Friday, April 20, 2007
Spice Girls plan reunion tour
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
The Spice Girls may reunite soon for a planned reunion tour in Europe and possibly the United States.
By Scott Muska
student life editor
The very unexpected reunion that everyone has
been secretly looking forward to may soon he com
ing to fruition. The Spice Girls, a former super
group from the British Invasion of the 19905. are
being coaxed out of retirement by the promise of a
huge payment.
It has been estimated that if Posh, Baby, Ginger,
Sporty and Scary Spice reunite for an international
tour they could make an amount of $24 million per
band member. The girls claim, however, that they
will only reunite if charity is somehow involved in
their events.
The original plan for the reunion included a kick
off concert on March 10 of this year to commemo
rate the release of their first single and astounding
ly popular song, "Wannabe. - This obviously fell
through due to the pregnancy of hand members
Emma Bunton and Melanie Brown.
'('hough the hand has remained adamant ahout the
fact that they will not be releasing any new music
hut performing songs from their previous albums,
they will still seek the representation of Simon
Fuller, the Amercan Idol judge who currently repre
sents band member Victoria Beckham.
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U_DEI IT Li
The hand has revealed that their first concert will
take place in London, though it would not be a sur
prise if they ventured to the United States for at
least a few shows, if not an entire tour. Victoria
Beckham will be living there by July as a result of
her husband's, soccer superstar David Beckham,
trade to a professional soccer team in Los Angeles.
They would also undoubtedly draw crowds of many
types, namely the teenagers and early adults who
are nostalgic for the British babes and their
extremely catchy music.
Rumors abound that the band has been talking to
U 2 frontman Bono about a possible collaboration
for the Red charity that he strongly supports. Red
has put on concerts and sold items that include
clothing, cell phones and iPods to support the effort
to find a cure for the HIV virus.
If this reunion does indeed happen, there's a pos
sibility that the group may achieve similar fame to
what they experienced a decade ago. Their fans
were based generally in the gradeschool through
high school range, and they could duplicate their
success among a new generation of children that
have not yet experienced "girl power. - They will
also undoubtedly draw in some of their older fans
who are hiding in the closets, almost ashamed to be
fans of the once hip supergroup.
Timbaland- "Give it to Me"
Avril Lavigne-
Bone Thugs and
T-Pain - "Buy U a Drank Shawty"
Beyonce and Shakira- "Beautiful Liar"
Fergie- "Glamorous"
Carrie Underwood- "Before He Cheats"
Linkin Park- "What I've Done"
9.
10.
Akon- "Don't Matter"
Gwen Stefani- "The Sweet Escape"
*Statistics courtesy of iTunes Music Store
nnovative dystopian album tops charts
By Joshua Lane
Student Life Editor
Artisiresistance.com/CONTRIBUTED .e
PHOTO was diS
covered by a
be Year Zero "Alternate Reality Game" is an interactive online promotion for NIN music. fan in one of
the stalls. On the USB drive was a high-quality
MP3 of the song "My Violent Heart" which was
almost immediately put on the intemet. Within days
more of these USB drives were popping up all over
Europe. One was found in Madrid, another in
Barcelona, all containing different tracks from the
new album. A USB drive found in Manchester had
a song and an image of the "Hollywood" sign pho
toshopped to look like it was the remains of a
nuclear fallout. Reznor claims that this sort of thing
was exactly what he wanted, and this type of think
ing should be the future of music. In a recent article
in the British newspaper The Guardian Reznor said
"It's really painfully obvious what people want
DRM-free music they can do what they want with.
If the greedy record industry would embrace that
concept I truly think people would pay for music
and consume more of it."
Nine Inch Nails' new offering, Year Zero is less
ke a stand alone album and more like the sound
ack to what Trent Reznor calls his "alternate real-
ty game" what does that mean? Well, no one really
ows. It's a global reality based "game" that seems
ike part scavenger hunt, part research project.
It started with a NIN tour t-shirt that had a code
n it. The back of the shirt listed all of the tour dates
nd locations for the NIN February European tour.
. me of the letters within the spelling of the cities
ere highlighted. When all of the letters were
trung together, they spell "I am trying to believe."
s a true testament to this dot-com world that we
ow live in, the fan that first recognized this oddity
lecided to type it into a google search which pro
' uced iamtryingtobelieve.com. It is one of many
IN websites that are based around this game.
The website seems like a website that is about a
onspiracy that hasn't really happened at all. It has
ake newspaper clippings from an Orlando based
ewspaper that says the government has decided to
ut a drug they call Parepin into the water and it
ay have side effects.
As if this couldn't get any weirder there was a
ideo released on You Tube that was listed as a Year
'ro album promotion, but is really a Year Zero
ame promotion. It looks like a random video taken
iTunes Singles
Top 10
April 19, 2007
The Behrend Beacon I
"Girlfriend"
Harmony -
on a handheld camcorder of a desert landscape.
After a few moments, the screen gets filled with
atic and a
Reznor may have something bordering on genius
with this type of promotion. For those that pur
chased the album, they may find it interesting that
the CD was made with a thermo-chrome heat-sensi
tive face. The CD is black, but when heat is applied
to it, it turns mostly white to reveal a series of zeros
and ones in binary code. The sequence translates to
exterminal.net. Happy hunting.
"I Tried"
ant dark
tnd reaches
, wn from the
All of these
lternative
omotions
_ , ,ht seem a
de ludi-
.ous, but for
;znor it
ems like this
a vision that
just begin
ng. Last
!bruary at a
[N venue in
;bon, a USB