Joe Kavanagh's Music News

Undoubtedly, the biggest story of the week in Ireland's music news (and indeed one of the biggest globally) was Friday's decision by a Dublin judge to order Prince to pay up the $2.95 million compensation awarded to an Irish promoter, as a result of the enigmatic singer pulling out of a 2008 concert. High Court Justice Peter Kelly claimed that he was making the hitherto confidential details of the financial settlement public because the Purple Rain singer had yet to pay MCD Promotions one cent, despite the ruling being made on February 28. Kelly also announced that he had absolved the representative of the singer from William Morris agency of any liability in the case, as it was Prince's decision to renege on the deal, despite an estimated 55,000 tickets having already been sold for the Croke Park concert. Ireland's largest promotional company MCD, maintained that it had paid the singer half of his $3 million fee upfront, in addition to spending a further million-plus dollars on venue booking fees and advertising, only to have the singer cancel at the last moment. A spokesman for William Morris claimed that he had contacted Prince when furious MCD owner Dermot Desmond traveled to LA in June of 2008 in an effort to salvage the gig, only for the singer to inform him: "Tell the cat to chill. We will work something out." To paraphrase Don King, there's a slim chance and no chance that Prince will pay up, and slim just left town. Given Prince's newfound adoration for being a Jehovah's Witness, maybe MCD should threaten to send the notoriously anti-religious Sinead O'Connor over to him for a preach-off. At the very least, it might just neutralize the pair of them...

Another Irish-themed story in the music world last week, was the announcement that U2's Edge will be taken before the California Coastal Commission this coming June, in order to plead his case regarding his ongoing efforts to develop some 156 acres of land he owns in Malibu. The guitarist claims that resistance to his efforts to build five new luxury homes has tapered off recently, saying: "I believe most of the local opposition is softening as I communicate my intentions of how these homes will collectively compliment the landscape. There is a small group of locals who are very vocal and simply want to stop all development of any kind." I'm not sure that's the case, as locals appear to remain extremely vocal in their contention that the construction of five mansions, on a previously sparsely-developed mountain, will essentially act as the thin end of the wedge and lead to the development of the entire area. Mayor Jefferson Wagner described the plans as "ego run riot" and environmental groups warn that the planned construction will have catastrophic effects on local wildlife. Considering U2's rather hypocritical approach to environmental concerns and Malibu residents' equally disingenuous attitude to development, I'm not sure that either side has a leg to stand on...

Speaking of hypocritical environmental activists, Sting and wife Trudie Styler will hold a 21st birthday benefit gig for their charity the Sting and Trudie Styler Rainforest Fund (do you think they wanted people to know who was behind it?), in Carnegie Hall next month. Elton John, Lady Gaga and Dame Shirley Bassey have already announced that they will perform at the concert, which aims to raise money to purchase tracts of the Amazon rainforest in order to preserve them. While such sentiment is certainly laudable, I have a problem with Sting preaching to us about environmental concerns when his last tour with The Police was responsible for the largest carbon footprint of any tour last year. There is also the small matter of his maintaining seven homes around the world, and I won't even mention the fact that he recently performed a private concert for daughter of Uzbekistani President Islam Karimov, a dictator whom the UN alleges engages in "systematic, and rampant" torture. Defending his decision to go ahead with that particular gig, he claimed: "I am well aware of the Uzbek president's appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that. I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular." Oh right, so it had nothing to do with the reported $3.2 million he received for it then? If, like me, you enjoy watching such frauds squirm a little, then just type "Sting" and "Paxman" into YouTube, but it seems to me that Sting, Elton John and Lady Gaga could serve the environment better by stripping down the size of their live shows and entourages, rather than performing some gig in Carnegie Hall just to assuage their guilt...

Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell told an interviewer last week that the death of her father in 1993 was the inspiration behind her drive to become famous. The flame-haired singer confessed: "Sometimes I don't think I would have been famous if it wasn't for my father's death because the pain of it, it was so painful and in the western world, when somebody dies, we don't have that, we're so formal nobody knew how to comfort me and I didn't know how to express it either." Miss Halliwell has evidently never been to an Irish wake because some of the best party's I've ever been at kicked off an hour or so after the host was put in the ground. Furthermore, what's this talking about the western world as if it's some alien place? Geri Halliwell was brought up on a council estate in Watford, not a Hindu temple in Varanasi...

Following hot on the heels of rumors that P-Puff-Diddy-Daddy intends to purchase Crystal Palace (and renaming it Cristal Palace of all things!) Jay Z is the latest member of the hip hop community to declare his interest in investing in an English football club. Talking to Arsenal Magazine last week, the rapper admitted that he has been a fan of the Premiership club since befriending former Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, some five years ago. Jay Z said that he is delighted that the club still play the type of attacking football they did while Henry was at the club, stating: "I think he had a real long term-effect on the team." I'm sure that Arsenal manager, tactician extraordinaire and football artisan Arsene Wenger would be thrilled with such analysis. That's kind of like saying that you love the way the Knicks play basketball because of Willis Reed's influence. Actually, that's probably not the best analogy to use because I don't think anyone likes the way the Knicks have been playing basketball for the past few seasons. Except possibly Nets fans. Actually that's probably not the... well, you get the picture...

Gary Numan claims that he was very upset when some of his peers had a pop at him during his heyday in the 1980s, but is convinced that the passage of time has made him a winner. The Cars singer claimed: "I remember Brian Eno was a bit s*** about me, as was Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Bowie has said some lovely things since - he said I'd written two of the finest songs in British chart history. Well, he's written one good song in 25 years so f*** him. I don't mean to sneer at Bowie, it was a lovely thing that he said and it healed a rift between him and me. But I was really upset when he said it." I'm glad to hear that he's gotten over it, in his own hasn't gotten over it at all kind of way...

Speaking of getting over things. Tula "Tulisa" Contostavlos confessed that she is delighted that her drug days are behind her, now that she has found fame as one third of UK act N-Dubz. The singer revealed in an upcoming biography chronicling the rise of the band: "As a young teenager I'd be getting messy (taking drugs) every weekend. I've never stopped drinking, but I stopped smoking weed when I was 14 as I started getting heart palpitations and panic attacks. One day I fell to the floor, started frothing at the mouth and blacked out. I woke up in an ambulance and never smoked weed again." Okay, just so I have this straight, by her own account she began smoking weed "as a young teenager" and was finished by the time she turned 14-years-old, so she smoked ganja for a year at most, or possibly just once. I'm sure Snoop Dogg puts more in a blunt than she smoked in her drug consuming career and I doubt Pete Doherty even considers weed a drug. Speaking of his own flirtations with the dark side, her brother and fellow N-Dubz member Dino "Dappy" Contostavlos confessed: "When I was a teenager I was getting up to all sorts to make money. Then I had a scare and realized I could go to prison for years. It was my dad who caught me - and it was him who pushed me to make the better choice. He would come into my room and find me with serious drugs or maybe some sort of weapon and shout at me." If Dappy's wild ways were anything like his sister's then he probably made 'dangerous' money by virtue of a paper-round that passed by a council estate and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the "maybe some sort of weapon" was a water pistol. These stories kind of sound like when Vanilla Ice first appeared on the scene and portrayed himself as all gangsta because he had been shot. His street cred took a bit of a hit when we subsequently discovered that he was a rich kid who might have been shot in the arse, with a BB gun. Knowing him he probably claimed that the shooter was so accurate that he still only had one hole back there...

BBC announced that former Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews will soon join their deejay line-up on radio station 6 Music, which is great and all but for the fact that the BBC announced two weeks ago that they intend to pull the plug on the station as part of a cost-cutting exercise. I'm sure that Cerys isn't exactly jumping up and down with excitement because that's kind of like getting a job on the Titanic after it has already hit the iceberg...

I read last week where Amy Winehouse is now anxious to start a family with Blake Fielder-Civil; you know, the same guy that she divorced last July after their marriage collapsed under the strain of prison time and heroin addiction? I'm not sure that adding children to such a situation is the greatest idea. Maybe she should get a pet instead. Oh that's right, she did, and then got rid of them when she got bored with them...

I also read last week about Australian Gabrielle Cilmi's peculiar pre-performance ritual. The Sweet About Me singer told BangShowbiz: "I like to feel pain before I go onstage. I kind of lose my head before I go onstage and I just need someone to being me back down to earth and say, 'this is real and what you are doing is real, and you're alive'. I like to feel alive, so I like to feel pain, so I get someone to squeeze my hand or punch me or something like that - which brings me back down to earth and makes me realize where I am." Eh, alrighty then. Talk about a job for the late-Ike Turner. He probably could have worked out some kind of two-for-one special deal where he could provide just such a service and perform as her opening act too. With Ike's fondness for slapping, he might have thrown in the opening act bit for free. There's always Chris Brown I suppose.