"She's conscious, but still in a daze. She doesn't know what happened to her.Stoffels said.Posters and pamphlets with her picture, a description of what she had been wearing and contact numbers for the police and her family were distributed all over the city. A massive campaign was also launched on the Internet. De Klerk was last seen at Lola's in Long Street, shortly before her cellphone was stolen and switched off. People who saw her there said she acted strangely and talked to herself before walking off with a group of street children and later a strange man.
She hasn't even been able to tell her parents what happened," De Villiers
said."But the most important thing is, she's alive. Her family couldn't have
asked for a better Christmas present. This has been an ordeal one wouldn't wish
on your worst enemies. We are very grateful to the media and the public. We
believe if it wasn't for the public's help, we may not have found her alive."De
Villiers said the family believed she may have been persuaded to get into a car
with someone, but that whoever took her with them must have taken advantage of
the fact that she was not fully aware of what was happening. De Klerk has since
been transferred from Groote Schuur to a private hospital, where her condition
is improving. She was not physically harmed during her disappearance.De Villiers
said she was still getting calls from people who think they have sighted her in
different places across the province.Police spokesperson Randall Stoffels said
the police were still investigating a case of kidnapping. No suspects had been
identified, he said."We haven't been able to take a statement from Miss de
Klerk. Hopefully we'll be able to talk to her in the coming week. We won't know
what happened to her until she can tell us,"
Heath Ledger, the star of the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, was found dead Tuesday in a Manhattan residence, New York City police said.
Heath Ledger, left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, in a scene from Brokeback Mountain, which earned Ledger a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination.
(Focus Features/ Kimberly French/Associated Press)
A housekeeper found the actor's dead body at 3:26 p.m. Ledger, 28, was lying in bed, naked, with a bottle of sleeping pills nearby, police spokesman Paul Browne said.
The housekeeper had been looking for Ledger to let him know his masseuse had arrived.
It was not immediately clear if Ledger committed suicide, but police said his death appeared to be drug-related.
Soon after news of Ledger's death emerged, a large crowd gathered at the apartment building in the upscale Soho neighbourhood and watched as police removed his body from the home.
Ledger, a respected actor who was known for carefully choosing his roles, earned an Academy Award nomination and won a Golden Globe for his role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain. The film went on to win three Oscars for directing, music and writing.
Heath Ledger with Michelle Williams at the 78th Academy Awards in March 2006.
(Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press)
It was on the set of the movie that he met actress Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the film and earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. The two actors got engaged and on Oct. 28, 2005, had a daughter, Matilda Rose.
However, last September, Ledger's father reported the couple had separated.
Ledger, who was born in Perth, Australia in 1979, began acting in amateur theatre at age 10, starring as Peter Pan in a production mounted by a local theatre group. The son of a mining engineer and French teacher, Ledger moved to Sydney at 16 to act on TV.
Ledger made his film debut in the 1997 Australian movie Blackrock before moving to Los Angeles at 19.
He became known as a heartthrob with 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale, but secured a reputation as a serious actor with his role as Billy Bob Thornton’s troubled son in Monster’s Ball.He also drew praise for his portrayal of a heroin addict in the 2006 movie Candy.
Throughout his career, he turned down several movie opportunities, including romantic teen comedies that were offered to him after 10 Things.
"It wasn't a hard decision for me," he told the Associated Press in 2001. "It was hard on everyone else around me to understand. Agents were like, 'You're crazy,' my parents were like, 'Come on you have to eat.'"
He was scheduled to appear as the Joker this year in The Dark Knight, which just finished filming. It's a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins.
With files from the Associated Press
“We called the record Dog Days because it seemed like the end of something, and the beginning of something else,”explains vocalist/guitarist Chuck Mead.
“It’s the start of a different way of thinking about BR549 and a different way of thinking about our lives and music.”The album, produced by John Keane (known for his work with R.E.M., Uncle Tupelo, and Widespread Panic) and recorded at Keane’s famed studio in Athens, Georgia, showcases 11 uncompromising songs from a band with fearsome instrumental chops, their own left field point-of-view, and an ever potent take on classic Country tradition. Now a lean four-piece of Mead, multi-instrumentalist Don Herron, drummer/vocalist Shaw Wilson and new bassist/vocalist Mark Miller, BR549 is a band defiantly reborn.
“It’s 10 years since we started this, and we’ve been through a lot recently,” says Mead. “On this record, we wanted – and needed – to do something that was beyond the norm.”
This whole "digital music era" thing is bringing out a lot of great discussion about changes to the status quo of music industry business models, and "indie" bands utilizing new "Do-it-Yourself" biz models are getting all kinds of press. The Wall Street Journal just last week had an article on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and how the band has been able to find success without signing a contract with a major label. Through touring, word-of-mouth fan buzz, and some key distribution deals, the band has sold a nice chunk of albums and had a successful few years on the road. Billboard also picked up on CYHSY's "go-it-alone" strategy with a nearly identical article that's (not behind a subscription wall and) definitely worth a read.
Articles like this aren't really all that new or revelatory. They chart the underground successes of independent bands that are finding varying levels of success without the help of a record label, a music video, or radio play, and therefore side-step the "standard" (and dying) mainstream "model." For an example of how pervasive this new type of thing is, I've compiled a bunch of similar reading at the bottom of this post. But what I keep noticing about these articles is not the exciting new ways independent artists are circumventing the standard model (though, I admit these stories are often quite intriguing). Nope, I keep noticing who they are not covering.
If you read this site, you can probably list a bunch of bands that have also found success with a "go-it-alone" strategy and no major-label contract. You can probably name several bands that have been successful by focusing on their fans, their live shows, and gradually building loyalty and fan buzz over the long-term. So where are the similar press accounts about MMW, moe., Umphrey's, STS9, or the Disco Biscuits? Why does it seem like these live bands--who are just as independent as your latest "indie rock" buzz band--consistently get ignored?
Take that Billboard article on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for example. It discusses the band's recent performance at the Hammerstein in NYC (which they did not sell out, by the way). But who else recently played the Hammerstein? Yep, the Disco Biscuits. They rocked that place not only for a solid Thanksgiving run but also sold it out for their NYE show last year (they also played Lollapalooza, had a killer line-up for their own festival, and just finished a stellar "comeback" year with an all-night bonanza at the E-Centre in Camden, NJ). And who else just capped off a huge year with an even bigger set of shows here in Chicago at the Aragon? That other "live band," Umphrey's McGee.
And then there's moe. Now, it just so happens that I'm not the biggest fan of moe.'s music these days, but moe. has many other converts out there. They must, or else they wouldn’t have just played one of the poshest venues in New York City on New Year's Eve: the Radio City Music Hall. Also, moe. just last week announced their snoe.down festival that includes a killer line-up and is really quite an innovative "recreation-destination" type of a music festival. This on top of what(?) doing their own festival every summer for the past 3-4 years? Like their music or not, moe. knows their fans and continues to find ways to give their fans a great concert experience, all with a very independent set of management and organization. How'd they do it? Slowly, gradually, and with a lot of touring and hard work.
Just over ten years ago, I saw moe. at a tiny upstate New York venue (the Haunt, Ithaca, NY). They rocked this little smoke-filled room and made people take notice that they were clearly on to something. Since then they've gradually built up a following. Part of it was the music, part their fans' devotion, and another component was the tapers (I had the tapes of that show in hand within a couple weeks; these days, it often takes less than 24 hours!).
We can cite all kinds of other bands that have done this, are doing this, or are just now tapping into it this "live band biz model". It's not limited to jambands, but can include any band that has a great live show and has no interest in being an indentured servant for Warner Music or Sony/Universal. Hence, your CYHSYs, Arcade Fires, and Wilcos of the world can pull off similar successes by using nearly the same model.
So the question remains: why don’t more people take notice of this type of progress when it's the bands that "jam?" Is it just too hippy (whatever that even means these days)? Is there a stigma in terms of the fans, the drugs, the scene? Is it too far off-the-radar? Isn't this exactly the type of shit the Billboard guys are writing about when it comes to CYHSY?
Of course, some mainstream outlets certainly HAVE taken notice. The folks who thought that the Dead and Phish were somehow enormous exceptions to the traditional rules have at least been swayed more recently by the behemoth that is Bonnaroo (just see FastCompany's article on SuperFly for an example of that). But, it just seems like the mid-size "jam-oriented" acts -- who are consistently playing the same venues as the CYHSY's of the world -- never quite get the same kind of recognition.
So what do you think? Am I full of shit? Do these bands even want this kind of press? Drop a comment.
caveat/sidenote:
All this is not meant to diminish what CYHSY or any of the other buzz-worthy indie rock acts have accomplished. There's a reason all those crazy fans at Lollapalooza (myself included) freaked out at Broken Social Scene's set, really dig Of Montreal, and have recently eaten up all the hype for Arcade Fire's new album. I just find it fascinating that there's so much damn press about bands side-stepping traditional business models with nary a mention about bands that have consistently accomplished the same (or higher) level of success with a very similar model: touring heavily, knowing their fans, having a lenient policy towards tape-trading and file-sharing, and building the interest and trust of those fans over time.
