Latest news with #Madge
South Wales Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Guardian
Concern as Amman Valley pub set to host summer festival
Wing & Prayer Sports Bar on Cwmamman Road will host Garnant Music Festival from August 14 to August 17. However, Cllr Kevin Madge has claimed he and Ammanford Town Council were not consulted about the pub hosting the festival, which some residents are opposed to due to the potential for heavy drinking, loud noise and anti-social behaviour. Wing & Prayer Sports Bar will host the four-day Garnant Music Festival. (Image: Google Maps) Cllr Madge said: 'I have public safety concerns over Garnant Music Festival. I'm not against having places for young people to go but I'm against this pub having a license to stay open until half past two in the morning. 'I've been told the pub will have 15 bouncers and that there will be 499 people in the car park. That's a lot of people. It's ridiculous. What's going to happen when they are performing outside the estate all night long with residential areas all around it? 'A lot of residents at Cwmamman Road are going to be affected. There are going to be parking problems and people are concerned about the level of disturbance. When you bring a lot of people into an area, there's always going to be problems. 'There will be music in the car park, and this will affect a lot of people. It's a residential area. Many people are going to come, and will police be able to police it properly? I am concerned about the disturbance to people who live in the surrounding area.' Cllr Kevin Madge believes the festival will cause noise disturbance to the surrounding neighbourhood. (Image: File photo) According to Cllr Madge, the pub has been granted a temporary license for the festival, but the event threatens to make an ongoing problem with anti-social behaviour in the Garnant neighbourhood even worse. He continued: 'People have also been drunk and walking through the nearby park late at night. When people have been drinking all day, they are going to cause a disturbance. I am not happy about this event happening. 'The environmental officers have said there is not enough people complaining about the pub to be denied a license. I'm getting a lot of complaints from residents, but they need to make their complaints to the authorities. People need to report it. 'The pub reopened eight to nine months ago. There's a lot of noise in the area and the police have been going back and forth.' Wing & Prayer Sports Bar was approached for a comment.
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Veronica Electronica by Madonna: Lost album is like a postcard from the edge of the rave era
Madonna Artist : Veronica Electronica Label : Warner From Taylor Swift to Beyoncé , pop star reinventions are a dime a dozen nowadays. But that was not the case in February 1998, when Madonna ended a four-year recording silence with her career and zeitgeist-defining seventh album, Ray of Light. This was Madge reborn, transfigured, lifted up and unshackled from her previous image as tweaker of taboos and scourge of moralists. It was also helpfully stocked with bangers – from the Tori Amos / Fiona Apple -flavoured ballad Frozen to an effervescent title track that pulsated with the joyous abandon of an evening spent raving your socks off. Eager to make the most of her return to prominence, Madonna had planned to follow Ray of Light with an ambitious remix LP, given the working title Veronica Electronica (named for the persona Madonna had adopted while toiling in the studio with producer William Orbit). However, as Ray of Light became a phenomenon, plans for a spin-off were shelved, for fear it would encroach on the success of the original record. Twenty-seven years later, Madonna's career is in a different place. There has been ongoing chatter about a biographical movie starring Julia Garner as the young Madge. However, that project is now apparently to be reworked into a Netflix series (with Garner seemingly no longer involved). READ MORE She has also been on the receiving end of unkind – and often sexist and ageist – reviews for 2019's Madame X. The accompanying tour was controversial more for its tardy start-time than for anything Madonna got up to on stage. Having once scandalised the world with her raw sexuality, now Madonna was only getting headlines because she didn't know how to operate an alarm clock. There's never been a better moment, then, for an outpouring of foot-to-the-floor Madonna nostalgia, and that is precisely what the fun, boisterous and belatedly unleashed Veronica Electronica delivers. Along with that, it is a great time capsule that brings the listener back to the heyday of the superstar DJ. This was a glorious age when remixes were less sad cash-ins than conceptual opuses, invariably conjured by figures such as producer and deck-spinner Sasha, who overhauls Ray of Light opener Drowned World/ Substitute of Love – inspired by the fun JG Ballard novel, The Drowned World – and whips it up into a supersized rave odyssey. There isn't much variety across Veronica Electronica, which more or less follows the running order of Ray of Light (the title track reworked into a rigorously OTT onslaught by Sasha). Two previously unreleased tunes, The Power of Good-Bye and Gone Gone Gone, are in a similar vein to the pre-existing material, and it is surprising to hear the latter was originally omitted because Madonna felt it jarred with the project's overall vibes. Ray of Light caught Madonna at a crossroads. She'd given birth to her first child, Lourdes Leon, in 1996 and was preparing to play the title in Alan Parker's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. [ Distressing news about Elton John and Madonna. We don't get too many cask-strength feuds any more Opens in new window ] She had, moreover, become immersed in the Jewish esoteric belief system of Kabbalah – events that led to a period of self-questioning and a desire to move forward as an artist. 'That was a big catalyst for me,' she told Q magazine in 2002. 'It took me on a search for answers to questions I'd never asked myself before.' She was also pushing herself as a vocalist – a consequence of the singing lessons she took for Evita and which can be heard on the epic remix of Frozen, where Madonna's delivery has the quality of a storm rising over ocean waters. 'I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realised there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn't using,' she told Spin in 1998. 'Before, I just believed I had a minimal range and was going to make the most of it. Then I started studying with a coach.' Madonna was eager, too, to tap into the energy of 1990s electronic music – which led her to collaborate with synth-pop artist turned producer Orbit. Yet, though their alliance would prove enormously fruitful, it was not a straightforward collaboration. Orbit was a bit of a lost soul and initially thrown by Madonna's ferocious work ethic. 'She's a fabulous producer,' he would later tell the Guardian. 'When it says 'produced by Madonna and William Orbit', people don't always give her the credit for that. But she's as responsible as me.' Among Madonna fans, Veronica Electronica has long been regarded as the ultimate lost album and news of its release has been greeted with joy. But even an agnostic will find lots here to enjoy. It's a postcard from the edge of the rave era and an eloquent love letter to pop at its purest and most euphoric.
New York Times
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Three Off Broadway Shows, They're Coming Out and Out and Out
For decades, describing a boy or a man as 'artistic' was a way to imply they did not fit the accepted heterosexual mold. Of course the expression's double meaning could be literal, as illustrated by recent coming-of-age shows in which the narrators are both gay and, well, artistic. (As for lesbians, they have long been called 'handy' — bring on the tool belts.) Douglas Lyons and Ethan D. Pakchar's 'Beau the Musical' follows many of the conventional signposts of the 'growing up different' genre. As a 27-year-old, Ace (Matt Rodin) revisits his middle and then high school years, when he navigated an affair with his bully, Ferris (Cory Jeacoma); figured out how to better understand his mother, Raven (Amelia Cormack); and reconnected with a once-estranged grandfather, Beau (Chris Blisset), who had secrets of his own. Josh Rhodes's production for Out of the Box Theatrics, through July 27 at Theater 154 in Manhattan, goes how you'd expect a story involving same-sex attraction in Tennessee to go: clandestine trysts, self-loathing, violent encounters, art (in this case music) as an outlet and escape. This is well-trod terrain, but Lyons has a flair for recycling tropes, as he did in his popular comedy 'Chicken and Biscuits.' And Rodin, who played a gay teacher in the musical 'All the World's a Stage' this spring, gives a warm portrayal of someone trying to find his place through music-making. The bulk of 'Beau the Musical' takes place over the late 1990s and early 2000s, while Rob Madge's autobiographical 'My Son's a Queer (but What Can You Do?)' largely looks back at events from the 2000s and 2010s, when Madge, who identifies as nonbinary, was growing up. The shows' time frames overlap somewhat, but the experiences they depict are starkly different. A British production that had a five-performance run at New York City Center in June, 'My Son's a Queer' is a portrait of a child who was unconditionally loved and accepted, even when bossing their father around in a D.I.Y. Disney tribute — which we see because the Madges were fond of making home videos. Everybody in the family supported young Rob's artistic-ness, both literal and euphemistic: Granny Grimble made them a Maleficent costume, and when problems erupted at school ('not the best of times,' the adult Rob says in a rare display of understatement), their mother took a job as a 'lunch lady' to keep watch. Madge revisits those years with unflagging, if solipsistic, brightness — the young Rob often asks their parents, 'Are you filming?' and a robust ego seems to have been a constant. The downside is that the City Center performance I saw did not always bear out Madge's confidence in their talent, with performances of original songs (written with Pippa Cleary) that rarely rose above adequate. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Is this week's UK heatwave linked to climate change?
As the UK prepares for a heatwave this week, there is a 50/50 chance of a day where temperatures reach 40C within the next 12 years, the Met Office has predicted. It said the prospect of exceeding that figure is now more than 20 times more likely than it was in the 1960s, as a result of climate change. The UK had its first recorded temperature above that threshold on 19 July 2022, when it was 40.3C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire — the hottest day in British history. And while temperatures will not get that high this week, the Met Office has said a heatwave is likely in many parts of England, with a maximum of 33C forecast in the east on Sunday. Met Office spokesperson Grahame Madge told Yahoo News that warm air driven from southern Europe later this week will make it very warm in the UK. 'This week the UK will experience rising temperatures," he said. "Later in the week, a weather pattern develops which will encourage a flow of air from further south in Europe to bring much warmer conditions to the UK, with values expected to reach 32C on Saturday.' The Met Office said much of the UK will reach the threshold for a heatwave either on Friday or Saturday. To qualify as a heatwave, there must be three continuous days of temperatures at a certain level, which varies by area in the UK. Madge said: 'A heatwave is a period of three days or more where the maximum temperature reaches or exceeds a specific threshold. 'This threshold is 25C for northern and western parts of the UK, rising to 28C for Greater London and parts of the Home Counties.' The Met Office predicted that the UK is likely to experience a hotter than usual summer in its most recent three-month outlook, after this year's spring was the sunniest and among the driest and warmest on record. Four of the five warmest summers on record for England have occurred since 2003, while all of the top 10 warmest years according to mean temperature have occurred since the year 2000, with five in the most recent decade up to 2024. Records extending back to 1890 show that the mean temperature (the average of the maximum and minimum temperature across every weather station through the year) has risen from just over 7.5C in 1890 to more than 9.5C today. Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, has made heatwaves 30 times more likely in the UK, the Met Office has said. Over time, this will make UK winters warmer and wetter, while summers will become hotter and drier, although wetter summers will be seen sometimes. By the year 2050, heatwaves similar to the one seen in 2018 will happen every other year. Met Office scientist Emily Carlisle said earlier this month: "The UK's climate continues to change. "The data clearly shows that recent decades have been warmer, sunnier, and often drier than the 20th century average, although natural variation will continue to play a role in the UK's weather.' In its study on 40C temperatures, published in Weather Journal on Wednesday, the Met Office warned that even higher temperatures of 45C or more "may be possible' in today's climate, while heatwaves could go on for a month or more. The study said the chance of temperatures hitting 40C is more than 20 times more likely than it was in the 1960s, and has almost trebled since the year 2000. Temperatures several degrees higher than the July 2022 record – up to a maximum of 46.6C – are also 'plausible'. Dr Gillian Kay, senior scientist at the Met Office and lead author of the study, said: 'Because our climate continues to warm, we can expect the chance to keep rising. We estimate a 50/50 chance of seeing a 40C day again in the next 12 years. 'We also found that temperatures several degrees higher than we saw in July 2022 are possible in today's climate.' The Met Office predicts that by the year 2070, summers will be between 1C and 6C warmer and up to 60% drier, and winters will also be up to 4.5C warmer and up to 30% wetter.
News.com.au
03-06-2025
- General
- News.com.au
Broncos' Problems Run Deeper Than Madge — And the Fix Is Right in Front of Them
Everyone's blaming Madge but it goes deeper than that. Tyson Jackson looks at what's really going wrong with the Broncos — and what they need to fix before 2025 completely slips away.
