Karl 
JENNY LEWIS, in the midst of an international tour, tells Manchester online her solo album was inspired by Laura Nyro and the Sun Records sound. You can hear a couple of examples of that sound via MySpace.
ANDREW BIRD talks to Billboard about the recording of his next full-length album, due early next year. Bird plans on previewing new material during his stints at music festivals this summer, including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.
RONNIE SPECTOR talks about her past with producer Phil and what London's Independent calls “her surprisingly good new rock'n'roll album,” The Last of the Rock Stars — which comes out in the UK in May (with no US release date yet).
COLDPLAY and JACK WHITE are among those making the Sunday Times Rich List for 2006.
FIERY FURNACES: the brother-sister duo take The New York Times to a Greek restaurant: “This is really hard for us… Matt and I see each other so much that the last thing we want to do on a Friday night is go out. We don't go out socially.”
MOUNTAIN GOATS frontman John Darnielle talks to Harmonium about pop masterpieces, the first 45s he heard, filesharing, and more…
GNARLS BARKLEY — a collaboration of DJ/producer Danger Mouse with Cee-Lo — is Britain's current buzz band. The duo's debut single, “Crazy,” made NPR's Song of the Day and rightly so — there's no reason this song couldn't be a monster worldwide hit with mainstream listeners. The video is a Rohrschach test. The whole album is streaming via MySpace, including a cover of the Violent Femmes' “Gone Daddy Gone.”
DANIEL JOHNSON: London's Guardian interviews and profiles the manic depressive lo-fi musician in connection with the award-winning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
EMMYLOU HARRIS and MARK KNOPFLER talk to London's Telegraph about their new album, All The Roadrunning: “Emmy brings such a wealth of experience that it's like a director having the finest actress for a film,” says Knopfler, who wrote the bulk of the songs. They also talked to the Independent. The title track is streaming in Real format from the front page of Emmylou's website. And there's more to stream from this promo, including “This Is Us.”
THE DOORS plan to announce today that will soon make more than a dozen concerts from 1967-1970 available for download from th band's website. They are using the same tech companies as Pearl Jam: “Anything that Pearl Jam does, I'm down with, because they have so much integrity,” drummer John Densmore says. “Pearl Jam is always trying to find new things and explore new technology, and I like that.” BTW, the band still sells over a million albums yearly.
THE RAMONES: Too Tough to Die, a documentary chronicling the last 21/2 days of Johnny Ramone's life, premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. The doc is directed by Mandy Stein, whose father, Seymour Stein, signed the band to Sire Records and whose mother co-managed the group before she became a top real estate broker.
PETE DOHERTY UPDATE: The troubled singer is planning a Johnny Cash-style prison gig for his former cellmates… provided he can stay out of prison himself. Ex-Libetine bandmate Carl Barat talks to the Guardian about the good old days with Doherty: “Well, I don't know. The good old days never seem good at the time, do they?”
DENISE RICHARDS and CHARLIE SHEEN are headed toward extreme nastiness in their divorce, with Richards alleging Sheen physically abused her, made death threats and that his alleged pornography and prostitution habits have put their children at risk (Sheen denies all, natch). Richards says in her 17-page declaration that during their reconciliation last September, she discovered Sheen was visiting websites with “very young girls, who looked underage to me, with pigtails, braces, no pubic hair, performing oral sex with each other.” Richards also claims that Sheen accessed gay porn featuring very young men. Life & Style magazine recently reported that Sheen met a much younger woman on an internet dating site. Sheen was ordered on Friday to stay at least 300 feet from Richards, her home, her car and their two daughters except during supervised visits with the kids. Looks like Sheen picked the wrong week to launch a kids' clothing line… or Denise picked the right one to make these charges.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Unsurprisingly, Silent Hill won the weekend with 20 million in receipts, right in line with other recent horror films directly aimed at teens, like Hostel and When a Stranger Calls. Scary Movie 4 came in second, followed by The Sentinel. The other wide release, American Dreamz, managed only 3.6 million, which must be disappointing, even on a 17 million budget.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: Cruise's young neighbors are making a small fortune selling lemonade and cookies to the paparazzi outside the actor's home in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, israelis now say that the name “Suri” means “get out of here” in Hebrew.
NICOLE KIDMAN has stated through her publicist that she never congratulated Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes on the birth of their new little baby Suri. Press reports had her wishing mother and daughter well, but not mentioning her crazy ex-husband. That's a compound Me-OW!
CELEB SCIENTOLOGISTS: KNBC in LA has an extensive slideshow of current and former members of the controversial church.
GOSSIPOLA: The alleged payola scandal involving Jared Paul Stern has prompted the New York Post's Page Six to axe all of its freelance employees.
BRADGELINA: The couple has gotten Namibian authorities to eject four photogs from the country or face arrest. Jolie is buying Richard Branson's man-made version of Ethiopia, located in Dubai. She also plans to take out a large ad in USA Today this week, urging Congress to fully fund peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan. She reportedly notes in the ad, “I'm an actress, and certainly no foreign policy expert.” No kidding. The US has, through mustachioed UN Amb. John Bolton, been seeking action on Darfur (which some pundits believe to be mild) and it has been Russia and China blocking UN action, just as they did with Iraq and are doing with Iran.
BRITNEY SPEARS: According to the National Enquirer, the pop tart's former bodyguards are gearing up to tell all about her drug use, sex life and her turbulent relationship with hubby Kevin Federline.
SHANNEN DOHERTY may have found her dream TV job at last.
UNITED 93: Iraqi actor Lewis Alsamari, who plays a hijacker in the movie opening Friday, must be pretty good — he has been denied entry into the US to attend the premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
JULIANNE MOORE speaks out about the Skeletor diet prevalent in figure-conscious Hollywood.
THE FRENCH HOTEL nearly electrocuted herself by drunkenly jumping into a swimming pool after a garden light had fallen into it.
LINDSAY LOHAN has set her sights on Jessica Simpson's future ex, Nick Lachey? That would be Young Hollywood's reality version of Bellus and Zira.
IRAQ: At ITM, Omar wonders whether Jawad al-Maliki will be any more acceptable to the Kurds and Sunnis than al-Jaafari, and has a rundown of the latest meeting of parliament. I think al-Maliki probably needs to find at least another six votes to become Prime Minister. Informal polls of young officers suggest that about 25 percent believed that Rumsfeld should resign, and 75 percent believed that he should remain. Many officers who blame Rumsfeld are not faulting President Bush, and some criticize the retired generals who said nothing before the invasion. The US had an interpreter pick up a phone call from insurgents, who stupidly kept calling back to ask what the Americans were doing and announced they would attack in ten minutes. And how does the enemy views things? It appears that bin Laden is urging fighters to go to the Sudan.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE OIL: Take a look at a graph comparing Pres. Bush's approval rating with gas prices. And there's not much Bush can do on a long-term basis about surging demand from China and India outstripping supply. Greens have noted that India's use of oil has doubled since 1992, while China went from near self-sufficiency in the mid-1990s to the world's second largest oil importer in 2004. Congressional Democrats propose boosting car fuel efficiency standards. But CAFE standards were imposed in 1974 and the US drives now twice as much and is more dependent on foreign oil, which suggests that CAFE standards are not much of a conservation measure. What both parties would like is to repeal the law of supply and demand.
THE ARSENAL SQUIRREL: Friday, I had an article on the squirrel brought a Champions League soccer semi-final to a standstill. The video is on YouTube.
PUG PUPPY: Adopted as part of a cat's second litter. Pic at the link.
WALLABYS are the newest weapon against antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
ROBOT SNAKES may eventually slither through collapsed buildings in search of trapped victims.
MINI-DONKEYS: Could anyone stop from uttering, “Awwwww,” and smiling when nudged by a velvety dark nose overshadowed by enormous fuzzy ears?
