After surviving threats from Islamic extremists before his recent gig in Israel, former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, 66, announced his electronic music project with famed producer Youth (Killing Joke/The Orb/The Verve) will release its third album, Electric Arguments, on November 18. The album comes after 1998’s Rushes which preceded 1993’s Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest. According to a statement, McCartney and Youth went into the studio with no master plan or clear direction and recorded the album in just 13 days scattered over the course of a year. Unlike their prior albums that were focused on instrumental electronic music, the new album will contain vocals for the first time and rockier songs, “yet is in keeping with the genre-hopping spirit of the first two the Fireman albums.” The album’s first single, “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight,” made its debut last night on the BBC. What do you think?
Tracklisting for The Fireman’s Electric Arguments
1. “Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight”
2. “Two Magpies”
3. “Sing the Changes”
4. “Travelling Light”
5. “Highway”
6. “Light from Your Lighthouse”
7. “Sun Is Shining”
8. “Dance ‘Til We’re High”
9. “Lifelong Passion”
10. “Is This Love?”
11. “Lovers in a Dream”
12. “Universal Here, Eve”
“Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight”
An older, much more electronic sounding Fireman tune…
DJ AM and former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker were critically injured after a Learjet crashed while taking off from Columbia Metropolitan in Columbia, SC. Four people—two passengers and two crew members—were killed in the crash.
Both were departing after performing at the T-Mobile Boulevard event in Five Points earlier in the day. Barker had performed Friday night at an event alongside Perry Farrell, the former Jane’s Addiction singer, as well as Gavin DeGraw and DJ AM.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday from Columbia when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. She said the plane went off the runway and crashed on a nearby road.
Hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits says Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were at a burn center in Augusta, GA.
TMZ filed the following report: TMZ has learned Travis Barker has been burned from the waist down, but he is expected to survive the plane crash. DJ AM’s face was severely burned and is being tended to right now.
The South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan is a Mecca for tourists who want to eat overpriced seafood and buy souvenirs. You’d hardly think it was a place where dance music could thrive, but it is (quietly). Tucked away in the back corner of Pier 17, Spiegelworld set up shop earlier in the summer and is presenting a series of events that will run until November. Like the best house party, the crowd was an odd mix comprised of local scenesters and European tourists, many of whom had bought tickets so they could watch the sunset from the beer garden. Fortunately for them, deep house don Charles Webster’s set didn’t overtly test their musical limits, because the master’s mojo is all about subtlety. Laced with elements of funk and soul, Webster played several exclusive remixes, many of which are included on his just released Coast2Coast compilation. For the faithful, it was a chance to hear one of the UK’s finest purveyors of deep house. For the uninformed, it was the musical backdrop for an otherwise lovely summer day.
Words & images: Darren Ressler
A video interview with Charles Webster is available on Big Shot’s YouTube page.
A literally blinding eye injury from a festival in South Korea has changed the life or Rabbit in the Moon’s Bunny forever. The dance community is rallying to help him, this Saturday with a benefit dubbed the Bunnyfit, at Giant’s anniversary party in LA on September 6th.
For more than a decade, Rabbit in the Moon has pushed the boundaries of live electronic music through stunning stage antics, theatrical costumery, and a dedication to expressing the best of life through their music. RITM frontman Bunny personifies what the group is all about, and he’s become a sort of icon in the dance community. He is warm and gracious to eager fans who declare their obsession with him after a gig and accessible on stage and off for those who want to share in the love-filled rave or post rave experience.
It’s a cruel irony then that Bunny would fall victim to an act of violence that has caused his near-blindness brought on by an audience member. This past May, Bunny and Rabbit in the Moon were hired to perform at the second Annual World DJ Festival in Seoul, South Korea. Bunny performed the first night and accompanied his friends DJ Dan and Donald Glaude to the festival the second night when they performed, assisting them with some technical and sound issues. It was the second night when a glass bottle, thrown by a member of the festival’s crowd, was launched intentionally and directly at Bunny, hitting him squarely in his left eye, destroying his retina, lens, some skin underneath, and his vision. He talked exclusively to Big Shot about his ordeal and the painful aftermath.
“I was standing next to Dan and I got hit in the chest with like, a coin, and some dude in the crowd was flipping me off and looking at me like ‘yeah, I threw it.’ I didn’t think anything of it, just what happens at festivals and stuff.”
“It went right to my face. I got hit in the eye with a bottle. It went directly into my eye. I immediately collapsed, bleeding. They carried me off and took me to the hospital. I basically thought I lost my eye. I’m a visual artist, so losing an eye would be like… I mean, it’s a big part of my life and livelihood.”
It was 20 minutes later when the second object was thrown. “It went right to my face. I got hit in the eye with a bottle. It went directly into my eye. I immediately collapsed, bleeding. They carried me off and took me to the hospital. I basically thought I lost my eye. I’m a visual artist, so losing an eye would be like… I mean, it’s a big part of my life and livelihood.”
At the hospital, his flesh wound was stitched up, but he was given the option of having an immediate and dramatic surgery on this eye to recover some of the vision there in Seoul, risking complications that would have stranded him overseas, unable to fly for months. Bunny opted to return to the US, with the promoters’ promise that his medical expenses would be paid for. That was not the case.
Although every live music event is contractually obligated to insure themselves for these kind of accidents, and RITM’s contract with the promoters of this event was no different in its stipulations, it has become clear since this incident that any insurance policy on hand was insufficient. Unlike in the US, Korea has no law regulating punitive damages, meaning nobody can be sued for liability. Bunny has no legal recourse in Korea, only in the US, and even if the promoters are sued in a US court, they would have to be extradited to enforce a US court’s penalty of law.
Bunny has paid out of pocket for two surgeries this summer. At this point he has about 20% vision in his left eye, which renders his depth perception and peripheral vision obsolete. From the surgeries, he’s also acquired trauma-induced glaucoma, which creates erratic levels of a painful pressure on his eye. “It’s so extreme I can’t even put sentences together,” he says of the times when the glaucoma flares up.
It’s been four months since the accident. While he’s learned to manage the day-to-day details of his life, it’s understandable still an upsetting ordeal. He describes moments of waking up and thinking that it didn’t really happen, and then—upon looking at anything—realizes it’s all too real.
He estimates his basic monthly expenses for his eye care—including doctor’s visits and eye drops—is about a thousand dollars, and that doesn’t include any extra procedures or surgeries, many of which still loom in the future. Because so many artists like Bunny don’t have healthcare (certainly not group health plans either), and the US has no national healthcare, Bunny’s story has caught the attention of the dance community, which has organized a benefit, the Bunnyfit, to aid and offset his considerable medical expenses.
Naturally, DJ Dan and Donald Glaude are performing at the Bunnyfit, forgoing their fees to help their friend. Other performers include LA-based artists like Sandra Collins and her husband Vello Virkhaus, Quivver, and Freddy Be. Rabbit in the Moon, of course, will also DJ at the event.
This experience has impacted Bunny in ways yet to be seen, not the least of which is his intermittent anxiety about what could happen to him when he’s on stage. “Things I never thought of in fifteen years of interacting with an audience,” he says of these fears.
Luckily for his fans and his own life, he hasn’t let any of this stop him. “I have to trust. I am at the mercy of the audience and they are to me.”
Words: Zel McCarthy
Update: September 6, 2008 Since this story first ran on September 3rd, we’ve received a great deal of feedback from fans and members of the dance music community. Many have asked if there’s a way to help the cause if you’re not in the LA area. Bunny has sent us a link to a page set up specifically to help him out. To make a secure donation, you can visitTheBunnyCoalition.com.
