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.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby