kimblr.com

Q: What (if any) screening process is used to prevent objectionable lyrics from airing?
A: I Tunes and Napster do a good job of making clean versions of popular rap and hip hop songs available for us to use. We use the versions of songs that you would hear on a top 40 radio station that are suitable for all ages.
Q: Is there one song you just know will get the crowd going?
A: “Rock ‘N Roll Part Two” and “We Will Rock You,” obviously. “Mony, Mony” by Billy Idol always gets fans going. “Shout” is a fan favorite just about anytime something good is happening on the court.
Q: What’s a song that’s popular with the crowd that just makes you cringe?
A: I never really was a big fan of “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani and Akon. But whenever it’s played, the crowd will sing the “Woo Hoo” parts of the song every time. It’s like clockwork.
Q: What’s playing in your car stereo?
A: I listen to Jay-Z and Kanye West a lot. A lot of top 40, and Lupe Fiasco’s “The Cool” is probably my favorite CD right now.
Q: What’s the oddest request you’ve had from a player (please play this, please don’t play this, etc)?
A: I’ve never really had any odd requests from players. Honestly, most players don’t even notice what music is being played because they are so focused on the game.
– Mary Schmitt Boyer

cleveland.com

Cash show is on the money
Theatre 145 show honors Johnny Cash with ‘warm, mellow ambiance’
BY FLOYD LAWRENCE
Over the course of his 50-year career, Johnny Cash wrote more than a thousand songs, released dozens of albums that sold more than 90 million copies.
The creators of “The Man in Black” tribute show now running at Theatre 145 (the former Roadhouse Theatre) must have faced a daunting task in selecting which of the songs to include in the 90-minute show. They’ve selected 18 good — and varied — Cash numbers. Best of all, they selected radio and TV personality Shannon Solo to perform them.
Without attempting outright imitation of Cash, Solo performs confidently in a manner that suggests Cash more than it seeks to duplicate him. Even Joaquin Phoenix, who portrayed Cash in the bio-pic “Walk the Line,” didn’t succeed in sounding exactly like Cash.
Solo performs the seven numbers that form the first act while seated in a tall wooden chair. Lighting designer Scott McClelland keeps the changes to a minimum, and the only lighting effect that bothered me was one that put Solo’s eyes in shadow.
Of the songs in this act, only the ominous ballad “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” rang with instant familiarity for me, and I found Solo’s rendition to be full of solemn emotion.
Though I didn’t recall “Country Boy” and “Delia’s Gone,” they both were filled with tender and intimate experience. “When the Man Comes Around” seems to reflect Cash’s religious faith.
“Sunday Morning Coming Down” (a Kris Kristofferson song) was introduced by Solo with an anecdote about Cash’s refusal to delete certain lyrics that TV network bigwigs found objectionable. But Cash retained the references to marijuana: “On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I’m wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned.”
Solo furnishes many interesting anecdotes between numbers, doing so in a low-key, conversational style. I presume that they were written by Ruth Sprague, who is given writing credit for the show.

goerie.com

50 CENT, UNIVERSAL SUED BY YAYO’S TEEN VICTIM: Rapper accused of promoting ‘gangsta lifestyle.’ Plus, artist in talks to join indie film.
*The 14-year-old boy who was allegedly assaulted by associates of 50 Cent has joined his mother in a lawsuit against the rapper and his label, Universal, for promoting a “gangsta lifestyle.”
Filed Wednesday by James Rosemond and his mother Cynthia Reed, the lawsuit claims Universal Music Group and its labels Interscope Records, G-Unit Records and Shady Records are ultimately responsible for the assault because they encourage artists to pursue violent, criminal lifestyles.
Rosemond says he was assaulted on a Manhattan sidewalk in March 2007 by four men, including G-Unit rapper Tony Yayo and his employee Lowell Fletcher. The lawsuit claims Rosemond was targeted because he was wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of Czar Entertainment, a management company owned by his father. Czar represents The Game, a former G-Unit rapper who fell out with the group and had become a rival.
The lawsuit names 50 Cent — whose real name is Curtis Jackson – Yayo, Fletcher, Violator Management and Violator CEO Chris Lighty.
“The members of G-Unit, including defendants Yayo and 50 Cent, encouraged, sanctioned, approved and condoned its members threatening violence, and or engaging in violent acts in furtherance of its business,”
the lawsuit said. The attack on Rosemond was intended to “promote and maintain Yayo and 50 Cent’s ‘gangsta’ image,” which was “promoted, marketed and advertised” by record labels.
Yayo, whose real name is Marvin Bernard, pleaded guilty to harassment in February and was sentenced to 10 days of community service. Fletcher pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to nine months in jail.
“Because of the injuries suffered by James, and the lack of remorse and arrogance displayed by Yayo, G-Unit and all named in the lawsuit, I feel obligated as a mother to bring this suit and obtain justice for my child,”

eurweb.com

Kate Voegele brought more than just a performance to The Basement Sunday night. Performing a non-stop set of songs from her debut CD “It’s Only Life,” Voegele belted out one song after another to a predominately female crowd.
However, the crowd was unable to match the energy that Voegele brought to the stage. Voegele’s music consisted primarily of catchy rock songs with feisty lyrics about life, independence and the many emotions that love can bring.
The catchy lyrics combined with Voegele’s charisma and sass encouraged the audience to join in singing along to her more popular songs “Kindly Unspoken,” and “It’s Only Life.” She got the crowd excited for songs such as “Might Have Been,” and her first radio single “Only Fooling Myself.” Voegele, a Cleveland native, took time throughout the set to praise the state of Ohio after being on the road for so many months.
She took a break between songs to showcase the talents of her band as each member performed solos on their respective instrument.
Voegele’s music career has taken off over the last few months because of her guest role on the CW drama, “One Tree Hill.” Voegele plays a character, Mia, who tries to break into the music business. She has performed a number of songs from her CD on different episodes. Voegele will be touring with Hanson for the next month.
Opening up for Voegele was Kelley James and The Whitest Light. James is a singer from San Francisco whose style is comparable to Jack Johnson. His song “In Between” was a crowd favorite, but the real entertainment came from his acoustic rendition of Kanye West’s “Stronger” and improvisational rhymes. The Whitest Light, a Missouri band, pumped up the crowd’s energy by encouraging them to sing along while they jumped around, performing songs from their self-titled album released in late March.

thelantern.com

The hobo as holy fool is an enduring touchstone for film and theater artists, from Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp to Samuel Beckett’s existential squatters to William Kennedy’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Ironweed,” which was subsequently turned into a 1987 film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.
Redmoon’s latest little marvel, “Boneyard Prayer,” manages to evoke those influences about the vagabond life without ever feeling like a museum piece. This engaging and frequently heartbreaking one-hour chamber folk opera was created by Frank Maugeri and Seth Bockley and features a haunting original score by Charles Kim (played live by pianist Rob Cruz).
It’s Halloween 1938, and Martin, a roaming drunkard, has come home to his wife, Alice, who has had her own troubles with booze and heartache since the accidental death of their infant son 23 years earlier. Despite the time period, this show has no whiff of ’30s radical politics or New Deal optimism. Happy days aren’t here again, unless one is reminded of Beckett’s “Happy Days,” featuring a female protagonist buried in dirt.
Dirt is the dominant visual motif here, from the hatful Martin dumps over his head with comic aplomb in his first appearance to the spadefuls turned over and over by the supporting cast of “gravediggers,” who unearth eerie puppet versions (designed by Jesse Mooney-Bullock) of Martin and Alice, who then re-enact their tragic history. Sung with raw clarity by Alex Balestrieri and Kasey Foster, this is a tale raked with regret, guilt and a tormenting sense of how differently things could have turned out, if not for bad luck and worse judgment.
A gorgeous series of sepia drawings (designed by Tracy Otwell and Robert Lovelett) unfolds on a screen behind the characters, illustrating the happiness of their youthful love and the ratcheting of grief and acrimony that led to the dissolution of that love, eventually edging into hints that happier times may, in fact, be possible — if not in this world, then in the next.

chicagotribune.com

The Tenderhooks kick off the new album “Distilled: 25 Years of Knoxville Rock.”
WUTK, 90.3 FM, is everything a college radio station should be. It supports the local music scene by playing music by local artists and helping to promote local shows. It gives students a chance to DJ, host their own shows and understand why radio under the right conditions can still be magical.
The fact that the station manages to do this without a penny of support from the University of Tennessee, aside from paying the light bill, makes it all the more remarkable.
To celebrate that station’s 25th anniversary (and raise some much-needed funds) the station will release “Redistilled: 25 Years of Knoxville Rock” on April 15. The idea of it is terrific: Seventeen local artists cover favorite songs by other local artists from Knox rock history.
Benny Smith, long-suffering program director (and just about everything else at WUTK), and Jeff Heiskell, formerly of the Judybats, hit on the idea for the CD at about the same time.
“I thought if one of Knoxville’s finest musicians has the same idea, too, it must be a good idea,” says Smith.
The typical route for fundraising CDs is to simply have the artists contribute a previously unreleased track. This would require artists to make fresh recordings and make hard choices on what to cover. Smith, Heiskell and musicians and studio aces Eric Nowinski, Don Coffey and Tim and Susan Lee met and plotted out the project.
“I thought it was something that artists would really put their hearts and souls into,” says Smith.
The disc proves that Smith’s prediction was correct. Tracks bounce out of the speakers with enthusiasm.
The very appropriate kick-off track is the Tenderhooks’ furious take on “104,” originally recorded by Balboa. Tenderhooks’ lead singer, Jake Winstrom, spits out the lyrics, which are an angry jab at commercial rock radio written by late local guitar legend Terry Hill, who was once a guitar teacher to Tenderhooks guitarist Ben Oyler.

knoxnews.com

I’ve got a conundrum, folks. You might, too: In a study entitled “The End of the Music Industry As We Know It” (suggested subhead: “And consumers feel fine”), Forrester Research, Inc., is reporting that half of music sales will be digital by 2011, and digital sales will surpass CDs entirely by 2012.
It should be pretty clear to everyone that the CD is beginning to go the way of the VHS tape - even if sales weren’t racing downhill faster than an Olympic skier, the technology has simply outdistanced the medium. I use my iPod in the car and my computer has long replaced my poor stereo. But up till now, I’ve still been buying CDs — even if I’ve already gotten a promo in the mail via my music-related day jobs, I’ll pick up a retail copy at a show or Amoeba to try to support my favorite bands and releases. But these days, that seems like a waste of money.
At this point, the CD is neither a useful product nor a collectible worth showing off: I’m just going to put it on my computer, leaf through the lyrics and never look at it again, and that’s assuming I haven’t already downloaded it (ha!). As a display item, somehow I don’t think a rack of CDs will impress the ladies much in the years to come — I might as well bust out my eight-track.
That said, an external hard drive full of album folders isn’t exactly the coolest thing to show off either, much less enjoy as a physical collection, which is partially why I’m hesitant to go all-digital. Then there’s the issue of quality - as a bit of an audiophile (and in fairness, a professional music writer for whom these things matter), no MP3 sounds better to my ears than one ripped in LAME V0, which also saves space over hefty 320 or 224 kpbs files. I can’t download V0 rips from Amazon, but even if I could, paying $9 and having no physical product to show for it (or to have as a lossless archive in the very real event that my hard drive goes kablooie or my computer corrupts the files) doesn’t seem like a good deal. In that case, I might as well buy the CD for $12 and rip it myself, but then I’m still left with a useless piece of plastic.

laist.com

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themoderatevoice.com

(Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson)
Which of the following is not true:
A. You can catch a cold from going outside with your hair wet.
B. You have to drink eight glasses of water a day.
C. Candy makes kids hyperactive.
D. Reading in dim light will ruin your eyesight.
The answer: none are true. A cold is caused by a virus and studies show that those who are exposed to the virus become infected whether or not they are chilled. Most people get plenty of water simply through their normal diet. Experts agree that there is no evidence that feeding children a high-sugar diet causes any hyperactivity. Reading in dim light may temporarily tire your eyes, but otherwise has no permanent effect.
Most celebrities know that this same kind of misinformation can be circulated about them simply because the more outrageous the claim, the more people will want to read it. I’ve been subjected to some of those claims, some outrageous, some merely annoying. And, like the myths I presented above about colds, water, candy, and reading, they persist even though there’s no truth to them. One of the common myths about me was repeated last week when a friend of mine was playing in his weekly basketball league and a teammate asked him, “Why was Kareem always so angry?” That’s not the first time I heard this charge. What’s weird about it is that every morning when I get out of bed, bluebirds, squirrels, and deer help me get dressed while we sing “We Are the World.” By the way, squirrels really suck at tying shoes. And deer often mumble the lyrics.
Even that doesn’t make me angry.
What’s interesting about the question is that the person who asked the question is white. In fact, no black person has ever asked that question. That’s because they already know the answer. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the civil rights movement was at its most intense and volatile level, I often used my celebrity to speak out against certain injustices. This seemed to irritate some people who expected black athletes to simply be silently grateful for their opportunities and not rock the boat. However, being given this tremendous opportunity to play college basketball at UCLA, how could I not speak out to help the many other black athletes who were not being given the same opportunity? To not stand up for integration of college athletics would be to dishonor the brave heroes who spoke out and made my opportunities possible. People like Bill Garrett (who is sometimes called the Jackie Robinson of college basketball), Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, and dozens of others. How could I not be angry to realize that many great players were being denied a college education and/or the chance to play before larger crowds( and therefore be more valuable if they chose to turn professional)? They were being denied a future.

latimesblogs.latimes.com

” is on display through March 8. The East Hartford-based artist has created drawings that approximate Nazi propaganda of the 1930s and comments on how Hitler’s government dealt with homosexuals before and during World War II. Gallery hours are 5 to 8 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday and 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.
“An Installation by Johanna Bresnick,” a New Haven-based artist who works with filament tape on Plexiglas. Bresnick, owner of the Elm City’s Grand Projects gallery, creates “site-specific art,” meaning this installation was created specially for The Niche. Bresnick might use the same materials in another setting, but the results will be quite different. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. This exhibition runs through March 28. For more information, call 860-343-5806.
“American Splendor,” the 2003 movie about graphic artist and music aficionado Harvey Pekar, starring Paul Giamatti, at 7 p.m. Film critic and reporter Rob Glidden will introduce the movie and lead the discussion following the film. For more information, call 860-663-5593.
“The Homecoming Project,” a collection of monologues, short plays and music created by the students of the Yale School of Drama that attempts to convey what it’s like for a soldier to come back from war. The show begins at 8 p.m. and there is no admission fee, but money will collected and donated to a nonprofit New Haven organization that helps to support veterans and their families. For more information, call 203-432-1566.
Woolsey Hall in New Haven. They will perform “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff and Mikhail Glinka’s overture to “Ruslan and Ludmilla.” For ticket information, call 203-562-5666 or go to www.shubert.com.
Wendy Black-Nasta, the Middletown-based artist who created the International Peace Belt, has a new project. Artists for World Peace, an organization she founded, and Cold Stone Creamery are sponsoring the “Hats for a Cause” fundraiser, with a hat parade, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Cold Stone Creamery store in Riverview Plaza in Middletown. Hand-made hats from more than 30 Connecticut artists will be on display. The parade (weather permitting) begins at 2 p.m. ,followed by a silent auction from 3 to 4 p.m. and a live auction at 4 p.m. There will be music and, of course, plenty of ice cream. Artists for World Peace is building a “safe house” in Cambodia, and the money raised from this event will go to buy beds for the house. For more information, go to www.artistsforworldpeace.org.

courant.com