Albarn finds new focus after Blur

Michael Deacon reviews The Good, the Bad and the Queen at Trinity Centre Bristol

Damon Albarn is a Chelsea fan, and there's something of Roman Abramovich about the supernova line-up he leads out on the opening night of its first tour.

Strutting and posing with lapels upturned is Paul Simonon, the bassist in the Clash; beaming behind him is Fela Kuti's Tony Allen, exalted by Brian Eno as "the greatest drummer who ever lived". Staring combatively ahead is Simon Tong, the rhythm guitarist in the Verve: Albarn's less glamorous but solid signing, his Makelele.

Together they're The Good, the Bad and the Queen, or, strictly, the band that's just released an album of that title (they're officially anonymous; Simonon has declared that band names are merely for the young and "insecure").

Supergroup, however, isn't quite the word for them. What we're really hearing, as Saturday's Bristol gig makes clear, is a solo singer-songwriter who just happens to have assembled an almost superfluously gifted backing band. No doubt about it, these are Albarn's songs – looser, less glossy expansions on the kind of ballad he wrote in Blur.

The other three musicians adjust their own styles to fit in. For all their pedigree, here they look virtually like Albarn's staff, his personnel – or like ducklings, paddling obediently behind their mother. It's a curious move, recruiting a rhythmic genius like Allen just to pat diligently along to tunes as unfunky as most of these; like hiring Michelangelo to creosote the garden fence.

But all that matters, as Abramovich would say, are results – and tonight sees an assured away win. A stately Kingdom of Doom, an aptly lush Green Fields and, at the end, a joyfully scrappy cover of Guns of Brixton, sung – or, more accurately, muttered – by Simonon.

It's often been asserted that Albarn's music lacks soul. Perhaps his critics accidentally fast-forwarded through Blur's This Is A Low, Out of Time, No Distance Left to Run, Yuko and Hiro and To The End. Or perhaps what they mean – with a touch more reason – is that Albarn's lyrics don't quite extend to misery; he's written plenty of songs about break-ups and breakdowns, but their mood tends to be resigned rather than distraught.

This is true of his latest lyrics, about Iraq, the tsunami, a fearful London. But his heart's there – if not obviously enough in the words, then without question in his increasingly rich voice.

At 38, Albarn is no longer the Britpop pin-up. His eyes are ringed with grey, that guilty-wolf grin is missing a tooth, and his hair looks suspiciously like it's been combed forward over his temples. But in yet another band he's found new energy and life.

John Galliano's journey from Streatham to superstardom

Those who do not know John Galliano must have an extraordinary perception of the man. His public persona is as vivid, varied, mannered and constantly changing as any actor on a stage.


John Galliano's public persona is vivid and varied
Where other couturiers take a bow or proffer a polite wave, Galliano's event on the catwalk has become a fashion moment in itself. One season he is dressed as an astronaut, the next as a flamenco dancer, pirate or boxer. The hair sometimes as blond as Donatella Versace's or tucked beneath a trilby or bandana, and the make-up (kohled eyes a given), are all part of the role.

Last Monday in Paris – at the end of his extraordinary pageant that was the Christian Dior spring/summer 2007 haute couture collection, marking his tenth year at the house and its 60th anniversary – was no exception.

The show encapsulated Japanese history and culture in 45 set-pieces, each as exquisitely worked as ink brush on rice-paper and as precise as lai-jitsu, the ancient art of drawing the sword.

The muse was Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Galliano took his bow as a customised Lieutenant Pinkerton, complete with sword, but added his own Napoleonic tricorn and riding boots.

advertisementIt was a fitting conclusion to the modern-day fairytale that is Galliano's own life, the story of the plumber's son from south London who became the saviour of 21st-century haute couture.

Off-stage, Galliano, who has a long-term boyfriend, can be quite shy, and emphatically rubbishes the notion he is grandstanding. His own catwalk appearance is, he says, a final gesture signifying that his work on a collection is over, freeing him up for the next.

"I live, breathe and drink in the world that is each collection. I immerse myself until I become it. Going on the catwalk is the end of the creative process. And don't forget, I've got to go on after all those girls looking totally fabulous. I have to make the effort."

Galliano's early upbringing was every bit as exotic as his catwalk shows are today. Born in Gibraltar of a Gibraltarian father and Spanish mother, his early schooling was in Spain, via Tangiers, where the souks, sights and smells made a profound impression. Although the family moved to Streatham when Galliano was six, his colourful background continued to exert an important influence. He remembers dancing the flamenco on the kitchen table and how he and his two sisters were always immaculately dressed up, even for trips to the shops – in stark contrast to the other children.

It wasn't until he was 16 and began studying design, first at City and East London College and subsequently at Central Saint Martin's fashion college, that he found his milieu.

As a student, he worked briefly for tailor Tommy Nutter, backstage as a dresser at the National Theatre and became a key player in the Soho Club scene, where he met, among others, the milliner Stephen Jones, who makes the hats for his shows to this day.

His graduate collection, in 1984, Les Incroyables, a blend of French Revolution ragamuffins and London street style, made him an overnight star. Joan Burstein of London boutique Browns put the collection in her windows. It was a sell-out. In subsequent London Fashion Week shows and, later, Paris, he astounded with ingenious deconstruction, raw edges, trailing hems, inside-out clothes, extravagant bias-cutting, bizarre accessories. Creatively, he could do no wrong. Commercially, it all went wrong and Galliano lost two backers, neither of whom really understood him, in a decade.

It was only in the mid-1990s, when American Vogue's Anna Wintour, a Galliano devotee, mounted a rescue campaign in Paris to secure new financial help, that Galliano finally found solid ground. His shows, each one a magical tour into the private world of his imagination, and staged in garages, rooftops and turn-of-the-century theatres, brought him to the attention of the all-powerful fashion tycoon Bernard Arnault. He gave Galliano the job at Givenchy and then, two seasons later, offered him the golden scissors at France's couture flagship, Christian Dior.

Last Monday's collection was Galliano's 20th couture presentation for the house, the climax of a decade of sumptuous catwalk cavalcades inspired by Tibetan princesses, Jeanne d'Arc, Henry VIII, long-dead eccentrics such as the Marchesa Luisa Casati, who took her pet leopards for walks along the canals of Venice, Masai warrior women, Ming dynasty empresses and Edwardian beauties. The collection was rumoured to cost in excess of €1 million.

There is no denying that the designs are examples of fantastical dreams made real with an opulence beyond avarice. To the average girl or woman in the high street, dressed in Topshop or Primark and shivering at a bus-stop on the way home, they must seem totally divorced from reality.

To Galliano, they are a labour of love and a laboratory. The collections keep beading and embroidery skills alive; young seamstresses are employed to learn alongside the petits-mains who have been working in the Dior ateliers for decades. They allow experimentation with hand-painting and printing, development of new fabrics, cutting and stitching techniques, all of which will filter down to the ready-to-wear collections and, ultimately, influence the high street.

More importantly, they are the beautiful behemoths that build the brand through the media, fuelling the mass-market appetite for bags, sunglasses, cosmetics and perfumes.

"It's like having 20 kids. I could never pick one that is a favourite. They are all special and part of the evolution of the house."

The evolution began the first day he walked into the famous maison on the Avenue Montaigne.

"It was the most thrilling day of my life. I couldn't afford a Dior suit then, I wore a second-hand jacket from Portobello and hid my dreadlocks under a black bandana. I met 700 people, me with my A-level French. I didn't sleep that night.

"It was quite daunting, but from the first I always felt as if I was fated to be here, almost as if it was my destiny. When I was a student, Christian Dior was my god."

We met in the studio-cum-showroom Galliano has made his personal fiefdom, an open-plan space with exposed brick walls covered with Japanese posters, archive Dior fashion shots, fragments of sketches and notes. One table is laden with a dozen albums crammed with Polaroids documenting the field-trip he and his team made to Japan. On another is a massive Ikebana arrangement of twisted wood and orchids.

Galliano's chef d'atelier, Rafael Illardo, is in the traditional white coat, but the rest of the studio team could be roadies on a rock and roll tour: ripped jeans, trainers, long hair or shaved crops, slogan T-shirts. Galliano is in a baseball cap printed with the word "Angel", a battered black velvet jacket, jeans and paint-splattered work boots.

"How could you not be excited?" he says as models dress-rehearse some of the finished designs. "It's like magic seeing it all come together.

"I see my role as an interpreter of Monsieur Dior and spend time in the archives trying to understand him. He was a lot more wild than people realise – one of his muses never wore knickers – and he was open to the influences of his time: music, politics, art. I think we are similar souls."

Apart from couture, Galliano designs ready-to-wear, pre-season and cruise collections, oversees the advertising, the look of the stores, the launch and direction of accessories, watches, eyewear, perfumes and cosmetics. Then there are his own-name collections – women's and menswear.

"I think I can safely say that I am the only designer who does all that. But I love it. I have fantastic support and an incredible team working with me."

Dior is one of the most lucrative luxury brands in the world. The number of boutiques has grown from 10 to 220 and expected revenue for last year for Christian Dior Couture, which includes ready-to-wear, menswear and accessories – but not cosmetics – is expected to be close to $1 billion.

"I think Monsieur Dior would be thrilled. I'd be upset if he wasn't. But there are times when I cannot believe it has been 10 years. I still pinch myself, every time I walk in here."

A bombshell from Gilbert & George

The themes of the veteran iconoclasts' new works are devastatingly simple: bombs, bombers, and bombing. They talk to Martin Gayford

In pictures: Gilbert & George

On Boxing Day this year, Gilbert & George went to a newsagent's to buy the morning paper.

Gilbert and George always wanted to be loved

"An old tramp – with a horrific smell – came in, dribbling," says George. "I felt it was so awful, someone going round like that at Christmas, that I said 'Good morning'. He said 'Good morning' back, and the shop assistant said, 'You don't know them.' He replied, 'They don't know me, but I knows them. They're famous artists and they've got an exhibition coming up at Tate Modern.' Extraordinary!"

Certainly, the fame of G&G seems to penetrate parts of the population that not all artists reach. But then, as they told me in their east London studio recently, many things have gone their way.

In the past it has been suggested that they were the godfathers of the Brit artists of the 1990s – now themselves established and occupying the middle of the art stage (G&G preferred, when asked, the role of "fairy godmothers"). "We even believe," says Gilbert, "that in some ways our vision of art has won. We used to be outsiders, and we aren't so much so now."

The fact that they are about to take over an entire floor of Tate Modern, plus other parts of the gallery, tends to confirm this claim. This G&G bonanza, modestly entitled Gilbert & George: Major Exhibition, will include a vast amount of work dating back as far as their early days.

It was in 1967 that George Passmore from Devon and Gilbert Proesch from the Italian Dolomites first met, at St Martin's School of Art, and decided that together they made up one artist. They first made an impression in the late 1960s as "living sculptures" – just themselves, alive in the gallery, their faces covered with metallic paint.

Now in their mid-sixties, they haven't changed much – though naturally they now look somewhat older, and in George's case, balder. Their capacity for exciting outrage remains undiminished – an exhibition last year entitled Was Jesus Straight? created, predictably enough, a furore. Even their suits are cut the same way as ever – weirdly out of fashion in the '60s and '70s, completely in tune with tailoring in the '90s, now looking slightly odd again.

G&G have moved with the times; they would argue that they have prophesied many developments. The notion of a breathing, sentient work of art was revolutionary 40 years ago. And their newest work, made especially for the exhibition, is, in a chilling fashion, equally attuned to the present age.

They have made six huge "Bomb Pictures" for the Tate show. Each consists of newspaper posters, collected and photographed over the past few years, containing the words "bomb" or "terror" or "bomber". "Together," Gilbert explains, "they create an amazing urban landscape. It's the best townscape an artist could do, with words. It's so simple and immediate. There's no need for us to say anything."

The six Bomb Pictures are horribly topical. G&G, like other Londoners, have to live with bomb threats and terror alerts; Aldgate Tube station, the scene of one of the July 7 attacks, is a few minutes' walk from their studio. But George says, "They are about past, present and future. London was bombed by Germans, IRA terrorists, and white supremacist homophobes as well as Al-Qaeda."

The pictures are intended as a commemoration, with the title of each – there is a 40-metre triptych entitled Bomb, plus Bombs, Bomber, Bombers, Bombing and Terror – written on a tombstone. "We think," adds George, "they are very powerful images. More and more they remind us of Lutyens – the Cenotaph, the war cemeteries."

The architecture of Lutyens is a characteristically unexpected G&G taste: they are connoisseurs of Edwardian London, which they have, equally characteristically, been exploring on foot, dressed in trademark G&G suits, still living sculptures after all these years.

London, in a complicated way, is their perennial subject. The point is made by the most surprising ingredient in the Bomb triptych. "Would you like to see the tallest living Londoner?" asks George. It turns out to be the London plane tree. G&G see the trees as a symbol of continuity. "In the past we've described them as our only living friends. We realised more and more that they are completely ignored, like the chewing gum on the pavement."

"Also," Gilbert adds with relish, "the seeds hanging down from the branches look like bullets, or hand grenades."

That is typical of the unique G&G angle on the natural world. So too is the fact that, after making the Bomb Pictures, they researched the plane tree (G&G were particularly taken with the story of the Persian ruler Xerxes falling in love with a plane, to which he wrote an ode). A couple of huge planes – which, true enough, I hadn't noticed – tower over their studio in Spitalfields. In a way, all their work comes out of their immediate environment: east London. But then, they have always claimed that the place where they live is the most representative possible of the current, globalised world.

"If a spaceship landed and they said we've got five minutes to report on a typical Earth planet place, where shall we go, we'd say Spitalfields, Commercial Street, Brick Lane." George said that 12 years ago, and it's getting truer all the time.

But they bridle at the idea that Spitalfields, their home of 40 years, is becoming gentrified – though its 18th-century buildings are now lovingly restored and glossy magazines hold parties in them. "We still have squatters, robbers, prostitutes, and crows eating dead rats in the middle of the street every morning," says George with pride. And how do they feel about that? "We're thrilled. It's inspiring!"

Although their environment may retain an edge, some of their ideas have become mainstream. Even the Conservative Party, which they have doggedly supported through triumph and disaster, looks as if it might make a comeback. What, I ask, do they make of David Cameron? "We're all for him," says George, "we very much agree with him about hugging hoodies."

"Cameron's very good looking," Gilbert puts in. "He's from Eton, like Jay Jopling. Etonians are a bit extreme – outsiders in a way. They have been taught to be superior."

"There is," George adds, "a certain confidence about anyone who's been to Eton – or to Borstal."

You might say that, without having attended either establishment, G&G have those qualities, too. None the less, they have their vulnerable points. And they feel their Tate show is already stirring up resistance.

"The knives are already coming out. The critics are sharpening them." And G&G – in common with absolutely everyone, I suspect, no matter how established and famous – are highly sensitive to bad reviews. "We always try to stop it getting to us," says Gilbert. "But it does get to us."

"We once had an interviewer who insisted that we provoked reviewers deliberately," recalls George. "So I leaned across the table and said, 'By the way, you must be the most stupid interviewer we've ever had, and terribly unattractive too!' He turned pale, he was just completely destroyed. So then I said, 'I was just testing.' "

Still, even if not all the reviews are glowing, this spring looks like being a bit of a triumph for these veteran iconoclasts. Do they worry that all this acceptance will destroy their status as avant-garde outcasts? Not at all, says George. "We always wanted to be accepted and loved, but we never were. We always dreamt that we would wake up, go out and buy the newspaper and read, 'Gilbert & George are the most extraordinary artists who do the most amazing pictures'."

"All we want," they once announced, "is total love." But the recognition demonstrated by this exhibition is quite a lot to be going on with?

"Yes," says Gilbert. "We admit it!"

Gilbert & George: Major Exhibition opens at Tate Modern, London SE1 (020 7887 8888), on Feb 15.

Davos observer; Google’s new and old media

Even at Davos, Google does things with a certain (geekish) style. While other multinationals cram into anonymous meeting rooms (KPMG’s office is in a hotel hairdressing salon), Google’s temporary offices in Davos feature all-white furniture, mysterious sliding walls and a lava lamp. Despite such new media trappings, the subject that got the reporters gathered there for a press conference was what fate Google’s founders thought awaited their old media employers.

“I think the newspaper has a good future,” said Sergey Brin, as Larry Page said Google wanted to be friend not foe, sending new advertising revenues newspapers’ way. What about their own reading habits? “I get the New York Times on Sunday and it’s nice,” said Brin, before warning that digital displays would soon provide as good a reading experience as paper. “I’ll cleary pay to access” good news content, Page said reassuringly, only to admit: “I probably should pay for the Wall Street Journal but I don’t because it’s just a hassle.”

Bai Ling Reveals All About Her Sex Life

Chinese actress Bai Ling enjoys sex so much she wants to die while making love. The bisexual 36-year-old, who will appear in TV drama Lost later this year, is so obsessed with sex she sleeps with as many men and women as possible.

She says, "Anything you can imagine... I've done it! It's in my nature to just run wild and I do. I love being naked and I love men and women - especially when I'm drunk. Sex is the best high. I want to die making love because it feels so good."

Ling also admits she doesn't class one-night stands and serious relationships any differently, saying, "For me, a one night stand and a lifetime commitment are the same. There's a lot of beauty in different men. You can't see just one man. It's too hard to choose. Before I get married I think I should enjoy it. I don't live by the rules."

CSNY Prepping Film, CD From Controversial '06 Tour

BILLBOARD.COM: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are moving forward with a documentary film and live album from the quartet's Freedom of Speech '06 North American tour, both of which are expected to be released this year.

David Crosby tells Billboard.com that Neil Young is currently working on the film amidst his other well-chronicled archival projects that are due out this year, while all four are listening to show tapes for the CD. The documentary, he says, will be more ambitious than merely a concert film. "It's a movie that we'd take to the festivals and try to win with," Crosby notes.

"You've got to understand this was a pretty controversial tour," he adds, noting that the material from Young's politically strident "Living With War" album tended to have a polarizing effect on the crowds. "We had a lot of people who felt very strongly that we were speaking for them; when we would say the war (in Iraq) was a bad idea, they really, really loved it. There was also a very small minority of very vocal people who would say, 'You can't say that about George!' and get very upset and stomp out."

CSNY's film crew interviewed people from both camps, according to Crosby, as well as soldiers who had been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. "We brought them to the shows and asked them what they thought about (the war) and also got them to write songs," he reports. "We just talked to a lot of people all over the place about where America is right now, about what the significance is of this polarization that's taken place in this country, what's at stake and how they think it might play out.

"It's pretty critical stuff. We feel like the Constitution is pretty much on the line here, and so the movie, I think, will concern itself with all of those things."

There's no title or release date yet for the film or the live album, which Crosby says will be drawn from the 2006 shows and not incorporate any of the recordings CSNY made of its 2000 and 2002 tours. "We feel that this (tour) made a gel better than any of the others," he explains. "We finally got the right bass player and drummer and had some new material that was really special."

Crosby is preparing to tour Australia and New Zealand with Stephen stills and Graham Nash in February and early March, while he and Nash will play U.S. dates in the spring. A CSN tour is expected this summer, but Crosby says reports of another CSNY tour later this year are "news to me ... although nothing would make me happier."

Carma Sutra - The Auto-Erotic Handbook

Unbuckle your seatbelt for this, the first-ever manual of sex positions for in-car entertainment! Fully illustrated and packed with helpful, practical, model-specific advice, this glove-compartment-sized guide contains everything readers need to rev up their sex drive!

Features illustrations and advice for over 20 makes and models, from compacts and sedans to hybids and SUVs.

Includes two double-page gatefolds on taxi cab eroticism and limousine service.

Perfect for car lovers and lovers in cars alike.

Murder, He Wrote (Sort Of)

VANITYFAIR.COM: When O. J. Simpson's notorious memoir, If I Did It, was left on the cutting-room floor following a national outcry, the entire print run was carted off to the pulping machines. But at least one copy survived: Vanity Fair scored a pristine hardcover. Here are the juicy bits.

Blogger's Path to Cheap Media

SPIN.COM: By dropping cable service and picking up iTunes and Netflix, ZDNet blogger Alan Graham saves cash.

Alas, another notch in the media's ever growing belt, but this time the growth spurt was logged by consumers, not conglomerates. In an effort to save cash on annual media expenses and rid his household of the 80 or so channels he never views, ZDNet blogger Alan Graham bid cable television farewell and turned to iTunes and Netflix to satisfy all his media thirsts. By allocating $300 annually to the purchase of programs and films from the two companies, Graham found he was able to cut his previous annual cable bill in half and force readers to rethink the availability of media a la carte.

When will mass media outlets reform their platforms and offer tailored selective service? Well, not long. Premium cable channels and internet start-ups like Joost (read more) are well on their way.

Here's what blogosphere is saying about cable alternatives:

"I love The History Channel and ESPN. You can't download stuff like that." 70ny, digg.com

"Alan comes to the same conclusion that I did some time ago, cable television lacks bang for the buck." Randy, ditchingcable.com

"I don't think it's a good idea for me. I will miss a lot of content." cyclotron, cyclotron.livejournal.com

"I was thinking the same thing myself the other day. We use cable and DVR to watch a handful of shows, but for $2 a pop we could buy them on iTunes. The only remaining piece is a program that burns those shows to DVD effortlessly." Robbie, consumerist.com

"I don't know about this, what about breaking news? TV seems fit to deliver that much better." Joashh, laternerdz.com

"I don't know about this for me. While I don't watch the majority of channels being pushed into my home, I like having the ability to watch stuff. I watched a really interesting documentary on the History Channel last night, but I certainly wouldn't pay to download it." Ken Posan, consumerist.com

Talk: Abandon conventional TV for interactive and selective viewing? Will you take the step? COMMENT

On the Web

Coldplay Drafts Brian Eno To Produce Fourth Album

BILLBOARD.COM: Coldplay has drafted Brian Eno to produce its fourth album, Eno revealed today (Jan. 26) in an interview on BBC Radio 4's "Front Row". [Listen to the show here, ed.]. A Coldplay spokesperson was unavailable for comment at deadline.

Eno didn't discuss the pairing in detail, but said he expected the as-yet-untitled album "will be very original and very different from what they've done before." He also joked with host Kristy Lang about the pervasiveness of rock music that resembles former Eno client the Talking Heads.

"Funnily enough, I mentioned to David Byrne the other day that we are trying very hard to stay clear of Talking Heads," he said. Eno's most recent pop production project was Paul Simon's "Surprise," released last year via Warner Bros. [iTunes Link].


As previously reported, Coldplay will debut new material during a run of dates in Latin America, beginning with a Feb. 14-16 stand in Santiago, Chile. Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin also appears on "Homecoming, the intended first single from Kanye West's next album, "Graduation."

Walt: man or mouse?

Why EMI's woes hold the key to music's future

The music business has to get used to enterprising interlopers, says Neil McCormick

A bad week for EMI is proving a very good week for DIY. While the multi-national record company has been forced to issue profit warnings, dispense with the services of two chief executives, and embark on massive cutbacks in the wake of disappointing sales from its superstar roster, an unheralded three-piece punk band from Colchester have exploited new download chart rules to score a hit single without signing to any record company at all.

Koopa have neither record contract nor publishing contract
"We got this far with no money/and this is what real music sounds like," boast Koopa on cheerful punk-pop anthem, Blag, Steal and Borrow. It may not have the ring of a generation-defining classic, but the message should send a shiver through the music business.

The trio, aged between 19 and 22, have neither record contract nor publishing contract. Their do-it-yourself ethic excludes expensive videos and marketing campaigns. What they do have is a small but dedicated fan base and an early adopter's instinctive comprehension of the possibilities of the new media.

Having hired the services of savvy digital distribution company Ditto Music (www.dittomusic.com), who provide the paperwork and infrastructure to comply with chart rules for a small flat fee, they have propelled themselves to the perhaps not so giddy but still impressive heights of number 31 in the UK top 40 and, more importantly, laid a path for any enterprising musician to follow.

"To release a CD single you're looking at an outlay of £20,000," according to Ben Drury of 7Digital, the download store responsible for 95 per cent of Koopa's sales. "With downloads, the cost is virtually zero."

"This should really make the majors wake up and take notice of who is creeping in through the back door," according to Matt Parsons, founder of Ditto Music. "The top 40 is no longer the playground of the major record companies.

"It has been a hard time for young bands. There's a feeling that record companies are unwilling to invest in the long haul, the touring and the overheads, and they are signing fewer and fewer new acts. But my whole business is built on the notion that there are always far more unsigned bands than record company bands, and fans actually do want to be able to buy their music."

The problems facing EMI are shared by all the multi-national music companies (Warners, SonyBMG and Universal). Their business model is dependent on delivering multi-million-selling global hits for an elite band of superstar artists. But sales of recorded music are falling and choice is expanding, with a huge smorgasbord of free music available through the internet in forums that allow listeners to feel like a participant, not a consumer.

A new musical sub-culture is evolving. Such is the spirit of irreverent invention abroad, combined with the thrill of lateral connections and accidental discoveries, that social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube are starting to feel like a genuine alternative to the charts, and not just an adjunct to them.

The overall effect is one of almost absurd acceleration, where the journey from start-up, to release, to success (and perhaps also to disposability) is becoming increasingly compressed. And the independent sector – with its low overheads, flexibility and, perhaps crucially, its driving ethos of musical passion –looks best placed to take advantage of this rapidly changing landscape. Arctic Monkeys, last year's internet break-out, signed to independent label Domino on the basis that it could offer everything a major could, with added creative freedom.

Yet even the independents face a struggle turning the online boom into tangible sales. "Having a hundred thousand friends on MySpace is meaningless unless you've got people willing to spend money on your music," says Parsons. "It is not just about having an online presence; its about having a live presence as well, an actual fan base who turn up to your gigs."

Which is why many in the music business believe that live revenues and merchandising may, in the future, outweigh the importance of actual record sales.

EMI's problems, after all, have been blamed partly on the poor performance of Robbie Williams's latest album, which failed to take off despite the star staging the most popular (and lucrative) stadium tour in Europe in 2006.

Meanwhile, the music business has to get used to enterprising interlopers such as Koopa, bands who aren't just going to wait for the old powers-that-be to give them a break, but are prepared to seize the reins of the new media and force the pace of change.

Predictably, Koopa now find themselves fielding offers from a number of majors. If you can't do it yourself, the next best thing is to find someone who can.

'It's the coolest job in the world'

Justin Timberlake talks to John Hiscock about his teen-idol status – and his acting role in a gritty new crime film

For someone who knows he's about to be the lead item on the evening's television entertainment shows because of a revelation about his break-up with actress Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake doesn't look too upset.

A man of many talents: Justin Timberlake has now added acting to his impressive list of credentials
In fact, when we meet, he's cheery, upbeat, and busy making last-minute arrangements for his six-month concert tour which arrives in Britain in April.

If his romantic life is in a state of flux, the former 'N Sync singer's professional career is at an all-time high.

He earned four Grammy nominations, including album of the year, for Future Sex/Love Sounds, which he co-wrote and co-produced; he displayed a talent for comedy on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live; and he is set to surprise critics with his acting in the gritty crime movie Alpha Dog.

As a bonus, he finds himself enjoying stardom in the YouTube universe thanks to his raunchily funny digital short, Dick in a Box.

With censored and uncensored versions of the boy-band send-up, it was December's most viewed video on the site and was seen more than 10 million times.

But 25-year-old Timberlake seems slightly embarrassed by the video, particularly by one version which features intercut clips of a seemingly drunken Britney Spears, a former girlfriend.

"I had nothing to do with that," he says. "I haven't seen it and I haven't spoken to Britney about it. I think it's a gone a little too far."

He is much more interested in talking about Alpha Dog, which writer-director Nick Cassavetes based on the true story of a band of bored, affluent teenagers living in a Los Angeles suburb who, in the summer of 2000, kidnapped a youth because of his half brother's drug debt, partied with him for two days and then shot him dead so he couldn't turn them in.

The gang's alleged leader Jesse James Hollywood fled to Brazil and, until he was arrested there last year, was, at 20, one of the youngest men ever to be on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He is currently awaiting trial.

Timberlake plays Frankie Ballenbacher, a gang member who tries to prevent the murder of the young hostage. His real-life counterpart is currently serving a life sentence for murder.

Since the film also features established stars such as Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone, Timberlake was under no illusions about how the cast might react to a multi-millionaire pop singer with little in the way of acting credentials.

"When I came on to this film, all the other actors were probably not looking forward to having to deal with me," he says. "But I wasn't worried about it and I just showed up to work the same as everybody else. I just wanted to be a player in the film."

Timberlake in person is a surprising combination of shyness and quick-witted intelligence. He easily dodges questions he does not want to answer, but does so with a laugh and a joke.

When we meet a few hours before the première of Alpha Dog, he has a plaster cast on the little finger of his right hand which he broke while shooting a music video. "Apparently I'm not as graceful as I thought I was," he says, ruefully.

He has no intention of abandoning his singing career, even though he is now branching out into acting in a big way with three films – Black Snake Moan, Southland Tales and Shrek 3, in which he provides the voice of King Arthur – all awaiting release.

"To me acting is a hobby," he says. "I've been lucky enough to have a musical career that has gone pretty good and acting is something I have always wanted to do.

"I've been offered a lot of different things I have turned down without thinking twice about, but Alpha Dog was an opportunity for me to sink my teeth into something. It spoke volumes to me. After reading the script, I thought this was a story that people should hear. It's not just about gangs, drugs or bad kids; it's about family and parenting, or lack of it."

Timberlake himself was born and raised in a small town in Tennessee. His parents divorced when he was three but he is still extremely close to his mother Lyn, who was his manager for a while, and his stepfather Paul Harless, a banker whom he calls "probably the greatest man I have ever known".

It was Harless who taught him to appreciate and conserve money when he was 10 years old by buying him shares in Wal-Mart.

"It was my first lesson in money. In the morning at breakfast he'd be reading the sports pages and I'd be reading the business section, then we'd switch over," Timberlake says, with a laugh.

"He taught me the right way to spend and save. I like nice things but if I'm in a store I usually talk myself out of buying anything."

He remembers himself as a shy boy whose life changed when he realised he could gain attention by performing. "My mom likes to joke that until I was about eight or nine I only knew what my sneakers looked like because I constantly walked around with my head down," he says.

"But then performing brought me out of my shell – and a monster was created."

It was a pretty successful monster. After beginning his professional career in 1993 as a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, Timberlake joined 'N Sync at the age of 15.

They went on to become one of the most successful US boy bands and their album No Strings Attached, released in 2000, still holds the record for the fastest-selling album of all time.

Timberlake wrote many of the group's songs and when the band took a break in 2002 he launched his solo career. His debut album Justified sold more than seven million copies worldwide.

His girlfriends have been as high-profile as his career, with romances with Britney Spears and actress Jenna Dewan preceding his four-year affair with Cameron Diaz, whom he met at an awards ceremony.

Friends of Timberlake have suggested that eventually the nine-year age difference between him and Diaz proved too much of a problem, but the singer just shrugs and says: "I can't talk about it right now."

He does, however, hint that commitment to a long-term relationship may have been a problem for him. "As much as I've learned, I am still a man so I have some kind of learning disability," he says with a grin. "And women wouldn't have us any other way."

Although he has been the idol of teenage girls for the past decade, Timberlake has a down-to-earth attitude to his fame and seems puzzled at the thought of being a teen idol.

"I was always so removed from it," he says. "I always cared so much about what I did that that stuff didn't really register. My parents instilled in me the mindset of always being humble, so I'd like to believe that all the teen idol stuff went in one ear and out the other.

"Now when I'm on the red carpet I'm just there to do a job." He laughs appreciatively. "But it's the coolest job in the world."

'Alpha Dog' (15) will be released in Britain this spring.

Internet Dating 2.0

TIME.COM: After typing in all manner of personal information (okay, I fudged on my weight), I hit the send button with a certain trepidation. I watched in horror as my instant background check appeared before the gathered group of onlookers at iDate 2007, an Internet dating conference held in Miami this week. The make of my unfashionable car, a reference to my ex-husband, info on a dubious family member (how many times did I bail him out of jail?) and other tidbits about my life popped up onscreen and made my palm sweat on the mouse. But seconds later, I was deemed clear of any criminal or sex offender charges or other black marks.

The company, HonestyOnline, offers a certification system that takes the lie out of online. The checks can dig down to confirm your ex- is an ex- and your B.A. isn't BS, and figure out pretty much what you earn every year.

"It's an extra layer of protection to determine if a guy is Jack the Ripper with three wives," said William Bollinger, executive vice president of National Background Data, LLC, which invented CrimSAFE, a database used by HonestyOnline.

Along with the background checks, HonestyOnline can show up at your house, snap some profile pictures, stand you on the scale, run a tape measure from head to toe, and even, if requested, leave with bodily fluids to assure potential mates you have nothing communicable. After you pass muster, you graduate to a sticker on your online profile testifying that you are ready for love.

At iDate 2007, vendors demonstrate ways to meet, court, virtual date and even marry without ever leaving home or taking the trouble to actually meet your intended. "People don't have time, so they date online," says Marc Lesnick, conference coordinator, describing an industry he says earned more than $1 billion last year.

Moving around the exhibit hall, my picture is snapped with a cell phone. Suddenly, I appear in the middle of a 15th century Venetian ballroom scene on a computer, with a mask over my image. Valentina, an artificial intelligence hostess, greets me and invites me to Venice Chronicles' party. An actor working from the website's office directs the fantasy by giving orders, moving our images and forcing us to make conversation with each other.

For more realistic scenarios, the company OmniDate can place you in a virtual restaurant with an animated date, literally. Both parties work keyboards and save thousands of calories on the five-course Italian dinner. You can survive some of the more awkward first date moments, such as ordering the high-ticket item on the menu, without abandoning the comfort of your pajamas. Animated figures called avatars stand in and react like you would when the waiter dumps hot soup into your virtual lap. The avatars move, speak, and even kiss goodnight for you.

For those of you who need a new cell phone nightmare, the driver in front of you could be cruising for a date. On Mobilove, I scrolled through the profiles of "lookn4luv", "LuckyL", and "Manoman," and sent text messages to the people on my hot list. An instant response brought rejection, proving that a typical dating experience can be found on the go. Already 500,000 Americans have posted their pictures and mini profiles on their cell phones, and users are growing by 20% every month, according to Mobilove vice president Nils Knagenhjelm.

The cell phone can also be turned into a Don Juan miracle tool: thanks to Vumber you can get many numbers with only one phone — and even numbers from more desirable area codes. You can be reached at a New York City number one minute and L.A. the next, or small-town Alabama, where you really live. If the person dialing one of the numbers turns out to be a less than desirable caller, poof! the number disappears with a few keystrokes. "You can vanish without a trace," said Geoff Schneider, executive vice president of Vumber.

While eHarmony brags about its personality profiles, Plenty of Fish quietly ignores theirs. This site, with 400,000 hits a day, was created by Markus Frind, who still runs it out of his apartment. He figured out people essentially exaggerate on profile answers. He follows a more sensible creed: actions speak louder than words. For example, Susie says she wants a solid, stable man who earns $100,000-plus but keeps clicking on profiles of muscle-bound bad boys. Plenty of Fish makes sure she meets plenty of underemployed weightlifters, and some of the stable ones she ignores. "People don't even realize we do this. They just know they are getting results," said Frind, who compares his strategy to grocery store purchase tracking: diet claim or no, you're still picking up ice cream every week.

In another profile model, Chris Walker is experimenting with behavioral matchmaking. An early innovator, he started in the 1960s with punch card computer dating. After years of matching people, he now focuses on how people choose to spend their time. Infopersonals.com also asks for frank answers on back hair, relationships with exes and the number of sexual partners.

But there are still those who believe in actual face time. "The personal touch still blows away everything else out there," says Paul Falzone, CEO of The Right One and Together, one of the nation's largest old-school matchmaking dating services where people sign up and are interviewed in person. "Sure, people get matched online," Falzone adds, "but monkeys also occasionally fall out of trees."

Even computer crazy Walker agrees. "Until you actually meet somebody, don't get excited."

Steve Buscemi: The Sundance Kid

In Hollywood, Steve Buscemi is the comic you recruit to pepper your star vehicle with some jittery laughs; he’s the nervy villain in your action movie; the virtuoso weirdo in your Adam Sandler comedy; the guy standing next to Nicolas Cage. But at the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off January 18, Buscemi is an indie god among video-store clerks: patron saint of character actors, working stiffs, and last-true-believers everywhere. In L.A., the paparazzi might miss him, but in Sundance, they hound him—and this year, he knows how they feel.

Happy birthday, Champ

SI.COM: Happy birthday, Champ. You're still The Greatest, even if it's been a long time since you could float like a butterfly or sting like a bee. We don't expect that of you anymore, especially not now, as you turn 65 today and continue to wage a fight against Parkinson's disease, a far tougher opponent than Frazier or Foreman ever were.

What goes through your mind on a day like this? Do you think back to when you were Cassius Clay, a promising young fighter out of Louisville, Ky., or a little bit later on, when you took out Sonny Liston in 1964 and proved to the world that you were more than just a loudmouthed braggard when you proclaimed yourself the greatest of all time?

Do you smile when you think of yourself as the young Muhammad Ali, so quick, so skilled that you could drop your hands and slip opponents' jabs with ease, or does the anger rise up when you remember how you were stripped of your heavyweight championship -- and some of the prime years of your career -- because you refused to serve in the military when you were drafted during the Vietnam War?

Maybe you're like us and you think of it all, the entire, remarkable life you have led. Maybe on this milestone of a day you think about the lasting effect you have had on American culture, arguably a bigger effect than any athlete of the last century. You had it all, Champ -- talent, wit, charisma, and most of all, substance. You were true to your beliefs even when it cost you dearly, and that is what sets you apart from the legion of imitators you spawned. All the self-absorbed jocks with their sack dances and end zone celebrations, all the me-first athletes who pound their chests and tell us how great they are -- they are all doing poor imitations of you, Champ, whether they know it or not. But ask them to make a stand for something other than their next contract, and suddenly they get very quiet.

For your sake, Champ, we hope you don't pay much attention to them. We hear that you you like to spend your time at home in Scottsdale, Ariz., with your wife, Lonnie, watching videos of your fights, documentaries of your life and the occasional Elvis movie. It sounds like a fine, peaceful way to spend your golden years. In fact, if we could make one birthday wish for you, it would be that you enjoy the rest of your days -- and may there be many of them -- in peace, without being trotted out to make appearances at so many sporting events.

We remember the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when you suddenly appeared, a surprise to us all, to light the cauldron to open the Games. It was a powerful, emotional moment when we saw you, quivering from Parkinson's with the Olympic flame in your hand. But ever since then it seems that too many people have tried to recreate that moment. As the Parkinson's has progressed, it seems your schedule has become busier, to the point where your appearances have been less inspirational and more uncomfortable. At the Orange Bowl a few weeks ago you were there, with Arnold Palmer and Dwyane Wade, and to be honest, it looked as though Wade had to help you stay on your feet at times.

There's no need for such appearances, Champ. It's not that we don't want to see you, it's just that you look like you would be more comfortable at home in Scottsdale. It's all about your comfort now. You have inspired enough people for one lifetime. Now you've earned the chance to rest. The next time someone comes calling, asking you to grace their event with your presence, feel free to say no. Just because you're out of our sight doesn't mean you are out of our thoughts. We wish you the best, Champ, on this day and every other.

INTERVIEWS > Crispin Glover by Richard Kern

RICHARD: Your debut film, What Is It?, is generating great controversy. Several film critics were extremely disturbed by it. One reviewer claimed there was a character dressed in a Nazi uniform.
CRISPIN: Descriptions of the film have been wrong, and reviews inaccurate. Nobody is dressed as a Nazi. What I consider odd is that there are so many subjects that are not generally dealt with in popular media. There are not many films like What Is It? I’m proud of it.
RICHARD: Was it difficult getting the project off the ground?
CRISPIN: The film was shot in approximately twelve days. I’ve been working on it for the past nine and a half years. It’s the first in a trilogy. Originally the film was going to be a short to promote a screenplay that had similar concepts. David Lynch wanted to executive-produce that screenplay. The corporation I went to for financing was uncomfortable having a majority of the characters played by actors with Down’s syndrome.
RICHARD: Why was it important for you to cast people with Down’s syndrome?
CRISPIN: When I look at the face of someone with Down’s syndrome I see a history written of someone who has lived outside the culture. When most of the characters are cast with actors with Down’s syndrome it makes a world that feels outside of the culture.
RICHARD: Audiences may feel that addressing disability is taboo.
CRISPIN: I do not treat the members
of the cast with Down’s syndrome the way they’re usually treated by most media. They are treated like any other actor. Perhaps that’s taboo. Someone in the press claimed that kids with Down’s syndrome have sex in this film. No one has sex in this film. There are two people with Down’s syndrome that were boyfriend and girlfriend that kiss passionately. They were not children.
RICHARD: Have you had any response from people who have disabilities?
CRISPIN: When I screened What Is It? in Austin this past February, a couple with Down’s syndrome came up afterwards and told me they related to the couple in the film. The couple in Austin have been together for seventeen years.
RICHARD: I saw a lot of parallels between What Is It? and Werner Herzog’s 1970 film, Even Dwarves Started Small.
CRISPIN: Yes. Herzog’s film is influential. The entire cast of his film were short people that were not particularly nice to each other. When I was conceptualizing about the short film to promote casting a majority of actors with Down’s syndrome I reflected on his film. I admire Werner Herzog very much.
RICHARD: Has he seen your film?
CRISPIN: He came to the screening at Sundance. I had shown him a rough cut a long time ago. I asked him questions on the commentary for the DVDs of Even Dwarfs Started Small and Fata Morgana. At Sundance, he said it was the best improvement between a rough cut and a final print he had seen. He has been truly supportive and I appreciate it.
RICHARD: How would you describe your character in the film?
CRISPIN: My character’s name is “dueling demigod auteur and the young man’s inner psyche”. The film is a simple mythic structure. “Being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic, racist, inner psyche.
RICHARD: You subjected snails to a gruesome death-by-table-salting.
CRISPIN: I received a letter from an animal rights organization. I don’t like pointlessly hurting animals, Yet, I knew there would be a certain visceral experience for the audience and that is worth that.
RICHARD: Not only have you maintained creative control of every aspect of this film, but you are also distributing it yourself. That must be exhausting.
CRISPIN: Yes, I have been traveling to cities showing the film. I present it after I perform a slide show of my books. I made the film for theatrical projection. I definitely won’t release it on DVD in the next few years. It would be helpful if there was public funding for media that is more conceptual and sits in the realm beyond good and evil.
RICHARD: There certainly isn’t any support from the film industry.
CRISPIN: There really are almost no films funded by corporate entities that genuinely question things right now. The current media climate encourages people to feel good about how things are and it will not promote thought that sits within the realm that could be considered beyond good and evil. If nobody counters the generally accepted cultural norm, there is no dialogue. That’s doom for a culture.
RICHARD: Experimental filmmakers have always reacted to the cultural conditions that disturb them.
CRISPIN: Luis Buñuel made L’Age d’or in 1930 in reaction to restrictive morality of the time. It definitely sits in the realm that is beyond good and evil. It ultimately makes fun of Jesus. Now people look back at it and say, “How quaint! Why would anybody be offended?” But you weren’t supposed to do that in1930 Catholic Europe. Buñuel started dialogue. This culture’s media likes to talk about the corruption of, say, dictatorship, that controls media through military power. But this culture’s media has difficulty pointing out its own corruption wherein the media is ultimately controlled by corporate interest.
RICHARD: Soldiers don’t enforce governmental censorship, but corporations that control the money determine what you can and can’t do.
CRISPIN: It is unlikely you will be hit with a bat, but nobody will fund your movie if it causes genuine discomfort. Supposedly censorship does not exist in this culture. But media corporations will not fund material that contains dissent. Whoever funds the film ultimately controls the project. The film industry largely consists of corporations producing films that conform to certain standards.
RICHARD: They choose an existing box office hit and use it as a model.
CRISPIN: What Is It? is a reaction to the existing film culture. The amount of propaganda that exists in the media makes it difficult for the population to understand that there are other ways of thinking.
RICHARD: Do you think there are some directors working within the film industry who succeed in making movies that pose questions and counter the status quo?
CRISPIN: Extremely rarely, especially if it funded by corporate interests. I’m all for movies making money. I’m definitely not against commercialism. I have great admiration for both Stanley Kubrick and the film director, Tod Browning.
They both worked within the studio system. At first Kubrick financed his films and they made money. Studios were interested. He indicated he would make films his way, or he wouldn’t do it with them. Kubrick utilized corporate interest to his advantage in a movie like 2001 that also appealed to what was called “the counterculture” at the time. Corporations could point to “ the counterculture” and say they would fund movies for them. There are all kinds of major blockbuster filmmakers today who lose money on their theatrical releases. Every single movie Kubrick made earned a lot of money in its theatrical release, and that’s extremely unusual. Tod Browning is also interesting. He directed a series of highly profitable movies featuring Lon Chaney, who was the biggest name in the silent era. With his success, Browning was able to have MGM fund Freaks. That is a remarkable piece of work.
RICHARD: Freaks is set in a traveling circus. It came out in 1932, but it is still shocking. How old were you when you first saw it?
CRISPIN: I was eight. It’s a beautiful story. The film is true to the power of the unusual, and the terror for those who are not sensitive to it.
RICHARD: While producing your personal projects, you’ve played roles in a number of big-budget, commercial studio movies such as Charlie’s Angels and Willard.
CRISPIN: When I’m working on films like that, I do it whole-heartedly. I utilized the money from Charlie’s Angels to fund the sequel to What is it? It is called EVERYTHING IS FINE! It was written by Steve Stewart. He had cerebral palsy, is in What is it? and is the main actor in the sequel which is currently being edited. It will probably be the best film I’ll ever have anything to do with in my career.
RICHARD: You’re one of the few people to successfully sue Steven Spielberg. After you declined to appear as George McFly in the sequel to Back to the Future, Spielberg hired an actor and put him in prosthetics to make him look like you.
CRISPIN: It was designed to fool audiences in to believing it was me. As a result of the lawsuit, the Screen Actor’s Guild instated rules preventing producers from doing that.
RICHARD: Your father, Bruce Glover, is an actor. He played the classic James Bond villain, Mr. Wint, in Diamonds Are Forever. What was it like growing up in a Hollywood family?
CRISPIN: I was born in New York City. My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was five. I went to a school for children with high IQs. The further away that gets, the more I realize it was an unusual way to grow up. There were two hundred students in the school It was insular. I was in a class with approximately the same twenty people the whole way through.
RICHARD: You seem attracted to more eccentric roles, like Willard, Layne in River’s Edge, and Andy Warhol in The Doors.
CRISPIN: I met Andy Warhol at Madonna and Sean Penn’s wedding in 1985, and he was nice to me. I watched him and studied how he moved, because I thought he would be an interesting person to play one day. When I heard that there was a Warhol role in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, I pursued it. I’m glad I got to do it.
RICHARD: Andy Warhol was an expert at handling the press.
CRISPIN: He understood certain things that journalists would not know how to properly deal with and he made his responses an art itself. I admire that about him.

Hot ticket: Joanna Newsom

There can be few better ways to lift your wintry blues than to listen to harpist Joanna Newsom, says Helen Brown

If the grey January days find you feeling earthbound and introspective, there can be few better ways to lift the spirits than a night wrapped up in the magical music of Californian harpist and singer Joanna Newsom.

Newsom will be backed by the Northern Sinfonia and the London Symphony Orchestra for her tour of the UK.

With her kooky, cracked voice and elfin demeanour, Newsom is always a captivating live performer, able to make the most cynical of grown-ups feel like children sitting cross-legged on the story-time rug.

Newsom has been touring the US, to rave reviews, since November. But we in the UK are in for a special treat. On her four performances, her songs of burning meteorites, oceanic mutinies and "greasy black engines a-skulkin' " will be backed by the Northern Sinfonia and the London Symphony Orchestra, arranged by Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks.

Dates in London, Glasgow and Manchester are already sold out, but there are still a handful of tickets left for her Gateshead show on Tuesday. It will be an evening worth commuting to from anywhere on these windswept islands.

From tomorrow. Tickets: 0191 443 4661

The building blocks of America's best architect

A breathtakingly simple new museum extension puts Steven Holl in a class of his own, says Dominic Bradbury

In an era of ever-increasing architectural showmanship and gravity-defying statement buildings, the work of American architect Steven Holl is defined by a more sophisticated, considered approach.

That's especially true of his latest project, the Bloch Building extension to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Part of a $200 million transformation, the Bloch Building opens in June, yet is already complete – bar internal detailing and art installation – and forms an extraordinary addition to the original 1930s building.

The Nelson-Atkins holds one of the finest art collections in America, but had outgrown the traditional neo-classical temple of art that forms its centrepiece. The Bloch Building increases its size by more than 70 per cent, or 165,000 square feet.

Its design is thrillingly unorthodox, with much of the structure tucked into the landscape of the museum's sculpture park, while a sequence of five glass pavilions, or "lenses", emerges from the undulating greenery along the eastern flank of the original building.

"It's as if the landscape were lifted up and the new building folded into it," says Holl's co-designer, Chris McVoy.

"The lenses come up through the land and bring daylight down into the lobbies and gallery spaces below. But the green roofs over some of the building become part of the sculpture park itself, so that Bloch is neither fully a traditional building nor a landscape, but a fusion of the two. Steven envisaged the pavilions as being like blocks of ice or sculptural elements floating in the landscape."

advertisementUsing frameless, structural planks of glass as building blocks for the pavilions – with iron content removed to take away the green tint and create a pure, white light – the lenses have a crisp, surreal presence.

At night they glow like vast lanterns, while in the day they let natural light filter down into the gallery, creating a layer of light supplemented by artificial illumination at exhibition level. Glass planks have been used, to similarly powerful effect, for another of Holl's new projects, the Swiss ambassador's residence in Washington, DC.

In the past, the quality of Holl's work has been criticised for being erratic, but the overwhelming success of both the Bloch and the ambassador's house give weight to Time magazine's recent description of Holl as America's best architect, praising him for "buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye".

The new projects have a vigorous, intelligent concept, but also a simplicity of form which recalls much of Holl's best work from the past: the aluminium-clad Turbulence House, a beautiful, sculpted metallic swirl sitting in the New Mexico desert; or Y-House, his reinvention of the red-painted American timber barn, transformed into a divining-stick structure with its pair of prongs opened up to the landscape.

Holl's rising reputation has now brought a string of commissions for new projects outside America, including a marina building in Beirut, an arts centre in Denmark and an oceanic museum in Biarritz.

But for now, all eyes are on the Bloch Building. With it, Holl appears to have found a new way to approach the whole business of museum design: it's neither a car-wreck spectacle nor the bland box that we have come to expect from museum extensions.

"The architecture is dynamic," says McVoy, "but it's not attention-grabbing, and is actually quite serene and subtle on the exterior. Yet the interior opens up to these great expanses within space which are very supportive of the art itself. In this case, more than any other museum that we've done, we've hopefully been successful in creating a third way."

See more of Steven Holl's work at www.stevenholl.com

My week: Don Johnson

Don Johnson, actor, describes his week to Laura Barnett

Thursday
I got up early with my three youngest children, who were over from LA with my wife, Kelley. They were off to Windsor Castle; seven-year-old Grace asked if she would be able to chat with the Queen. I said I didn't think so, and headed to the Piccadilly Theatre for a rehearsal of Guys and Dolls, in which I'm the new Nathan Detroit. By the evening, I was hoarse – it's a deceptively large theatre, and it takes some energy to fill it with your voice.


Friday
Kelley and the kids came to see my first dress rehearsal. Luckily I didn't drop a line, fall into the orchestra pit, bump into the scenery or give any of the actresses a black eye by running into them – my main concerns. I could hear my eight-month-old son Deacon talking from the balcony through most of it. Afterwards, I put my Nathan Detroit hat on for him and he said, "Oh, so you're the guy who was down on stage – I didn't know it was you." At least, he seemed to say it with his eyes.

Saturday
I put my family on an early flight back to LA, then went back to bed and slept gratefully for a few hours. I dreamt that the children had come back and left their mom at the airport; when I woke up, to mausoleum-like silence, I realised it wasn't true. To keep from missing them, I ordered in sushi from Nobu and watched Little Miss Sunshine on DVD. It was a real slice of life; in some places it was extremely funny, and in others it was just pathetic.

Sunday
After a gym workout and massage, I watched the Indianapolis Colts, one of my American football teams, beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Then I got on with Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, a weird, fascinating parallel-lives tale about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 – a little light reading – and slid into the cinema to see Casino Royale. Eva Green was captivating; I remembered film director Bernardo Bertolucci saying that she's so beautiful, it's indecent.

Monday
I warmed up with the cast at the theatre before our final dress rehearsal with all the bells and whistles. The fast-paced dialogue was daunting, so I went over and over the script. Then I had a quick nap and collected my thoughts, correcting technical points, and hit the stage for my first public performance feeling full of good nerves. I had a couple of little wobbles in the first scene, but then I righted the ship, and steered it right through to the end.

'Guys and Dolls' is at the Piccadilly Theatre, London W1 (tickets: 0870 060 0123).

INTERVIEW - Richard Gere, AIDS Activist, Actor

"My model is related with the integration of cultural icons and the media"

The focus of your efforts regarding AIDS is mostly India at the moment. Why India?

About five years ago I asked myself, “Where would my personal capital be most effective”? And I felt India’s HIV/AIDS condition would provide me the chance to use my social capital effectively as the people there were right on the cusp and a number of years behind the U.S. I thought if I could use whatever I know about HIV/AIDS and start to create effective and workable systems and models for India then it could have a major effect.

Was the cultural affinity for India a reason to choose it because there are a number of other countries which are also on the cusp of an AIDS epidemic?

For 25 years India has been very close to my heart as I have been a frequent visitor to the Tibetan community that lives mostly in Himachal Pradesh near the Himalayas. I feel I have some deep affinity with this place that is beyond my memory.


There are obstacles in every country to battling AIDS. But are there unique obstacles in India that you haven’t seen elsewhere?

In the US, the people are homogenous. You have rich and poor but both speak only one language. In India, it’s very different. You have 400 languages and 1000 dialects. There are wide cultural variations if we move from North to South and East to West and the communication systems are not uniform nationwide. State governments are more involved with health and similar issues. So part of the work that we’ve been doing is actually trying to set up separate systems based on a model. But I think the model we have developed work. I think we’ve reached a model definition that is applicable almost everywhere we’ve worked.

Does the model work in each region despite the language and cultural differences?

The model does work. The model I’ve been working with starts from my strength, of being able to make an immediate connection with the creative community wherever I am. In the North, it is Delhi and the surrounding region, and then there is the Indian film industry in Mumbai. In the South, there is Tamil Nadu, and we are based in Chennai. That’s a whole other language. They speak Tamil and have different movie stars. The model is basically finding the cultural creative community and it includes not just actors but also musicians, poets, dancers and athletes. Talk to them, energize them and then connect them with the media.

Can you explain what your model is about?

My model is related with the integration of cultural artifacts, the icons of a culture, actors and the media. Working with industry is important as it is not only a source of money, but it’s also intimately connected with everyone’s family. Who you work for very much tells what your health plan is or how you think, the hours you work, the conditions you work under, the kind of philosophy of your work day etc. It permeates almost everything in your life. If you have industry on your side, you also have a tool to educate and take care of people and they’re a captive audience. Put together with that, the NGOs. I don’t go to the government first. I go to the NGOs. They are self-starters. The ones who are motivated from the heart to start a clinic where there isn’t one and to learn about this issue when no one else knows about it. To treat people that no one else will treat. We serve them. The last of this group that I would bring in is the government. The government, I find, usually follows along any moving train that’s successful.

You have been saying that your model is not based on typical public service announcement campaigns, but you’re going to sell a product. What’s the product?

I think we’re unsuccessful in doing most Public Service Announcements (PSA). They end up begin something that an audience can start to taste 10 minutes before it comes on and does not grab the attention of the audience. I feel PSAs have to be made as exciting as programming usually is on TV, if not more so. And I say sell a product. You put it out like a business plan. Like an ad agency goes about selling a product. We want partners to sell this product together. In this case it’s HIV/AIDS and all the issues surrounding it - How do you contract this virus? How do you prevent getting infected? How do you protect yourself and your family? To let you know that you will be feeling some discrimination and how to deal with it - A holistic approach of what are the emotional, psychological and physical realities of dealing with HIV.

INTERVIEW - Richard Gere, AIDS Activist, Actor

"My model is related with the integration of cultural icons and the media"

The focus of your efforts regarding AIDS is mostly India at the moment. Why India?

About five years ago I asked myself, “Where would my personal capital be most effective”? And I felt India’s HIV/AIDS condition would provide me the chance to use my social capital effectively as the people there were right on the cusp and a number of years behind the U.S. I thought if I could use whatever I know about HIV/AIDS and start to create effective and workable systems and models for India then it could have a major effect.

Was the cultural affinity for India a reason to choose it because there are a number of other countries which are also on the cusp of an AIDS epidemic?

For 25 years India has been very close to my heart as I have been a frequent visitor to the Tibetan community that lives mostly in Himachal Pradesh near the Himalayas. I feel I have some deep affinity with this place that is beyond my memory.


There are obstacles in every country to battling AIDS. But are there unique obstacles in India that you haven’t seen elsewhere?

In the US, the people are homogenous. You have rich and poor but both speak only one language. In India, it’s very different. You have 400 languages and 1000 dialects. There are wide cultural variations if we move from North to South and East to West and the communication systems are not uniform nationwide. State governments are more involved with health and similar issues. So part of the work that we’ve been doing is actually trying to set up separate systems based on a model. But I think the model we have developed work. I think we’ve reached a model definition that is applicable almost everywhere we’ve worked.

Does the model work in each region despite the language and cultural differences?

The model does work. The model I’ve been working with starts from my strength, of being able to make an immediate connection with the creative community wherever I am. In the North, it is Delhi and the surrounding region, and then there is the Indian film industry in Mumbai. In the South, there is Tamil Nadu, and we are based in Chennai. That’s a whole other language. They speak Tamil and have different movie stars. The model is basically finding the cultural creative community and it includes not just actors but also musicians, poets, dancers and athletes. Talk to them, energize them and then connect them with the media.

Can you explain what your model is about?

My model is related with the integration of cultural artifacts, the icons of a culture, actors and the media. Working with industry is important as it is not only a source of money, but it’s also intimately connected with everyone’s family. Who you work for very much tells what your health plan is or how you think, the hours you work, the conditions you work under, the kind of philosophy of your work day etc. It permeates almost everything in your life. If you have industry on your side, you also have a tool to educate and take care of people and they’re a captive audience. Put together with that, the NGOs. I don’t go to the government first. I go to the NGOs. They are self-starters. The ones who are motivated from the heart to start a clinic where there isn’t one and to learn about this issue when no one else knows about it. To treat people that no one else will treat. We serve them. The last of this group that I would bring in is the government. The government, I find, usually follows along any moving train that’s successful.

You have been saying that your model is not based on typical public service announcement campaigns, but you’re going to sell a product. What’s the product?

I think we’re unsuccessful in doing most Public Service Announcements (PSA). They end up begin something that an audience can start to taste 10 minutes before it comes on and does not grab the attention of the audience. I feel PSAs have to be made as exciting as programming usually is on TV, if not more so. And I say sell a product. You put it out like a business plan. Like an ad agency goes about selling a product. We want partners to sell this product together. In this case it’s HIV/AIDS and all the issues surrounding it - How do you contract this virus? How do you prevent getting infected? How do you protect yourself and your family? To let you know that you will be feeling some discrimination and how to deal with it - A holistic approach of what are the emotional, psychological and physical realities of dealing with HIV.

BUSINESS > Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.
The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.
People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.
All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.
According to my inside sources, the person with the most pending LinkedIn invitations is...Guy Kawasaki. (Though I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed of this factoid.)

Most people use LinkedIn to “get to someone” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized, so I’ve compiled a top-ten list of ways to increase the value of LinkedIn.



Increase your visibility.



By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 52,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.



Improve your connectability.



Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities.



You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. The added benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment.



Improve your Google PageRank.



LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you.



To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web> For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature.



Enhance your search engine results.



In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like “My Website,” “My Company,” etc.



If you select “Other” you can modify the name of the link. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and voila! instant search-engine optimization for your site. To make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to “Full View.”



Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.



LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search will find the people who worked at the company during the same time period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glowing, this is a good way to get more balanced data.



Companies will typically check your references before hiring you, but have you ever thought of checking your prospective manager’s references? Most interviewees don’t have the audacity to ask a potential boss for references, but with LinkedIn you have a way to scope her out.



You can also check up on the company itself by finding the person who used to have the job that you’re interviewing for. Do this by searching for job title and company, but be sure to uncheck “Current titles only.” By contacting people who used to hold the position, you can get the inside scoop on the job, manager and growth potential.



By the way, if using LinkedIn in these ways becomes a common practice, we’re apt to see more truthful resumes. There’s nothing more amusing than to find out that the candidate who claims to have caused some huge success was a total bozo who was just along for the ride.



Increase the relevancy of your job search.



Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work experience like yours to see where they work. For example, a programmer would use search keywords such as “Ruby on Rails,” “C++,” “Python,” “Java,” and “evangelist” to find out where other programmers with these skills work.



Make your interview go smoother.



You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting. Knowing that you went to the same school, plays hockey, or shares acquaintances is a lot better than an awkward silence after, “I’m doing fine, thank you.”



Gauge the health of a company.



Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the “Current Companies Only” box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board.



Gauge the health of an industry.



If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors—or even better, companies who failed. For example, suppose you wanted to build a next generation online pet store, you’d probably learn a lot from speaking with former Pets.com or WebVan employees.



Track startups.



You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as “stealth” or “new startup.” Apply the “Sort By” filter to “Degrees away from you” in order to see the people closest to you first.



Ask for advice.



LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Answers, aims to enable this online. The product allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums.



For example, here are some questions an entrepreneur might ask when the associates of a venture capital firm come up blank:



Who’s a good, fast, and cheap patent lawyer?



What should we pay a vp of biz dev?



Is going to Demo worth it?



How much traffic does a TechCrunch plug generate?




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Addendum



These additional ideas came in through comments:



Integrate into a new job.

When people start a new job, ordinarily their roots aren’t that deep in the new company. However, with Linkedin, new employees can study fellow employees’ profiles and therefore help them get to know more people faster in a new company. (contributed by Vincent Wright)
Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc. This seems like it’s a no-brainer, but you can use LinkedIn to scope out the competition’s team as well as the team of customers and partners. For example, your competitor’s vp of marketing came from Oracle...she’ll probably believe that business is war. (Kev)

Guy Kawasaki is Managing Director at Garage Technology Ventures, and his blog is How to Change the World

Trash the system!

Like The Roxy and The Blitz, club night Trash changed the UK's musical landscape. As it bows out in style, Trash regular Leonie Cooper looks back on the decade's hippest rave up.

Clicking her sparkly heels together, a wise, drug-addicted gay icon uttered the immortal words "There's no place like home". She was, of course, talking about Kansas, but could just as easily have been referring to Trash, the indie clubbing phenomenon that changed the way alternative music and its fans were viewed the world over. Either way, in those shoes and in that gingham dress, Dorothy would have waltzed past the club's staunch dress code.

For the past 10 years, to fashion reprobates and new music obsessives, myself included, home was Trash, a rammed, genre-smashing sweatbox that made Monday nights in London the biggest night of the week. It was The Roxy, it was Studio 54, it was The Blitz, it was Club freakin' Tropicana; the place to see and be seen, whether you were a checkout girl from Romford, a German art student with shaved eyebrows or an indie celebrity in a vintage Stooges T-shirt. Now, after a glorious decade of pushing boundaries and setting scenes, Trash is bowing out. "I just don't want it to be shit before it ends," explains Erol Alkan, the night's founder and ever-present DJ who, in all of Trash's 10 years, only ever missed one night, to go on his honeymoon with his wife, the club's door girl.

Back in 1997, things were different for 22-year-old north London boy Alkan. Dance was massive, whereas indie clubs were sloppy, messy places you went to with the express purpose of vomiting over her flared cords to the strains of Ocean Colour Scene. So from his bedroom, Alkan set the Trash wheels in motion - he called promoters, faxed listings from the newsagents and photocopied flyers at the library. "There was never any real kind of vision behind it - just the necessity of playing music and not being limited." Hitting a nerve with likeminded people across the capital, the night moved from Plastic People on Oxford Street to Soho's Annex before finding itself homeless. After visiting every major venue in central London, Erol happened upon an unheard of plan; he'd take the indie club to the dance club, specifically The End - the club opened by The Shamen's Mr C in 1996. Again the club was packed every week: "Every time we moved, more people came, but it always seemed like the right people, we weren't watering it down."

With the 2000 move, the press started picking up on the night; The Face voted it their Club Of The Year and Erol was rarely out of the pages of the style mags. Trash became a catalyst of cool, spawning a generation of clubs across the country that took on Trash's glam indie ethic. In Nottingham, Ricky Haley set up Liars Club, a night referred to by i-D magazine as "Nottingham's answer to Trash". "When I started visiting London, it was a real eye opener to see all these crazy people with half a haircut. You didn't do that in Nottingham lest you should want a beating," says Ricky. Other famed discos which took their lead from Trash were Southend's now-deceased Junk club (which spawned The Horrors), London's White Heat, Leeds' PIGS (run by Kaiser Chiefs) and pretty much anywhere that plays indie and electro to well-dressed kids.

Groups of Trash regulars also started forming bands; Bloc Party could be found on the dancefloor every week until they found fame and even ended up dedicating a song during Glastonbury 2005 to the Trash crowd. Electro-folk wunderkid Patrick Wolf was often flouncing around, as was Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell, whilst the most recent Trash-graduates, Klaxons, had been going to the night since the start. "There were members of Ash wearing flowery Caribbean shirts and dancing to The Stone Roses," says bassist Jamie Reynolds. "It just had this continual party atmosphere."

To protect the night from an influx of fly-by-night fans, the club's legendary dress code was strictly enforced, with a succession of door-bitches checking over the snaking queue. "I was quite worried we'd get a lot of social tourism, where people will dip in and out of something because it's trendy," says Erol. "We had to show that we believed in the people that made the club special. I'll always stand by the dress code, it was ambiguous, yes, and at times it was unfair, but it was one of the most important factors in the survival of the club." Work suits and casual clothes were turned away, whilst vintage fashion was in - net veils covered the kohl smudged eyes of the boys and razorsharp fringes, Elizabeth Duke jewellery and fishnet stockings adorned the girls. I regularly braved the bus from pub to club in shimmering postwar evening wear and my secondhand 1980s ra-ra dresses saw more fun on the dancefloor of Trash than they ever did in 1986.

Trash soon became a celeb hangout to rival any chi-chi West London private members club and anyone who was anyone in rock'n'roll could be seen mingling with the masses. The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Libertines, Arthur Baker, Jarvis Cocker, Muse, Lily Allen, Kooks, Razorlight and Grace Jones were just the tip of the starry iceberg, and once Marilyn Manson turned on his heels and left after he was told there was no VIP area. Courtney Love turned up one night, and was subsequently asked to leave. "She was being an arse," says Erol, "falling over and grabbing at people, just really embarrassing."

Throughout the night's history, the eclectic playlist (anything from ESG to AC/DC) evolved. The club pioneered the trend for mash-ups (under his Kurtis Rush alias, Erol's George Gets His Freak On was one of the first bootleg anthems). Trash was also one of the driving forces behind the electroclash movement, spearheaded the return of UK guitar music, and even had its finger in the pie that is "new rave".

They began booking bands - the busiest when Yeah Yeah Yeahs played and 1,100 people made it into the club (although how many could actually see is a different matter). There were also live spots from Jarvis Cocker's Relaxed Muscle, one of The Scissor Sisters' first UK gigs, a scene defining performance from a hot-panted Peaches, and, most memorably, a hushed solo piano set from self-styled Canadian "Entertainist" Chilly Gonzales. "It was such a ridiculous idea," says Erol, remembering the night he carted a baby grand down the steep stairs.

Everyone who went has their own Trash memories. I'll remember spending my 21st birthday dancing on the side of the DJ booth, bumming fags off The Strokes, being chatted up by the Kings of Leon (but who wasn't?) and sitting on the sofas squashed between Carl Barat and Pete Doherty the week The Libertines had their first NME cover. And how does Erol want people to look back on the night that changed so many lives? "When we moved to The End, clubs that played guitar music were frowned upon," he says. "Dance clubs had all the cred. Trash made it so that alternative club culture was just as well-respected as dance culture. I think Trash deserves that."

Getting trashed

What you might have seen on a typical Trash night out ...

FLASHING!

August, 2003

When Grace Jones flashed all and sundry her knickers (big and black, rather appropriately), before running off into a corner and gossiping with Billy Zane all night.

VIP RAVES!

December, 2001-2006

The clubs yearly invite-only mailing list parties - messy nights of gratis booze, homemade punch and free-for-all DJ sets from the extended Trash family.

FIRST PLAYS!

May, 1997

The night The Verve's manager came down to the club with the first pressing of Bittersweet Symphony and gifted it to Erol with the immortal words "You're the only club who has this. It's going to be massive, man".

NEW GENRES!

June, 2000

When Erol began the bootleg craze by cutting up of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time and fusing it with Primal Scream's epic Loaded. The dancefloor, it has to be said, went apeshit. In a good way, mind.

SUPERSTAR DJS!

March, 2005

When Bloc Party returned as heroes to the club that spawned them and DJed in the main room as Kings of Boyz.

· Trash bows out on Mon at The End

David Lynch "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity"

In this rare work of public disclosure, filmmaker David Lynch describes his personal methods of capturing and working with ideas, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

Over the last four decades, David Lynch has created some of the best-known and widely discussed screen works of our time. This distinctive writer-director's art bears not only the mark of box-office success but also criticalacclaim and cultural posterity.

Yet Lynch generally reveals little of himself, or the ideas behind his work. Now he provides a rare window into his methods as an artist and his personal working style. In Catching the Big Fish, Lynch writes candidly about the tremendous creative benefits he has gained from his thirty-two-year commitment to practicing Transcendental Meditation.

In brief chapters, Lynch describes the experience of "diving within" and "catching" ideas like fish-and then preparing them for television or movie screens, and other mediums in which Lynch works, such as photography and painting.

In the book's first section, Lynch discusses the development of his ideas-where they come from, how he grasps them, and which ones appeal to him the most. He then shares his passion for "the doing"-whether moviemaking, painting, or other creative expressions. Lynch talks specifically about how he puts his thoughts into action and how he engages with others around him. Finally, he discusses the self and the surrounding world -and how the process of "diving within" that has so deeply affected his own work can directly benefit others.

Catching the Big Fish provides unprecedented insight into Lynch's methods, as it also offers a set of practical ideas that speak to matters of personal fulfillment, increased creativity, and greater harmony with one's surroundings.

The book comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch's deeply personal vision. And it is equally intriguing to anyone who grapples with questions such as: "Where do ideas come from?" and "How can I nurture creativity?

About the Author
Three-time Oscar-nominated director David Lynch is among the leading filmmakers of our era. From the early seventies to the present day, Lynch's popular and critically acclaimed film projects, which include Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive, are internationally considered to have broken down the wall between art-house cinema and Hollywood moviemaking.