PUSHING 50, Paul Weller shows no sign of mellowing - we hear the singer refused a CBE in last summer's Birthday Honours.
A source close to Weller, 48, says he received a letter asking if he was interested in receiving one but replied with a firm "thanks but no thanks". The Modfather's spokeswoman confirms: "Paul was surprised and flattered, but it wasn't really for him."
Rob: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?But then, there is:
Rob: It would be nice to think that since I was 14, times have changed. Relationships have become more sophisticated. Females less cruel. Skins thicker. Instincts more developed. But there seems to be an element of that afternoon in everything that's happened to me since. All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one.Or:
Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.
Kate must love putting up with a bunch of crap. How else could you explain the reason she stays with Pete? He was recently snapped in Germany sneaking around with one of his groupies and during their holiday he was supposedly out trolling for drugs again. Kate, of course had a miserable time on their vacation in Thailand. Oh, and remember that song he was writing for her? It or something like it evidently ended up on a bathroom floor. Boo!
A high school play based on Harper Lee's classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" brought together black and white high school students to tell the classic story of racial injustice — and even drew out the novel's reclusive author.
Wednesday night's invitation-only performance was organized to celebrate diversity and arts education in Alabama, the home state of the novel's author, whose book and the movie made from it won immediate acclaim at a time when Alabama was still rigidly segregated.
The two public schools near Birmingham are only about 16 miles apart. But Mountain Brook is one of the state's wealthiest communities, with a median home price of about $300,000, while the same figure in Fairfield is about $68,000.
Mountain Brook High draws from an overwhelmingly white suburb, while Fairfield students are from a mostly black district.
The performance has helped the students transcend not only the 30-minute distance between their communities, but a cultural divide as well. Teens who were strangers this time last year are spending hours on the phone, sending each other multiple text messages per day and chatting on the Internet networking site Facebook.
The Montgomery performance was in Troy University's Davis Theater, directly across the street from the bus stop where civil-rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man 51 years ago.
The symbolism of the location was not lost on Regan Stevens, a 17-year-old Mountain Brook senior who plays Scout, the book's main character in the fictional Southern town of Maycomb during the Depression.
Scout recounts how her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, fought in vain to save a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman.
"I hate to say life's not fair," Stevens said backstage after lamenting the play's sad, but realistic ending. "But it's just that things are not always where they need to be. The great thing about Harper Lee's novel is that it helps us address that because it shows us the problem areas that we need to work on and that's what the civil rights movement thankfully did."
Girls Aloud and Sugababes have recorded a version of Aerosmith 'Walk This Way' as this year's Comic Relief charity single.
Although neither group has yet commented on the collaboration, it is understood the track is due to be released ahead of this year's Red Nose Day, which is expected to take place on March 16.
The track was produced by TLC producer Dallas Austin. Austin also worked on Sugababes' 2005 album 'Taller In More Ways'.
First came Blur, then Gorillaz. Now, Damon Albarn has another supergroup up his sleeve, dubbed The Good, The Bad, and The Queen and featuring Paul Simonon of The Clash, Simon Tong of The Verve, and Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen.
David Beckham is coming to America.Ian Brown has put together a Manchester super-group featuring Happy Mondays and The Smiths members for his new album.Entitled ‘The World Is Yours’, the former Stone Roses singer is currently recording the new LP with bassist Andy Rourke and guitarist Paul Ryder.
