He was the bare – chested screamer who embodied the phrase sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Robert Plant was almost as renowned for his hellraising behaviour as for his performances with Led Zeppelin.
But old rockers never die – they just end up at Buckingham Palace.
Yesterday 60-year-old Plant became the latest in a long line of popular musicians to be honoured when he received his CBE from Prince Charles.
And rather than discuss his days of outrageous behaviour throwing TVs out of hotel windows watched by gaggles of admiring groupies, he chatted about global warming.
Plant’s award was for ’services to popular music’.
He arrived at the palace with his blond curls tied into a ponytail and wearing a plain blue suit, although he could not resist a number of heavy silver rings on his fingers.
Plant denied that the award meant he was now part of the establishment.
‘The diversity of people who have moved through here this morning prove there is no real establishment here,’ he said.
Part of the Establishment? Former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant displays his CBE which he received from Prince Charles
‘I owe everything to the musicians I work with. From the UK to Africa to Tennessee, it is their brilliance that I bounce off. Alone I’m nothing.’
Plant’s date at the palace came after Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Elton John and Cliff Richard all received knighthoods.
His Led Zeppelin bandmate, guitarist Jimmy Page, was awarded the OBE four years ago.
Plant has enjoyed a successful solo career since the group split in 1980 following the death of drummer John Bonham. His latest album, Raising Sand, recorded with country singer Alison Krauss, won five Grammy awards after it was released in 2007.
After the ceremony, he said he and Charles discussed the Dimbleby lecture the prince gave this week on global challenges and the environment.
Plant became notorious during the 1970s for his wild behaviour. During the band’s stays at the Hyatt House hotel on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, it was nicknamed the Riot House.
Led Zeppelin have sold more than 200million albums worldwide.
In December 2007 the band reunited to play a one- off show before nearly 20,000 fans at London’s 02 arena with Bonham’s son Jason playing the drums.
Mumbai, Feb 26 (IANS) Post Mumbai attacks, Bollywood composer Aadesh Shrivastava is teaming up with some of the biggest names from the music world including Justin Timberlake and Rihanna for an anti-terrorism album. He says these talented people are coming together to sing about peace, though with a difference.
“I’ve already invited these singers and they will participate. I’ve recorded with that extraordinarily-talented violinist Kala Ramanathan and with Ustad Rashid Khan. Justin and Rihanna have also given their nod,” Aadesh told IANS.
“The time to sing bhajans and qawwallis evoking Allah and Ishwar to bring peace to earth is over. Such silent pleas won’t work any more,” he added.
Aadesh, who is all fired up with the blasts that happened on 26/11, says rather than attend rallies he decided to produce an anti-terrorism album.
“Mumbai has witnessed the worst ever massacre and I’m not interested in token gestures. That’s why I didn’t attend the peace rally at the Gateway Of India. All those thousands hopeful Mumbaikars who attended were in danger. Hardly any security was provided to them. What if there was an attack at the rally?”
Immediately after the attack Aadesh has started work on his global album against terrorism.
“I was actually working on another album based on the four seasons of the year. But I’ve put that aside for the anti-terrorism album. I’m very clear about one thing – it will have no references to the gods of any religion. We need to fight terrorism on our own,” he said.
‘Call me mom’: Madonna is once again trying to convert US singer Britney Spears to kabbalah
Related
Kabbalah Bracelets Replacing Diamond Bracelets in Hollywood ‘Madonna is determined she can get Britney back into kabbalah. She has offered her a suite of rooms at her apartment in New York and has told Britney she is her surrogate mother.
With her divorce settled, Madonna is focusing her energy into converting more A-list stars to kabbalah, and her latest target is troubled singer Britney Spears.
The 50-year-old has already converted actress Gwyneth Paltrow to the controversial Jewish-based faith that she follows.
Now she is attempting, for a second time, to persuade Britney to follow suit.
Madonna cooled her friendship with Britney when Spears announced after the birth of her second son, Jayden James: ‘I no longer study kabbalah. My baby is my religion.’
Message from the missus: Madonna in concert in the U.S. as her ‘quickie divorce’ was approved
‘Britney used to wear the red kabbalah bracelet and read the books Madonna gave her and she is thinking about giving it another chance.’
A spokesman for Britney tells me: ‘Britney wouldn’t really comment on that, it’s just a case of wait and see what happens.’
Madonna also apparently plans to take her new friend, baseball star Alex Rodriguez, and Britney to Malawi next year in the hope they will make donations to the kabbalah centre she has set up there.
Like he does in his monthly blog on Vibe.com, the incarcerated Prodigy recently spewed more of his conspiracy theories via a handwritten letter to URB. This time, he reveals the moment his eyes were opened to the sham he calls “the government, religions, politics, the Federal Reserve, and I.R.S.”
According to P, in 1996, after reading a book by Dr. Malichi Z. York titled Leviathan 666, he was moved so much, he cried, and that was his “moment of clarity.”
“I was crying for all of humanity, but mostly for my black people ’cause I then realized it was all a sham,” Prodigy writes in his letter to URB. “The government, religions, politics, the Federal Reserve, the I.R.S., and everything that we believe and live by is a joke.”
Even worse, the rapper says that many popular rappers are aware of these society secrets, but choose not to speak on it for fear of not being accepted by corporate America. One, in particular, is Jay-Z.
Occult Secrets of Jay Z, Kanye & Nas
“J.Z. knows the truth, but he chose sides with evil in order to be accepted in the corporate world. J.Z. conceals the truth from the black community and the world, and promotes the lifestyle of the beast instead,” he wrote.
Prodigy says that Jay grew up grew up in Dr. York’s “Nuwabian” community in Brooklyn as a kid, and is “aware” of these evils — rogue government, elitists running the country, etc. (For more on Dr. York, read up here)
Because of Jay’z refusal to speak on the topics Prodigy has been doing so since his incarceration, he will make it a point to wage war against him.
“J.Z is a God damn lie. I have so much fire in my heart that I will relentlessly attack J.Z, Illuminati, and any-every other evil that exists until my lights are put out,” P writes.
“This negativity I speak of is an actual living entity that uses us as food. We must sever ties with it in order to see things for what they really are. This negative energy is created and harnessed by the Illuminati secret government and they will make you spread this energy without you even knowing it. But people like J.Z. are very well aware. He was schooled by Dr. York,” he continued.
Nuwaubianism is an umbrella term used to refer to the doctrines, and teachings of the followers of Malachi Z. York. The Nuwaubians themselves reject this term Nuwaubianism as it is found nowhere in the literary works of their teacher Malachi Z. York. They refer to their teachings by such terms as “Nuwaubu”, “Nuwaupu”, “Wu-Nuwaubu”, “Right Knowledge”, “Sound Right Reasoning”, “Overstanding” and “Factology”, and many other names through the years.
The Nuwaubians originated as a Black Muslim group in New York in the 1970s, and have gone through many changes since. Eventually, the group established a headquarters in Putnam County, Georgia in 1993. The Southern Poverty Law Center has categorized the Nuwaubians as a black supremacist hate group.
Al-Muftil Azeem the Grand Al-Mufti “Divan” The Imperial Grand Potentate As-Sayyid Issa Al-Haadi Al-Mahdi Noble Rev. Dr Malachi Z. York El 720 degree
Nuwaubianism is said to have borrowed from a wide range of sources which include Theosophy-derived New Age movements such as Astara as well as the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry, the Shriners, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the revisionist Christianity and Islam of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the numerology of Rashad Khalifa, the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin, Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, J.J. Hurtak’s The Keys of Enoch, the works of Richard Shaver (a proponent of the Hollow Earth theory), David Icke, the UFO mythology of greys and reptilians, the political and legal theories of patriot mythology, modern scientific and pseudoscientific legends like those of Area 51, the Philadelphia Experiment, Project Blue Book, Montauk Project, and MJ-12, popular conspiracy theories such as those about the Illuminati or the Bilderberg Group, and even a paperback on fortune-telling.
Grand Master Malachi Z. York, Nuwaubian Grand North Lodge
Journalist Adam Heimlich reviewed a number of York’s booklets in 2000 and wrote:
A partial list, from my notes, of places I’d encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes Chariots of the Gods and the Rael’s [sic] embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga. Many of these York mentions by name. There are also extensive discourses on the Torah, Gospels and Koran, as well as on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation.
Some of York’s followers consider him to be a living god. At times he has encouraged this interpretation, and at other times, York has suggested that he is merely channeling the divine through various personalities. He has also identified himself as Al-Khidr (“the green one”) and as Melchizedek (who York says is also the archangel Michael). In later years York dismissed bodily worship of himself in a preface that was published within all of his books:
I am not the Lord Adonai, Jesus Messiah “The Christ”; nor am I a holy man, nor a preacher. I am a Master Teacher, a guide.
Nuwaubians also may view themselves as gods, using such sources as the Bible and Torah to validate their claims. Nuwaubians do not see the use of the word “god” as just referring to a universal creator, but also a title that one receives upon reaching a state of perfection or absolute power.
York was arrested in 2002, and was later sentenced to 135 years in prison for sexually molesting boys and girls whose parents were members of the Nuwaubians and for RICO violations. His followers continue to disseminate his teachings as he continues to develop them from behind bars.
The Eye of Horus gestures are believed to be used to channel spirits through one’s “illuminated” body. So people are not going to go on and on about the pyramid being Jay-Z’s Roc symbol, look at our articles attached below, and see this picture of Gloria Steinem, editor of Ms. Magazine and supposed feminist. She has nothing to do with Jay-Z other than she also holds up the alleged Illuminati pyramid sign at various photo opportunities.
Hip Hop & Freemasonry: Culture Creation – 4/8
Hip Hop & Freemasonry: The New Age & Military Agenda – 1/3
Hip Hop & Freemasonry: The New Age & Military Agenda – 2/3
Hip Hop & Freemasonry: The New Age & Military Agenda – 3/3
Eddie has appeared in several Iron Maiden album covers including Killers. Ever-present at Iron Maiden concerts, it has often appeared above the drummer with ‘blood’ spitting through its mouth.
Eddie the Head, the blood-spitting skeletal mascot of the heavy metal rock group Iron Maiden, has been displayed in a Spanish town hall as part of a political war of symbolism.
The demonic face, a regular feature of the band’s violent album cover designs, features regularly at council meetings in the town of Villava in Navarre.
Because Basque separatist councillors insist on hanging the Basque flag on their desks during debates, upset rivals opposed to the idea of the Navarre region being treated as part of the Basque country have adopted the Iron Maiden flag as their own emblem.
The Socialist leader, José Luis Uriz, said: “The Iron Maiden flag means a lot to me. If I have to put up with their flag, they’ll have to put up with Eddie’s face.”
The conservative Navarrese People’s Union party has joined the protest, with its councillors now hang the flag of the local La Liga football club, Osasuna, from their desks.
Eddie The Head, whose first incarnation was created by an art student from a melted plastic face mask, is ever-present at Iron Maiden concerts. It has often appeared above the drummer with ‘blood’ spitting through its mouth.
Navarre, in northern Spain, borders the Basque Country and is divided between Basque speakers and Spanish speakers. Earlier this month, police in Navarre detained four men overnight on charges of staging acts of street violence in support of the militant Basque separatist group ETA.
On Sunday, four Spanish soldiers who were killed over the past year by ETA were honoured during Spain’s traditional national day military parade.
Family members of the victims attended a ceremony for the four, as well as for eight other soldiers killed over the past 12 months, held just before the start of the parade through the central streets of Madrid.
ETA has killed 824 people in Spain in its 40-year campaign of bombings and shootings for an independent Basque homeland in parts of northeastern Spain and southwestern France.
ROME (Reuters) – Pop star Madonna, once accused by the Vatican of staging one of the most satanic shows in history, surprised fans by dedicating her hit “Like a Virgin” to the pope at a sold-out concert held in Rome.
“I dedicate this song to the pope, because I’m a child of God. All of you are also children of God,” the 50-year old “Queen of Pop” told the 60,000 fans that flocked to the Italian stop of her “Sticky & Sweet” world tour on Saturday.
Italian newspapers gushed over the singer’s electric performance and called the dedication a surprising provocation.
“At the Roman leg of her tour, Madonna didn’t miss the opportunity for a provocation that will certainly be discussed,” Italy’s top newspaper Corriere della Sera said in a front-page report.
Madonna, who comes from a devout Italian Catholic family, has raised the ire of the Catholic Church in the past with sexually charged antics designed to shock.
In 2006, she staged a mock-crucifixion at a concert in Rome to the backdrop of accusations from the Vatican of blasphemy.
The Vatican also condemned her controversial 1989 video for the song “Like a Prayer” that featured burning crosses, statues crying blood and Madonna seducing a black Jesus.
The Vatican later panned a show where she decked the stage out with religious imagery as one of the most “satanic shows in the history of humanity”.
Suddenly, the Middle East is alive to the sound of riffs. Sukhdev Sandhu meets the makers of a new film about the phenomenon
The plaintive beauty of Iranian folk. The effervescence of Algerian rai. The street-wise stridency of Palestinian rap. The music of the Middle East is as diverse and eclectic as the region itself.
It’s unlikely, though, that even the most passionate world-music fan has heard Egypt’s Hate Suffocation, Israel’s Orphaned Land, far less Lebanon’s Scrambled Eggs.
All are part of a large and growing subculture of metal bands across the Middle East who play thrash, grindcore, doomy and bowel-churning noise.
Many of them do so at great risk to themselves: metal is not just the torture-music of choice used by rendition-cell operatives, it’s seen by many Islamic clerics and politicians as satanic. In 2003, 14 Casablancan musicians, among them members of Nekros and Infected Brain, were sent to jail in Morocco for moral subversion.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad, a new documentary by Canadian-born Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti, looks at one of the bravest bands of them all: Iraq’s Acrassicauda. Named after the Latin for “black spider”, and inspired by Metallica and Slayer, they struggle to play their impressively dynamic music in a city where bombs rain down and blow up their rehearsal room, and where road checks and tight security make gigging almost impossible. In the end, they’re forced to flee as refugees to Damascus.
Acrassicauda deny that they’re a political band, but in the present situation their hyper-aggressive sound, their decision to sing in English, as well as how they wear their hair and their clothes, can’t help but lend them a radical edge.
“For a long time, especially in England with groups like the Darkness, metal has had a trivialised cultural currency,” says Moretti. “Its gravitas was impinged upon and diminished. But Acrassicauda are artless, plain and very real. I was drawn to the starkness and the impossibility of their situation. They have a level of authenticity unparalleled in the West.”
Metal, with the exception of a handful of bands such as Napalm Death and System of a Down, is not normally seen as a political genre. Compared to punk or to hip-hop, its imagery and lyrics are less rooted in a recognisable social present. Yet, in the context of modern-day Iraq, metal’s lexicon of terror, mayhem and apocalypse has unmistakable resonance. One of the musicians in Alvi and Moretti’s film claims: “We play heavy metal, because our lives are heavy metal.” It’s a sentiment that also appears in Heavy Metal Islam (Three Rivers Press), a newly-published study by musician and Middle East historian Mark Levine.
“Metal reflects schizophrenia: it both sounds like it and is a therapy for it. It’s a way of dealing with mental illness. At the very least, many young people across the Middle East are politically ill. They have no outlet for their dreams and creativity. They think they have two options: to be a Jihadi, or to sell out and become a yuppie.”
Both Levine and Moretti point out that the cost of buying instruments and amplifiers means that metal is currently confined to being a middle-class phenomenon across the Middle East. The bands, some of whom fell in love with the music after watching MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball on satellite television, are often forced to play before segregated crowds.
A female band, the riot-grrl-inspired Mystik Moods who hail from Morocco, face tricky ideological issues as much as they do those around gender: are they willing to be co-opted by the state by performing at a festival held “Under the patronage of His Royal Highness, King Mohammed VI”?
This raises another fascinating question: will Middle Eastern metal bands, if offered financial support by American proponents of international “self power” – as they surely will be in the future – be able to resist and to hold on to their creative independence?
Many bands face more practical issues. Levine, who has put together a compilation of Islamic metal entitled Flowers in the Desert, recalls how difficult it was for him even to get hold of a track by Sajid and Zeeshan, musicians from Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier province: “For months and months they couldn’t send their music to me because the Taliban kept knocking out the energy grid,” he says. “And they’re not allowed to send FedEx packages out of Peshawar. They’re risking a lot of personal freedoms by even trying to do that.”
As for Acrassicauda, Alvi tells me that their fortunes have declined since the film was completed. “They’re now refugees in Turkey. They’re hoping to resettle to America, but they’re stuck in the purgatory of Turkish bureaucracy and UNHCR stipulations. All they want to do is create, but they’ve run out of money and been forced to sell their instruments. Last time I spoke to the lead singer, he said: ‘I’m going cuckoo.’”
‘Heavy Metal in Baghdad’ is released on September 12.
Hear and read more about Middle Eastern metal on Mark Levine’s website: www.meaning.org/hmi-index.html
Fifteen-year-old Disney pop starlet Miley Cyrus (aka Hannah Montana) wants America to wake up and deal with global warming … though she’s not quite sure what that means. At least, that’s what she admits in a song — dubbed an “eco-anthem” by some, though I’m curious what qualifies it as an anthem — on her new release Breakout.
It may seem not to fit on an album whose title track whines “Every week’s the same/Stuck in school’s so lame/My parents say that I’m lazy/Getting up at 8 a.m.’s crazy/Tired of bein’ told what to do/So unfair, so uncool.” But once you listen to it (or read the lyrics), you may agree with the Entertainment Weekly reviewer who suggests Miley “talks about our troubled planet as if it were a needy adolescent.” In which case, perhaps the song fits quite well.
No word yet on whether she’ll be touring by biodiesel bus, releasing the CD in ecofriendly packaging, or really doing anything more than singing about doing something. But as many artists have found recently, singing crappy eco-songs (“Hey You,” anyone?) is one step in the right direction.
Wake Up America – Miley Cyrus
Wake Up America
Oh, can you take care of her
Oh, maybe you can spare her
Several moments of your consideration
Leading up to the final destination
Oh, the earth is calling out,
I wanna learn what it’s all about,
But everything I read — global warming, going green
I don’t know what all this means, but it seems to be saying
Wake up, America, we’re all in this together
It’s our home so let’s take care of it
You know that you want to
You know that you got to wake up, America
Tomorrow becomes a new day and everything you do
Matters, yeah, everything you do matters in some way
Stand up, I’ll try if you will
Wake up, it’s not a fire drill
All she needs is a little attention
Can you give her just a little attention?
Uh oh, it’s easy to look away
But it’s getting harder day by day
Everything I read — global warming, going green
I don’t know what all this means, but it seems to be saying
Wake up, America, we’re all in this together
It’s our home so let’s take care of it
You know you want to
You know that you got to wake up, America
Tomorrow becomes a new day and everything you do
Matters, yeah, everything you do matters in some way
I know that you don’t want to hear it
Especially coming from someone so young
But in the back seat, yeah, they want to hear it (they want to hear it)
So come on (turn it up)
Come on (turn it up)
So come on (turn it up)
Wake up, America, we’re all in this together
It’s our home so let’s take care of it
You know that you want to
You know that you got to wake up, America
Tomorrow becomes a new day and everything you do
Matters, yeah, everything you do matters in some way
Frat boys: Masons drum up members among Hub rockers
By Dave Wedge
Stodgy lodges, traditional initiations and secret handshakes would seem to be the antithesis of punk rock.
But a diverse group of Hub rockers are embracing centuries-old fraternal ideals to become the new face of the Freemasons in Boston.
Rockin’ lodge: Musician J.R. Roach of Sam Black Church, master of the Cambridge Amicable Lodge, is flanked by members and friends.
“It’s not a religion, and it’s definitely not a cult,” said J.R. Roach, drummer for Sam Black Church and bassist for The Men, who also is master of the Masons’ Cambridge Amicable Lodge. “Everything is supposed to be dignified. There’s no hazing. We’re all brothers. It’s a movement for guys trying to find a deeper meaning in their lives.”
A new breed of Freemasons has surfaced locally, filling seats occupied for decades by community leaders, politicians and executives. Some join because their fathers or grandfathers were Masons. Others come for the male camaraderie or the intellectual challenge. And some simply want to get out of the house and go somewhere other than a rock club.
“It’s kind of like a history class that no one else can take,” said Dave Norton, drummer for Victory at Sea and The Men. He believes his membership in the fraternal organization will be especially rewarding when he tours Europe later this year.
“I can go anywhere in the world and find a brother,” he said.
According to the organization’s Web site, “Freemasonry is the oldest and largest fraternity dedicated to the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of a supreme being. Although of a religious nature, Freemasonry is not a religion. It urges members to be faithful and devoted to their own religious beliefs.” Its slogan is “making good men better.”
Masons have numbered artists as well as presidents, governors, judges and businessmen for centuries. Famous members include actors Clark Gable and Ernest Borgnine and musicians such as Mozart, Irving Berlin, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington.
Masonry does have its critics who claim it is a secretive, chauvinistic and cult-like organization seeking no less than world domination. It’s been denounced by the Catholic Church and other religions and has faced political opposition for centuries.
“Some people just aren’t ready for it,” Norton said. “Any man can join. You just have to have the right reasons for it.”
Inside the Cambridge lodge, with its candelabras, velvet-covered pews, pipe organ and paintings of members past, members wear aprons indicating their level of enlightenment. Members meet monthly to discuss lodge business, which ranges from raising money for charities to electing leaders.
Gary Robley, drummer for Dashboard Jesus and J. Geils cover band Blow Your Face Out, said he joined because his father was a Mason, as are many of his friends.
“There were a bunch of musicians I knew in it,” Robley said. “It was kind of a brotherhood. Musicians have always been a part of Masonry since its inception.”
For Hank Peirce, a Unitarian minister and former roadie for hardcore band Slapshot, Masonry provided a safe haven when he went through a divorce.
“It’s important to have ‘men space,’ where we can talk about things going on in our lives,” he said. “The lodge is a sanctuary. When you’re here, you’re doing rituals that men have done for hundreds of years.”
This photo provided by the State Department shows Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, center, posing the hard rocker group Kiss, Thursday, May 29, 2008, in Stockholm, Sweden. From left are, Tommy Thayer, Paul Stanley, Secretary Rice, Gene Simmons and Eric Singer
(AP Photo/State Department, Anne Lyons)
The Kiss Army fan club has an enthusiastic new recruit: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice was in the Swedish capital Thursday for an international conference on Iraq. Kiss had a sold-out concert to play Friday.
“I was thrilled,” Rice said of her late-night encounter with Kiss frontman Gene Simmons and bandmates Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer in the executive lounge of the Sheraton Hotel where they signed autographs and handed out backstage passes and T-shirts to her staff.
“It was really fun to meet Kiss and Gene Simmons,” she told reporters, noting that they seemed well-informed about current events. The band had asked if she could stop by after she finished dinner with the Swedish foreign minister and Rice readily agreed, she said.
Rice, a classically trained pianist, said she has eclectic musical tastes ranging from Beethoven to Bruce Springsteen.
Hard rockers such as Kiss are included in the mix, and Rice said her favorite Kiss tune is “Rock and Roll All Nite.”
But, Rice conceded, she has never seen the band in concert.
Mumbai, Feb 26 (IANS) Post Mumbai attacks, Bollywood composer Aadesh Shrivastava is teaming up with some of the biggest names from the music world including Justin Timberlake and Rihanna for an anti-terrorism album. He says these talented people are coming together to sing about peace, though with a difference.
