At Home in Hespeler

We all have our favourite Beatle. Personally, I’m a George guy, being a guitar player and as I love his playing and songwriting. But Ringo Starr comes in a close second. His good natured humour and tendency towards simple pop in his songs has it’s appeal.

Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr is a fairly comprehensive look at the worlds most famous drummer. Covering his early years, his time before the Beatles with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the Beatle years and beyond, With a Little Help covers all the points of Ringo’s career.

It is also, to a degree, a defense of Ringo Starr the drummer. Often maligned (“He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles,” John Lennon once said of Starr), With a Little Help is definitive on the point, Ringo Starr was the best drummer in Liverpool in 1962 when he joined The Beatles, and his drumming, while sometimes in-elegant, was crucial to their sound. He has a unique style due to being a left handed drummer using his set right handed, he is clumsy on fills (for much the same reason), but he is a solid to very good drummer.

With A Little Help is not all a defense of Starr, however. His very limited vocal range is an important part of the narrative and Ringo has success as a singer when he has material within his “six-note range.” As well, Ringo’s alcohol problems are well documented, as his much of his negative behaviour during his long bout of alcohol abuse. His later career work ethic is questioned and the breakdown of his first marriage to Maureen is well documented, including his affairs during the legendary “LA lost weekend” period of the early 70’s.

On the bizarre side, the author cites diary entries of teenage Ringo fanatic Marilyn Crescenzo some seventeen times, following her feelings over events in The Beatles lives in 1964-65 time frame:

This morning ten o’clock, I heard a report from the Beatles hotel and Ringo and George were talking—I said to my mother “why didn’t you let me go down there—Everybody is there.” I then walked into the bathroom and couldn’t hold back -I just cryed! [sic] I couldn’t help it!

Intended to provide color I gather, these diary entries really just fill some page space.

Ringo: With a Little Help is a good read, and an interesting look at one of our times more interesting, if reasonably unimportant, people.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Book Review, Books Beatles, Ringo Starr

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

“Do you think you could make him a list of bands and songs from the 70’s to listen to?”

My daughter is asking on behalf of her boyfriend, who is a Stones fan, “but he’s not into Zeppelin,” and wants to expand his musical horizons. Well, besides the fact I don’t really do lists and I consider anybody who’s “not into Zeppelin” beyond hope, sure.

For starters, any fan of 70’s era Stones should check out The Faces. The two groups sound, at times, remarkably alike, yet you would never mistake one for the other. Get their greatest hits album, “a nods as good as a wink….” and check out Stay With Me, Three Button Hand Me Down and Ooh La La.

As well, never ignore the albums when talking about 60’s and 70’s music. If you are a Stones fan based on any number of their hits, know that buried on the albums are songs you have never heard but are great. Pick your favourite Stones songs, and listen to the albums they came off. Chances are you’ll find songs you’ll like, and possibly whole album sides that just seem perfect (yes sides: the artists thought in terms of sides – not songs, not albums – and they are the way to approach the music of the era)

Working backwards from the 70’s, The Stones and Yardbirds both came from the same place, The Crawdaddy Club of the early 60’s. Each went in different directions, but they started at the same place. So too shall we.

The early Yardbirds is the thing, that Clapton stuff, and moving into the Jeff Beck years. Five Live Yardbirds to start, and then a greatest hits package of some sort. Branching out, check out the individual guitarists post-Yardbirds careers: Clapton with Cream, Derek and the Dominoes and his early solo work; The Jeff Beck Group (featuring pre-Faces Rod Stewart); and of course – you knew I had to get here – Led Zeppelin.

Now I know, not a Led Zeppelin fan, he’s heard them before and found them wanting &tc. But discussing the era without discussing Led Zeppelin is like not discussing The Stones or The Who. It’s an incomplete conversation. Everybody knows some Led Zeppelin songs, and judgement can be clouded by an incomplete picture of a band that played such a variety of music. Here’s what you do. Listen to, in order, Led Zeppelin I side 2 – the blues album; Led Zeppelin II, side 1, the heavy metal album; Led Zeppelin III side 2, the acoustic album; Led Zeppelin IV, side 1, the masterpiece.

Here’s the logic. After The Yardbirds, Cream and The Jeff Beck Group, the first album is in context. It’s their blues album, but side 2 will surprise you with the almost pop sounding You Time is Gonna Come, the acoustic solo Black Mountain Side, the pre-punk Communication Breakdown, Old Willie Dixon blues on I Can’t Quit You Baby and the jam How Many More Times. It has a little of everything, and turning the album over just to hear Good Times, Bad Times and Babe I’m Gonna Leave You will be a revelation.

The second album is their road album, and if Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal (they didn’t, and it’s an awful description of them as a band), II is when they did so. That in, everything you ever wanted to know about Led Zeppelin is in the first two songs of Led Zeppelin II. Whole Lotta Love, the supposed birthplace of heavy metal and What is and What Should Never Be, sweet ballad turned hard rocker in the chorus. They may not have invented heavy metal, but they did invent the heavy metal ballad with What is… The slide solo alone is worth listening to this album for.

The third album, written at a rustic cabin in the Welsh countryside, is everything Led Zeppelin is not supposed to be. Side two will literally shock the person who thinks they know Led Zeppelin but have never heard this. Four acoustic songs, each one completely different, yet not an electric guitar to be found. They return to the blues on the last song but it’s probably worth skipping until you’ve listened to the first four songs enough times to a) love them and b) wonder what the hell they are about. My favourite album side as a teenager, and still one that mesmerizes me.

Finally four, the masterwork. You know the songs on side one, but hearing them in context improves them. The sound of needle on vinyl (yes, listen to the records if you can – just ask first and put the damn things away when your done) a quiet E string being played in the open position, and then, all on his own Robert Plant, bel canto, singing on of the great opening lines:

Hey hey mama said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.

How can you not like that? It’s immediately followed up with Rock and Roll, Zeppelin’s answer to critics who said they had gone soft after the second side of the third album. If you can take it up a notch from Black Dog, they do. And then, the greatest 14 minutes in rock and roll: The Battle of Evermore/Stairway to Heaven: Prelude and Masterpiece. Everybody has heard Stairway to Heaven in isolation, or at dance’s end after Play the Funky Music and Night Fever, or on the radio in a set with Hell’s Bells and Let it Be, and it loses something. But the pastural intro to Stairway in the shadow of the war ballad of Battle of Evermore gives it an entirely new feel. Oh and by the way, here’s why Led Zeppelin are the greatest band ever. That slide solo in What is…, Page gets the sweetest sound using an electric guitar and a distortion pedal yet in Battle of Evermore they convincingly create a massive sounding war song with 2 mandolins and an acoustic guitar. Nobody else can do that, and they do it while creating emotional intensity. Stairway ends side 1 ends the way Black Dog began it, Robert Plant singing a cappella – because when I tell you the artists thought in sides, I wasn’t kidding.

So that’s Led Zeppelin, and hour and a half spent investigating some of the greatest music ever. If you’ve followed the directions and still don’t really like Led Zeppelin, well then find someone else’s daughter to date, ’cause there’s not much hope for you. But at least everything else you listen to from the decade will have the appropriate context.

Moving on, but staying ever so briefly with the Stones offshoots, Aerosmith took influence from all of The Yardbirds, The Stones, Led Zeppelin and, as I’ve argued before, The Faces. Forget everything since they’ve reformed in the 1980’s, forget that Stephen Tyler loses credibility with every TMZ day, Aerosmith’s 70’s stuff is good to great. Start with the greatest hits if you must, but hit the albums too. The hits, Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion, Dream On are all excellent. But in the albums are some stellar tracks: Mama Kin, The Yardbird’s Train Kept a Rollin, Same Old Song and Dance.

In 1981 the Rolling Stones where playing locally at Buffalo. Opening that day at Ralph Wilson Stadium was a guy the rumoured to have been readied to step in and take over for Ron Wood if he was unable to continue, which seemed possible. Reportedly the only artist Bill Wyman would ask for an autograph over the Stones long career, the guys in the Stones where George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers fans, so shouldn’t a Rolling Stones fan be too? Start at the beginning, with One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer. If you can’t recite the line “I know, everybody funny, now you funny too,” with confidence, you really don’t get rock’n’roll.

Also on the act that day, Foghat. Try them out, and their British counterparts (I know, Foghat are British, but their success was in the US), Status Quo.

Leaving the Stones influence behind, there’s almost too much music, too many bands of the era. In some cases whole repertoires should be explored, in others, a song or two. In most cases, I’ll discuss and album or album side.

The Beatles: Since we are discussing the era of the late 60’s early 70’s, explore at your leisure the later Beatles. While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Revolution, Back in the USSR. There’s a lot of good rock music in there between John Lennon’s experiments in avant-garde and Paul McCartney’s soppy ballads. You’ll find stuff you like, including possibly some ballads and avand-garde.

Also, the solo Beatles is good. To me, Paul McCartney’s best work, ever, was his early Wings stuff – Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. Also his first few solo albums, including the song Maybe I’m Amazed. Lennon’s solo work is also good, sometimes great. Everyone knows Imagine, but Jealous Guy, Whatever Gets You Through The Night, Watching the Wheels and Woman are all excellent. George was the underrated Beatle, and he proves it in his solo work. His first post-Beatles work is All Things Must Pass and it has My Sweet Lord and What is Life. But pick up his greatest hits and find out how good he is. Then get Somewhere in England, or at least the song All Those Years Ago and hear his tribute to John Lennon, who was killed the year before. Most people don’t know that Ringo had a fairly good solo career, and his greatest hits album is full of fun little pop songs that are a perfect way to waste an afternoon.

The Who also fall into the must listen category. Considered one of, if not the most exciting live act of the time, the Who’s work spans the decades. From the 60’s, grab their greatest hits album, Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, as well as their live album Live at Leeds. For sport, imagine seeing The Who, playing as good as they do at Leeds, playing your university.

In the 70’s, check out Who’s Next. You know all the songs anyway, from the CSI intros, but listen to them in their entirety, in context. In the 80’s the post-Kieth Moon Who had former Faces drummer Kenny Jones keeping beat, and they released a couple of good albums, 1981’s Face Dances and 1982’s It’s Hard. Check them both out, including You Better You Bet, Athena, Eminence Front and John Entwistle’s ironic rocker, The Quiet One.

How’s that fro a start? There’s your homework, and there’s enough there to keep you too busy to be bothering my daughter. And when your done that, we’ll move on to individual songs you should be listening too.

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod Beatles, Eric Clapton, Faces, Foghat, George HArrison, George Thorogood, Jeff Beck, Jeff Beck Group, Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart, Rolling Stones, Slade, The Who, Yardbirds

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

In 1979 I was visiting Belfast. During the trip I was at an old neighbor’s house. Their son, a few years my senior, was in University in England. He had to quit his band, he explained to me, when he left for school.

Stiff Little Fingers are more influential than they are popular – Green Day, among others, cite them as an influence – at least here in America. But the band would release four albums before dis-banding in 1983, and have released a number more since they reformed in 1988.

My old neighbor? He’s another middle aged guy with a job. I haven’t seen him in over 30 years, and I don’t know if he has any regrets, but I’d be willing to bet that on pub nights, he tells the boys over pints of bitter that he used to be in Stiff Little Fingers.

Terry Reid is an English singer. Recently interviewed at his Florida home, the still active performer said he had no regrets. Having had a career that had saw him eventually landing in Florida with enough assets to buy a home, that seems logical enough. What would Terry Reid have to regret?

In 1968 Jimmy Page was forming a new band in the aftermath of the Yardbirds breaking up. He had an idea for a singer, a guy who could powerfully belt out the blues, Terry Reid. Reid had some recent commitments and a reasonable prospect of success on his own, so he respectfully declined. He did, however, know of a bloke, Robert Plant.

If Reid really has no regrets about declining the gig as lead singer of Led Zeppelin, then he’s a fool. Here’s the lesson to take from the Terry Reid story: always demand a finders fee of 1 point on every album sold.

At least my Irish friend and Terry Reid made their choices. Not so Pete Best.

Best had the bad fortune of being the dues paying drummer in a nothing band called The Quarrymen, who got the boot just before they became The Beatles. On the verge of a record deal, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison were told your drummer isn’t good enough. Out went Best, in came Ringo Starr.

If you think, well you can’t spend your life worrying about what might have been, consider this. Ringo Starr backstopped The Beatles for seven years, had one of his songs turned into a movie, another into a TV show. By the time The Beatles broke up he was very wealthy. He then had a reasonably successful solo career and developed and starred in a little TV show called Thomas the Tank Engine. For the last 22 years he has spent the summers touring with the Ringo Starr All Star Band, featuring an ever changing cast of the worlds best musicians. Oh yea, he married a Bond Girl.

It’s easy to say no point worrying over what might have been, but your life was never going to the one Ringo Starr got.

Pete Best, who turned 70 last Thursday (and many happy returns to him), has said in past interviews he too has no regrets, that he’s lived a good life and wouldn’t trade any of it. Fair enough, but as his 70th birthday passed, do you suppose somewhere deep in his being a little voice said, “just let me outlive that bastard Ringo Starr!”? He who gets the last laugh, and all that.

Still, some last laughs are louder than others, wouldn’t you think.

Birthday Wishes, The Freedom of Music Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, Pete Best, Ringo Starr, Robert Plant, Stiff Little Fingers, Terry Reid, The Beatles

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

April 11, 1970. It was a warm day, as I recall it. Quite warm for mid April. It must have been a weekend, else why else was I at home in the afternoon? My dad was working outside, and the windows were down on his old dodge while he listened to the radio, CFRB – radio for squares.

The news came on and the announcer reported, “The Beatles announced yesterday they have officially broken up.” Paul McCartney had issued a press release.

My thought was, ‘Good. Now I won’t have to hear about Beatles this and Beatles that all the time. I don’t like their music anyway.’

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

In my defense, I was six, and all I really knew about The Beatles was from hearing people talk about them, and people seemed to rather go on about them. Bear in mind as well, I was living with people who listened to “radio for squares.”

It wouldn’t be too many years before I realized Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, a song I would run around the house singing, was The Beatles. And Octopus’s Garden, which I knew from a cartoon that was regularly on TV, hey that too was The Beatles. And before you knew it I discovered that in fact, I did like their music.

But at least people would stop talking about them.

When I was 12, I started learning to play guitar. Up the road from our house was a place with a Japanese family, including two guys who were late teens or early twenties. They were in a band and had a stack of amplifiers against their basement wall. I specifically remember a Gibson SG guitar, although there must have been other instruments. I became friendly with the guitar player, who blew me away with his ability to learn a song, by ear, in about half an hour – a skill I had never even imagined before that.

“The Beatles weren’t just a great band,” my guitar playing friend told me. “They changed the world: they changed how people dressed, how they cut their hair, even how they thought. And they introduced drugs into mainstream culture.”

Here it is, six years since the break-up, and people are still talking about the Beatles. Like I said, wrong, wrong and wrong.

In fact, as I moved into my rock and roll years, The Beatles individually would be as influential as they were collectively 10 years earlier. In the early to mid 70’s The Beatles were everywhere, making music that was comparable to their best. John Lennon did Imagine, Paul McCartney Band on the Run, George Harrison was big with My Sweet Lord and What is Life, even Ringo was singing Photograph – co-written by Harrison (although You’re Sixteen is kind of creepy in retrospect).

So much for the end of the Beatles. Despite Paul’s press release, and later the flying lawsuits, The Beatles were very much a going concern.

April 11, 1970. Marked on the calendar as the day I was wrong, wrong and wrong.

The Freedom of Music Band on the Run, Beatles, George HArrison, Imagine, John Lennon, My Sweet Lord, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Octopuses Garden, Paul McCartney, Photograph, Ringo Starr, What is Life, You’re Sixteen

…(she’s) a drunkards dream if I ever did see one…

Ringo Starr’s Allstar Band, 1989 (the first one).

Ringo Starr
Billy Preston
Dr. John
Joe Walsh (Eagles)
Levon Helm (Band)
Rick Danko (Band)
Garth Hudson (Band)
Nils Lofgren (Bruce Springsteens E-Street Band, Neil Young’s Crazy Horse)
Clarence Clemons (E Street Band)

And of course, no Ringo Starr Cool For Cats Friday would be complete without Mrs. Ringo Starr

Cool For Cats, YouTube Barbara Bach, Billy Preston, Clarence Clemons, Crazy Horse, Dr. John, E Street Band, Garth Hudson, Joe Walsh, Levon Helm, Nils Lofgren, Rick Danko, Ringo Starr, The Band

One likes to believe in the freedom of music.

Rush – Spirit of Radio.

What’s going to save the music industry from itself? You know what I mean, that whole CDs, golden goose, dead thing. To hear the rockstars and industry execs tell it, sharing files – they call it pirating for Gods sake – will ruin the industry. Who’s going to make music if you can’t make obscene amounts of money doing so?

“Make a few bob and then open a hairdressing salon,” Ringo Starr answered when asked what he hoped to get out of The Beatles. It was The Beatles first trip to the United States, and the press was already asking “what next?” I’ll make enough money to start a little shop, thought Ringo. By the time I get around to writing Octopuses Garden, I’ll have no one to sing it to except my customers. They probably all thought that: A bookstore for John; a music store for George; a hat store for Nigel (Tufnel, the oft forgotten sixth Beatle).

Who indeed?

During a television interview aired worldwide before The Who’s live simulcast farewell concert from Toronto in 1982, Roger Daltry talked about the band’s habit of breaking their equipment at the end of their shows: ‘we would run into a store, grab a guitar off the wall and run out again saying over our shoulder, I’ll pay you later,’ he said. ‘We didn’t make any money until the mid-70’s.’ Yet they managed to come out with Tommy and Who’s Next, alternatively known as the greatest rock opera and the CSI soundtrack album.

Kiss would work their way to the west coast, and have to book gigs, any gig, to eat and travel their way back to New York. Ever seen those early Kiss shows? Phenomenal. They were hungry, they had attitude and they were good. They started making money around the time of the Destroyer album. They stopped making listenable music exactly around the Destroyer album. “They prostituted themselves,” a high school buddy said one day about Beth. I rather think not, think Beth was in retrospect, a reasonably heartfelt song. It was immediately after Beth that the Kiss act became red-light. “This is a great Rod Stewart song,” Paul Stanley told the band about Hard Luck Woman, hoping to sell the song to Stewart. That, my friend, is prostituting yourself.

Nobody got into the music business for the business potential until sometime in the late 70’s or early 80‘s. Before that, even the big stars figured by the time they were 30, then 40, they wouldn’t be acting like rock stars. Mick Jagger said once that he couldn’t imagine running around a stage when he’s 60. He knew then what he refuses to acknowledge now: that he’s become somewhat absurd. But somewhere late in the 70’s, early in the 80’s guys started choosing rock star as a career option. It is considered a remarkable coincidence that people stopped making rock music that was transcendental at the same time.

Who am I kidding? The moment musicians stopped thinking I’ll give it all I got until I’m 28 or so, then get a real job is the moment music changed. If you imagine music as a career, what you’re going to do for the rest of your life, then you’re not about to go out on a limb because you believe from the depths of your soul that the 3rd bar in the 2nd verse should be a C#m instead of an E. If the record company guy, the one in the charcoal suit, says it should be an E, then who are you to withhold the master tapes and risk your future until he concedes your point? And while one C#m may not matter in the grand scheme, once you concede the 3rd bar in the 2nd verse, then why not cut the solo because nobody does solos anymore? And why not rewrite the last verse to make it more radio friendly? Never mind that you talked to God on that solo, or the third verse was absolute poetry, this is about selling records. So why not let the art director from the design department design your album covers, why worry your pretty little head over artistic direction? After all, it’s not art, it’s business.

While the artists were busy working for the man, the people who buy the product, the important line in the supply and demand curve, stopped buying. Instead they, ahem, stole it. Not stole as in left the store with a product, stole as in they took a bunch of 0’s and 1’s that one person voluntarily put on their computer, and moved them to your computer without removing or in any way changing them. Want to talk about the law? Here’s a basic law of economics: price = scarcity. Without scarcity, there’s no need for price. Computer files are technically an unlimited resource. They can be duplicated an infinite number of times without experiencing any degradation of the original file. And if you can duplicate something ad-infinitum, you can’t impose a price on it in the long run. Notice I said can’t, not won’t or shouldn’t, but can’t. You cannot impose a price on something that has no scarcity. And if you can’t impose a price on a music file, the business model of the career recording artist falls apart.

My favourite theory is that recording will become the incidental effort, to promote the live experience that the musician offers. Sooner or later musicians will give away files, sell records and CDs to those (say, me) who must have them, but will make their money for what they do today, or rather tonight, not what they did back in 1982. For this to happen, some things within the industry will have to change, not the least of which is the expectation that musicians should be paid in perpetuity: musicians will have to be first, and always, musicians. Brittany Spears need not apply, we need people who can step on a stage, and sing, or play their instrument; the idea that a concert should be a spectacle will have to end. If you need a ten piece band and dancers – especially if you need dancers – then you can’t be expected to turn a profit on tour. No profit, no performance, it needs to be that simple. A five man band giving it their all, ala the Stones 1972 can be profitable work. An eleven man band playing Jumping Jack Flash while Mick, Keith and Ronny prance and preen ala the Stones now, no Dice, Tumblin’ or otherwise; prices need to come down. Sure Roger Waters or Madonna can carry a circus act, tractor trailer loads full of bricks and flying pigs, then charge $150, but nobody else can. Fourty dollars to hear some band on the margins is too much, they need to be able to play, profitably, for less, maybe a lot less. The trick is get enough people in the seats for $20, and sell them shirts, ring-tones, iPhone cases and downloads of the show.

I mention this because it is, I think, the future, and it is coming sooner than most believe. Here’s an item from this weeks paper:

Christina Aquilera has announced a 20-date North American tour… in support of her upcoming album Bionic. Fans will receive a digital copy of the album with every ticket purchased before June 4.

Give away the music, sell the concert. It’s a new idea, and will take some working out, but it’s economically viable. To put it simply, performance is a scarce commodity, one that can be charged for. As it gets harder and harder to collect on the bits and bites sitting on your hard drive, it will become more viable to look to the performance of music to make a living.

What’s going to save the music industry from itself? That’s easy: musicians. And when they do, music consumers will be better off for it.

The Freedom of Music, This Week on my I-Pod Beatles, Beth, Bionic, Brittany Spears, Christina Aquilera, CSI, Destroyer, George HArrison, Hard Luck Woman, John Lennon, Jumping Jack Flash, Keith Richards, Kiss, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Nigel Tufnel, Octopuses Garden, paul stanley, Ringo Starr, Roger Daltry, Roger Waters, Rolling Stones, Ron Wood, The Who, Tommy, Toronto, Who’s Next

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities

Recently the Vatican has forgiven The Beatles for John Lennon’s famous 1966 quote, “We’re bigger than Jesus.” At the time the Vatican condemned The Beatles, referring to them as “possibly satanic.”

Ringo Starr replied this week saying, “the Vatican has more things to worry about.”

Funny world when the Beatles are respectable and The Vatican is “possibly Satanic.”

Celebrity biographer Kitty Kellyreleased a new tell-all this week on TV super-duper-star Oprah Winfrey. The most surprising revelation? The big O once lived sinfully with John Tesh of Entertainment Tonight and really bad music fame.

Other Kelly revelations include about Oprah include:

Her real name is Oscar Winfield

Her husband Stedman is the founder of famous Canadian grocery chain, Stedman’s.

Oprah once shared beef Jerky with Ben Roethlisberger in the men’s room of a Georgia deli.

She kicked John Tesh out of their Memphis love nest when Tesh played a new composition for her, which she told Tesh was “space aged white-assed crap, which made me lose what little respect I had for you.”

She sang back-up for Sly and the Family Stone

Larry King, the famous talk guy with the infamous breath, is on the divorce train for the eight time. Rumour is that King, 76, was stepping out with 50 year old Shawn Southwick’s sister. And that he didn’t have a pre-nup.

Ouch! This ones gonna hurt Larry.

Doctor House MD, AKA Hugh Laurie, has gotten himself a record deal with Warner records. Laurie is a talented musician and muti-instrumentalist, as well as leader of the Band from TV.

Expect to hear some House-Music™ sometime in the fall.

Fluffernutter Band from TV, Beatles, Ben Roethlisberger, Dr. House MD, Entertainment Tonight, House-Music™, Hugh Laurie, John Lennon, John Tesh, Kitty Kelly, Larry King, Oprah, Ringo Starr, Shawn Southwick, Sly and the Family Stone, Vatican