Lollapalooza taps Kings of Leon, Jane's Addiction

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Kings of Leon will be among the headliners of this year's Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits festivals, Billboard sources have confirmed.
Depeche Mode, the Beastie Boys and Jane's Addiction are also playing Lollapalooza, which takes place in Chicago's Grant Park Aug 7-9, the Chicago Tribune reports and Billboard's sources confirm. Both events are produced by Austin, Texas-based C3 Productions.
The full Lollapalooza lineup announcement is expected in April.
Among the known top headliners for this year's Lollapalooza, Kings of Leon are the only band that wasn't around when the event debuted in 1991 as a traveling, multi-city festival. The Nashville-based rock act sold out New York's Madison Square Garden in January, and has a run of U.S. arena dates scheduled for April and May.
Jane's Addiction, the classic alternative band fronted by Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell, has reunited with its original lineup and will play the event for the first time since its inception. The group is set to embark on a co-headlining tour with Nine Inch Nails, a band that also played on the first Lollapalooza tour and headlined the Chicago fest in 2008. (Nine Inch Nails is playing a separate solo Chicago show this year.)
The Beastie Boys, who were on the Lollapalooza tour in 1994, are preparing for the release of their follow-up to 2007's "The Mix Up" instrumental album. They are among the headliners of the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee in June.
Depeche Mode is prepping the April 21 release of "Sound of the Universe" and heads out on a North American tour on July 24. The Lollapalooza show will be its only Midwest appearance.
Kings of Leon and Jane's Addiction will meet earlier in the season when they both headline the Sasquatch festival at the Gorge in Quincy, Wash., on May 23-25.

http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSTRE52607Y20090307

NIN and Jane's Addiction to Tour

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction will kick off their co-headlining tour on May 8 in West Palm Beach, Fla., they said on Wednesday.
The 23-date amphitheater trek ends June 12 in Charlotte, N.C. The Chicago date, May 29 at the Charter One Pavilion, is the only stop on the tour without Jane's Addiction, fueling speculation that Perry Farrell's band will headline his own Lollapalooza festival there in August.
The tour may be Nine Inch Nails' last before an extended break. In announcing the tour recently, mainman Trent Reznor stopped short of saying the band was going on something more than a hiatus. But Reznor confirmed these will be the last NIN shows for some time, and that they will be "much more raw, spontaneous and less scripted" compared to last year's "Lights in the Sky" tour. "It's time to make NIN disappear for a while," he said.
Key stops include May 20 at Irvine, Calif., June 2 at Toronto, and June 7 at Wantagh, N.Y.

http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSTRE5240I420090305

An article about a legend: Gandhi comes home

Gandhi's possessions to finally return home
3 hours ago
NEW YORK (AFP) — Mahatma Gandhi's meager possessions are to finally return home after a flamboyant Indian tycoon paid 1.8 million dollars to win a dramatic auction in New York.
Cheers erupted at Antiquorum Auctioneers when the hammer came down on the huge bid by liquor and airline baron Vijay Mallya.
"Basically he was bidding for the country," said Tony Bedi, who acted on behalf of Mallya to secure the revered independence leader's round glasses, worn leather sandals, pocket watch, plate and bowl.
Mallya "will take the items to India," Bedi said.
India had bitterly opposed the auction, insisting that Gandhi's belongings were part of the country's national heritage and that their sale was an insult to the memory of a man who rejected material wealth.
The owner, California-based pacifist James Otis, insisted the auction would proceed. With less than an hour to go, he astonished journalists outside the auction house by announcing that "in light of the controversy" he too wanted the sale stopped.
But he was too late and Antiquorum went ahead.
A fanfare of soft music and a slide show of black and white Gandhi photos introduced the bitterly controversial lot to a packed room.
Then Indian businessmen -- who had seen both their government and Otis himself fail to stop the sale -- leapt in, bidding frantically to prevent any foreigner from winning.
Within seconds, Antiquorum's opening price of 20,000 to 30,000 dollars for the five items rocketed to half a million dollars, and then kept climbing rapidly.
Asked afterward if the possessions of a man who embraced poverty were really worth 1.8 million dollars, white turbaned Bedi laughed: "I think they're worth six" million dollars.
There was still one more twist before Gandhi's passionate followers could breathe easy.
Otis had declared the auction to be illegal and his lawyer had warned of legal action if Antiquorum went ahead.
Antiquorum, which specialized in high-end watch sales, declared a two-week delay in delivering the goods to the auction's highest bidder to address legal questions.
Bedi acknowledged the delicate situation, saying: "Obviously there are some restrictions at the moment pending resolution whether this auction was legal."
But as if Gandhi's spirit of peace was now triumphant, even this potentially nasty legal problem was soon resolved.
Otis explained through his lawyer that his last-minute opposition to the auction had been because he suddenly feared that someone unsuitable, like a foreign dictator, would win.
Mallya's promise to repatriate the items resolved that worry.
"We intend to ratify the sale as we expect Vijay Mallya to keep his word," said Otis's lawyer Ravi Batra.
This must still be confirmed by Mallya, he added. "We don't want it in a private trophy case. We want them returned to the people of India."
However, Batra said that Otis had "every trust in the successful bidder."
Otis, a tall, curly haired documentary maker and longtime Gandhi enthusiast, seemed bewildered by events.
"I never intended the controversy that this has created," he lamented.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jZ21FMzjO-opSkVbTef7OdAubQEQ

R.I.P Gandhi, is all I have to say. He was the inspiration to many people including my mother and I and as cheesy as it sounds, it's true. He freed the Indians from the cruel British rule and he taught humanity valuable things. Even though he died before I was born, I still say R.I.P Gandhi.

Battle of the Song

THE musician Alex Lloyd's former band - Slim La Beef and the Spare Ribs - are set to re-form as part of a legal showdown in the Federal Court this year.
More than 15 years after they played together under that name, the four will probably be reunited to give evidence in Lloyd's court battle over who wrote the hit song Amazing.
Mark O'Keefe, a truck driver and songwriter, is suing Lloyd, claiming he wrote the lyrics to Amazing on a series of beer coasters at the Bridge Hotel in Rozelle late on a Thursday night in April or May 1991.
O'Keefe says he wrote the "lyrics and melody of the chorus", the opening line of the first verse and the opening line of the middle eight, and gave Lloyd a template to complete it later.
He also says Lloyd promised that he would finish the rock song and register it in both their names with the Australasian Performing Right Association.
The song was a hit in 2001 and voted No.1 on Triple J's Hottest 100 poll. It has since been used in three television advertising campaigns, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for Lloyd.
At the time the song was written, Lloyd was performing under the name Slim La Beef in pubs around Balmain, O'Keefe says.
The Federal Court heard yesterday that the members of the Spare Ribs could either be called as witnesses by Lloyd to defend his version of events, or by O'Keefe, who is seeking to prove that he wrote the song.
The key to the case is the timing of the meeting between Lloyd and O'Keefe.
O'Keefe is not sure of the date on which the song was written, but is attempting to narrow it down by referring to which nights Lloyd was at the Bridge Hotel.
O'Keefe is appealing for any witnesses who saw him with Lloyd at the hotel in April or May 1991 to come forward. He says the song was written after a performance by his band, What's Next.
It is understood Lloyd will argue he was not at the hotel on the night What's Next played in 1991.
The other members of Slim La Beef and the Spare Ribs are Mitch Grainger, Declan Kelly and Kinnon Holt.
The case will return to court next month.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/song-lyrics-battle-in-court-20090303-8ngd.html

Anyone in the mood for playing chicken? An asteroid maybe?

http://www.smh.com.au/national/asteroid-plays-chicken-with-earth-20090303-8nge.html




IT COULD have put an end to our worries about the economy and those sharks at Sydney beaches.
At 12.40 yesterday morning, as the city slept, a previously unknown asteroid swept about 60,000 kilometres over the south-western Pacific.
In astronomical terms it was a close call. Estimated to be between 30 metres and 50 metres wide, it passed almost seven times closer than the moon.
"No object of that size, or larger, has been observed to come closer to the Earth," said Rob McNaught, of the Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran.
In 1908 an object possibly up to 50 metres across flattened some 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.
Mr McNaught said yesterday's asteroid was probably smaller but it could do a lot of damage to a city. If it had crashed into the ocean "I imagine it would produce a tsunami", he said.
Funded by NASA to search for asteroids bigger than one kilometre across, Mr McNaught spotted the object on Friday night. Within 24 hours astronomers had calculated it would narrowly miss the planet.
Mr McNaught said as the asteroid approached Earth yesterday morning it had glowed 5000 times brighter than on Friday night. "It was so bright I could actually observe it through the cloud. That is very rare," he said.
He believed that if 2009 DD45 had been on a collision course with a populated part of the planet, there would have been time to act. "A lot of people falsely claim there is nothing you could do, but there is. If there is an asteroid coming, and you have 24 hours, you can evacuate."
About 1000 asteroids are known to have come close enough to be classified as potentially hazardous.
While a collision with a one-kilometre-wide asteroid could cause global devastation, Mr McNaught said one that was just 300 metres wide could throw the world into "a short-term winter".
Objects bigger than one kilometre wide were likely to hit the world only every few million years but ones large enough to threaten a city crashed "probably once a century".

Invaders Must Die

Smack My Bitch Up's New Album

.Out.Now.

[The Prodigy <3]

Proof That We're Old

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Footprints found in Kenya that resemble those left in wet sand by beach goers today show that 1.5 million years ago a human ancestor walked like we do with anatomically modern feet, scientists said on Thursday.
The remains of the footprints found in sedimentary rock near Ileret in northern Kenya most likely were left by a human ancestor called Homo erectus, also known as Homo ergaster, an international team of scientists wrote in the journal Science.
The scientists found a series of footprints, including one apparently left by a child, left by individuals walking on a muddy river bank. Judging from stride length, they estimated the individuals were about 5-foot-9 (1.75 meters) in height.
"It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site," archaeologist David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.
"These could quite easily have been made on the beach today," Braun added.
The footprints show that the individuals had a big toe parallel to the other toes, unlike that of other apes where it is separated in a grasping configuration useful in the trees. The footprints show a characteristic human-like arch and short toes, typically associated with an upright bipedal stance.
The size, spacing and depth of the footprint impressions allowed the scientists to estimate weight, stride and gait, which all were found to be within the range of modern humans.
Our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared 200,000 years ago. But this shows that at least as far back as 1.5 million years ago, the human lineage walked with a modern stride, the researchers said.

The findings mark one of the most important discoveries in recent years regarding the evolution of human walking.
Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University, another of the researchers, said the findings show that these individuals had evolved an essentially modern human foot function and a style of bipedal locomotion matching today's people.
These are the second-oldest known footprints of human ancestors. The oldest, found in Tanzania, date from about 3.75 million years ago and apparently were made by a much more primitive human ancestor called Australopithecus.
These are smaller and show signs of bipedal posture but with a shallower arch and a more ape-like, divergent big toe.
The species Homo erectus had a smaller brain than modern people but had generally similar body proportions -- longer legs and shorter arms -- to Homo sapiens. Their remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, with dates consistent with the newly reported footprints.
But no remains of their feet have been found from that time period, Braun said.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE51P81K20090226?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0