Pope of Pop

In Martin Scorsese’s remake of ‘Cape Fear (1991)’, Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is arrested and waiting to be interrogated, when Lieutenant Elgart (Robert Mitchum) makes an interesting comment about Cady’s tattooed body: I don’t know whether to look at him or read him.

During the Sovjet era, Russian prisoners’ tattoos were to be read. KGB believed the tattoos were secret anti-government codes.

Danzig Baldaev was a Sovjet prison guard, and he documented the prisoners’ tattoos with his camera and with drawings. KGB unexpectively supported Baldaev, realising the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. Baldaev’s documentation covers more than 3,000 tattoos.

Russian criminal tattoos have always had a significant meaning to the inmates. Both the motif and the placement on the body has symbolic meanings.

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‘Beer Geek Brunch’ is the name of a new beer brewed on coffee and crap.

Actually it’s made on a Vietnamese coffee bean called Cà Phê Chòn also known as weasel coffee. The beans are carefully collected from the feces of the Asian Palm Civet weasel.

The little weasel eats berries and coffee beans, but — unlike the berries — the beans passes undigested through the animal. The weasel coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world and costs between USD 120 and 600 per pound.

Now the coffee beans have found their way into a beer from the Danish brewery Mikkeller.

Normally the flavor of a beer brewed on coffee is a little bitter, but not this beer. You can taste the coffee though it’s not a like a cup of coffee, brewer Mikkel Bjergsø says to the Danish newspaper, Ekstra Bladet.

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Prince has over the years released more than 20 albums, several live recordings, tons of singles and music vidoes. And he’s not ready to quit yet.

According to Los Angeles Times he’s planning to release three new albums this year. The first one is the electro-flavored ‘MPLSOUND’ featuring rapper Q-Tip. Next up is ‘Lotus Flower’ and ‘Elixir’.

Back in the 1980’s Prince was one of the three most influential artists along with Madonna and Michael Jackson. Last year they all turned 50. In the 1990’s he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, just to change it back to Prince a few years later.

Though we haven’t seen much of Prince on the charts lately, he has always been very active. The excentric multi-instrumentalist lives and works in his colorful Paisley Park studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he records most of his music and performs live.

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Today the entertainer and classical pianist Victor Borge would have turned 100.

Victor Borge was born in 1909 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He grew up in a Jewish home with very musical parents. His dad a violinist, his mother a pianist.

When the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940 he escaped to Sweden then to America, where he got his breakthrough on the Bing Crosby radio show. He didn’t speak English, so during his appearance on the show he read a transcript of one of his Danish acts, translated to English by his wife, Elsie.

He knew he was good at the piano, but he also knew he wasn’t great. Instead he combined his classical performances with satire. Usually he would enter the stage sharp dressed and serious looking. Then he would begin to speak.

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When the 51st annual Grammy Awards Show takes place on February 8, 2009, Coldplay could win the Song Of The Year Grammy for ‘Viva La Vida’.

No doubt it’s a great song, but there is one problem: The song resembles the instrumental melody ‘If I Could Fly’ by Joe Satriani so much that it could be plagiarism. Satriani believes Coldplay has ripped off his song, and he has filed a lawsuit against Coldplay.

Coldplay rejects it with a statement on the band’s website saying: If there are any similarities between our two pieces of music, they are entirely coincidental. But maybe Satriani has a case against Coldplay.

First of all it’s ridiculous to think that Coldplay never heard Satriani’s ‘If I Could Fly’. Satriani’s song is only four years old, and it’s not like Satriani is some strange Serbian street musician.

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For the first time in 51 years, the same song appears at both No. 1 and No. 2 on the UK chart.

After Alexandra Burke won the British X Factor with a cover of Jeff Buckley’s version of ‘Hallelujah’, she hit the top of the chart, QTheMusic.com reports.

Jeff Buckley’s own 1994 version of the Leonard Cohen song tops the same chart at No. 2. ‘Hallelujah’ is featured on Buckley’s album, ‘Grace’. He drowned in 1997.

If two of the same song on the chart wasn’t enough, Leonard Cohen’s original recording from his 1984 album ‘Various Positions’ appears at No. 36.

According to QTheMusic.com, this hasn’t happened since 1957 when Tommy Steele and Guy Mitchell held the top two positions with ‘Singin’ The Blues’.

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