Jack Black discovers his country music DNA on father-in-law’s album

NEW YORK, Jan 2 — Jack Black may have been schooled in rock, but now he’d like to sing at the Grand Ole Opry with his wife’s family — who recently turned him on to bluegrass music.

The actor-musician energetically sings the traditional tune “Old Joe Clark” with his father-in-law Charlie Haden on Haden’s Grammy-nominated CD “Rambling Boy”.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect because I haven’t recorded or really sung any old songs like that before, bluegrass style, but it came very naturally and I cranked it out in two takes,” said Black, who grew up in the Los Angeles area.

“There was something in the music that I think struck a chord in my DNA. I think I’ve got some hillbilly in my roots. ... I’m already practising my square dancing if we play the Grand Ole Opry.”

Black, who recently starred in “Tropic Thunder” and the animated “Kung Fu Panda”, landed the last-minute supporting role when his father-in-law brought the nearly finished mix to their home so he could hear his daughter, Tanya, sing on her own and as part of the Haden Triplets, with sisters Rachel and Petra.

“Tanya’s very shy and doesn’t think she can sing, so I wanted Jack to hear, especially, how beautifully she sings ‘He’s Gone Away’, which I really had to do some talking to get her to sing,” said Charlie Haden, the eminent modern jazz bassist.

Haden brought his current family together to perform some of the old-style country songs he once sang with his parents and siblings in the popular Haden Family band in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“Old Joe Clark” was originally intended to be an instrumental, but Black felt it was “a great jam” and asked his father-in-law if there were any lyrics. Haden hastily arranged a studio session so his son-in-law could add a vocal track.

“Even though I was already married to Tanya and we had kids, when I was invited to be on the Haden family album, I finally felt like I was truly part of the family,” said Black, speaking by cell phone with his wife from their car outside a Los Angeles restaurant. “I’ve always loved Tanya’s family. The whole family has always been kind of a magical source of mystery.”

Black is a self-declared “ham” whose upcoming Judd Apatow/Harold Ramis biblical times comedy, “The Year One”, co-starring Michael Cera is slated for summer release. His wife, a cellist and visual artist, describes herself as “more of a hermit” and recently completed an animated short with music by her sister Petra for the Nick Jr children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba!”

But on the album, Tanya and her sisters — with their tightly blended harmonies on the Carter Family’s “Single Girl, Married Girl” and other songs — really stand out among a line-up that features such vocal stars as Vince Gill, Elvis Costello, Dan Tyminski, Ricky Skaggs and Rosanne Cash.

“We’ll just start singing a song and we’ll naturally fall into certain harmonies,” said Tanya Haden. “When we were little we would spend the night at our grandparents’ house on our mom’s side, which was really fun for us because we’d share a room and sing in harmony before we went to bed.”

The triplets and brother Josh — all of whom have been involved in the indie rock scene — were largely raised by their mother, Ellen Haden, a therapist, after her parents divorced. Tanya says her mother — whose parents both played classical music in the Los Angeles Mandolin Orchestra — helped influence their musical bent along with her more well-known father.

Haden and Black first met at a private high school in Santa Monica, California, but went their separate ways. She jokes that she was “a groupie” who would show up at concerts by his comedy-rock band Tenacious D. He says he was “kind of stalking” her by turning up at Haden Triplet performances. They met up again three years ago when Tenacious D was playing at a mutual friend’s surprise birthday and got married in March 2006.

“Rambling Boy” includes an excerpt from a 1939 Haden Family radio show with 22-month-old Little Cowboy Charlie yodelling on a gospel tune. Black and Haden say the oldest of their two sons, 2-year-old Sam, is already showing he’s inherited the family musical DNA after being exposed to everything from Weezer’s danceable “Surf Wax America” to Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”.

“Our son is already yodelling better than my father,” said Tanya Haden. “He already has his own taste in music. He’ll hear something and do his own rendition and we’ll try to sing along with him and he’ll tell us to shut up.” — AP

Penyampai berita, pelakon ditahan positif dadah

Seorang penyampai berita televisyen swasta dan seorang pelakon wanita adalah antara 26 orang yang ditahan dalam pesta seks dan dadah bagi meraikan kedatangan tahun baru di sebuah bilik hotel di Jalan P. Ramlee di ibu negara awal pagi Khamis.

Operasi pukul 3.30 pagi yang diketuai oleh ASP Mahani Ahmad dari Bahagian D7 cawangan maksiat, judi dan kongsi gelap Ibu Pejabat Polis Kontinjen Kuala Lumpur (IPKKL )itu turut mendapati pembaca berita wanita dan pelakon itu positif dadah.

Bernama melaporkan Mahani berkata serbuan di sebuah bilik di tingkat 11 itu turut menemui pelbagai jenis dadah seperti ketamin, kokain dan syabu serta minuman keras.

"Kesemua 26 yang ditahan berumur 18 hingga 31 tahun dan sembilan daripadanya iaitu enam lelaki dan tiga wanita positif dadah," katanya ketika dihubungi di sini hari ini.

Beliau berkata pembaca berita wanita itu gagal dalam saringan pertama ujian air kencing yang mana didapati positif dadah jenis ketamin dan syabu.

Mahani berkata turut ditahan dalam serbuan itu seorang pelajar dari sebuah kolej swasta di Kelana Jaya berusia 20 tahun yang dipercayai ejen pembekal dadah.

Katanya ketika serbuan terdapat tiga pasangan berada di atas katil manakala selebihnya sedang berhibur dalam keadaan separuh sedar dipercayai mabuk.

Difahamkan pesta seks dan dadah itu dianjurkan oleh dua lelaki dan kesemua mereka berkenalan di dalam kelab dan melalui rangkaian laman web friendster.

Kesemua mereka yang ditahan dibawa ke IPKKL dan sembilan yang positif dadah disiasat di bawah Sekyen 15 (1)9(a) Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1950.

Sementara itu, sambutan malam tahun baru di Bukit Bintang tercemar apabila kira-kira 40 orang ditahan atas pelbagai kesalahan.

Tinjauan Bernama di sekitar kawasan Bukit Bintang mendapati beberapa kejadian pergaduhan membabitkan remaja dilaporkan berlaku sejurus selepas detik 12 malam tadi.

Antara punca pergaduhan itu adalah akibat salah faham dan kerana mabuk.

Bagaimanapun anggota polis yang bertugas bertindak pantas meleraikan pergaduhan itu dan mereka yang terlibat telah ditahan untuk siasatan.

Selain itu, ada di kalangan pelancong asing yang menjadi sasaran peragut membabitkan kehilangan wang tunai, pasport dan alatan elektronik (gadget).

Sebanyak 10 laporan polis telah diterima oleh Balai Polis Bergerak yang ditempatkan di lokasi sambutan Tahun Baru di Jalan Bukit Bintang tersebut.

Seramai 200 anggota polis termasuk Pasukan Gerakan Am (PGA) bertugas membuat kawalan pada malam itu.

Album sales plunge, digital downloads up

NASHVILLE, Jan 2 — Music sales have continued to slump in 2008 as the increased number of downloads of digital tracks failed to make up for a plunge in the sale of compact discs.

Year-end sales figures released on Wednesday by The Nielsen Co show total album sales, including album equivalents made up of single digital tracks, fell to 428.4 million units, down 8.5 per cent from 500.5 million in 2007.

Physical album sales fell 20 per cent to 362.6 million from 450.5 million, while digital album sales rose 32 per cent to a record 65.8 million units.

Digital track sales, such as those conducted in Apple Inc’s iTunes Music Store, were up 27 per cent from last year, breaking the 1 billion mark for the first time at 1.07 billion.

The report continues a troubling trend for the recording industry, which has a harder time maintaining profits when consumers buy single songs instead of albums. The number of transactions rose 10.5 per cent to 1.5 billion, although the figure treats single track and whole album purchases the same.

“You can see the overall unit sales as a positive, but their model is really built on album sales and that just continues to decline,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, director of charts for Billboard magazine.

“Music consumption has never been at a higher clip, it’s just a matter of trying to turn it into revenue,” he added.

Some record labels are making progress. Craig Kallman, chief executive of Warner Music Group Corp’s Atlantic Records, whose artists include Kid Rock and T.I., said his label passed a milestone in the year to September by having its digital revenue exceed that from physical CD sales.

The label, the top-selling in the US in 2008, has had to become more careful in choosing which artists to promote and more patient in waiting for their songs to break out, he said.

“You have to really be right about your hits. If you’re going to invest that amount of time in them and not run as many records, you have to be way more right today than wrong,” Kallman said.

Nielsen SoundScan said album sales fell in every genre. Classical music saw the biggest drop at 26 per cent, followed by country at 24 per cent and Latin at 21.1 per cent.

Taylor Swift was the year’s best-selling artist with more than 4 million albums sold, followed by AC/DC, Lil Wayne and Coldplay. Sugarland finished No 8.

Swift had two albums on Nielsen’s Top 10 sales list: her self-titled debut at No 6 and her sophomore album “Fearless” at No 3.

“Taylor Swift is a great artist development story that started as organically as you can in the digital age,” said Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of her label, Big Machine Records. “It involved online, non-stop radio tours and strategic TV opportunities which led to non-stop touring. But — most importantly — Taylor connected with her fans like no other artist in 2008”.

Lil Wayne had the year’s top-selling album, “The Carter III”, with 2.87 million units sold, with Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” (2.14 million) and Swift’s “Fearless” (2.11 million) rounding out the top three.

The top selling digital artist was Rihanna with 9.94 million tracks sold, followed by Swift and Kayne West.

Ironically, as digital downloads grew, vinyl album sales also climbed. In 2008, more vinyl albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991.

More than two of every three vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store during the year, the company reported. The top selling vinyl albums were Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” (26,000 units), the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” (16,500) and Guns ‘N Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” (13,600).

Nielsen also reported that music sales exceeded 65 million in the final week of 2008, representing the biggest sales week in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. The previous record was Christmas week of 2007 with 58.4 million music purchases. — AP

Alagna, Gheorghiu ring in the New Year at the Met

NEW YORK, Jan 2 — At the end of Giacomo Puccini’s “La Rondine”, an enamoured woman jilts her ardent but poor lover, saying she can’t give up her old life as a rich man’s mistress.

And, she says, she doesn’t want to financially ruin her soul mate.

But on New Year’s Eve, after the Metropolitan Opera’s gold curtain fell, there was a second ending: The two lovers went off together into the Manhattan night.

The stars of the company’s first production of Puccini’s work since 1936 were soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna — married in real life.

“We can say to the audience, ‘OK, they will be separated in the story, but not in real life!’” Alagna said in a backstage interview.

“And we can go to the New Year’s party together!” added Gheorghiu.

The musical power couple has fertilised opera’s overripe gossip world over the years — most recently in 2007, when Gheorghiu was fired from Chicago’s Lyric Opera for missing rehearsals, saying she wanted to support her husband during his Met appearances. Months earlier, he had a dustup with Milan’s Teatro alla Scala after walking out of a performance of “Aida” because some fickle audience members booed.

But there’s no doubt that the two, who first met 16 years ago on the stage of London’s Covent Garden, share a vocal synchronicity and an emotional electricity that keeps an international audience riveted.

They proved it on Wednesday in a performance of “La Rondine” that would be difficult to match — singing with ravishing, tender voices and onstage intimacy they say is not feigned. Their 1997 recording of Puccini’s work is considered the best by many critics.

Alagna and Gheorghiu were married at the Met in 1996 by then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

On Wednesday evening, their love story again spilled onto the stage.

First, she appears at a party as a worldly Parisian woman, Magda, who questions her existence with a wealthy older man while reminiscing about a brief youthful infatuation with a handsome stranger at a dance hall. She barely notices one party guest, a newcomer from the countryside named Ruggero — Alagna.

Reading Magda’s future in her palm, a poet friend tells her she will someday fly off like a swallow in search of a new true love — hence, “La Rondine”, meaning swallow in Italian.

In this first scene, Gheorghiu sings the opera’s most famous aria, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” (Doretta’s Dream Song) — a fictional woman’s dreamy longing for love lost summed up in two falling intervals: a perfect fifth followed by a tritone. Gheorghiu’s soaring, gem-like phrases created some magical moments of music.

Magda returns alone to the dance hall, where she by chance encounters Ruggero. They fall in love and she abandons her role of pampered mistress.

This second act at Bullier’s dance hall matched the evening, with an oversized mirror ball dangling from the ceiling as Alagna’s thrilling upper register opened up for the love duet. Ruggero invites Magda to dance to the strains of “Nella dolce carezza della danza” (“In the soft caresses of the dance”), with tenor and soprano singing sensuously in each other’s arms as though transported.

Knowing one another as husband and wife doesn’t make working together easier, Alagna said.

“The problem is, when you go onstage, you must be surprised,” he said. “But we know one another very, very well. I know exactly what gestures she’ll make.”

Surprise is replaced by a more interesting experience for the audience: the feeling of being allowed to peek, unnoticed, at a couple in love — at home.

For years, Gheorghiu was more “ashamed” kissing her husband onstage than any colleague, “because the whole world sees my intimacy,” she said, adding jokingly, “With a colleague, it’s ‘Mua, mua, mua — salut, ciao, arrivederci!’”

For the endless kisses on this New Year’s Eve, the Met stage must’ve been filled with mistletoe.

“La Rondine”, premiered in 1917 in Monte Carlo, packs some of opera’s most beautiful melodies into just over two hours, along with some complex, modern psychology.

In the final act, the deeply-in-debt lovers are living happily together when Ruggero proposes, sending Magda into an emotional spin. She declares herself unworthy of him because of her tawdry past, and despite his pleas, abandons him for the life to which she’s accustomed.

Alagna embodied Ruggero’s pain with throbbing heartache, his burnished voice blossoming into Gheorghiu’s for the ending.

The pleasure of performing the scene together “is double”, said Alagna. “I cry because all of a sudden, at that instant, it’s no longer Magda who is leaving — it’s as if Angela was leaving.”

The current Met production was first created for them at Covent Garden in 2002, and repeated in 2007 at the San Francisco Opera.

Making his Met debut on Wednesday was Gheorghiu’s fellow Romanian Marius Brenciu, whose clarion tenor fit the role of the poet with velvety lyricism.

The veteran bass Samuel Ramey’s rich, but now rather wobbly, aging voice was also right for the role of Magda’s wealthy lover.

Conductor Marco Armiliato led the orchestra, drawing out Puccini’s lilting melodies with elegant effervescence. — AP

Female newscaster, actress among 26 arrested at sex party

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 1 — Police arrested a female newscaster of a private television station, an actress and 24 others who took part in a sex party at a hotel room in Jalan P. Ramlee here today.

The two woman and seven others — six men and a woman — tested positive for drugs, said ASP Mahani Ahmad of the police’s vice, gambling and secret society branch.

All those arrested during the 3.30 am operation aged between 18 and 31 years, she said when contacted.

She said the police also found liquor and various drugs like ketamine, cocaine and syabu in the room on the 11th floor of the hotel and a 20-year-old student of a Kelana Jaya private college believed the drugs supplier was among those held.

During the raid, three couples were on the bed while the rest were entertaining themselves believed intoxicated, she said.

She said preliminary investigations showed the sex party was hosted by two men and those who attended it knew each other through Friendster, a social network in the internet.

Those arrested were taken to the Kuala Lumpur contingent police headquarters.

Meanwhile, about 40 people were arrested for various offences during the New Year’s eve party in Bukit Bintang where several fights took place between drunken youths.

A number of people including foreign tourists also lost cash, passports and electronic gadgets to pickpockets and 10 police reports were lodged at the mobile police station deployed there. — Bernama