The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| Good times again for Daft Punk collaborator Nile Rodgers Posted: 23 Nov 2013 09:40 PM PST Without "The Hitmaker" as Rodgers calls it, some of the most influential music of the past 35 years would not have sounded the same. From Rodgers' band Chic, which soundtracked the decadent rise of disco with hits such as "Le Freak" and "Good Times", to records that he produced or performed on for Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Madonna, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, Daft Punk and others, the guitar has been a permanent fixture. Losing it "was horrible – it felt the same as if I had a child kidnapped", Rodgers, 61, said in an interview with AFP. "That instrument is so unique and so special, there is nothing in my world that is as consistent as that," he added on the phone from his dressing room before a concert in Tokyo. Luckily, Rodgers found the guitar in the lost property area of a train yard hours after realising he had left it on the service to Connecticut, where his studio is. It is just one element of good fortune in a year in which Rodgers has been given the all-clear from cancer, seen his "Get Lucky" collaboration with French electronic music duo Daft Punk become Spotify's most-streamed song over 24 hours, and headline festivals with his band Chic. "It's great, but I'm very careful not to make a big deal out of it," said Rodgers, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer in 2010. "I know that it can all switch in an instant. The day before I was diagnosed with cancer, my doctor told me I was the healthiest patient he had. "I felt great. However, I was asymptomatic, and the cancer was growing so fast inside me that it was just a matter of time." Rodgers underwent surgery and in recovery decided to play as much music around the world as possible. He started a blog, "Walking on Planet C", to document his experiences and reached out to artists he wanted to work with through Facebook and Twitter. "That was my therapy. I decided that if you have a really good reason to live, you have a reason to wake up the next day," he said. 'Le Freak' Aside from Chic, Rodgers co-wrote "We Are Family" for Sister Sledge, "Upside Down" for Diana Ross, produced and performed on David Bowie's biggest-selling album "Let's Dance" and on "Like a Virgin" for Madonna. And that's just scratching the surface of his discography. In his 2011 autobiography, Rodgers describes a mostly happy childhood in New York, despite battling acute asthma and being raised by loving but heroin-addicted parents in a bohemian household "dotted with junkies". As a teenager he joined the Harlem branch of the Black Panthers, dropped acid with LSD guru Timothy Leary and jammed with Jimi Hendrix. After jobs in the Sesame Street band and at the Apollo Theatre, he went on to form Chic with his musical partner Bernard Edwards, whose death in 1996 left Rodgers devastated. The disco lights are shining on Chic once more this year, helped by Rodgers' role in underpinning Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories", a dance album that pays heavy tribute to the 1970s and 1980s. Its lead single "Get Lucky", featuring Rodgers on his trademark Stratocaster, was for many the song of the summer. "When 'Get Lucky' first hit, I said to people 'I'm so excited for Daft Punk'," said Rodgers. "This is their first number one record – my 20th, I don't even know how many I've had. This is a rare, unique club to be in." After a year of celebrated live performances, Chic will headline the Shanghai Electric Disco Carnival and perform at Hong Kong's Clockenflap music festival on November 29 and 30, before dates in New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur and then Australia. "You're just on a trajectory when, every now and then there's some kind of convergence and people go 'we like that' and I'm the beneficiary. "I know it doesn't last," he said, dwelling on disco's demise in the late 1970s before its rebirth in later years as the undercurrent to newer sounds in hip hop and electronica. Recent collaborations with British electronic act Disclosure and DJ David Guetta will feature on a new Chic album along with Daft Punk, Rodgers told AFP. In doing so, he will extend an extraordinary body of work that Rodgers still hears daily, wherever he is in the world. "Half the time you wonder why it sounds so familiar," said Rodgers. "And then you remember that you wrote it." – AFP/Relaxnews, November 24, 2013. |
| Dr Who turns 50 with eyes on global space Posted: 23 Nov 2013 05:05 PM PST "Doctor Who", first aired on British television on November 23, 1963, is the world's longest-running science-fiction series according to "Guinness World Records", telling the story of a half-human with two hearts and the power to travel in time. It is now a major part of BBC efforts to press sales overseas. From its inception, it had British children cowering behind sofas, untroubled by sometimes less than convincing sets and aliens that looked frequently like men in rubber suits. The doctor's chief enemy, the Daleks, are an alien race forced by an apocalyptic war to retreat into robotic shells, bereft of all emotions bar hatred; man-sized salt cellar-shaped villains with probes reminiscent of sink plungers and flashing lights on their heads strangely similar to those on a car seen widely on British streets in the early 1960s. Scrapped 24 years ago, it re-emerged in 2005 in what many view as a more sophisticated form, going from strength to strength. As well as building a strong fan base in Britain among so-called "Whovians", the show has made its mark in the United States, Australia and Canada and is expanding in other languages to markets such as China, Brazil and Mexico. Randy Bloch, a computer engineer from Chicago, Illinois, was one of an expected 24,000 fans gathering at a conference centre for a 50th anniversary edition, "The Day of the Doctor", to be broadcast in more than 90 countries and 15 languages. Some wore Dr Who costumes, took part in workshops, bought up merchandise and took part in workshops. "I like Doctor Who's idealism and optimism. It offers hope and acceptance for people who need it," Bloch, wearing a Dr Who-themed stripey scarf, commented. The show, joined by current and past doctors, is a key part of the publicly-funded BBC's efforts to win a global audience for this and other drama shows. Steven Moffat, the show's chief writer, attributed its success to having "a simple hero who can go anywhere in time and space" and transforming itself every few years with a new lead character and updated technology. One centre piece is the Doctor's Tardis time machine, taking the form of a blue police box. The Tardis had been designed to melt in with its surroundings, which it did nicely in the 1963 broadcast set in a London where such boxes were a common sight, a constable's telephone link to the station. Unfortunately, the function froze after the first series leaving the Tardis in the same, subsequently rather incongruous form for future visits to far away planets and distant times. The show has its detractors, as even the BBC acknowledges. "Daleks are like a wheelie bin with a plunger. I am simply not scared of them, no matter how much people may scream," wrote one observer, Chris Sallis, in an article on the BBCwebsite. "The Tardis itself just doesn't interest me either. What is interesting about a blue police box compared with the star ship Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon?" Yet the fans keep clamouring for more. The lead role has been played by 11 actors, starting with William Hartnell in 1963 through to the incumbent doctor Matt Smith who will hand over the keys to the Tardis later this year to the 12th doctor, Oscar-winning Peter Capaldi. – Reuters, November 24, 2013. |
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