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dailytomlinson · 4 years ago

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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

#rolling stone #ROLLING STONE SAID ROCK BAN SO ITS A ROCK B AND PERIDOT #220720 #10years1d #one direction

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stylesnews · 4 years ago

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“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

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“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

#rollingstone #july20 #10years1d

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hlupdate · 4 years ago

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The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

#harry styles #louis tomlinson #one direction #1d ten #220720

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bethestaryouareradio · 4 years ago

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Cast of Paramount Film, Mighty Oak and Author Jo Giese

SAG/AFTRA member Cynthia Brian continues Wednesdays with Writers and Performers on StarStyle® giving authors, actors, artists, and entertainers who have had their live performances and events canceled due to Covid-19 a platform to shine. Find out how brilliant our world talent is right here on StarStyle®-Be the Star You Are!

MIGHTY OAK tells the story of Gina (Janel Parrish, “Pretty Little Liars,” To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before), a band manager who struggles after losing her brother/lead singer (Levi Dylan, 12 Mighty Orphans) in a fatal car accident while traveling to a gig. A decade later, Gina meets a 10-year-old music prodigy named Oak, played by newcomer Tommy Ragen, a real-life prodigy whose music inspired the screenplay. Oak seems to possess the same qualities as Gina’s late brother, inspiring her to pull her life back together and try to reunite the band with Oak as its new front man. Directed by Sean McNamara (Soul Surfer), guests to be interviewed by Cynthia Brian include Tommy Ragen (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock Broadway Musical), Rodney Hicks (Rent, Come From Away) Gianna Harris (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock Broadway Musical), and Ben Milliken (Bosch, Blue Crush www.mightyoakthemovie.com

Official Trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ba40pACGBZ0

At a turbulent time in America, when personal connections are fleeting and shared values rare, award-winning journalist and author Jo Giese offers uplifting lessons in old-fashioned civility in her memoir, Never Sit If You Can Dance: Lessons from My Mother. The lessons are wisdom from a mother of the 20th century for a daughter in the 21st century. www.jogiese.com

Bio: Tommy Ragen

Tommy Ragen is a 12 year old musician, songwriter, producer, and actor. He has released three albums “9, Rocket, and Heart Emoji”. He played the lead role of “Oak” in the Paramount Pictures movie Mighty Oak. Mighty Oak features eight original songs co-written by Tommy and Caroline Corn. He was, also, a cast member on the First National Broadway Tour of The School Of Rock the Musical.

www.mightyoakthemovie.com

Bio: Rodney Hicks

Rodney is a longtime New Yorker, originally from Philly who now resides in Colorado. He is an Award winning Black Gay

Male Artist. His play FLAME BROiLED had its World Premiere at Local Theater Company in Boulder, CO in the Fall of 2019.

The play was awarded the 2019 Eulipions Fund on behalf of The Denver Foundation. Previous versions of his plays MS.

PEARL’S CABARET and JUST PRESS SAVE were a 2019 and 2018 Semi-Finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Conference.,

respectively. Rodney was last seen on Broadway as Bob & Others in Come From Away; Clarence Norris in The Scottsboro

Boys, Peter in Jesus Christ Superstar (2000 Revival) and the Original Cast of RENT. He currently has a supporting role in

the newly released Paramount Studios film ‘Mighty Oak’ at Drive in’s and movie theaters. Rodney is a peace and love

practitioner/meditator as well as a playwright and actor. www.rodneyhicks.net/ Follow on instagram: @rodneyhickshere Facebook: Rodney Hicks

Bio: Gianna Harris

Gianna Harris is a 15 year old singer, musician, actor and dancer. She plays the guitar, piano, bass and ukulele. Gianna discovered her love for performing in 2015 and as an amateur she performed at MSG during the Knicks half-time show and Apollo Theater. Gianna's professional career started in March of 2016 when she got her first big role in Andrew Lloyd Weber's School of Rock on Broadway. In 2017 she graduated from Broadway and joined the touring company of School of Rock. Her most recent role is Emma Biggs in Mighty Oak. When Gianna is not acting she is either writing and recording music, reading or riding her skateboard. Her favorite color is lavender and her favorite dessert is choc chip cookies. Gianna is a huge advocate and voice for Mental Health Awareness and LQBTQ+ Equality. Insta: @thegiannaharris

Bio: Ben Milliken

Born in Manchester, England, Ben was raised in Bilgola Beach located on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Ben, then moved to Los Angeles where we quickly began landing roles in multiple film and television projects, including Universal's "Blue Crush 2". Most recently, Ben landed a role in season 5 of Amazon's hit show “Bosch”. www.mightyoakthemovie.com

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Sean Patrick McNamara is an Irish-American writer, director and producer of the break out hit “Soul Surfer” (Tri-Star Pictures). “Spare Parts” from the Wired Magazine article “La Vida Robot” (Lionsgate), “The Moon and the Sun” (Paramount Pictures), “Raise Your Voice” (New Line Cinema), “Hoovey,” “Field Of Lost Shoes” and many more Feature Films and Television shows have been Helmed and produced by Sean. He is the director of Mighty Oak. www.mightyoakthemovie.com

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Jo Giese is an award-winning radio journalist, author, teacher, community activist, and former TV reporter. As a special correspondent, she was part of the Peabody Award–winning team at Marketplace, the most popular business program in America. At Marketplace she won an EMMA for Exceptional Radio Story from the National Women’s Political Caucus and a GRACIE from the Foundation of American Women in Radio. She has contributed to Ira Glass’s This American Life and is the author of A Woman’s Path (St. Martin’s Press) and The Good Food Compendium (Doubleday). She has written for many top publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, the LA Weekly, European Travel & Life, BARK, Montana Outdoors, and The Malibu Times. An intrepid and enthusiastic world traveler, Jo has visited more than 50 plus countries. She lives in Southern California and Bozeman, Montana, with her husband, Ed Warren. www.jogiese.com, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjogiese/

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torentialtribute · 5 years ago

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BUMBLE AT THE TEST: Bit of a damp squib from Jofra Archer

BUMBLE ON THE TEST: a bit of a wet squib from Jofra Archer … while if Jimmy Anderson, Ed Sheeran and James Quinn weren't enough excitement for a day, wait until you see who's next visiting me!

By David Lloyd for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:37 BST, 4 September 2019 | Updated: 19:37 BST, September 4, 2019

Steve Smith was back in Australia to frustrate England during the opening day of the fourth Ashes Test at Old Trafford.

The Australian star-shaped man remains undefeated at 60, while Marnus Labuschagne published another impressive half-century before being shot at by Craig Overton. The tourists ended the day at 170 for three.

Here, Sportsmail columnist David Lloyd was always there to give his expert opinion on the action of Manchester …

Steve Smith from Australia returned to frustrate England when he ended day one unbeaten at 60

A bit of a wet squib of Jofra Archer. We all expected him to come in, not least the Australian batsmen. But he bowed at best in the mid-80s. We've had 10 days since the last test, so I thought I'd be fresh like a daisy. Fast bowling is difficult, but there are times when you just have to lift it.

We were all expecting that Jofra Archer would steam, but in the end it was a bit of a damp squib

Stuart Broad did David Warner again! Make no mistake, Warner is a fantastic player, but Broad is in charge. I just wonder if it is technical. Maybe he's too careful. Warner is a diminutive batsman and appears to be squatting in the fold. Maybe he should get up a little more …

We had a visit to Old Trafford from Jimmy Anderson on Wednesday. There he was repairing a toilet door, doing some plumbing and some electrical work. Not England's injured recordwick contractor, but Mr. Fixit of the same name. I spoke to him about his damaged calf, but he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. He lost it, Jim …

We had a visit from Jimmy Anderson on Wednesday … Lancashire & Mr Fixit of the same name

I made a stop at talkSPORT the day before the test live from Old Trafford with Adrian Durham and Darren Gough and They were really good. They know their business. But they approached me and wanted me to choose my five best Lancastrians of all time. So, with the proviso that I just choose the one I've played with or seen, here comes – Brian Statham, Michael Atherton, Andrew Flintoff, Jimmy Anderson, and Neil Fairbrother. And highly praised goes to Glen Chapple, Ken Higgs, Peter Lever and Frank Hayes. Discussion

Great to see Early Doors Fame actor James Quinn in Old Trafford. James not only plays a brilliant & # 39; bent & # 39; buyer in the cult program, but he is also a tragic cricket who even knows statistics of games in which I played when I couldn't even remember being there. He was here to have books signed by Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting and the boys were happy to oblige. The BBC must order a new series! Remember that crime will not crack itself!

Another famous face here was none other than Ed Sheeran! Big boy who loves his cricket. And what a singer. Ed told me that he has just completed a tour of two and a half years. He said it was like being in college. But if Jimmy Anderson, James Quinn and Ed Sheeran didn't have enough excitement for a day, then wait until you see, dear reader, who visits me next time … Everything will be revealed on Friday …

It became farcical in the afternoon session with fresh packages flying over the ground, referee hats throwing off and a few overs without bail. Meanwhile, a partnership broke out between Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne. Make no mistake Smith is back. All his eccentricities were there, but it is his stroke that you should pay attention to.

It became tight in the afternoon session with crunchy packages going around the bail flew

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/slater-case-proves-nrl-justice-is-indeed-blind-and-just-plain-stupid/

Slater case proves NRL justice is indeed blind – and just plain stupid

Handshake deal

The ESPN Sports Business reporter Darren Rovell put out an interesting tweet this week noting that Thursday was the 20th anniversary of the day that the St Louis Cardinals baseball slugger Mark McGwire – powered by steroids as it later turned out – broke the single season home-run record by belting his 70th.

The ball bounced out of one fan’s hands, bounced out of another’s and was finally caught by a 17-year old fan, Phil Ozersky, who at the time was earning chump change stacking shelves.

The Cardinals asked him for the ball and offered in return a signed bat, ball and jersey. But Ozersky wanted one more thing. Yup, he told the Cardinals he wanted to meet McGwire, shake his hand.

McGwire was too much of a big shot, busy hitting more big shots over fences, and said no. So three months later, Ozersky sold the ball for $US3.05 million, bought a house for his handicapped father, gave six-figure sums to charity, married his high-school sweetheart and went on to live happily ever after – while still driving now the car he had back then.

Ain’t sport grand?

Teaming up

Now you can call me an old “romantic” if you like, but I don’t care. See, by definition, every day that passes, big-time sports gets more “modern”, which usually means more technical, more driven by statistics, and more littered with incomprehensible jargon like “corrugated iron” and “marmalade jam”.

It means that, when you come across stories of big-time teams prospering because of embracing the old-time values, it is heart-warming. A prime case in point is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL side, who’ve come from nowhere to open their account this season by beating two of the top-ranked teams in the league, including last year’s Superbowl winners, the Philadelphia Eagles.

United: Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston looks for a receiver.

Photo: AP

Part of it is credited to coach Dirk Koetter doing something different in the off-season.

As reported in The New York Times: “He broke his team into groups of eight, mixing coaches with players, and had the groups hold meetings during which people took turns talking about their backgrounds or upbringing. The goal was team unity.”

Yes, I know. Players actually getting to know each other, and care about each other, beyond football!

“You play with guys but you don’t know personal details of their lives,” tight end Cameron Brate said. “It was really eye-opening. A football team is built on communication and trust and truly being able to understand where someone is coming from and being able to open up to them. It created new pathways of communication and enhanced our trust in each other.”

Everything is so old it’s new again. Next thing you know, you’ll get players truly caring about the jerseys they play for, and speaking about the clubs they’ve played for, for over a decade, in the first person, not the third person, as in: “They’ve been a great club, and really good to me.”

Just Google it

As I have said many times before, if they were holding a group 1 horse race – whatever that is – around my house, I would pull the curtains shut and call the police. I just don’t care. Still, occasionally stories arise from the racing world that pique the interest, and a case in point comes from reader Paul Foster this week. He advises that all owners of new racehorses get to name their steed, often by seeking inspiration from their parents’ names.

“So this fella has a horse by Benfica out of Loose ‘n’ Lovely. He called it Andiamo Fica, which is Italian for Let’s Go C—.”

For this effort, he’s just been disqualified from owning horses for 18 months.

My thoughts . . .

1. It’s great to get one over the authorities.

2. Don’t Racing NSW have Google?

Knock it off

TFF had a rant mid-week on the ludicrousness of SCG Trust Chair Tony Shepherd following Alan Jones’ lead by asserting that if the Sydney Football Stadium is knocked down, we risk a Hillsborough disaster – where 96 lives were lost – in Sydney.

My central point was this: “If you do insist that the SFS actually risks being a Hillsborough, how on earth did you or the government let last Saturday night’s final go ahead? You dinkum thought there was a risk of 100 people dying, and somehow – ignoring your duty of care, to preserve the safety of spectators – the match was allowed to proceed?”

Precisely what happened that terrible day at Hillsborough thirty years ago remains a deeply sensitive topic but, as several readers pointed out, it’s a whole lot more complex than just assigning blame to the design of the stadium itself. Just two weeks ago, the man who was in control of police operations that day, former South Yorkshire Police chief superintendent David Duckenfield pleaded not guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence. The date for his trial is set for January. We will let their legal system get on with it.

What They Said

Mick Malthouse at a Ballarat sports lunch on Thursday, on women’s football: “I don’t like it . . . I don’t say you shouldn’t play it, I say I don’t like it . . . I don’t like the women’s game the way it is. I would rather see them with a smaller ball, I would rather see it without any tackling, I would rather see it without any heavy bumping.”

AFLW player Moana Hope on Malthouse’s comments: “He said that AFL was a man’s game and not a woman’s game and he’s said that on stage in front of 50 kids who had just played a boys and girls game of football. I left after that. I was so disgusted and drove back to Melbourne. He can have an opinion but then there’s just degrading and disrespectful comments. We’re in 2018, not in 1942 . . . I will never be in the same room as him again.”

Drought over: Tiger Woods celebrates with caddie Joe LaCava after the Tour Championship golf tournament and the FedEx Cup final at Eastlake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia.

Photo: EPA

Tiger Woods on his 80th tour win: “I was having a hard time not crying on the last hole. I just can’t believe I pulled this off. It hasn’t been so easy the last couple of years. It’s hard to believe I was able to do it again . . . [lightly sobs]”

Cooper Cronk on whether he’ll be 100% for this weekend’s grand final: “Obviously there’s a point where you can’t get things right in a certain amount of time . . . at some stage God or science will say no, but until then I’ll do everything I possibly can.”

Shane Watson on the support for Steve Smith: “To be able to see so many people come along to a grade game is incredible. We see the crowds that come along to a Sheffield Shield game or a JLT Cup as well, it’s nothing compared to this. It’s very impressive.”

New Zealand great Brendon McCullum tweets his view that David Warner celebrated a grade century a bit too much: “Geez Davey! This celebration is the equivalent of Sir Ed Hillary giving it large climbing his front steps, post Everest! Hahaha.”

Over the top: Dave Warner was in a particularly devastating mood against St George during his knock of 155 not out.

Photo: AAP

Richmond young gun Jack Higgins on winning goal of the year: “Firstly, my heart is at about a thousand minutes per second, so if I screw it up, don’t hate on me.”

Wallaby Ned Hanigan with a fine mixed metaphor: “We can’t be sitting there kicking stones and letting it just get worse, we’ve got to grab it by the balls and try and turn it around.”

Melbourne Storm’s Will Chambers knows how the media rolls: “It’s pretty easy to be a keyboard warrior, people don’t really say stuff to your face. It’s easy to print it in a newspaper, but they won’t come and say it to you. But everyone wants a story, it’s pretty funny don’t you think? I’m from a small town in the Northern Territory. You don’t get much media up there, it’s pretty cruisy, it’s not the Sydney press.”

Michael Cheika aware of how quickly things can change: “They wanted to cut Nathan Buckley’s head off last year didn’t they, and he’s in a grand final this week. That’s the way it goes.”

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick after their elimination: “It was an un-Richmond-like performance.”

Jose Mourinho can’t explain why Manchester United players can’t fire up: “I can’t explain the difference of attitude because I never had a difference of attitude. For me it is difficult to explain that.”

Team of the Week

Magpies/Eagles, Roosters/Storm. Play in this weekend’s grand finals.

Tiger Woods. After his extraordinary finish to the season – including his first victory in five years – his world ranking has soared to 13, a nice improvement from where he finished in 2017, at 1193.

Central Coast Heart. This regional elite team just won the Netball NSW Premier League grand final last night, a big achievement for the only non-metropolitan team in the Premier League competition.

Tom Mitchell. As TFF predicted, winner of the 2018 Brownlow medal.

Nathan Buckley. One of the most storied figures in Australian sport is about to add the one thing his glittering career has lacked – a premiership. After his Collingwood side finished 13th last year, they are today in the grand final against the Eagles.

Eddie McGuire. There is a very good reason they don’t call him “Eddie the Eagle”. The Collingwood president is a Magpie to the marrow of his bones, and his decision not to sack Buckley last year now looks a like a master-stroke.

Mozzie Legends. Beat the young pups of the Weigall Wanderers in the Cook and Philip Park indoor soccer grand final. The significance is that the Mozzies have played in every single season held since this ex-Olympic venue was handed over to the public in 2001 – meaning that the team, who now has an average age of 45, have compensated their loss of speed with an injection of guile and determination.

Peter FitzSimons is a Herald journalist, columnist and author, based in Sydney. He is also a former Wallabies player.