News & Reviews

.45: All the author and DJ gossip that’s unfit to publish!
by BPM Smith

This week’s hot gossip involves San Francisco Bay Area author Terry McMillan, who reportedly got her groove on with the wrong man -- and then married and divorced the gay inspiration of her best-selling novel, How Stella Got her Groove Back. Meanwhile, rumor has it that a certain star Drum & Bass DJ from the UK enraged his American counterparts by sabotaging one crew’s party.

We don’t know who’s more desperate, the broke islander or the author!

Let’s see: Rich forty-something author meets broke 20 year-old while on vacation in Jamaica, brings the guy back to America and marries him. Author writes a novel about her sizzling love life and Chic Lit fans eat up the affair-with-a-young-islander story. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the real life ending is a train wreck: The islander, Jonathan Plummer, is as gay as Boy George and married Terry McMillan for U.S. citizenship and a chance at her millions of dollars.

Now that a local court ordered McMillan to pay her boy toy $2,000 per month while it determines how to hash out this mess, perhaps Terry has found other ways to get over her mid-life crisis. Plummer is trying to scuttle the pre-nup, which could result in a very expensive six-year fling. This sad story reminds us to never hit Danville, which is apparently an escape community for one-time San Franciscans who’ve gotten rich and batty.

Q not A!

Which major publishing house, perhaps jealous of St. Martin’s heavy media coverage after it published beautiful 18 year-old New Yorker Amanda Marquit’s novel Shut The Door, is countering with its own blonde 18 year-old’s novel? No word on deal terms or a publication date, but we expect this debut sometime in 2006. The author is currently in re-writes... Which popular Break Beat DJ fell face first on his mixer in the middle of a club performance? While performing one of his famous iron man sets, this decade-long veteran got thirsty and asked for a glass of water. Someone handed him a cup of "vodka" that turned out to be the dreaded date rape drug GHB. Since emerging from the blackout, he has "sworn off underground club" gigs.

If DJ Fresh is a diva then is Drum & Bass far behind?

In the WTF department, message boards were aflutter after this year’s Winter Music Conference with rumors that DJ Fresh terrorized an American crew of Drum & Bass DJs in Miami by repeatedly pulling the needle of their records during a late night party. Supposedly, Fresh would then plop one of his own records on the turntable. When he nearly caused a riot -- one party promoter threatened to duct tape Fresh and throw him in a car trunk -- he kept saying, "But I’m DJ Fresh!"

Okay, if it’s true then bad on Fresh. Having once dealt with a drunken party-goer who tried grabbing our needle during a set last year, we know that you can’t ruin an event with the only appropriate response: a KO beatdown. Who wants to associate with a DJ who' known for knocking out Fresh, right? But it doesn’t change our opinion on his skills as a producer/DJ. Judging by Fresh’s Bass Invaders album that he released earlier this year, he brings the skills to pay the bills. Besides, if you can show us one DJ who hasn’t done idiotic things while drunk, we’ll sell you the Golden Gate Bridge. For cheap!

Let’s just hope Fresh was on a one-night tear and it's not a sign of increased diva behavior in the electronic music scene. After all, we don’t want to go through what hip hop has submerged into, namely a bunch of no-talent posers basking in financial success and artistic failure.

Selling out has made P. Diddy totally mad!

Hip hop is a one-time "underground" genre that today is so far from its urban roots that P. Diddy has morphed into a pin-striped suit wearing clown. This wanna-be monarchist reportedly had his goons wrangle up women while drinking Cristal in the VIP section of last weekend’s Maxim Magazine party at the Borgata Hotel Casino. He also sent club "ambassadors" scrambling to set up a "hyper VIP" platform that was off limits to the other VIPs. Meanwhile, nobody mentioned what DJs actually performed at the party.

See the parallel? VIP rooms are ruining the DJ scene as club-goers emphasize bottling services and private lounge areas. The "scene" has moved away from the music. Half the time these wanna-be ravers don’t even know which DJs are spinning. Meanwhile, Drum & Bass, House and Downtempo producers are selling their tracks to television, a medium that's categorically for mental midgets. After seeing a Propellerhead track play in a Jaguar TV ad, we will never again set one of their records on our decks.

Journalist gets publishing deal based on day job ho-hum!

We’ve been around journalists for most of our career. After all, our day job’s title is called News Editor. A big percentage of reporters wanted to become authors but then find that being a broke artiste doesn’t pay off student loans, so they end up writing for pay in the media. BPM Smith doesn’t fall in that category, does he? Anyhow, the latest journalist to cash out is the New York Post's Danica Lo, who this week got HarperCollins to publish How Not to Look Fat, a book inspired by her work for the tabloid. The Post reports that Trident Media Group agent Melissa Flashman closed the six-figure deal for her.

Norman Mailer brawls NYC media!

Also in New York, it’s amusing to see that old school novelist Norman Mailer still has some fight in him, judging by the brass knuckles he’s been using to brawl with New York’s famously carnivorous newspapers. First he rants about The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani’s savage reviews of his books, calling her an "Asiatic" then he denies speculation at Page 6 that it’s all a ploy to keep the "Kamikaze" from trashing his work. Last we heard, a group of Asian American community activists had demanded an apology. How's that for an "author platform?"

Maybe you're wondering what ever happened to the "all publicity is good publicity" theory. Oh yeah, we learned during our prior life in public relations that it’s a myth pushed by desperate pseudo celebrities. Only positive book reviews are good, and if you’re dealing with a pampered, big-name author you’d better get out the baseball bat.

PS: Big ups to Naomi for teaching us "relaxation techniques" this week, Abdul for being our studio sidekick for the past three years, and of course Lyndsay Lohan for being fine.

.45 is a new column from WORD’N’BASS.com Editor BPM Smith, who needs some comic relief from covering straight news. He is a financial reporter for a global news wire, Drum & Bass DJ, and author of 1.65 "gritty and engaging" novels. E-mail him your comments, gossip or shout-outs at editor@wordnbass.com

 

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