Latest news with #IronButterfly
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic '80s Rocker Reveals Ghost of Eddie Van Halen Visited Him in His Hotel Room
Iconic '80s Rocker Reveals Ghost of Eddie Van Halen Visited Him in His Hotel Room originally appeared on Parade. It's not every day a rock legend says he shared a cigarette with the ghost of Eddie Van Halen. During David Lee Roth's Wednesday, August 13, show in Hampton Beach, NH, the legendary Van Halen frontman claimed he was recently visited by the ghost of Van Halen himself — though not in quite the same way his former bandmate, Sammy Hagar, once described. Back in 2022, Hagar shared with UCR that Van Halen had appeared to him in a dream, even gifting him a guitar riff. 'I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song. I used the f**kin' lick that he showed me in the song,' Hagar said at the time. That riff eventually became part of the track 'Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,' released nearly three years later. RELATED: Iconic '80s Rocker's Guitar Expected to Sell at Auction for Over $2 Million Roth, meanwhile, couldn't resist putting his own spin on the story. 'One of my esteemed colleagues, he's a contemporary, he's got a great voice, he's got a great catalog. You all know Sammy Hagar, right? He's got a great voice,' Roth, 70, told the crowd before recalling Hagar's ghostly tale. Then came his punchline: 'I don't know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me at the f**king hotel room. I was watching the weather report and he came in and he was laughing. His f**king ghost was laughing.' According to Roth, Van Halen told him the riff Hagar believed was a divine gift was actually just Iron Butterfly's 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' played backward. The bit drew laughter from the audience as Roth delivered it in the middle of performing 'Dance the Night Away.' But the moment ended on a more heartfelt note. Roth said he and Van Halen's ghost shared a cigarette, and he confessed, 'Man, do I f**king miss you.' Van Halen, he claimed, replied, 'I miss you too, Dave. But you know what? You should still go to hell.' Roth quipped back: 'Save me a seat.' Iconic '80s Rocker Reveals Ghost of Eddie Van Halen Visited Him in His Hotel Room first appeared on Parade on Aug 18, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 18, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mirror
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Iconic The Simpsons scene could have been very different if problem hadn't occurred
An all-time great joke from The Simpsons could have been very different, with showrunner and writer Bill Oakley sharing what the original end to the moment was meant to be An iconic scene in hit animated comedy series The Simpsons was meant to be very different, but one thing changed it. The legendary programme has been running since December 1989 and shows no signs of stopping, although fans would be the first to admit the quality has dropped off since the glory days. Even then, the show receives millions of views on each broadcast. Former writers for The Simpsons have since shared some behind the scenes bits and pieces, with one writer sharing a different ending was planned for an all-time great moment. Costs behind the scenes led to the joke being rewritten, and the scene is arguably better off without the original plan. Former showrunner and Simpsons writer Bill Oakley confirmed the show's use of the Iron Butterfly song, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, was because of song pricing. Another song had been in mind for the Season 7, Episode 4 release, Bart Sells His Soul, but the first choice was simply too expensive to warrant using. The hilarious scene where Bart Simpson switches the church organ music to the Iron Butterfly song was originally meant to feature a classic song from British rock band Led Zeppelin. Clearing the song would have been too expensive, and so the team opted for Iron Butterfly. Taking to X, Oakley wrote: "It was originally 'Stairway to Heaven' by Led Zeppelin but the music was too expensive so we had to go with this more obscure track." Fans believe the scene is better with the Iron Butterfly track and say it fits the moment perfectly. One user wrote: "Much better with Iron Butterfly." Another added: "This ended up being much better for comedy purposes." A third wrote: "This was the better choice. The song name is still biblical but not as obvious and the fact the real song is 17 minutes makes it way funnier than an 8 minute one. "Also for the longest time, I thought the song was called In the Garden of Eden until I looked it up." Other users have credited The Simpsons with keeping the Iron Butterfly song in popular culture. One user suggested: "I feel like I grew up thinking this song was more popular than it was because of this scene specifically." Another shared: "I never knew it was a real song until this moment." A third user suggested it added new depths to Bart Simpson, with many fans praising the writers for the last-minute switch. One fan wrote: "The fact that Bart seems so cultured in Rock Music to orchestrate such a stunt in the first place." Another added: "I think the alternative was for the best because having it be a 17 minute song makes the prank more hilarious."
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Yahoo
My favorite iOS 18.4 feature is ambient music — here's how to activate it
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plenty of software features on your phone promise to make you more productive, with iOS 18 boasting more than its share. But the iOS 18.4 update takes things a step further, adding a new capability that aims to bring a productivity-boosting soundtrack to your iPhone. Specifically, iOS 18.4 introduces an ambient music feature to the Control Center that lets you play tunes in the background. In addition to a productivity option, ambient music genres include "chill" for more relaxing tunes and "wellbeing," which seems geared toward being the soundtrack of any mindfulness or meditation sessions you engage in. Finally, a "sleep" mode includes sounds geared toward lulling you off to dreamland. My ears pricked up when I heard about the arrival of ambient music in iOS 18.4. That's because I'm always looking for ways to stay focused when I'm trying to complete a task, and music often plays a big role in that. I like to play music as I work, and since I work remotely, I don't have to worry about donning the best headphones to keep my taste in music from distracting others. So when it's time to hunker down and work on a project, I usually wind up launching the Music app on my Mac or iPhone, hitting the shuffle button and getting down to business while the randomized playlist goes from one song to the next. There's an issue with this approach, though. Because a lot of my work involves writing, I find that some times music can be a distraction, particularly when we're talking about songs with lyrics. It's not really helpful when I'm trying to describe some of the finer points of, say, Apple Intelligence, and all of a sudden "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" starts playing, distracting a part of my brain that's trying to explain how to get the most out of Writing Tools to instead focus on whatever the hell it is Iron Butterfly is singing about. True, I could create a playlist of instrumental songs, saving me the embarrassment of inadvertently transposing the lyrics of "She's a Rainbow" when I'm writing about iPhone 16 color options. But since I like a variety of audio playing in the background, it'd have to be a very long playlist. And why go through the trouble of creating a playlist when Apple can do it for me? That's the promise of ambient music — it can play in the background, doing just enough to stimulate the brain with particular beats and rhythms optimized for specific tasks like productivity or relaxation, without making you think about lyrics or artists or who opened for Guns N' Roses on the Appetite for Destruction tour. It's a solution long discovered by people like my wife who plays ambient music via YouTube when she needs to concentrate on a task, but now it's right there on my iPhone, giving me a convenient way of trying ambient music for myself. To access ambient music in iOS 18.4, you're going to want to start in the Control Center section of your iPhone. Just swipe diagonally from the upper right corner of the home screen to bring up Control Center. You're going to need to customize Control Center in iOS 18 to add ambient music controls. Press and hold anywhere on the screen to edit Control Center, and then tap Add a Control at the bottom of the page. On the subsequent screen, scroll down to the Ambient Music section, and then select the particular genre you want to add to the Control Center — Sleep, Chill, Productivity or Wellbeing. You can add one or even multiple controls if you have the space. Once you've got an ambient music control in the Control Center, all you have to do is tap on that control any time you want to play music in the background. You can then pause or stop the music using your iPhone's regular playback controls. If you really enjoy ambient music, you can use the ability to customize lock screen controls in iOS 18 to add an ambient music control to the bottom of your lock screen. That way, you can just control music playback from there. With the iOS 18.4 public beta installed on my phone, I've been trying out most of the different ambient music genres, with a particular focus on the Productivity tunes. (I haven't played anything from Sleep, as I don't need any help falling asleep these days — and certainly not during work hours.) The genres sound pretty distinct to my ears. Productivity offers a very synthesized sound, with steady, rhythmic beats that are clearly intended to keep you pounding away at the work in front of you while Chill has much more mellow tone. The Wellbeing sound relies heavily on piano, to the point where it sounded like the kind of ambient music that plays in the waiting room a funeral parlor. I'm not sure if that would contribute to my sense of well-being. As for the Productivity tunes, I certainly never felt the urge to glance at the playback controls on my iPhone to see if there was an artist or title to the song. (If I had, all I would have seen would be a generic title like "Momentum Beats.") In that sense, iOS 18's Ambient Music feature is serving its purpose — fill the air with enough sound to keep my brain stimulated but not to the point of distraction. If I have one complaint about Ambient Music, it's that you have to set different controls for the different genres — there doesn't appear to be any way to toggle from Productivity over to, say, Chill without setting up separate controls in the Control Center. If you're really into ambient music, that's a lot of space to devote to one feature. Ambient music is available on any phone that can run iOS 18.4. It's not Apple Intelligence-specific as so many new features are these days, so anyone with an older iPhone can enjoy just as easily as an iPhone 16 owner. Not everyone's going to embrace the feature, not even music lovers. If you don't find background music to be particularly helpful for your state of mind, then Ambient Music won't have much to offer you. But if you are like me and need something playing as you work, this is definitely an iOS 18 feature you need to try. iOS 19 risks turning Apple Intelligence into the new Siri — and that's not good Apple CarPlay just got a welcome upgrade in iOS 18.4 iPhone 16e vs iPhone 17: Everything we know so far
