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If hell is other people, it makes sense that heaven should have an extremely exclusive door policy. Glastonbury, the ever-expanding Somerset festival lovingly documented in Julien Temple's new film, was originally conceived as a hippie idyll, a place in the country where the heads could get their heads together, long of hair, bare of foot and blown of mind.   The first "happening" in 1970 featured Marc Bolan and Al Stewart performing at Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm and included free milk in the £

Fiona Apple, who last toured the US while opening for Coldplay, will get top billing during a summer roadtrip as she continues to back last year's "Extraordinary Machine."   After playing a trio of early May warm-up dates, Apple will tackle a busy itinerary that begins in late June and stretches into mid-August. So far, stops are planned in more than 30 cities. Details are included below.   Prior to its release last October, "Extraordinary Machine," Apple's third studio set, was the subject of s

If you didn't get tickets to the Arctic Monkeys' sold-out club tour this spring, here's some good news: the British indie rockers are returning to the States next month.   The Artic Monkeys -- whose many fans include David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul Weller, Oasis, and Chris Martin from Coldplay -- have announced a second North American headlining tour that kicks off May 27th in Vancouver. Dates are currently scheduled through June 17th, when the band plays Toronto's Kool Haus.   Some of the US ci

Now more than ever, Britain's hype machine works overtime, cogs spinning on a predictable wheel of buildup and breakdown.   Propelled by a Pitchfork–meets–Us Weekly editorial fickleness, bands are born and busted in the public consciousness before they even have record deals—which brings us to three survivors of this process. What makes them unique is their scrappy passion. Liverpool's Ladytron have thrived as a highly stylized act that might've gone out with the electroclash trash were they not

Music group Ball in the House recently announced their launch of a digital music store through BurnLounge, the first community-powered digital music service that enables passionate music fans to sell the music they love to friends or like-minded individuals.   While Ball in the House may not be on a major record label, the Boston-based pop and R&B band has risen above the ranks of professionally-signed chart-toppers, including the Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Gorillaz, Kelly Clarkson and James

A humorous look at choosing baby names   Here's a rule of thumb I always try to follow: Never, ever discuss celebrity baby names with your husband, unless you want his eyes to roll so far back in his head they are wedged there forever. My husband, Doyle, is a plain-spoken, flannel-shirt-wearing, meat-and-potatoes kind of fellow in all matters, not just which monikers the rich and famous deign to label their offspring.   So I should have known not to initiate the following conversation with him:

There may be no Glastonbury this year, but it will still be difficult to avoid an outdoor festival. Up to 250 festival organisers are hoping to attract the crowds in the next few months - and some fear that the summer is already saturated.   Six years ago Neil Greenway set up efestivals.co.uk, a website packed with information and festival discussion forums. He said the market was overserved. "It was always a bit of an underground thing and now it's gone overground. And there are an awful lot of

As Americans we tend to recycle our music but are rarely swept into a mania. Sometimes, it takes a while for us to feel any sort of mania that may be happening throughout the rest of the world, especially in England.   It took us almost a year and a half to catch on to the Beatles and the British invasion. We signed on to Coldplay far after “Yellow” was released throughout the rest of the world. It took a “Wonderwall” to breakdown the door to those quirky Gallagher brothers of Oasis. So who the

In Manhattan's trendy Soho district, rock star Lenny Kravitz peers down from an 18-m-wide billboard for Absolut vodka, holding in his outstretched arms what appears to be a digital cable with bottle-shaped plugs. This isn't just the physical manifestation of the vodkamaker's latest hip ad campaign; it's also a display of advanced technology.   At the bottom of the sign, Absolut invites passersby to send a text message or enable their Bluetooth cell phones to download a free 4-min. MP3 track wher

It seems almost unimaginable for any 21st-century movie star to send his children out among the Hollywood elite equipped with ordinary names like Michael, Eric, Joel and Peter, as Kirk Douglas once did.   This point was driven home again last week, when Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin, the frontman of the band Coldplay [both pictured, left], named their newborn son Moses. It was an unlikely enough name for a baby boy born in 2006, but perhaps less startling than the much discussed

Because Elbow makes pretty rock music, Guy Garvey occasionally tries a falsetto, and the whole thing has a distinctly English sensibility, the comparisons to Coldplay come easily. The bands' differences are real, however, and crucial.   Elbow seems more reliable, more grounded. Garvey's knack for lyrical detail and his droll humor focus on the dramas at hand; he doesn't have one eye on the girl and the other on free-trade coffee, but rather on the facts of life as most people experience them.  

They had the fastest-selling debut album in UK history. But with their strong northern accents and Frank Spencer references, how will America take to the Arctic Monkeys. Alexis Petridis boards their tour bus in New York to find out.   The Spotted Pig has a fair claim to be called the hippest restaurant in Manhattan. A kind of upmarket gastropub, it has a Michelin star and rave reviews - its low-carb alternative to gnocchi is apparently to die for - but the food is overshadowed by its celebrity c

Considering that album sales have been down in four of the last five years and are off by 2 percent from 2005, it might seem like faint praise to trumpet that Rascal Flatts pumps the biggest sales week of 2006.   But an opening week of 722,000 copies for "Me and My Gang" genuinely entitles Rascal Flatts to bragging rights. The opening tally is the biggest since Mary J. Blige Mary J. Blige rang 727,000 copies when "The Breakthrough" arrived during Christmas week 2005 and the largest week by a co

Take a novelty record, infuse it with the perfect holiday timing, toss in a bit of "Fresh Air" and, voila, What I Like About Jew has its first hit.   The duo -- Rockapella founder/former leader Sean Altman and Blender magazine music editor Rob Tannenbaum -- self-released its debut album, "Unorthodox," April 10. The next day, it ranked a pitiful 34,598 on the Amazon sales chart.   But later that day, after Terry Gross played the pair‘s Passover song, "They Tried to Kill Us (We Survived, Let‘s E

Nobody's quite sure if they're pop or opera - but by any definition Il Divo are a fully-fledged phenomenon.   It's barely two years since the quartet were launched by Simon Cowell, but they are now global superstars with the statistics to match. Earlier this year they became only the fifth non-American act to debut an album at No 1 in the Billboard chart. The other members of that ultra-elite club are The Beatles, Elton John, Led Zeppelin and Coldplay - and Zeppelin are the only previous group t

Richard Ashcroft swears that he doesn't go searching for mind-blowing spiritual epiphanies. They somehow seem to find the brainy Brit — on a basis so frequent it could spook the Dalai Lama himself.   One such memorable moment occurred in 1997, when the singer decided to re-christen his pending "Urban Hymns" solo set with the working title of his old band, the Verve. Thanks to operatic hits like "Bittersweet Symphony" and "The Drugs Don't Work," the album went on to sell a career-making 7 million

Back in 1970, Michael Eavis, a young farmer, opened his 150-acre farm to 1,500 people who paid a pound each to watch a handful of pop and folk stars perform for a weekend. The Glastonbury Festival was born. Last year, 153,000 people paid £125 for the privilege of making hay in the mud and rain.   Julien Temple's minutely researched rockumentary concentrates mostly on these exhausted but happy campers who have travelled to Worthy Farm over the years to enjoy a kind of micro-city far removed from

A lawyer for Apple Computer on Wednesday defended the company‘s right to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store and in a series of TV advertisements for iTunes, despite objections from the Beatles‘ Apple Corps recording label.   The British company, started by the Beatles in 1968, argues Apple Computer has infringed on its territory by entering into the music business, and is seeking to force Apple Computer to drop its apple logo from iTunes and pay unspecified damages.   Anthony Grabine

Top celebs from across the country are heading to London's Leicester Square tonight for the premiere of the long-awaited Glastonbury festival film.   They're all going to be there tonight. Kate Moss, Coldplay, Jarvis Cocker, the Gallagher brothers, Rolf Harris.   And they'll all be on hand to witness the unveiling of the Julien Temple-directed film of the fest – a project that began in 2002 when Glasto guro Michael Eavis was pondering bringing the festival to a close.He wanted a record of the ev

Saw Gwyneth Paltrow coming out of FAO Schwartz with her mama (Blythe Danner) and Apple in stroller. Looks heavily pregnant now. Had a Burberry umbrella, and was very gracious to the guy who held the door open for her. Almost no makeup, but seemed in a great mood.   Was walking south along the Hudson Park path on Friday when I saw a gorgeous man jogging & pushing a stroller. I thought, “Of course all the hot guys are married,” when I realized it was Ed Burns. He wasn’t dressed to run (jeans,

If last year was Ottawa's ultimate year of rock, this year is sputtering along as if it's going to fizzle out.   In one month, Donald Fagen, Nine Inch Nails, Sheryl Crow, Hawksley Workman and MC Rob Base all blew off dates in Ottawa. There were various legitimate reasons, mostly health-related, but so far only Workman has made it a priority to reschedule (May 8, Bronson Centre). A new date for Crow is to be announced today.   Recent concerts by superstar artists such as Coldplay, Nickelback and

It will be just like the festival but without the mud. Many of the big names to have graced the Pyramid stage and the bars over the past three-and-a-half decades will converge on London tomorrow for the premiere of Glastonbury, the movie.   Julien Temple, whose previous films include The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and Absolute Beginners, has woven together miles of footage, professional and amateur, to create a record of the festival by which all other outdoor music events are judged. Glastonb

For 20 years, the Cubs have played the same pregame song while the pitcher is warming up, but on Friday and Saturday, it was "Have a Nice Day" by Bon Jovi.   The Cubs now will rotate four or five songs in an attempt to be more contemporary. Among the other titles are "Clocks" by Coldplay and "Beautiful Day" by U2.   Read the full article here

THEY may have been making music together for almost 20 years – but 80s pop heroes A-ha are far from best pals.   When we caught up with the Norwegian wonders for an exclusive webchat, they REFUSED to be interviewed together and described their relationship as an 'unusual marriage'.   Speaking separately to The Sun Online, Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy revealed they didn’t speak to each other for most of the 1990s and that they wrote much of their new album Analogue separately.   Despite

Julien Temple's new film Glastonbury isn't the first attempt to bring the festival's myriad wonders to the screen - the 1995 Lottery-money squandering Glastonbury The Movie regrettably springs to mind. But it looks like they've got it right this time. If you really want to know what it feels like to be edged out of a muddy field by thousands of confused Coldplay fans then this is for you.   Actually, this provides a decent, music-filled overview of the summertime fixture and this series of speci