The NFL is on a roll in terms of popularity, and that has also translated to the Super Bowl half time show. While most football fans are checking out sportsbook reviews as they prepare to wager cash on the big game, many more casual fans are waiting for the half time show each year. This coming year we’ll have Bruno Mars as the featured superstar as the organizers went for a much younger act.
Not that the older acts were busts. Madonna did an excellent job with her half time show. Bruce Springsteen was also excellent several years ago. But if you look at the performers recently since the program started focusing on one artists, it’s really been mostly a classic rock tribute show. Iconic performers like the Rolling Stones, Prince, U2, Paul McCartney and The Who have been tapped along with Bruce and Tom Petty.
Then, with Beyoncé last year and the Black Eyed Peas several years ago, we started seeing more contemporary artists getting the nod. The Beyoncé reunion with Destiny’s Child was a very big hit last year as the dancing became a huge part of the show as it did with the Madonna performance.
Now with Bruno Mars we have another young performer who can really dance, so we can expect a pretty lively show this time as well. Though you have to wonder if the cold weather in New York might affect the half time show along with the game itself. The decision to have the game in New York during February was quite controversial.
The Super Bowl has come a long way since the first game that wasn’t even a sellout, and the half time show has changed quite a bit as well. The spectacle of these performances are light years away from the marching bands that were booked in the early days. I remember when the Orange Bowl half time show was the most talked about event of its kind. Now nothing really compares to the Super Bowl show.
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Here’s a great photo of the lovely Taylor Swift in a short black dress onstage with Mick Jagger. It’s a cool photo and her legs look amazing, but could you imagine the old-school Rolling Stones inviting a pop star like her onstage?
After splitting with his ex-wife, Ronnie Wood is selling off some of his Rolling Stones memorabilia. The items include a wide variety of stuff, ranging from included several worn leather and velvet jackets and real and cardboard guitars, along with a signed lithograph of Eric Clapton.
Wood and his wife Jo had been married for 23 years prior to their divorce being finalized last year. Next February we’ll be getting her memoirs which are expected to reveal her stories fro their years together. Wood left Jo for a young waitress named Ekaterina Ivanova, so it will be interesting to see what Jo decides to reveal in her book.
Events like this are a double edged sword, as they sometimes bring more interest to the band which affects things like memorabilia sales. Stuff like Rolling Stones posters can generate more interest, though new prints are usually very reasonable. With the premiere of the Rolling Stones’ new documentary “Crossfire Hurricane” you can shop for movie poster frames and have a totally new item to add to your collection along with older Stones stuff.
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A movie about the art form of mash-ups that features mash-ups of the movie within the movie itself? We’re pretty sure we just heard the space/time continuum begin to rip at the prospect. Director Brett Gaylor attempts to make sense of the intellectual property laws that allow some musicians to steal riffs and make millions (Led Zeppelin, the Stones), while other, more cutting-edge musicians are branded as criminals (Girl Talk), and the end result is “Rip! A Remix Manifesto,” a wake-up call to Big Media that, whether they like or not, the rules have changed. Gaylor declares Walt Disney to be the first mash-up artist, and absolutely pummels publishing company Warner-Chappell for refusing to let “Happy Birthday” to enter the public domain (it’s true: if you sing that song, ever, you’re a thief), and for suing Radiohead fans for mash-ups once W-C acquired the rights to In Rainbows. Truth be told, the doc isn’t quite a five-star affair – we were frankly surprised that he didn’t mention when John Fogerty was sued for ripping off one of his own songs – but we’re giving it an extra star because “Rip!” addresses an issue that needs to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Indeed, one could argue that the music industry’s very survival depends on it. (Disinformation 2009)
Better than the 2003 collection that bears his name, this michelgondry.com-exclusive set of music videos is simply staggering. The beauty of Gondry’s work is that his methods are surprisingly low-tech (Beck’s “Cellphone’s Dead” being this set’s exception). He uses reflective glass to create the ghosts that haunt Paul McCartney’s house in “Dance Tonight,” and Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” is a brilliant stop-motion clip, using both real people and their string equivalents. Gondry assembles a couple of clever yet completely unique one-take videos with Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” and the White Stripes’ “The Denial Twist,” and his videos from the pre-CGI early ’90s, namely Thomas Dolby’s “Close but No Cigar” and Sananda Maitreya’s “She Kissed Me” (otherwise known as Terence Trend D’Arby to your older brothers and sisters), look as good as any video made today. The set comes with a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, a couple films featuring Gondry solving a Rubik’s Cube with various parts of his body (feet and nose, to be precise), and they also added the parody of Gondry’s video of the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button to Button” that appeared on a 2006 episode of “The Simpsons.” Genius stuff, across the board. If only he could replicate this consistency in the feature film arena.(ElektroFilm)
