCartney duo released their first single, “Love Me Do,” in October 1962. The next single, “Please Please Me,” topped sales charts in the United Kingdom in early 1963. The group’s first album of the same title also topped the charts in England and sold over 500,000 copies by year’s end.

By the end of 1963, the group’s fourth single, “She Loves You,” became its biggest up to that point, with sales of 1 million in England.

Lennon’s suggestion to replace the typical “me and you” subject with something about a third person broadened the song’s appeal, wrote Burrows. “As Paul recalled: ‘We hit on the idea of doing a reported conversation — She told me what to say, she said she loves you — giving it a dimension that was different from what we had done before.’”

The Beatles also became a top draw in America. Their show at Shea Stadium on Aug. 15, 1965, packed in 55,000 hysterical fans and grossed $304,000, a record at the time.

Early in their career, Lennon and the Beatles learned the value of positive press.

“Trying to get publicity was just a game,” Lennon told Davies. “We used to traipse around the offices of the local papers and the musical papers asking them to write about us because that’s what you had to do.”

Later, reporters often pursued Lennon because of his sharp wit.

In 1966, the Beatles stopped playing live. They recorded seven more albums by the time the group disbanded in 1970.

In the recording studio, Lennon became adept at incorporating news and personal bits into his songs.

The inspiration for “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” came from a drawing by Lennon’s son, Julian. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” came from a circus poster Lennon saw, wrote Geoff Emerick, an engineer who worked on several Beatle albums, in “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles,” a book co-authored by Howard Massey.

“He’d often work little phrases or snatches of conversation about something he had been recently reading or talking about into the music he was recording,” he wrote.

Lennon competed for record space with McCartney. When Paul wrote “Penny Lane,” John countered with “Strawberry Fields.”

The pair collaborated on other songs such as “With a Little Help From My Friends” in the studio, with Lennon on guitar and McCartney on piano.

When Lennon got stuck on finding a middle section for “A Day in the Life,” McCartney penned “Woke up, got out of bed …”

Fine Lines

As a songwriter, Lennon played the role of a careful editor. He bristled when his first wife, Cynthia, suggested using the word “just” in the song, “I Feel Fine,” wrote Davies.

“You never use the word just,” Lennon said. “It’s meaningless. It’s a fill-in word.”

In the 1970s, Lennon recorded several hit songs, including “Imagine” and “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”

Following a five-year break from music to help raise his son, Sean, Lennon released the “Double Fantasy” album with his second wife, Yoko Ono in November 1980.

A month later, on Dec. 8, Lennon was shot to death outside his apartment building in New York City by a deranged fan. He was 40 years old.

Newstex ID: IBD-0001-22588719

Originally published in the January 29, 2008 version of Investor’s Business Daily.

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Shortly after composer Joe Waters arrived at San Diego State University, he articulated his mission:

“My goal is to blow the doors off the academy of music, and to let in all the music of the world,” said Waters in early 2002.

Now in his seventh year as Professor of Music and Director of Electro-Acoustic and Media Composition at San Diego State, Waters hasn't exactly knocked the doors down. But he is broadening the school's focus beyond the European classical music tradition that has dominated music education for centuries.

Waters, whose quartet, SWARMIUS, makes its local debut Saturday at the Neurosciences Institute, has the audacious notion that serious music – and music schools – should be inclusive of contemporary culture.

“It's an idea whose time has come,” Waters said. “So much of our culture now is a mixture of huge parts of Africa, as well as Europe. I mean, for jazz, rock, pop, it's been this enormously potent amalgam.

“But in the classical music world, whenever there's a beat, it's still considered a little suspicious. You can't have a drum, and you can't have a drummer playing with a symphony orchestra. Immediately, it's like: That's got to be pop music. It's not serious.”

There's a beat to Waters' music. In a piece like “Intelligent Designs” (on the self-titled SWARMIUS CD), you could dance to it.

“I'm not the first person to combine Europe and African music,” Waters said. “That's been happening in classical music for a 100 years. There's a whole string of people, Gershwin, and even before.

“But it's still a problem that we wrestle with. And in terms of dealing with contemporary concerns, that's something I think we need to do to move the music forward.”

Waters' interest in other genres of music comes naturally. Now 55, he considers himself among the “first generation” of musicians who came to classical music through rock.

“That was the entry gate, and inside you discovered this whole legacy of classical music, this wonderful legacy,” Waters said. “But the way of getting there wasn't by taking violin lessons at the age of 5; it was by hanging out with my homies in the basement and banging on keyboards and drums and playing 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.' ”

With degrees from the University of Minnesota, Yale and the University of Oregon, Waters eventually caught up with the musicians who had taken the more traditional route, but the most important lesson he learned in music school was to ignore his teachers.

“Many of my (peers) had actually played rock, but they they had been taught at some point that they were to leave that now and study the 'great music.' The difference is, I didn't believe my teachers. I did for a while; I tried really hard to listen to Arnold Schoenberg.”

Schoenberg's music earned his respect, but not his affection. Waters even tried playing Schoenberg over and over for his youngest son, figuring that the toddler might be a blank slate on which to imprint the eminent German composer's thorny, dissonant music.

It turned out, not only the kid, but the entire household hated Schoenberg.

“Every time I put it on, the house would break into chaos,” Waters said. “Everyone would be screaming at each other.”

Exactly why Schoenberg's music didn't work for him, or why it seems to be despised by a majority of the listening public, is a question Waters has spent considerable time pondering.

“The answer is, or at least part of answer is, for various reasons we don't get it,” Waters said. “It transcends our ability. It's about pattern recognition. You can't listen to it and understand it in some way that's not analytical.

“And people aren't analytically listening to what's going on. Music has to serve a function that helps them increase their ability to appreciate and enjoy in some way the moment-to-moment passing of their lives. They are not going to go for a piece of music that's like reading a technical journal.”

But increasingly, in Waters' estimation, it's not just Schoenberg, Webern and their modernist peers who are incomprehensible – Bach, Mozart and Beethoven make less and less sense to a younger audience.

“For these kids who are growing up on a diet of hip-hop music, they don't get the music of Mozart and Beethoven, even though hip-hop is built on it,” Waters said. “I mean, Mozart is somewhere underneath Eminem, he's lying there, but they just can't make a connection to it. To them, all that music is, it's categorically, cognitively (unavailable). It's this old stuff, and they don't get further than that.”

Waters is intent on closing the gap between Mozart and Eminem. While in Oregon (where he taught at Lewis & Clark College), he founded the NWEAMO (New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization), which is devoted to forging “connections between the composers, performers and lovers of avant-garde classical music and the DJs, MCs, guitar-gods, troubadours and gourmets of experimental popular music.”

Since Waters' move to San Diego, NWEAMO has broadened its reach and now presents an annual festival in about a half-dozen cities worldwide, including San Diego (this year in October at SDSU), and has hopes of presenting concerts on the online virtual world Second Life (where the organization's board of directors already holds its meetings).

At San Diego State, Waters collaborated with like-minded faculty members Todd Rewoldt and violinist Felix Olschofka (and “guest percussionist” Joel Bluestone) to form SWARMIUS, which is dedicated to Waters' most potent weapon: his genre-defying music.

And Waters has started a new major at SDSU in Electro Acoustic Composition, intended for composers who, in the words on the university's Web site, began “their creative experiments within so-called 'Popular' genres such as rock, metal, hip-hop, electronica.” The program calls itself “one of the most forward looking in the world.”

Waters believes there is an increasing number of faculty at SDSU who are open to fresh ideas. “There is a group of us now who feel that the underlying principles of what constitutes an academy of music really need to be rethought, so that they in some way address who we are becoming as a culture,” he said.

The School of Music and Dance's new director, Donna Conaty, acknowledges Waters' vision and expects it will be one aspect of the school's focus.

“Ideally, I'd like to see us be known as a school that's really valuing the traditions of the past – whether Western European, African, global music, folk music, American traditional, and so forth,” Conaty said. “But also valuing emerging technologies, emerging musical and artistic visions.”

Maybe Waters won't have to blow those doors off after all. It may just be a matter of opening them ever wider.

In a cosy sound-proof recording studio, housed in a decrepit building in central Tehran, Felakat lounges on a chair, surrounded by sound mixers. Sporting a tousled black shirt and a rumpled-and-spiky hairstyle – popular as “Tintin style” in the local barber’s parlance – this Persian rapper could pass for a punk icon.

“I devoted my life to rap when I was just 15,” says the 27-year-old whose stage name means”miserable” in Farsi. “Rap is my god.” ButFelakat is well aware of the perils of indulging in rap music as a profession. The music is forbidden in Iran.

Rappers replicate American accents, indulge in obscene lyrical content and often use female leads or background voices – all symbols of Western decadence to the authorities.

Despite the restrictions, Felakat and countless other rap musicians are the demigods of Iran’s “underground” music scene – an expression that applies to any group which fails to obtain a recording license from the Culture Ministry. In a country where 70 per cent of the population is under 32, society is strongly influenced by the young.

Felakat is aware of his appeal. He coyly admits his female fanbase has “become fanatical” since the release of “Nazgol,” his first hit track, themed on love and fidelity, last March. “I’ve had to change my mobile phone number twice,” he grins.

With the introduction of satellite television in Iran in the early 1990s – also illegal – hip-hop found an explosive following and eventually the fans began to create their own version.

Another group, Zedbazi, introduced gangster rap withtheir song “Mehmooni,” or “In the Club”. The most famous rapper, Soroush Lashkari, who boasts the nickname Hich Kas – or Nobody – is thought of as the “father of Persian rap”. And, astonishingly in a country where singing is banned for women, female rappers also dot the landscape.

The first of the female hip-hop and rap artists was Salome, who lives in Tehran and focuses on social issues such as the miseries of the war in Iraq and prostitution.

Given the restrictions, one of the main ways for Iranian rappers to get their music out both locally and globally is via the internet. Many websites – such as www.rap98.com and www.parshiphop.com – make downloading it easy. There may be fame, but there’s little money in the business because of tight regulations. Most CD shop owners refuse to sell underground music, fearing raids – if caught, they face imprisonment and hefty fines. Concerts in private gatherings are sometimes cancelled because of threats from ad-hoc neighbourhood Islamic vigilantes.

In March last year, the government filtered a number of underground music websites. Last April, some rappers were incarcerated, their recording studios raided and shut down. Felakat was also arrested and later released on bail.

Mohammad Dashtgoli, of the Culture Ministry, which is responsible for vetting music “in accordance with Islam,” said: “There is nothing wrong with this type of music in itself. But due to the use of obscene words rap has been categorised as illegal.” But”.S” has composed up to 100 Persian songs, 80 of which are rap. Only two of them have clearance from the ministry. “If we adhere to their red lines, rap will be ruined,” he says. But he is hopeful that rap music will go overground one day in Iran. “The youth are the majority, and they can’t ignore their aspirations,” he says.

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The radical makeover of the music giant EMI, which has provoked an irate Robbie Williams to “strike”, is a reflection of the metamorphosis of the global music industry. Top of the Pops may be dead, but CDs, MP3 players and file-sharing have given birth to digital music. It is more mobile and personal then ever, making the listener king, and the music industry is struggling to maintain control.

The music industry is a great topical choice for the classroom. Teachers can hand the mantle of expertise to their students, allowing them to bring their knowledge, experience and opinions to bear on the subject, while the teaching simultaneously develops their understanding and skills. It’s relevant to music and ICT, of course, as well as other areas such as English and maths.

Start with the official charts site (www.theofficialcharts.com). As well as showing the current chart-toppers, it has an archive of the number one singles and albums, so ask students to look for records for significant dates such as their birthday, although be prepared to comfort any year 5s or year 9s who find they were born when the Teletubbies or Mr Blobby topped the charts.

Give them time to explore each other’s taste in music. Explain the concept behind Desert Island Discs by looking at the website, focusing on well-known names such as Ricky Gervais or Nigella Lawson (www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs.shtml). Ask students to choose and discuss their top three records. If you can get a colleague (eg the headteacher) to model the process, so much the better.

Once you’ve established their tastes, ask them how they listen to music (eg CDs, radio, MP3 players, phones, internet). Encourage them to conduct a survey of how much music they listen to in one week and by what means. They can create a chart or graphs to show the results. Older students can then compare their listening habits with a wider picture by accessing the IFPI’s Digital Music Report 2007 (www.ifpi.org/content/library/digital-music-report-2007.pdf).

It is technological developments that have brought about the modern music revolution. The advent of MP3 files, for example, which can compress music data by a factor of 10 or 12, allows songs to be transferred and downloaded relatively quickly. Get students to create a poster explaining MP3 files. How Stuff Works provides an accessible video on the process as well as more detail for older students (www.howstuffworks.com/mp3.htm).

These rapid technological advances have prompted a crisis within the music industry, as consumers reap cheap sources of music through piracy and file-sharing. CD sales are declining, but income from downloads is not making up the shortfall. The BPI site (www.bpi.co.uk/index.asp?Page=piracy/content_file_79.shtml) will help students to understand the issues. Ask them to write a guide to accessing music legally and safely. A parents’ guide on the same topic may provide a useful model: www.pro-music.org/guide/pdf-youngpeople-english.pdf.

Encourage students to find out more about the industry by investigating how a record label works (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/record-label.htm), producing a cartoon strip to show the journey from unknown musician to successful recording artist. Older students can research some of the career options in the music industry, such as A&R, journalism and PR/promotion, and produce a series of card factfiles for a careers display aimed at young people (www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic/industry).

Guy Hands, who bought EMI for £3bn, is focused on revitalising a business in decline rather than cosying up with pop legends. One of the big four record companies, alongside Sony BMG, Universal and Warner, EMI has an impressive pedigree. Students researching this British company will find the Beatles, Queen and Pink Floyd in its lists (www.emigroup.com/About/History/Default.htm). It currently has a roster of 14,000 artists. But artistic temperaments and lavish advances have led to Hands’s plans for modernisation. Read a range of news reports on the issue, eg www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/16/citynews.privateequity, highlighting the arguments, before debating whether they agree with the hard-nosed businessman or the disgruntled pop star.

Digitisation is not the only music industry innovation. Reality TV has brought us Simon Cowell, and a series of short-lived successes on shows in which fame rather than the realisation of musical expression seems to be the motivating factor. Draw out the conventions of this type of programme (www.xfactor.tv) then have some fun using drama skills to create a parody of the show.

Next month’s Brit Awards should reflect the state of British pop music. Give students a list of award categories, eg best single, best group, and ask for nominations. Compare their nominations with those on the Brits site (www.brits.co.uk). Do they think they are a fair representation of British music? Hold a class vote on the nominations to see whether the class can predict the results on February 20.

Teachers and students will find a complete KS3 lesson pack on the music industry on the Guardian’s daily newsdesk for schools: www.learnnewsdesk.co.uk. The lesson is based on Guardian extracts

Kid: But wasn’t Compton dangerous before gangster rap?Teacher/Indoctrinator Guy: Wrong! Compton was a nature preserve for bunny rabbits! When gangster rap came along they tore down the country clubs and put up housing projects!”I literally lol-ed at that. It’s an excerpt from a new music video that Ice Cube recently put out, called “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It.” (For those of you who are confused at this point, Ice Cube was a rapper before he was in “Friday” and those PG movies. For those of you who knew that and are now skeptical of this whole column, hear me out.)The video is his criticism of the recent arguments that rap music and hip-hop are poisoning America (i.e., making white people use the “N-word,” making young black men drop out of school or sell drugs, devaluing women, causing global warming, causing SIDS, etc.). I admit that lately I’ve also been having some serious problems with hip-hop. It hasn’t been because of Soulja Boy or the myriad other rappers that everybody is mad at for being “ignorant,” either. My problem is that as my love for the music has grown, so has my sense that too often it powerfully and effectively perpetuates dangerous and self-destructive behavior in the communities it claims to represent, and which many artists (entertainers?) claim to love.At this point I should say that I have no interest in writing a column to bash rappers or hip-hop. I simply intend to quickly examine a bit of the conflict surrounding the music through the lens of the aforementioned song. In the interest of convenience and word limits, I’ve chosen to talk about two major issues: (1) The dreaded N-word and (2) Misogyny. Disclaimer: This is by no means intended to be comprehensive.1. “If I call you a n-, ain’t nuthin to it, Gangsta Rap made me do it.”Frankly, I don’t care to revisit the list of people who have been publicly lambasted for all manner of inappropriate references to blacks. It’s not that I don’t care, I just find it tedious. However, what I find even more tedious is the allegation that somehow because (black) rappers are permitted to use certain language, everyone should be afforded the same freedom. Mind you, I’d be the last to argue that the N-word in any of its forms is positive (I can’t seriously argue for any word that I don’t use in front of my mother), and I don’t buy the idea that because we as youth use it more freely it is innocuous.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to synchronise the playback of twocopies of the same record before. Not being a Flaming Lips fan, I’venever bothered, but in an attempt to achieve some compromise betweentechnology and tradition, past and present, clarity and quality, Ithought I’d try getting the 12″ I so patiently awaited these pastweeks, (and inevitably had to trek to the sorting depot to retrieve),to hold hands with its illegally-downloaded mp3 doppelganger.

The fury followed; was it the cheap antique record deck I bought fromthat second hand shop in that village in Devon playing the LP at arenegade 35 rpm? (A Toshiba Stereo Music System SM-2100, with acomplementary copy of the translated ‘Tales for Young and Old’ by Jacoband Wilhelm Grimm thrown in for good measure.) Or was it the dodgyhotch-potch demo-ripped contraband I hoovered from the digital etherthat was the guilty party?

I decided to give both a try.

“Rising in the East, setting in the West.” Had my Czech grandfatherbeen here to answer the (rhetorical?) question posed by British SeaPower’s third long player (’Do You Like Rock Music?’) he’d haveresponded with a resounding “Ne!” He hated rock music, and pop music,and anything other than what we now call ‘classical’, but which wasprobably known to him simply as “music”.

And yet I can’t help but feel, from what little I knew of him beforehis untimely descent into alcoholism and hermitude, that he’d have beenmoved to tears by the sentiment of recent single ‘Waving Flags’.”Welcome in”, inscribed on the the inner sleeve of the vinyl in whatlooks like a cue card for colourblindess tests, is a message rarelyseen or heard once you’ve stepped out of the airport of any foreigncountry. The twentieth century was, above all, a time for borders to bedrafted, for walls to be built, for the last maps of the furthersfrontiers to be inked and printed, and for words like ‘immigrant’ and’refugee’ and, latterly, domestically, ‘identity crisis’, to rule thebroadsheets and tabloids alike.

While often preoccupied with Englishness and/or Britishness, BSP arenever foolish enough to entirely define themselves or their music byone or both. Their musical journeys may have their beginnings in thesewet islands, but their destinations can be, at times, both the harshclimates of the unexplored, and the postcard perfection of knownheritage sites.

British Sea Power have a distinctly unmasculine (and perhaps un-rockmusic) habit of asking, not answering questions. And, cheekily, in’Lights Out For Darker Skies’, one of their more direct numbers, theyinsist “There is no reason that you need to ask why”, preempting theinevitable speculation. And yet, amongst their confounding yetenthralling lyrics is a rare celebration of vagary and exploration,exemplified no better than in the explosive ‘Atom’, where Yan squealsin joy, as much as exasperation, “I just don’t get it!”

And their language bank is no robbed loot. British Sea Power may be thefirst band in a long time to have arrived at their very own vernacular,so much so that ‘No Lucifer’ sounds like it could have been writtenusing a BSP Fridge Poetry kit. From the “Easy, Easy” Big Daddy backingchant to the baffling “You can just say no / to the anti-aircraft crew/ the boys from the Hitler Youth… To Sodom I will go / not TelMegiddo.”

We tend to be wary of literate pop stars. Their songs often make theleast sense. But isn’t it preferable to ask questions of the listener?Better than half-baked love metaphors, surely?

‘A Trip Out’ stands as a definite competitor for ‘No Lucifer’in the ‘potential first top ten hit’ category; “It doesn’t come muchbigger than this,” they rightly claim, amongst awesome riffs shadowingYan’s echoing vocals. This is the sound of a band having fun.

This is as much Big Country or Manic Street Preachers as it is JoyDivision. “Arcade Fire” is what a lot of people are saying. Well, it’s big, butnot exactly flashy. It’s global in scale, but not always stadiumesque.’Open the door’ is reminiscent of House of Love’s tenderer moments, andpuffin-munching bully bird tribute, ‘The Great Skua’, sounds likeglaciers shifting.

No, there are no answers here, just “moths that get confused / By allthe man made moons”, and lost travelers dreaming of home: “Where I comefrom, silvery trees… Why did I leave?” Perhaps we humans are stillnomadic after all this time.

The sound collage ending is less cathartic than British Sea Power’susual crescendos, but is far from being a disappointment. It just begsto be played again and again, until the needle wears out, or thecomputer collapses under the weight of a virus. It’s a blessing not tohave to ‘rate’ this album, as such, or have to quantify it. Whateverform it’s in, it’s well worth owning, worth carrying with you, whereveryou go. 

So who believes R&B and Soul Music is dead?  Well I for one certainly don’t!!  The truth and reality is (in my humble opinion) that the powers that be, Mass Media, Clear Channel Radio, video outlets, etc… and the music buying public (Pre-teens, teens, and Young Adults) just aren’t as interested in that genre of music as they are in Rap music. 

Lets face it, the mass media in general and Clear Channel Radio, are interested in making big bucks!!  I don’t blame them, everybody wants to make money.  Pre-teens, Teens, and Young Adults are the main consumers of music these days just as all of us "Baby Boomers" were once upon a time.  So what’s the deal?  

Record companies want to reach the people who are going to buy their products.  Thus they employ those that make the music that the music buying public wants to hear.  At this day and age, Rap music is all the rage…  So Why Rap?

Well let’s look at the differences between R&B and Soul Acts as compared to Rap Acts…  Take a soul act such as Earth Wind & Fire or Cameo…  both of these acts are self contained bands who actually play instruments, sing, dance, and record…  Not to mention both are awesome live acts.  Now take Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five or the Sugar Hill Gang…  They didn’t have to play instruments (Though maybe some of them could or can…  You tell me ok?), they don’t sing, don’t dance, they just record their raps to a generated beat often sampled from the aforementioned soul groups or other soul groups…

A deeper look at the differences…  Hmm…  Lets see…  It’s expensive to be in a soul music group…  You know, to have to buy instruments…  Take lessons, form a group, write YOUR OWN MUSIC, practice dance steps, attire (Got to look good!), deal with multiple personalities, deal with equipment problems, and splitting your money up between however many members there are.  For the record company…  Hmm…  Pay bigger advances, more contracts to write up, higher studio cost, due to longer time spent putting a project together, Band personnel changes and in general, a bigger hassle than it’s worth when the record fails to sell well.

Rap artist…  Lower overhead in general…  Fewer people to have under contract, can produce a project in a fraction of the time, lower advances paid out, can package a tour with several rap artist to maximise cost involved in touring, don’t have to deal with a band or back up singers, and the young people with their ever changing taste…  Well they buy it!!           

Now listen, I grew up on Rap music, I dig Kurtis Blow, Run DMC, Kool Moe Dee, LL Cool J, Eric B & Rakim, UTFO, The Fat Boys, Biz Markie, and so many more…  The newer rappers on the block such as Nelly, Jay Z, Common, etc…  I don’t like all of it, but I feel ya…  So I’m not totally knocking the rap thing…  It’s just that there is so much more than rap!! 

Give me some Temptations, New Edition, Brass Construction, Tower Of Power, Average White Band, O’Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Al Hudson & One Way, "J", The Deele, Morris Day, The Time, Prince, Hall & Oats, Aretha Franklin, Sade, Patti Labelle, Angie Stone, Jill Price, Regina Belle, Karen White, Stephanie Mills, S.O.S. Band, Four Tops, Temptations, Blue Magic, The Spinners, Otis Redding, Teena Marie, Smokey Robinson, Zapp, Roger Trautman (RIP), Rick James (RIP), James Brown (RIP), The Jackson Five, Boys II Men, Hi-Five, Ralph Tresvant, Tony Thompson (RIP) Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill, Babyface, Terrence Trent Darby, Chazz Dixon, Anita Easterling, Lyfe Jennings, Mario, Sammie, Ricardo, Sonny Garr, Renee, Luther (RIP), even Usher & that young brother Chris Brown and so many more young artists both young and old, holding it down for Soul music and R&B.  

Well check out the link and hear what Milwaukees own Da’ Soul Recordings Group LLC. CEO "J" & Vice President Chazz Dixon have to say about the state of the music Biz today…  The page features two video interviews as well as a sample of the Soul and R&B music being produced right here in Milwaukee.  So again I say…  Who says R&B and Soul Music is dead?  If it’s you…  Well I suggest you think again and check out what’s going on right in your back yard!! 

Also check out Soul Express…  It’s a UK site (Where Soul Music and R&B have never died) that features the music that those us 35 and older grew up listening to…  For instance, did you know that O’Bryan had a new CD out?  Did you know that Chris Jasper Of the Isley brothers is still making music as is Ray Parker Jr.?  Ha, ha…  R&B and Soul Music dead…  Not hardly…  see ya next time and I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic. 

Peace         

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Singer Amy Winehouse, the jazz-pop diva best known for a hit song describing her refusal to go to drug rehab, entered a treatment facility last week to tackle her narcotic addition.

The announcement came just days after the 24-year-old was pictured in British tabloid The Sun apparently inhaling fumes from a small pipe. Police have launched an inquiry into the matter.

“Amy decided to enter the facility today after talks with her record label, management, family and doctors,” Universal Music Group said in a statement.

“She has come to understand that she requires specialist treatment to continue her ongoing recovery from drug addiction,” the statement said.

Winehouse, who is nominated for six Grammy Awards for her acclaimed Back to Black album, seems to be as famous for her drug problems as for her music. Since the album’s US release last year, she has canceled a slew of appearances amid reports of drug use.

The album’s most popular song, Rehab, references her struggles, and is a defiant anthem against entering a treatment facility.

Rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight has been named by police as a member of a notorious gang in a crime-plagued suburb of Los Angeles.

Knight, best known as the co-founder of the rap label Death Row Records, was one of some 200 people named as members of the Mob Piru street gang in a crackdown by authorities in the city of Compton, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Knight, who was raised in Compton and spent five years in prison, said that including his name on the list of gang members was a “publicity stunt” by police.

“This is crazy,” Knight told the newspaper. “I’m a 42-year-old businessman, not a gang member. I don’t even live in Compton anymore. This injunction lists people who are already in jail - and at least one guy who is long dead.”

“I am engaged … to Barack Obama,” Scarlett Johansson joked in an interview. “My heart belongs to Barack, and that is who I am currently, finally, engaged to.”

Johansson, who showed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate at the Iowa caucus earlier this month, was really just deflecting a question about rumors she might be engaged to actor-beau Ryan Reynolds.

The 23-year-old also talked about the warm welcome she received while visiting troops stationed in the Persian Gulf last week. “Everybody that I met there was so incredibly friendly and polite and genuine and generous,” she said. “They were so, so sweet. I mean, I was just amazed.” Johansson said some people ripped patches off their jackets as gifts and handed her challenge coins from their military units. One Marine offered up his St Christopher medal.

Lil Wayne was arrested on three felony drug charges after federal agents said they found illegal drugs, including cocaine, on his charter bus at a checkpoint in southwestern Arizona.

A Border Patrol dog alerted agents to the presence of illegal drugs on the bus, said Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Ramona Sanchez. Among what a search yielded: nearly 114g of marijuana and just over 28g of cocaine, as well as drug paraphernalia.

Officials also found a .40-caliber pistol registered to the performer, who has a concealed weapons permit in Florida. Authorities are looking into whether he violated any weapons laws in Arizona.

Former British pop singer Gary Glitter, jailed in Vietnam for child molestation, is considering moving to Hong Kong after his release, a report said Sunday.

The 63-year-old - jailed for three years in 2005 for molesting girls aged 11 and 12 - has asked his Vietnamese lawyer Le Thanh Kinh about the possibility of a new life in the city, the Morning Post said, quoting unnamed friends of Kinh.

Glitter - whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd - is set for release in August, when he will be deported back to the UK.

But he told Kinh he wants to return to Asia as soon as possible, the report added.

Glitter began thinking about Hong Kong 13 months ago after a meeting about life in the UK with British police and a sex offences specialist at his prison in Thu Duc, the source said.

“It wasn’t a happy encounter. He said afterwards he didn’t like the sound of it at all, and it made him determined never to settle back in the UK,” a friend of Kinh told the English-language paper.

Kihn denied Glitter had spoken to him about moving to Hong Kong, and said “it is not clear where he will go after his release.”