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Edie Falco’s TV Nursing Skills Called for at Premiere Party

Roger Friedman
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She only plays a nurse on Showtime’s new series, “Nurse Jackie.” But last night at the show’s premiere party, Edie Falco was just about the first person summoned when a guest fainted.

It wasn’t clear what she was being asked to do, but Falco rushed over.

The guest was the eldlerly mother of a theatrical agent. At first, the word went out in Nicola’s restaurant at the Parker Meridien hotel that someone had had a heart attack.

That didn’t stop the crowd, which had just seen two episodes of the wonderful new Falco series, from chowing down and drinking. It was late, after all.

Ironically, the party room had been totally redecorated to resemble an ER. There were actual hospital beds, medical cabinets stocked with bandages and the like, and heavy plastic curtain dividers.

Someone had even set up a machine for guests to try oxygen at a bar in flavors like lemonade and tangerine.

Read the rest of the story

All-Star Music Night Has Biggest Buzz of the Year

Roger Friedman
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The biggest night in the music year is not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner. It’s the Songwriters Hall of Fame dinner in New York on June 18th. Phil Ramone is the musical producer; Hal David and Linda Moran put on a show of shows year in and year out.

This is the 40th anniversary, which means a blowout at the Marriott Marquis. Bon Jovi, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Rascals, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Tom Jones, Andy Williams, the composers of ‘Hair,’ and ‘Godspell,’ are all getting awards, along with pop song crafters Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway are getting awards.

Ramone’s showcase of these stars should be monumental. He’s already got James Taylor, Rob Thomas, Berry Gordy, Clint Black, Chris Daughtry, John Ondrasik (of Five for Fighting), and Paul Williams to either present or perform. Jason Mraz is getting the award for new generation songwriter. I’m excited because legendary Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. of the Fifth Dimension are coming to salute the ‘Hair’ writers. They had the #1 record of 1969 with ‘Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In’ from that show.

The SHOF dinner and show is a hot ticket. Call Buckley Hall Events, (212) 573-6933 for info. And here’s something for FREE: a master class at Merkin Hall with Lamont Dozier, interviewed by Nelson George, on June 16th for members of the SHOF. Don’t worry: I will be there, and report back every word that’s said by the co-writer of all the Four Tops and Supremes hits.

Jennifer Hudson Not Happy With Her Guests

Roger Friedman
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Jennifer Hudson may or may not be pregnant. But listen: she’s not ready to say either way, for her own reasons. And still, friends’so called’are betraying her confidence.

Yesterday the Chicago papers claimed they’d uncovered a baby shower. They talked to a guest, Felicia Fields, who yakked away until her jaw hurt. She told the papers Hudson was seven months along, that she wanted to keep it quiet, and so on.

Other friends of Hudson say the Oscar winner and hit singer is very upset with Fields. Suffice to say, Fields will not be on the list of wedding guests when and if Hudson marries her fianc’e.

More importantly: if Jennifer is seven months pregnant, that means she conceived right after the terrible tragedies in her family at the end of October 2008. If’if, meaning if’this is the case, she has her own reasons for keeping the whole thing private until she’s ready.

Whatever’s happening’everyone wishes Jennifer Hudson the best at this point. She deserves peace and privacy. Not every human event in a celebrity’s life is ready for primetime exposure.

Whitney, Mariah: Grammy Deadline Looms

Roger Friedman
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houston whitney 263x300 Whitney, Mariah: Grammy Deadline LoomsWhitney Houston‘s new CD, her big comeback effort, is said to ‘near ready,’ ‘almost done,’ or ‘just about finished.’

I’d heard last week that Clive Davis was putting a September release date on it. But really, here’s the thing: the Grammy deadline is August 31st. That’s a month earlier than usual because the Grammy Awards are a week earlier this year, on January 31, 2010.

Yes, that’s right: a week, a month. It makes no sense, but that’s what they did at Grammy HQ. At the end of January 2010 they’re going to give out awards for music released between October 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009.

And Whitney’s comeback may not make that deadline. Of course, it’s possible a single could be released by then. But that’s always a tricky story. J Records tried that with Alicia Keys a couple of years ago, with ‘No One’ making the cut. A year later, her very good album, ‘As I Am,’ seemed old.

At the same time, Mariah Carey is buzzing away in the studio for her new CD, called ‘Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.’ She’s been working with The-Dream and other producers putting together another collection of catchy pop songs. But will she be ready by August 31st? It doesn’t seem possible. But don’t count her out. Mariah tells me, ‘I feel it’s a special album and I want it to have a shot.’

Maybe the Grammys will have so few choices that they’ll have to acknowledge artists who usually get shunted aside. Elvis Costello‘s new CD, ‘Secret, Profane and Sugarcane,’ would be a good choice. The theme of the next Grammys could be albums that didn’t chart, weren’t promoted, or played on the radio.

So far 2009 hasn’t been that great. The big releases have come from U2, Bob Dylan, Kelly Clarkson, Eminem, and Kanye West. None of it is really superior quality stuff, though, compared even to those artists’ previous work. New albums by Rob Thomas and Black Eyed Peas should help. Of course, Adam Lambert might make the deadline with his release. We have that to look forward to.

But the idea of a Grammy show overwhelmed by Lady Gaga is enough to make you want to get out Daniel Faraday’s notebook from ‘Lost’ and travel back fast to 1972.

P.S. As I told you during the early days of this new column, Mariah is also working with Jermaine Dupri on a theme song for Lee Daniels‘ great movie, ‘Precious.’ It’s set to be called ‘100 Percent.’ At least Mariah will make the Oscar deadline!

Jay-Z Tug of War Ends (With Diddy’s Help?)

Roger Friedman
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As I told you last week, there’s been a tug of war between Sony Music and Warner Music Group over Jay-Z.

But the tug of war is over, sources tell me: Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label, with new up-and-coming artists, will go to Sony. His new album, ‘The Blueprint 3,’ will be released by Warner.

Jay-Z bought back ‘Blueprint 3’ from Universal Music for $5 million. So WMG has had to advance him at least that much for the CD. And it’s a one-off deal, just for this recording. Given WMG’s track record, it’s questionable they’ll be able to break even, let alone turn a profit.

For Sony, it’s a win. Roc Nation could supply them with desperately needed new artists. With Jay-Z’s imprimatur, the new artists should have an easier time being heard, and selling music.

Why did Jay-Z go to WMG at all? My guess is that Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs had something to do with it. The two hip-hop stars attended a Lakers game together on May 5’a rarity. But WMG spent $30 million on Combs’ Bad Boy label. They may have pressed him into the role of backchannel diplomat. And it worked.

Jane Fonda Will Put Mug Shot on Mugs

Roger Friedman
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jane fonda mug shot 263x300 Jane Fonda Will Put Mug Shot on MugsJane Fonda has always been brilliant at marketing, especially when the proceeds go to one of her causes.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jane created the workout videos and associated stuff to fund what she called the Campaign for Economic Democracy.

Over the last few years, Fonda has been instrumental in the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, or G-CAPP. Her involvement is a result of her relocation to Atlanta during her marriage to Ted Turner. But Fonda has always been a political activist, like it or not, on the cutting edge of humanitarian causes.

Now comes word that the two-time Oscar winner has authorized use of her famous mug shot from a false arrest in Cleveland during the 1970s. It’s going to be put on T-shirts, mugs (it’s a mug shot, after all) and other merchandise to raise money for G-CAPP.

The black-and-white picture shows Fonda, fresh from shooting ‘Klute’ with her trademark haircut of the time, fist raised in the air. At the time Fonda was wisely protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Now that image will morph into a defiant plea to teens to keep from making lasting mistakes.

Thanks to the picture, we know that it was taken on November 3, 1970. Fonda was 32 years old and weighed 126 pounds. She was, and is, five foot eight.

She writes in her blog about the arrest, which was for drug smuggling’hilarious, but that was the paranoia of the time, and the persistence with which the police and FBI pursued anti-war activists.

‘Headlines across the country had the story of me being jailed on suspicion of drug smuggling. I was released on bond and months later, after every pill had been tested in a lab (with taxpayers’ money!). The charges were dismissed and there were a few paragraphs hidden in the back of papers that they were vitamins, not drugs.’

The result of all the publicity was that the number of students who showed up for her appearances after that grew to as many as 10,000 at a time.

Fonda, by the way, will be at the Tony Awards this Sunday in New York (broadcast on CBS). She’s nominated for best actress in a play, ’33 Variations,’ by Moises Kaufman. She’s up against two actresses from ‘God’s Carnage’ and the two from ‘Mary Stuart.’ They all deserve to win, but my guess is that the two pairs cancel each other out, and Fonda takes the statue. She deserves it.

Jacko: L.A. Times Gets It Wrong

Roger Friedman
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Today’s article in The Los Angeles Times about Michael Jackson contained some of the worst reporting I’ve ever seen.

It was if the reporters just refused to do any research. Instead, they muddled a bunch of disparate facts. Let’s not let this story stand as the record for anything, OK?

I don’t know how they could have screwed up so much about Colony Capital LLC’s involvement with Jackson.

For one thing, Colony Capital and its chief, Thomas Barrack, only have the note on Neverland. They never had anything to do with Jackson’s main loans against his 50% ownership in Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Those loans were sold by Fortress Investment Group to a consortium of Barclays, HSBC, and Sony Music in 2007.

I don’t know if Barrack ever called his ‘old friend’Philip Anschutz about Jackson. But the truth is: AEG Live’s Randy Phillips tried to get Jackson to agree to perform at the O2 Arena in London as early as December 2007, when I reported it. That was at least a year before Colony and Barrack had anything to do with Jackson.

Barrack makes it sound like Jackson was living in a hovel in Las Vegas when he arrived and ‘saved’ him. Jackson was living in an expensive rental home at the time. He could have moved at any time back to Neverland, or to his parents’ home in Encino, if he didn’t like it.

The L.A. Times reporters obviously have done no research about Jackson’s newly former manager, Tohme Tohme. He is not a doctor. There is no record anywhere of him having been one. He told me directly that he is not ‘currently’ a licensed physician.

The L.A. Times reporters deftly stepped around Tohme’s assertion, on his website, that he’s an ambassador at large to the country of Senegal. The Senegalese U.S. embassy said to this reporter that they have no knowledge of him whatsoever.

There’s more about Tohme: Jackson blames him for the Julien’s Auctions debacle of this past winter, in which all of the Neverland possessions including its front gates were going to be sold to strangers. In the end, Jackson and Tohme were going to lose a court case with Julien’s.

Tohme came in with enough money at the 11th hour to stop the auction. But where he got the money remains a mystery, and who now has the key to the storage spaces is also up in the air.

Colony Capital’s interest in Jackson remains solely about Neverland, and the money they’ve paid to finance it. They hold the note. That’s it. They have simply nothing to do with Jackson’s concerts in London. In 2008, when Fortress called the note on Neverland, it was almost sold at auction. Colony Capital stepped in at that time. They advanced Jackson several million dollars at the time as part of the refinancing.

The L.A. Times reporters seem to think that John Branca helped Michael to buy a 50% stake in the Beatles catalog. In fact: Branca and Jackson bought ATV Music, which contained the Beatles catalog. They merged it with Sony’s music publishing division a few years later because Jackson needed cash. The new deal gave him $90 million and a half-ownership in the new entity, called Sony ATV Music Publishing. Jackson now has loans nearing $400 million secured by his position in that company.

What the L.A. Times doesn’t seem to get: Jackson currently has no official manager or entertainment lawyer. Tohme has been cut off from access to the pop star. Also apparently out is Peter Lopez, the lawyer who did deals for Jackson for the last year. Arfaq Hussain, who the article notes was jailed for four months, is simply assisting the production in London. Jackson, as of now, still has no home rented for his stay. Nothing has met with his approval.

The L.A. Times took a turn at trying to sort out a lot of material that I’ve reported on extensively. What they didn’t grasp is that the yawning gap between Jackson and solvency grows every day, that the only thing that keeps him afloat is that 50% ownership in Sony ATV, and that no matter what he makes from the O2 shows, whether he does one, two, 50, or 100, he is capable of spending as fast as it comes in.

Katie Melua Takes New York

Roger Friedman
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Have you heard of’Katie Melua? Perhaps if the airwaves weren’t cluttered with junk, you would know this 24 -year-old’s clear and vibrant voice. She’s a musical descendant of’Stevie Nicks and’Natalie Merchant. Last night the 24 year old from Georgia (in Russia, not Atlanta), who was raised in Belfast and London, wowed a packed house at the Highline Ballroom. She’s on an acoustic tour of America, not to be missed.

Melua sang songs from her new live album, played guitar and piano (standing, hello!) and was basically very impressive. Melua’s on’Mike Batt’s very cool indie label, Dramatico, which is distributed in the U.S. by Universal (of course).

At last night’s show, Melua’who is cute as a button and tiny, with a huge pile of brunette locks’sang several songs from her American release, “Pictures,” including “Sailboat”’-which should be on the radio, and “What I Miss About You,” which was lovely.

She also has a song about’silent film legend Mary Pickford that name-checks the movie stars who created United Artists in th3 1930s’Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and’D.W. Griffith. UA should build a whole campaign around it. It’s much nicer than “Valkyrie.”’ Check out this video for more info on that.

One poignant note: there were a lot of Georgians in the audience last night. They all sang along to a Russian song at the end of the show, very quietly, in and out of tune. They all know about her and are very proud.

Jay-Z in Record Cliffhanger

Roger Friedman
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Something funny ‘ and I don’t mean humorous ‘ in the world of hip-hop magnate Jay-Z. Sony Music thinks they’re signing to distribute his latest album, “The Blueprint 3,” for their Epic label. But yesterday, the fun folks at Warner Music Group planted a story in a New York Daily News gossip column that they were secretly negotiating with Jay-Z to do the same thing. The story was so glowing about WMG that it was a bit hard to swallow: Why would smart Jay-Z want to go where no hits exist? WMG has even had trouble delivering on Green Day’s new album.

jay z 300x214 Jay Z in Record CliffhangerBut there’s more: Jay-Z bought back this CD from Universal Music Group for $5 million after making an overall deal with Live Nation. With Live Nation, Jay-Z ‘ real name Shawn Carter ‘ is partners in everything including his Roc Nation label.

But Live Nation, which has deals with Madonna, U2, Nickelback, and Shakira, is not a record label. It’s a concert promoter. For example, with U2, Live Nation is also in business with Universal’s Interscope to release U2 albums. This means that the other acts ‘ including Madonna ‘ will need similar deals to put out albums. Madonna and Nickelback have each left Warner, so their deals will presumably be elsewhere or otherwise.

In Jay-Z’s case, he and Epic’s Amanda Ghost share a manager. Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce Knowles, is a Sony star. So making the Sony-Epic deal seems right. Joining Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles at WMG does not.

(Cohen, by the way, celebrated WMG’s lack of chart hits last week by going to the Cannes Film Festival with girlfriend Tory Burch. Cannes, he didn’t seem to know, is a FILM festival, mostly in French, and so having nothing to do with the AMERICAN RECORD business. WMG stockholders would do well to check that expense account. Hotel rooms for CEOs during the festival start at $1,000 a night.)

But the Jay-Z/WMG story had its desired effect, moving the recently miraculously and mysteriously revived WMG stock up 16 cents to close yesterday at $6.52. In February, when the company had just as few hits, the stock bottomed out at $1.74.

Jacko Nanny Starts Her Own Charity

Roger Friedman
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Grace Rwaramba, the Neverland office assistant who worked her way up to being the nanny for’Michael Jackson’s kids, has started her own charity.

Rwaramba has just put up a website named for the cause, World Accountability for Humanity. Yes, it’s a mouthful, and a little highfalutin’ considering once you get there. it’s not completely clear what’s going on.

Grace ‘ who’s been a surrogate mother to’Prince, Paris and Blanket Jackson ‘ does reveal a little about herself. Whether or not it’s completely true is another story altogether. But she does say she was born in Uganda, not Rwanda, as previously thought. She was sent to live with older siblings in the U.S. when she was small, and attended a boarding school in Connecticut. She says she received a B.A. in Business Administration from Atlantic Union College.

She did turn up at Neverland circa 1994, where she worked in the office. In short order, she was caring for Prince, Jackson’s first child with’Debbie Rowe. By the time Rowe had Paris, Grace was the full-time nanny.

jacko 203x300 Jacko Nanny Starts Her Own CharityAn email sent through the website to Rwaramba yesterday was not answered. I did ask her how and where and for what purpose she was collecting money.

Most of the information on World Accountability ‘ or WAFH ‘ is vague. It seems to be about “transparency for donors and recipients.” I’m not sure if the donations are transparent, or the people giving or getting the money. In the past, Rwaramba’s critics have said, however, they could see right through her. In columns at foxnews.com, I wrote often about how the nanny isolated Michael Jackson from his family, including his beloved mother. When Jackson appeared drugged or woozy, Rwaramba was often blamed by insiders and observers on the scene for his condition.

It’s certainly interesting that since Grace is gone (to recall an unfortunate movie title), Jackson appears mostly well and is working on his London concerts.

Here’s my idea for Grace, and anyone interested in helping people in the Third World: I’ve put up a link on this page (to the left) for’Kiva. This is a wonderful organization that lends money to Third World entrepreneurs. They make sure the money arrives, and gives a full accounting of where it’s been used. It’s an in-place, working charity. Rather than start yet another new bureaucracy, why not explore Kiva instead?

As for Jackson, he continues rehearsing for his shows.

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