MuchMusic.com | Blog

- Miss Jackson If You’re Nasty looks un-flabular on the cover of US…
- …but the blogs are like, “that beyotch was photoshopped!” Meh. She still look good.
- Pick a sister, any sister! The Simpson girls are pretty much interchangeable now.
- Jessica misses Nick, Nick misses royalties, royalties miss the constant grovelling of the olden days.
- Did Gwen pop out her baby? Sources say MAYBE.

Oh my friends, I present to you one of the most refreshing commercials to come out in the past couple of months. It is a Coke commercial directed by the fabulous Japanese artist by the name of Nagi Noda. It’s bright. It’s original. It’s worth checking out. Plus, Jack White composed original music for it. If you are a White Stripes fan, you’ll be shocked to find out that the vocals in the commercial are in fact done by the man himself. Surprise, surprise, considering the fact that he sounds like a watered down pop version of himself. Nevertheless, the video and the music will blow your mind.

Speaking of creative geniuses, Sofia Coppola recently received an extremely poor reception at the premiere of her new film “Marie Antoinette* at the Cannes Film Festival. The audience actually booed the flick. *Gasp* Even though I have strong hopes that the film will be up to Ms. Coppola’s standards, I still fear that the audience may be on to something. If the movie poster is any indication of what it’ll be like, schmaltzy and a bit cheesy, then maybe just maybe they’re right. Please Ms. Coppola, please Mr. Schwartzman, tell me they’re wrong.

I moseyed on down to New Yawk this past weekend - it was mah first time and I instantly fell in lust. The vibrance … the energy … the hot nuts - it was glorious. GLORIOUS, I tells you.

Uh, anyway, I’m telling you about this for two reasons. One, I saw my personal action hero Uma Thurman in the street, walking with her son on her shoulders. Awesome. I saw Julia Stiles too, but that was just kind of like, “hey, that was Julia Stiles. And THERE’S A TARGET! Holy crap I’ve never seen a Target!!”

Second, I took one for the team, guys. Just for you, I bought 50 Cent’s vitamin water “Formula 50″ to drink and review and benefit from the 50% daily total of Vitamin B12. Conclusion? Tasted like watered-down juice. I guess that what flavoured water does on a regular basis, but that’s the best way to describe it. I wasn’t going to finish it, but I was sitting in the airport and I kept sipping at it and eventually it was mostly gone. I guess it got better. Would I buy it again? No. Was I a better person for filling myself with vitamins? Maybe.

- Possibly the best job ever: appearing at stuff for cash. Except I’m talking about Paris Hilton and I’m doing my best not to wish I was her.
- Oooo, the trickeries of advertising. Check out how Tom Cruise’s face has gotten smaller and smaller in posters for MI:3. FASCINATING.
- Wait. Britney Spears quit Kabbalah? I’m so out of date. Something about money and liking it and Kabbalah taking it.

Hey kids, if you caught my last blog I told ya all about the beautiful and famous people rocking out at the Coachella Music Fest in Indio, CA. Time now for the real reason I went all the way out there. Music! And boy oh boy was there ever a lot of rock and roll. Now I didn’t go to this cool desert fest just to see mega-mainstreamers like Madonna and Kanye. But I gotta say, they killed it!

The only time I’d seen Kanye before was when I floor directed his performance of “Jesus Walks” at MMVA04, and that blew my mind. But this was something else. He came on like 25 minutes late, and with these festivals there are no exceptions on set times. So with only about a half hour to go, Mr. West took a moment to confer with his band, redo the set list, and what you got was an all out hit parade of his hottest tracks. Catonia and I were dancing and laughing and singing under the hot sun with 50,000 friends. Give or take. He had some stilly fun spinning retro dittys like a-ha’s “Take on Me” and MJ’s “Rock With You”. Seriously it was amazing.

My second favourite set belonged to Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley. He had the best timeslot. 6pm. The sun was starting to set, giving him the first light show of the fest. And the mood of the polo fields changes once that sun goes down. So that, plus his amazing reggae jams and some v.v. friendly ciggie passing made it a pretty perfect moment. Use your illusion please. My little sister might be reading this.

WOLFMOTHER!! “I fell down in the desert baby, yeah!” F***in outstanding. Four in the afternoon in a hot sticky tent. Check out this dude. File this under DON’T. Don’t wear a full-on wolf suit to a Wolfmother show in 95 degree heat in the desert. But A+ for band support.

Depeche Mode. The first band I ever discovered on my own. The first concert my parents let me go to without adult supervision making it the first girls’ night out of my life. Maybe I was just too excited. Too hyped. It was just OK. Not their best ever (that would be at the ACC in Toronto last week) Slow start but Dave and the boys picked it up at the end. It was my grade 7/8 Valentine’s Day dance all over again only without the after-stank of Drakkar Noir in my clothes.

Day two was all about Madonna. Her first music festival and she was playing in a small dance tent. The wave of people crossing the grounds in the dark to invade the Sahara Tent was somewhere between frightening and exhilarating. But no walls and a giant screen helped everyone get a glimpse of the Material Girl. But a glimpse is all you were gonna get cus there was no sound. Worst sound of the entire weekend - like it was coming out of a boom-box. So I couldn’t tell ya what 6 songs she sang, (yes only a 6 song set) but the woman worked it. She ripped up the stage. She shredded (or mock-shredded) on guitar. She told off the crowd. She wiped up water someone threw at her. She left. Not a half hour later Madge’s helicopter rose from the backstage, did a flyby over the thousands of music lovers, and disappeared into the dark sky. And word on the street is she got paid 2 mil for that. Blah.

After Madonna, what is there to do but drink in VIP and listen to Massive Attack and Tool do their thing. Maynard was in full on Brokeback meets Taxi Driver attire and brought on the noise. And thanks to Warped Tour mastermind Kevin Lyman for the post-Coachella come down bevvies. Always love seeing you and your bus in the camping grounds.

Other highlights: Imogen Heap, Ladytron, Cat Power, Eagles of Death Metal, Scissor Sisters, Atmosphere, Common, Sigur Ros, Franz Ferdinand, Phoenix, Gnarls Barkley, James Blunt, Metric, Editors, Paul Oakenfold, The Dears, Minus the Bear, Digable Planets (wha?), Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Magic Numbers, Mogwai, Art Brut, The Duke Spirit…

If you got this far you must be related to me. Thanks mom! So in the final part of Jessica’s West Coast Tour of Duty ‘06 I’ll tell you about everything unrelated to the concert. Partying in Frank Sinatra’s pool, dinner with Pilate, texting with Bedouin, drinks with k-os, rocking to Joel Plaskett and new and vintage friends. Stay tuned for part 3!

There’s no such thing as bad press, well according to Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy…Oh yes, Mr. Fall Out of My Pants, has decided to use his crotch to sell some CDs. Pete has decided to use his infamous nudie pics to promote the latest band off his label. What is wrong with this picture?

a) Those photos are royally disturbing to the eye, both with or without the CD.
b) Remember, your audience are a bunch of 12 year old girls…Honestly, what would mommy think?
c) You’re a douchebag. YOU’RE NOT CLEVER!

Mr.Wentz, please note that you really anger my soul.

Onto something much more calming actually, exciting… Thom Yorke, a.k.a the God from Radiohead, has a non-solo album coming out and well this really gets me pumped. And since, I don’t have tickets to the show, I’m going to have to soak up as much Radiohead news as I possibly can. Okay, back on track…Our friends at pitchfork have posted little blurbs about each song from his record “The Eraser.” From the likes of the album art, the website and what not, the record is going to be as enchanting, obscure and fanciful as any Radiohead album…Basically, a perfect debut from a brilliant artist such as he. Plus the site is worth checking out www.theeraser.net. It’s fun and fun is good.

Last night I saw Depeche Mode perform their zillionth concert, and it could have been their first - they were in top form, loving the crowd, the energy and just being on tour in general. Dave’s still got it and the girls definitely still want it - can you believe the man turned 44 last week?!

When the band unleashed a lethal quintet of throwback singles (Behind The Wheel / World In My Eyes / Personal Jesus / Enjoy The Silence) on the crowd towards the end of their set, I thought I was going to lose my mind; the tension and anticipaton was building more and more with every song! And then the encore. Oh, the encore! A lovely trio of longtime favourites, including Martin’s reworked version of “Shake The Disease” that incited many ooohs & aaahs from the crowd.

During “It Doesn’t Matter Two”, our row broke out sparklers and wove (waved?) them in the air until security inched its way towards us and motioned to ‘cut it out’. I stamped mine out with my foot and because I’m an idiot and my shoe soles are rubber, I stunk the entire place up. Ha!

Even after 22 shows I am still constantly amazed by how incredible the band are in a live arena. Now I have to go home and watch all of my live DVDs over and over to sustain the unbelievable buzz. If the band wasn’t heading as far as Germany next, I’d gladly follow them to their next destination.

Just because I like to spend my time picking up random garbage in between news hits, I found myself holding one of those coffee cup coats they put on your hot double-foam non-fat decaf venti latte (ugh) at, oh, let’s say Farbucks. Anywho, the real reason why I picked it up is because it had a huge word on it and I am a word nerd. “Autochthonous”?! That is a word I have NEVER seen before. Do you know how rare it is to come across a word you have literally NEVER seen before? Very, very rare. Especially considering that I subscribe to dictionary.com’s Word of the Day (told you I was a word nerd) and I read William Safire every week.

Do they put different words on the coffee cup coats every day? It almost makes me want to go for daily, overpriced coffee! Almost.