Will Ferrell has a knack for playing self-important boobs who get ahead in the world by sheer bluster, and the fictional NASCAR champ he plays in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" may be the most inflated of them all. When Ferrell's Ricky Bobby boasts to an interviewer, "I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence," the not-so-subtle subtext is that he's a winner with juice to spare.
We’ve known for a while that Modest Mouse leader Isaac Brock and former Smiths guitarist/genius Johnny Marr were collaborating on MM’s next record. But guess what? Marr is now officially a full-on member of Modest Mouse, Brock recently told us. According to Brock, Marr’s membership is so unequivocal, he will tour with MM in support of their next record, tentatively titled We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank and tentatively due this fall.
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And when asked for her thoughts on You’re Beautiful singer James, Lily put it bluntly: "It rhymes with his surname.''
If you tell people you're taking a trip to southern France, they're likely to assume you mean the South of France -- that land of pastis, sunflowers, celeb-swarmed film festivals, and sunburned Brits. It's an honest mistake; though the Côte d'Azur and Provence have long been celebrated by tourists (and romantic chateau-restoring writers) for their improbable mix of big-money glamour and precious country charm, few American travelers realize that the towns and villages along the western half of France's rolling southern border offer a great many picturesque pleasures of their own. Ribboned with three of France's great rivers, penned in by the Pyrenees to the south, hollowed by some of the world's most remarkable caves, and -- in parts -- populated by more geese than people, the limestone Causses and green valleys of Gascony, the Dordogne and the Lot feel continents apart from the crowded beaches and high-rise hotels of their Mediterranean neighbors.
Over the past 12 months, the words “Produced By Rick Rubin” have graced the backs of CDs as disparate as Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way, Shakira’s Oral Fixation Vol 2, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium (all US No 1s) and the aforementioned 12 Songs by Neil Diamond (No 4, a 40-year career best).
When we played Hallelujah in 1989, we never realised that us and the Stone Roses appearing on the same Top Of The Pops would become a seminal moment. But I do remember getting back to Manchester and people telling us all the bars had set up screens specially to watch it, so it was a big deal. I'd wanted to be on Top Of The Pops ever since I was eight and saw David Bowie performing Starman with a blue acoustic guitar. I remember bumping into Tina Turner. We'd been given £1,000 each by the record company to buy new clothes; I spent £300 and pocketed the rest. I think everyone was heavily "sedated". I vividly remember being sat in the BBC garden and Shaun [Ryder] and Ian [Brown] were chuckling, plotting to swap drummers. I think the BBC rumbled it.
