I attended the premiere of Bjork's new documentary a few days ago. Bjork didn't bother. She was supposed to, but she suddenly pulled out, citing a rather flimsy excuse about working on an album. She would have known she was doing that when she committed to the premiere. All a bit odd. All a bit Bjork.
Directors Peter Strickland and Nick Fenton, and producer Jacqui Edenbrow, apologised at the premiere for Bjork's absence.
I'm not a particular Bjork fan, but was interested to give the film a go and see whether she could win me around. Sadly, she didn't.
A few weeks ago I interviewed Bootsy Collins, who had launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter to pay for his new humanitarian-themed album and tour. Despite being one of the most sampled musicians of all time, Bootsy told me he was one step away from being a starving artist.
Here is an audio excerpt from our chat.
He has since moved his campaign away from Kickstarter, saying that many international fans were reporting problems trying to make payments. He has relocated to IndieGoGo. Rewards available to those who donate to the project include digital album downloads for just $1 andsigned copies of his new album and DVD for just $25. With those rewards at those prices, you'd have to be a loony not to donate at least $1.
Last week I had the privilege of interviewing one of my favourite musicians. Bootsy Collins played bass on some of James Brown's funkiest and most dynamic tracks. He then took Mr Brown's philosophy of 'the one' over to George Clinton's Parliament / Funkedelic, where he worked on some of that collective's greatest tunes as well. By the late 70s he had gone solo, recording a raft of classic funk tracks. He has contributed to some of the greatest party anthems and hip-hop tracks of all time. His live shows are some of the most dynamic and exciting you could ever hope to attend.
Click to enlarge. Bootsy Collins on stage in London, 2011. (Picture: Charles Thomson)
Right now, Bootsy is running a Kickstarter campaign, where he is giving away signed merchandise and rare memorabelia to anybody who supports his new album and tour - both dubbed 'iGiveAFunk'. The project, inspired by the philanthropic work Bootsy has gained a passion for in recent years - would see him record a 'unity in the community' themed album and then travel the globe delivering its message. The plan was for the Kickstarter to raise $100,000 in 30 days.
Presently, there are three days left of the campaign and Bootsy has raised roughly 30% of his goal. Sadly, it looks unlikely that the project will be successful, short of a miracle. I'm not sure why. Bootsy toured Europe in 2011, playing to packed out venues all across the continent. He has thousands and thousands of fans. As part of his Kickstarter campaign, he is offering a digital pre-order of his new album for just $1. If all of his fans pledged for that alone - and you'd have to be a wally not to, at that price (about 65p in British currency - less than a KitKat bar) - he would meet his target with ease. He seems to have had trouble getting the message out.
I wanted to do the best I could to help him get that message out, so I organised a 40 minute phone interview. During our chat, I expressed my surprise that he needed a Kickstarter campaign in the first place. The comment led to a lengthy discussion about the music industry in general and the way it treats artists. Bootsy told me he was 'one step away from being a starving artist'.
I produced a 2,000 word article based on our conversation, published on my blog at the Yellow Advertiser - one of the largest regional newspapers in the UK. A short news story publicising the online contribution was published in over 100,000 newspapers. How many readers were funk fans, I don't know.
Click to enlarge. Bootsy Collins on stage in London, 2011. (Picture: Charles Thomson)
If Bootsy's Kickstarter campaign doesn't prove successful, I hope he will try again but spend a little longer on advance publicity it and give himself a longer fundraising period. I'm sure he has enough fans to help make it happen, just as long as they know about it.
That said, on a personal note, I am a little disappointed that some of Bootsy's more prominent fans haven't made more of an attempt to help him out. Some of today's biggest rappers have built songs around Bootsy's riffs; songs which have helped them become businessmen with globe-spanning, multi-billion dollar operations. Those Bootsy samples they used - he says they just about cover his bills. Snoop Dogg, who used Bootsy on his 2004 album Rhythm & Gangster, is worth a reported $100million. He could probably sponsor Bootsy's entire project without spending more than a few weeks' interest on his bank account.
For reasons I can't even begin to fathom, music legend Ben E King decided to visit my local theatre last week. As a co-writer of one of the top ten highest-earning songs on the history of recorded music, Mr King, now 74, surely can't need the money.
However, I wasn't complaining. In fact, I booked tickets the moment I found out (front row, no less) and made the 10 minute journey from my front door to the theatre with pleasure. What an honour to have a genuine superstar of soul performing on my doorstep.
I reviewed the show for the local newspaper, which you can read by enlarging this image.
I met Mr King very briefly after the show. He was a true gentleman and signed a CD for me. Sadly, I didn't manage to pin him down long enough for an interview. Here's hoping he comes back and I get a shot second time around.
After tapping out my recent blog post about visiting BBC's Television Centre one last time before it shuts down, I decided to turn it into a three-quarter page newspaper story. The loss of such an important landmark doesn't come around all that often.
Since the piece ran last week, tours have completely sold out. So if you haven't already booked up for a walk around the iconic site - that's it; you never will.
BBC Television Centre will never be the same again. The iconic building in White City, used in aerial shots for many of the corporation's 'idents' and in which many of its most classic shows were filmed, is to be sold off thanks to David Cameron and his cabinet's decision to freeze the licence fee.
I've been to BBC HQ a number of times over the years. I've been to the recordings of many TV shows there, including Never Mind The Buzzcocks, The Catherine Tate Show, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and Top Of The Pops. It was also at the BBC's White City base that I interviewed Jermaine Jackson in a vacant radio studio.
Now the corporation has been forced to sell off the site - where classic shows like Fawlty Towers, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Two Ronnies and Morcambe & Wise were shot - and shift the majority of its operations up north. The area will be turned into a hotel and resort, with just three studios in the complex remaining active (it currently has eight working studios, numerous radio studios and hundreds of offices).
For many years the BBC has run a two-hour tour of the site for less than £10 per visitor. Upon learning just before Christmas that these tours would soon cease and it was our last chance to take a look around, my friend Angela booked a tour for the pair of us as a Christmas present.
We took the tour on Friday, January 25, before traveling to Paris.
The tour took in the BBC news room, multiple television studios (we spotted comedian Russell Kane rehearsing in one of them for the show Live at the Electric) and celebrity dressing rooms, where the guides dished the dirt on the divas with the biggest demands. I was chosen to 'host' a weather transmission in front of a greenscreen and other participants were nominated to take part in a Name That Tune style quiz, buzzing in with their answers in a bid to win some BBC merchandise. Along the way we spotted lots of TV artefacts, from Pat Butcher's earrings to the Dr Who Tardis.
The tour only runs until February 22, so this really is your last chance to explore the most iconic building in British television history. Tickets are available here.
Exploring the BBC studios one last time. Pic by Angela Kanda. Click to enlarge.
This week I published two Jermaine Jackson interviews within two days of one another, on two different continents. The first, published in the States, marked by Huffington Post 'comeback' after 15 months away. The second was Jermaine's only UK interview promoting the Jacksons' Unity Tour concerts.
I spoke to Jermaine twice last week by phone. The first time I caught him - on Monday, January 14th - he was just about to go on live TV in France to promote his solo tour with David Serero, which was what I had called to speak about.
The second time - the following morning - I called him at his hotel for our exclusive chat about the Unity Tour. By that point he had damaged his voice. He'd seen a doctor earlier that morning and been told not to speak loudly (I'm not sure I've ever heard Jermaine speak loudly - but he was even quieter than usual). He cancelled other interviews later that day to rest his vocal chords.
The Huffington Post article, published yesterday, featured interviews with Jermaine and his collaborator, French opera singer David Serero, about their joint album and French tour. The pair are currently on the road together performing 'You Are Not Alone: The Musical'. Based on Jermaine's memoirs, he tells stories about his family's years in and out of the spotlight, showing never-before-seen photographs, a well as performing songs from the family's enviable catalogue of hits. Click here to read the article.
David Serero and Jermaine Jackson in the studio recording their new album, 'I Wish You Love'.
The second article, published in the UK today, is the first interview any of the Jacksons have given this year to promote the European leg of their Unity Tour. Jermaine spoke about his memories of London, how the show was 'healing' his brothers, what fans could expect from the concerts and what progress had been made on the group's new album.
It was published in the Yellow Advertiser newspaper series - one of the largest regional newspapers in Britain, featuring 10 different editions with a combined readership of almost half a million people in and around London. It went into half the editions this week and will go into the other half next week.
Here's how it looked on the page. Thanks very much to Harrison Funk for supplying us with the pictures.
(Click to enlarge)
If you're finding that print too difficult to read, you can read the online version by clicking here.
On Thursday 3rd February I attended the second of Usher's sold out gigs at the O2 Arena, part of his OMG Tour. My review of the night has been published by SawfNews.com, including some of my own photos from the gig.
Michael Jackson's long-serving tour guitarist Jennifer Batten has slammed Gene Simmons' recent allegations against the King of Pop.
Last week I sat down for an hour-long interview with Batten, who accompanied Jackson on all three of his world tours. During her decade of service she was also seen in the Dirty Diana music video, Jackson's feature film Moonwalker and the star's record breaking Superbowl performance, which was watched by more than a billion people.
Batten performs Dirty Diana with Jackson on the Bad Tour, 1988.
During our interview, I took the opportunity to quiz Batten over allegations recently made by aging glam rocker Gene Simmons, who claimed in a Classic Rock interview that a musician friend of his had quit a Michael Jackson tour after 'seeing boys coming out of the hotel rooms'.
Was it true, I asked her, that a musician had quit one of Jackson's tours while on the road?
"Number one," said Batten, "there's no truth to it. Number two, I would guess that it was somebody who got fired. Somebody who was embarrassed that they got fired and made-up a story."
But did any musicians ever get fired mid-way through a tour?
"No. Nuh-uh. No, there were a couple of people who got fired like a week before we took out on the road."
So there you have it, folks. No musician ever left a Michael Jackson tour mid-way through. Some musicians were fired but before the tour even hit the road, meaning that they couldn't have seen anything going on inside any hotels.
Yet again, Simmons' ravings about Jackson have been entirely debunked.
Charles Thomson is a multi-award winning court reporter, feature writer and investigative journalist.
His stories have appeared in the Sun, the Mirror, the Daily Star, the Guardian, MOJO, Wax Poetics, Orchard Times, the Huffington Post and various other publications.
For more, visit http://www.charles-thomson.net
