Archive for October, 2014
Downey & Duvall In The Judge
Posted by Life on the Scene in Movie Review on October 10, 2014
Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall star in The Judge, in theaters today! The plot goes like this:
A successful lawyer returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral only to discover that his estranged father, the town’s judge, is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before.
The movie also stars Vera Farmiga, Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’ Onofrio, Jeremy Strong, Dax Shepard and Leighton Meester.
I’ve read a mixed bag of reviews regarding this movie and I can’t wait to see it and form my own opinion. I’ve been amazed to hear long time Downey fans state that “once was enough”, critics digressing on about how it’s a long and meandering film (kind of like their reviews?) to people raving it’s one of their new favorite films.
This is the first movie from Robert and Susan Downey’s production company, Team Downey and it looks like an exciting risk for them to release a movie that will make you laugh, maybe cry and definitely sit back and think about your own family issues.
If you see The Judge this weekend, come back and let us know what you thought of it
Billy Idol Launches Book Tour For Dancing With Myself
Posted by Life on the Scene in Book Reviews, Celebrity, Concert, Photography on October 8, 2014
Billy Idol Dancing With Myself (Touchstone), Billy Idol performs live © 2011 Life on the Scene/Cindy Robinson
Singer Billy Idol has written his memoir, Dancing With Myself (Touchstone, available now!), recorded a new album called Kings & Queens of the Underground (out Oct. 21), and is set to tour the world with his band. Before he heads out on the road with his band, Idol has done a handful of book signings across the United States, starting in New York this week and he’ll make a stop at Hollywood’s favorite book store Book Soup, this Saturday, October 11th at 4:00 pm! You’ll need to buy a copy of the book from Book Soup and hang on to your receipt.
In an excerpt from his book, Idol writes:
*Recording with Keith Forsey was exciting for me, though Tony didn’t really get on too well with him. They would bicker all the time, and I could see the two of them might not want to continue together after the record was finished. I thought Keith was doing a great job. It was the best-sounding album we’d made so far. He didn’t let events rattle him, and he could shake himself from an unhappy to a happy mood easily.
When we finished the album, I was the only one to seek him out at his hotel on his last night in the UK. I had dinner with him and his wife, Karen. I told him I liked how he worked and hoped we might do more, if I was ever given the chance to make another record. After all, my future was certainly up in the air at that moment. Keith had really tried to make my concept for the record work, and I appreciated that a great deal. Most important, we had a finished version of “Dancing with Myself” in the can. Would it be my bridge to the future?
During the recording of the album, Perri and I had been on a nonstop, twenty-four-hour drug-and-sex binge without sleep. We made love in bed all day and night, high on heroin, grass, and hash. With that particular cocktail, as orgasm boiled over, we would pop an amyl nitrate (commonly known as poppers) and send our bodies to the sweet spot that intensifies the growing explosion of chemistry between two lovers entwined like vines, curling together, disappearing into each other . . . writhing, sighing, and groaning, soaring into heaven, only to slowly burn out and return to earth, spent but somehow wanting more.
Heroin is a dangerous and addictive drug. If you take it enough, it returns you to the place that is as comfortable and all-encompassing as your mother’s womb. After three days, you’re hooked. When you come off, you’re debilitated, to the point where you feel like your skeleton is trying to get out of your body; you’re dying for more. And unless you want to go on feeling bad, you need a continuous supply. If you take enough to not get sick, you can maintain a semi-regular lifestyle. Thanks to Bill Aucoin’s renegotiation with Chrysalis, I now had enough money to fund my habits . . . and he, unbeknownst to me at the time, had enough to fund his.
The Stony-Eyed Medusa and I lived in a twilight world of drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll friends. We roamed the London night in a small tools minivan I bought from my dad, dubbed “Power Tool the People.” The slow-burning nights spun into a web that trapped me in its embrace until unconsciousness delivered me back to a moment of enforced sleep. Waking up on different floors and beds, I was surrounded by the ubiquitous reggae music, which we always played while we were “block up,” a phrase we used for getting stoned. There had to be guardian angels looking silently through the hash fumes just above our heads. Why else would I still be here today, alive and well, to tell the story?
On one occasion, Perri and I took acid and went to see Apocalypse Now, then made love all night to George Faith’s Lee “Scratch” Perry– produced album, To Be a Lover. It was amazing I was able to get out of bed long enough to record our album, but I was.
I continued going to Perri’s gigs, where I ran into David Mallet, the director who shot Generation X’s ’77 Marquee performance. This meeting would prove fortuitous for the future.
Living twenty-four hours every day with Perri back then was quite the experience. We had a connection that was deeper than any I had ever known. It was a great trip for me to have a counterpart with whom I had so many interests in common, including fashion, music, movies, and the like. Perri had become my constant companion throughout this life of love, lust, and insanity. Only later did I realize that I had not paused to consider that my intense love affair with her, the heroin, hash, and other drugs were unraveling the constraints of my punk past and helping to further widen the gulf between me and Tony James.
Billy Idol, Steve Stevens and the band will hit the road in November for their European tour with newly unleashed plans for North America in January and February. Dates are listed below (with more dates to come so don’t fret if you don’t see your city listed just yet) with presales happening now, general public on sales happening October 10th in most markets with Idol and Stevens offering meet and greet packages for the shows! Let Life On The Scene know what you think of Billy Idol’s new book and what shows you’ll be attending in the comment section below.
North American Tour Dates:
January 21 (Wed) New Orleans, LA House Of Blues
January 22 (Thu) Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
January 24 (Sat) Philadelphia, PA Tower Theater
January 25 (Sun) Washington, DC Lincoln Theater
January 28 (Wed) New York, NY Beacon Theater
January 31 (Sat) Boston, MA Orpheum Theater
February 3 (Tue) Montreal, QC, Canada Metropolis
February 4 (Wed) Toronto, ON, Canada Massey Hall
February 7 (Sat) Chicago, IL Riviera Theater
February 9 (Mon) Denver, CO Paramount Theater
February 12 (Thu) Vancouver, BC, Canada Queen Elizabeth Theater
February 13 (Fri) Seattle, WA Paramount
February 15 (Sun) Oakland, CA Fox Theater
February 18 (Wed) Los Angeles, CA Wiltern Theater
*Book excerpt from DANCING WITH MYSELF, by Billy Idol. Copyright © 2014 by Billy Idol. Published Touchstone, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
HIM to Release Lashes To Ashes, Lust To Dust’ in November
Posted by Life on the Scene in Concert, Music on October 7, 2014
Finnish platinum selling band HIM (vocalist Ville Valo, guitarist Mikko “Linde” Lindström, Mikko “Migé” Paananen, Janne “Burton” Puurtinen on keyboards and Mika “Gas” Karppinen on drums) have been a cultural phenomenon in the alternative rock world for over two decades, now they are excited to announce the upcoming release of an exclusive limited edition boxset ‘Lashes To Ashes, Lust To Dust’: A Vinyl Retrospective ’96-’03 on November 25th via The End Records. The boxset includes the rare debut 1996 EP ‘666 Ways To Love: Prologue” on 180 gram heavy weight vinyl for the first time ever, along with an exclusive Heartagram logo slipmat and a USB drive with 37 bonus tracks, 80 tracks all together, all re-mastered. Also to be released on November 25th, four of their iconic albums, ‘Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666’, ‘Razorblade Romance’, ‘Deep Shadows And Brilliant Highlights’, and ‘Love Metal’ will be released in multiple configurations, all re-mastered with bonus tracks, exclusive liner notes, and special packaging.
A must for any diehard HIM fan, these deluxe vinyl (in crushed velvet cases and colored vinyl to match each album’s art work) and boxset releases can be ordered in time for Christmas here and dont’ forget to check your local independent music store like Hollywood’s Amoeba Records to grab your copy.
HIM have also scheduled a couple of weeks of global concert appearances for the end of the year to promote ‘Lashes To Ashes, Lust To Dust’: A Vinyl Retrospective ’96-’03 which will culminate at home in Finland as they perform at their annual Helldone New Year’s Eve concert. Finnish ticket agency Tiketti is giving away a pair of tickets to the always instantly sold out New Year’s Eve bash on their Facebook page but sadly it doesn’t include the airfare to Finland! Click on the “see translation” button if you don’t read Finnish. Good luck to those who enter! This California girl has long-held onto the dream of going to Finland for Helldone on New Year’s Eve.
Other concert dates leading up to Helldone are listed below. Tickets are on sale now (and are sure to sell out so grab ’em quickly) and would make a great early Christmas present!
Dec 05 O2 Shepherds Bush Empire London, United Kingdom
Dec 06 O2 Shepherds Bush Empire London, United Kingdom
Dec 09 Webster Hall New York, NY
Dec 10 House of Blues Boston Boston, MA
Dec 11 Starland Ballroom Sayreville, NJ
Dec 12 The Fillmore Silver Spring Silver Spring, MD
Dec 16 The Wiltern Los Angeles, CA
Dec 17 Marquee Theatre Tempe, AZ
Duran Duran’s Influence in the Ordinary World
Posted by Life on the Scene in Celebrity, Concert, Life, Music on October 2, 2014
Duran Duran 2014, image courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/duranduran
by Cindy Robinson
Honestly, I don’t completely read most articles on Duran Duran these days (even though I’m a lifelong fan) because I already know most of the information being shared, it’s someone being slanderous toward the band or a fan complaining about the injustice of their Duranie fan life. I skim the articles. Yes, I’m a skimmer unless it really grabs my attention and today this article on Duran Duran by Ariane Sherine grabbed me. I read the entire thing!
I’ve read many thoughts over the years since the song “Ordinary World” was released at the end of 1992 about how it has saved people from their dismal existence and given them hope for a better life to come but Ariane’s story was a little different. In fact, she was downright bullied by her peers and sought refuge in a band that was beyond her generation’s interest. As fate would have it, she fell into friendship with Duran Duran over time and judging by her article, they gave her inspiration and encouragement to pursue her dreams.
Her story was engaging because it wasn’t filled with the sensational details, merely a story of some nice guys she met who mentored her, offered friendship and also happen to be musicians in one of the world’s biggest bands of the 80’s. It offered a human perspective on the tribulations of being a teenager and the softer side of musicians as mere humans. While her big break to appear on their Pop Trash album never happened, and she felt slighted (which is a common entertainment industry happening – promises of things which never come to fruition, or powers that be axe an idea or song) she found her footing in writing instead and succeeded.
Parts of it felt a little familiar to me as my dream has always been to become a major photographer but as life often does, it throws you curveballs and things don’t go the way you dreamt they would. Having children and no longer being married dictated the need for a regular, constant paycheck in my world so photography went on the back burner, a passion to be enjoyed and pursued when time allowed.
Image courtesy of Duran Duran store http://www.duranduranstore.com/
While Ariane never got her album credit, I do have mine. I was fortunate to have one of my live photos of John Taylor included in the CD artwork for his 2002 solo CD Metafour, my image is the 4th from the left in the photo to the left of this text. As I write this, I don’t have all of my resources in front of me to grab the image with the photo credit but it’s there (and if I have time to update later, I will add it).
And conversely, I can also relate to feeling a little slighted. In 2011, I attended a Duran Duran concert in Los Angeles that was being taped for future use and was also broadcast live to millions of viewers around the globe on YouTube. By the time the concert ended, my phone was buzzing like a bomb about to explode as messages came in from friends around the world that had seen me in the front row during the broadcast of the David Lynch directed extravaganza that became Duran Duran UNSTAGED. In November of 2013, Duran Duran UNSTAGED was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The band presented it to an ecstatic audience. Wait, I was part of an art exhibition and didn’t receive my red carpet invitation? Well, it isn’t like I performed on stage with them like special guests Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Mark Ronson, Kelis and Beth Ditto of Gossip did but I am seen a handful of times throughout the art film along with a plethora of people I know! The movie has gone on to be screened in many European cities, across the United States and I believe there is even a screening coming up in Russia soon! Also, beginning on October 14, 2014 you can watch Duran Duran’s UNSTAGED from your own home as it will be available On Demand nationwide in the U.S. and Canada so I’m (OK, we!) are coming to a TV near you in the next couple of weeks! While I’ve traveled the globe with them in their movie over the last year and will be popping up on TV screens everywhere in the coming weeks, I, and many others didn’t get any credit in the film but it sure was fun being there!
Duran Duran are also finishing up their latest studio album, due out in 2015 so be sure to check in on Duran Duran at their Facebook page to find out when it will be available on iTunes and when the band will hit the road to tour in support of it!
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