Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Running With "Scissor Sisters"


Scissor Sisters: Live in Victoria Park - London 2011
on DVD Feb 19  
Brand new concert from London's Lovebox Festival, 
released for the first time ever on DVD!  


According to the Chinese New Year, 2013 is my year! Yes I am the year of the snake.....woot!

So how fitting that this year would give birth to the release of a concert DVD from one of the best bands I have ever seen live, because like tits, you can not see the Scissor Sisters on the radio either!

Here they come on DVD, are you ready?! Scissor Sisters: Live in Victoria Park! Yep, it's going to be a great 2013!


The Scissor Sisters certainly need no introduction, having toured around the world, collaborated with the likes of Elton John and Kylie Minogue and sold millions of albums. Bono from U2 describes the band as "the best pop group in the world."

Every one of their 4 albums reached the top 5 in the UK charts, with their first two albums making the #1 spot. Their most commercially successful single, I Don't Feel Like Dancin' (2006), charted at #1 in the UK and throughout Europe. They have released 18 singles to date.

This brand new DVD contains the stunningly electrifying performance from the Scissor Sisters at Victoria Park in London, on 17 July 2011. Colourful and glitzy as ever, the New York outfit who brought garish costumes and twisted disco sounds to the capital, fully embraced the weekend's flamboyant spirit.

Tracks:
Night Work
Any Which Way 
Laura 
Take Your Mama 
Kiss You Off 
Fire with Fire 
Comfortably Numb 
Paul McCartney 
Filthy / Gorgeous 
I Don't Feel Like Dancin' 
Invisible Light
Bonus Tracks:
Harder You Get 
Running Out

Cut me gently with a "Scissor Sister" at: http://www.scissorsisters.com/


Friday, January 18, 2013

Pop Princess Shara Strand "Gets Random"



Pop Princess Shara Strand claimed her territory with the release of her EP "Born Tonight" the title coming from a verse of the Rosanne Cash song "Seven Year Ache" which Shara does a wonderful cover of on the disc.

Also on the EP is Shara's hit single "Jekyll or Hyde" the song is so popular that coming Tuesday, January 22nd a disc of re-mixes is dropping, yes including dance ones.

Shara dropped by "Entertain Me" to respond to 10 Random Things I tossed out to her, let's see what she said in return...


1. Born Tonight:  My debut EP everyone that has something for everyone! OUT NOW! 



2. Make-over:  Shara Makeup Studio at The Pierre Hotel in the Dominique Salon will have you looking and feeling INCREDIBLE! 


3. Showtime at the Apollo:  Still nervous thinking about doing that show. The producer literally had to push me on stage! But, the scary clown man never came out and I rocked it!


4. Get Here:  Oldie but goodie. I performed this on Showtime at The Apollo.



5. Re-mixes:  Jekyll or Hyde remixes out Jan 22nd. D1 Music, Mike Rizzo, Paul Goodyear, and Wayne Numan ALL did their thaaang!!


6. Treble Clef:  I've always hated music theory  BLECH!


7. Broadway:  My real schooling for everything thats evolving in music.


8. Whiskers on Kittens:  I played Liesl, and I never had so much fun doing a show!


9. Pop Princess:  Honored, humbled, and excited every time I hear "pop princess" in the same sentence as my name!!


10. Jekyll or Hyde:  Wahoo! Touring starts NEXT WEEK!


Keep up with Shara and check out her tour dates at: http://www.sharastrand.com/

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Marie Parie: 5 "Beautiful" Things

"Alien" Marie Parie is back. The Parisian pop artist has called the United States home since 2005. Her background gives her music a unique take on American society.

Bewildered with "Dating" she now delivers her personal take on beauty in the world with her new single "Beautiful".

Marie has appeared on "Entertain Me" before and I also did a full length interview with her which you can read at "Chorus and Verse" http://www.chorusandverse.com/content.php?id=20121005A

Here to list 5 "Beautiful" Things is Ms. Marie Parie...!

1. The innocence of a child

2. The simplicity of nature that made us to a perfection, no matter what our judgment is

3. The love that bind all of us as one connectedness. never goes away no matter what chaos we caused to nature

4. The brain to understand one another

5. The heart to forgive what our brain can't explain


"Beautiful" is a journey to innocence “back to childhood, children and the inner child”. When we lose the innocence, we lose ourselves.  We are all here, and we all make theories to what make us real or not real, or what makes us human or non human “I  personally believe I’m an alien, ”, and we try to extract the truth in all that. Well, in all what we are, perceive, touch or feel; there’s beauty" - Marie Parie 




Make it a  "Beautiful" day and give Marie's music a listen on her Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/MarieParieMusic

Or visit an alien world at: http://www.mariepariemusic.com/




Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Pentatonix: "Thrift Shop," Tour & Larry King

Do those PTX'ers ever take a break?! Judging by the fact that they have a new video and song cover out of Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" the answer is obviously a resounding "No".

Also this week the group will be appearing Thursday January 17th on the 100th episode of "Larry King Now".

Oh and on top of that, they are on tour as well...I will see all of you Los Angeles PTX fans at The Henry Fonda on Thursday January 24th, I can't wait...!

Let's go to the "Thrift Shop" shall we?


PTX: http://www.ptxofficial.com/

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Day I Met Jodie Foster



Yes, it's true...I have met Jodie Foster. Her speech tonight at the Golden Globes (except for that weird sound glitch) was heartfelt and honest, and from my perspective I agree with the content of it 100%..!!

Cut to my second job upon arriving in Los Angeles, CA. I worked for the now defunct Orion Pictures in the mail room. Jodie had her production company there at the time Egg Pictures.

Well she had just directed and starred in her first film via the truly independent movie making machine "Little Man Tate" about a child prodigy. The whole company got invited to the premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

It was a great afternoon! Jodie graciously introduced the film and the supporting cast members and the party in the lot adjacent was truly amazing.

Cut to a few days later...while delivering the mail, I saw Ms. Foster speaking with her assistant at the desk outside her office.

Although the film was formulaic (Hey, what isn't?!) It still was a lovely valentine to humanity with Jodie's personal experience blended in as a child prodigy in her own right.

Me (to Jodie): "I really liked "Little Man Tate".

Jodie: "Please, tell me what you liked about it"

Me: "It was a film of honest moments and humanity"

Jodie: "Thank you for taking the time to tell me that".

Jodie you are the best, I have always loved your honesty, your truth and your class.

Here is a clip from my favorite Foster Academy Award Winner (for her as well) "The Silence of the Lambs"


Thursday, January 10, 2013

My Meeting With David Bowie


This week has been a big one for music legend David Bowie. He turned 66 years young and he has released his first song in a decade "Where Are We Now". With an album to follow in March.

Yes! Anything Mr. Bowie does is head and shoulders above what's out there now. It also reminded me of the time I met The Legend.

Now, I am seldom, if ever get "Star Struck" - in fact most people are a polite "Hello" nice to meet you situation.

But David Bowie, well now that was an entirely different thing. I was working my first job upon arriving in Los Angeles, CA at the once landmark, now gone Tower Records on the Sunset Strip.

Minding my own business and stocking the shelves of the tape department (cassettes not 8 tracks) - I walked by David two times, when I finally registered he was in the store. I dropped my tape box and ran into the backroom of the store so as not to embarrass myself and screamed like a teenage girl: "Oh My God, it's David Bowie, he's out there in the store"!

After regaining my composure I walked back out and got a Tin Machine album and ripped the plastic off so he could autograph it as did my fellow co-workers.

Bowie was gracious, down earth, not to mention humble. When someone I worked with said: "Mr. Bowie it is an honor you are such a legend" His response was "Oh please, I'm not that big of a deal".

This was also in the era before camera phones, otherwise I am sure the gracious Bowie would have done photos with all of us.

David Bowie is an amazing artist and man who deserves everything he has rightfully earned, not to mention being one of the coolest people on the planet. Also the only famous person I ever got gaga over meeting.

Happy 66th David - and cheers to your latest "Where Are We Now"....!

"

"When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home" : www.davidbowie.com

Monday, January 7, 2013

Dudley Saunders: "Monsters"




Independent: This is the adjective that best describes Dudley Saunders, and that's a good thing. 

From his performance art - to his activism, and first and foremost his music, Dudley could be a spokesperson for The First Amendment. 

I first heard of Dudley via his CD "The Billy White Acre Sessions" and saw him perform at Genghis Cohen in Los Angeles, CA. I was hooked. 

Dudley is a gifted storyteller, musician and thought provoker who stays true to his personal vision.

His latest CD: "Monsters" is no exception, Mr. Saunders is like wine, he gets better with age. 

For those of you out there who are familiar with Dudley, this will be fun! For those of you who aren't well here's your chance to really get to know him. I recently checked in with the man behind the music and threw 10 Random Thoughts at him, and "Yes" he answered...


MS: Performance Art 

DS: Uncomfortable. Find the place that makes you want to turn away, and you’ll know that’s where you most need to go. Then you create a brand new form that fits the shape of the uncomfortable thing, which then makes the audience uncomfortable, because they don’t know what to expect. This is very exciting to me as an audience, but most audiences prefer to be comfortable. The audiences that get excited the way I do usually turn out to be great friend material.

MS: East Village 

DS: Lost Home. A geographic location where challenge and opposition to traditional modes of expression, as well as traditional subject matter, were normal and the expected minimum. A time and place not meant to stand, and maybe too easy to mythologize. I try not to look back anymore.

MS: "Love Song For Jeffrey Dahmer"

DS: Hidden key. I can tell whether people will like me based on whether or not they want to engage this song. The not-think-about-it people don’t stick around me very long. Susanne Breslin did the best interview about this song, and was not much-liked for doing it:http://www.facebook.com/l/AAQFq8mLvAQEMvlN7GaMkZy-RjEKahMDBvbZ21wPvpv63PQ/trueslant.com/susannahbreslin/2010/04/19/a-love-song-for-jeffrey-dahmer/

MS: Rolling Stone 

DS: Immaterial: the magazine traffics so predictably in the mainstream and the “officially-sanctioned indies” that it reflects almost nothing of what matters to me (except for Matt Taibbi’s political reporting). I will be shocked if they ever mention my name, although maybe when I’m 80 they’ll call me “an underground legend” in some article squib. As if they hadn’t participated in making me “underground” by ignoring me. Talk to performance artist Penny Arcade and she’ll give you an earful on that media pattern.

MS: "American Horror Story" 

DS: Meta-fiction. Pile up enough standard gothic tropes and they become something more. You start to feel the darker fears and desires that undergird them. This show addresses these old narratives head-on where I just pull pieces of them into story-songs I don’t actually think of as gothic -- like in my song THE ROSEWOOD CASKET, where the murdered woman’s skull asks him to “kiss my skinless face”. I was a little aware that that might seem a little horrifying, but not as much as I now see it is. Really, nothing I write every seems that disturbing when I’m writing it; it’s just after the fact I get all these reactions and go ‘oh yeah ...’ But I wonder now if other people see a stronger connection between me and Ryan Murphy? Usually the artist has the most skewed perspective on these things.

MS: Storytelling 

DS: Untold. Most of the stories that matter to me - or would matter to me - go untold. And the heroic model of storytelling, where a hero learns and earns his just rewards, is primarily a lie we tell to assure the evil that they have a right to the things they’ve stolen. I’m drawn to lives with foreshortened narratives -- they get trapped too early, or are broken before they can get to redemption, or the trouble they face doesn’t make them stronger but breaks them into strange distorted shapes. A lot of pop songs just regurgitate the same old stories, and you can tell where they’re going halfway through the first line. That doesn’t make me feel anything. I think the untold people deserve their own melodies.

MS: Act-Up

DS: PTSD. My old ACT UP colleague Spencer Cox just died a few weeks ago. We met for lunch when I was touring through New York in October. We talked at length about how much untreated trauma there is in our activist generation. It was a great discussion, but it turned out he was more of an example of PTSD than I realized: he’d stopped his medication, and in December just couldn’t fight off an infection. It reminds me of something that the writer Sarah Schulman once told me, that the people who create change are rarely the ones who benefit from it. The drag queens from the Stonewall Rebellion mostly ended up poor and homeless and murdered while younger gay people experienced previously unimagined freedom. And so many of the AIDS activists who saved millions of lives are having trouble saving their own. But - and this is very ACT UP - we’ll probably do better if we pull together to save each other. 

MS: "Birdbones" 

DS: Exorcism. Rageful fragility. Wow, that’s a weird response! This was the performance art piece that got me the most attention, but it also marked a turning point. 

Back then, I made art because I had all these horrifying ghosts in the back of my head that I couldn’t quite identify even though they ruled my life. I was a completely tortured, haunted person, but if you asked me what was wrong I had no idea. So I used performance art to make those ghosts manifest themselves so I could see them, feel them and wrestle with them. I used a form I called “witnessing,” which was essentially me bearing witness to these surreal horror stories in the enraptured voice of a psychosexual evangelist - I think the Village Voice used that term. Anyway: like a lot of tortured people, I believed that the pain would literally kill me if I faced it. Which means performance art, for me, felt a little like a suicide mission - but for the purpose of saving my life. In retrospect, no wonder I was such a basket case.

Birdbones got the last of those ghosts out of me and probably saved my life. I also got great reviews, and if the right wing hadn’t decimated arts funding, I might have become an avant-garde art-world star. Maybe I’m glad that didn’t happen: a few years later, I made my first record, RESTORE.


MS: Rainy Days 

DS: Falling on the just and the unjust alike. Isn’t that in Matthew, in the King James Bible? It just means that when it rains we are all bound up in one common experience. It’s a gentle version of what happens in LA during an earthquake, or during a power outage in New York. It’s inconvenient but I love it - I’d rather be uncomfortable than disconnected.

MS: "Monsters"

DS: Unseen. Monsters that look like monsters aren’t frightening to me. Reagan’s charming face used to fill me with abject terror. Or the kindly gentle smile of Rick Warren now, filling us with uplifting platitudes while preaching anti-gay propaganda in Uganda that led directly to the deaths of gay people. Most monsters don’t believe they are monsters the way most alcoholics don’t believe they have a drinking problem.

"Monsters" are everywhere athttp://www.dudleysaunders.com/