With perfect timing and dramatic moves, an American performer with the stage name of Hot Lixx Hulahan has captured an international rock guitar award — without ever having to strum the instrument.
Wearing tight black pants, satin shirt and elaborate armbands, Hulahan — real name Craig Billmeier — crushed his competition on Friday night to capture the world air guitar championships in Finland’s western city of Oulu.
“The two-year reigning Air Guitar champion, Japan’s Ochi ‘Dainoji’ Yosuke had to give in to the overwhelming new champion,” organizers said in a statement that saluted Hot Lixx’s “impeccable timing and overall solid performance.”
For his prize Hott Lixx was presented with the real thing — a Finnish handmade Flying Finn electric guitar.
The event, which involves performers strutting and strumming on nonexistent instruments, has taken place in Oulu for the past dozen years.
Hott Lixx’s winning performance can be viewed on the video-sharing Internet site YouTube.
Canadian pop-rock star Avril Lavigne will be able to perform in Malaysia after authorities reversed their decision to cancel her concert, saying Saturday that she can perform next week despite complaints her act is ``too sexy.’’ The Arts, Culture and Heritage Ministry sparked an outcry among music fans when it decided earlier this week not to permit Lavigne’s show. The ministry said then that the show was unsuitable for Malaysian culture and could not be held on Aug. 29, two days ahead of Independence Day, because it might disrupt patriotic celebrations.
Muzahet declined to give a specific reason for the decision, but he said organizers told the government that they had already sold thousands of tickets and that the cancellation could hurt tourism.
The flap over Lavigne’s concert is the latest in a string of troubles confronting foreign artists seeking to perform in Malaysia. Last year, R&B singer Beyonce moved her show from Malaysia to Indonesia, and Christina Aguilera skipped the country on an Asian tour after a controversy erupted over a dress code for foreign artists.
Malaysia requires all performers to wear clothes without obscene or drug-related images and to be covered from the chest to the knees. They must also refrain from jumping, shouting, hugging and kissing on stage.
Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias has vowed never to slow down as he marks the 40th anniversary of a polyglot career that has made him one of the biggest selling Latino singers in history.
His romantic ballads, along with the signature dark mane, perpetual tan and flashing smile, propelled this Madrid native from a reluctant contender in a seaside song contest to an international heartthrob with more than 250 million albums sold worldwide.
“I love my profession and I owe everything to it. As long as I have strength, I will be here,” Iglesias, who turns 65 next month, said in an interview published Tuesday ahead of his latest concert in a summer tour.
Old pop memorabilia is getting fashionable with investors, with Madonna souvenirs and vintage guitars the latest alternative assets to attract interest from structured investment funds.
Marquee Capital Ltd and Anchorage Capital Partners Ltd. are London-based companies planning to start the first investment funds devoted to rock and pop mementos.
“Some people have huge memorabilia collections,’’ said Ted Owen, managing director of the specialist auction house, The Fame Bureau. “These have quadrupled in price in the last 10 years. Now funds could make people aware that the rock and pop market has a financial base, rather than just a fan base.’’
“Madonna is a good investment because she’s the most successful female pop artist of all time,’’ said Marquee Capital’s founder, Chetan Trivedi, a 36-year-old former management consultant at A.T. Kearney Inc. “Many of the people who admire her now will be reaching the peak of their wealth in the next 10 years.’’
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
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