Itseems that EMI boss Guy Hands can’t get no satisfaction. After Robbie Williams threatened to go on strike and Radiohead quit the record company following his NT$193 billion private equity takeover last year, the financier suffered another blow when the Rolling Stones decamped to Universal on Friday.
The veteran rockers, led by Mick Jagger — who qualified for his old-age pension Saturday — have handed on their entire post-1971 catalogue of such classic albums as Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. The band will also release all new albums through Universal’s Polydor label.
“Universal are forward thinking, creative, and hands-on music people,” the Stones said in a statement. “We really look forward to working with them.”
The deal brings all the band’s output over a 46-year career under one roof, as Universal’s Decca label already owns the rights to Stones recordings made before 1971. The pre-1971 rights in the US are held by ABCKO, the company run by the Stones’ former manager, Allen Klein.
The Stones turned down the chance to sign up with Live Nation, the concert promoter that has album deals with the likes of Madonna, U2 and the rapper Jay-Z. Universal capitalized its release earlier this year of the soundtrack to Shine a Light, the Martin Scorsese film of a Stones live performance in New York in 2006.
Singer Britney Spears will pay US$20,000 a month in child support to ex-husband Kevin Federline for the care of their two children and will make a final payment of US$250,000 to his lawyers, according to a final custody agreement filed in court on Friday. The monthly child support payment is a US$5,000 increase over what Spears and Federline, a dancer and rap singer, agreed to last year, the court papers showed.
Two paparazzi in camouflage gear scuffled with bodyguards of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt after they were found hiding on the grounds of the Hollywood stars’ French estate, the couple’s security chief said on Friday. Tony Webb, head of the team guarding the Chateau Miraval estate where the couple are staying following the birth of their twins earlier this month, said the incident took place on Thursday afternoon.
Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, Arab cinema’s most celebrated director, died yesterday aged 82 after several weeks in a coma, his friend and fellow director Khaled Yussef said.
Chahine was flown back to Cairo on July 17 after a month-long stay in Paris where he underwent surgery after suffering a brain hemorrhage and falling into a coma. He was being cared for at the Maadi Military hospital in south Cairo.
“Youssef Chahine died this morning at 3:30,” said Yussef, who co-directed Chahine’s latest film Chaos last year.
Chahine won official plaudits for his pioneering role in Egypt’s film industry and was awarded the Cannes film festival’s 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997.
He never shied away from controversy during his long career, criticizing US foreign policy as well as Egypt and the Arab world.
Chahine made his first film in Egypt in 1950 and it was there that he also discovered and launched the career of Omar Sharif, who shot to international stardom with Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
US jazz tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, who played alongside such luminaries as Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey and Thelonius Monk, died Friday in France, his agent Helene Manfredi said. He was 80.
Nicknamed the Little Giant, Griffin was due to perform Friday evening alongside US organist Rhoda Scott, French saxophonist Olivier Temime and drummer Julie Saury.
Griffin died at home in Mauprevoir, a village in the west-central La Vienne district, where he had spent the last 18 years of his life. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Nana Mouskouri has bid adieu to a remarkable half-century in music with a farewell concert in her native Greece at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens.
Fans filled the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus on Wednesday evening to hear the 73-year-old songstress — one of the best-selling recording artists of all time — perform from her wide repertoire.
Hours earlier, the city of Athens bestowed its gold medal on Mouskouri, who has been on a worldwide farewell tour since she announced her plans to retire three years ago.
Born on the island of Crete, the bespectacled Mouskouri has sold more than 300 million records in French, English, Germany, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew and Japanese, her record company Universal says.
She was also engaged in humanitarian work, serving as a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ambassador, and served as a Greek member of the European Parliament in the 1990s.
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
The slashing of the government’s proposed budget by the two China-aligned parties in the legislature, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has apparently resulted in blowback from the US. On the recent junket to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, KMT legislators reported that they were confronted by US officials and congressmen angered at the cuts to the defense budget. The United Daily News (UDN), the longtime KMT party paper, now KMT-aligned media, responded to US anger by blaming the foreign media. Its regular column, the Cold Eye Collection (冷眼集), attacked the international media last month in
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but
RSS