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.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s