Unlicensed to Ill
If you've ever shelled out the bucks for a hot-ticket rock show, you've had to put up with any number of annoyances -- from service charges to surly scalpers -- but you've probably never had it quite as bad as a passel of Beastie Boys fans in Pittsburgh. They ended up ponying up their hard-earned dough -- which could've gone for a case or two of Iron City beer -- for a show that didn't even exist. A local promoter, who was putting together a bill for a May 2nd extravaganza called the Ghetto Booty Battle, was apparently bilked out of a $10,000 appearance fee by a scammer calling himself Gene Santiago, who reportedly was posing as a representative of the Beasties. Gold Mountain Entertainment, which manages the trio, was presented with copies of phony contracts riddled with false names, addresses and phone numbers -- not to mention a poor forgery of band member Adam Yauch's signature. Representatives there insist that the Beasties were never approached to play the gig, and have never had any contact with Santiago.
Chinese Wall
In a move that will no doubt cost the artists involved, oh, a cool four bucks in lost revenue, the Chinese government issued a statement earlier this week making it clear that anyone who performs at the upcoming Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. will be forever banned from performing on Chinese soil. In a statement issued on Wednesday, an Embassy representative stated that "Western artists have no right to intervene in the internal affairs of our country. Any of those performers who do will not be permitted entry to China, including Tibet, and their works will never be welcome in our country." We're not sure how much gnashing the ban on Kraftwerk will bring in Beijing, but somehow, we think that a country of more than a billion people harbors at least one person smart enough to sneak in a few Pearl Jam bootlegs.
From Jim to Jacko
We've often thought of Chicago avant-garde guru Jim O'Rourke as the Kevin Bacon of the noise-rock world, and now a few brave souls (with far more free time on their hands) have gone and proved it by creating a website entitled "Six Degrees of Jim O'Rourke." It doesn't take much effort to link the guitarist to, say, the Jesus Lizard (for whom he remixed several songs earlier this year), but there are some fairly intricate connections -- like the five-degree thread that links O'Rourke to Michael Jackson. Being good sports, we'd hate to give that one away here, but you can check it for yourself.
The Singer Nose Best
Rock's disabled list is littered with rehab stints and liver damage, but every once in a while, an artist has to check in for treatment of something that's actually work-related. Take Doug MacMillan, frontman of North Carolina alterna-pop faves the Connells. The singer had to take nearly a year off after being diagnosed with diverticulitis, a nasal condition exacerbated by the stress of singing every night. Well, after going under the knife late last year, MacMillan returned to action in an L.A. studio to record the sextet's forthcoming album, Still Life, and found that he was, in fact, able to sing again -- although the old drinking beer through the nostril trick is probably out of the question.
OK Supermodels
Since we have fond childhood memories of playing that "one of these things is not like the other" game, we were thrilled to get word that New York's uber-hip Moomba Club just hosted a rogues' gallery consisting of Matt Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Amber Valetta and Thom Yorke. They gathered to celebrate -- no, not a new line of designer cardigans -- Radiohead's sold-out two-night stand at Radio City Music Hall. Apparently, OK Computer has been a really big hit in the supermodel community, which was uniformly overjoyed to have finally found music with enough intellectual heft to discuss at those cerebral cocktail parties they're always attending.
DAVID SPRAGUE
