R Kelly 'sex documents' unsealed

Documents pertaining to R Kelly.'s child pornography case were unsealed yesterday (June 17) following the R&B star's acquittal last week.

The documents include claims from star witness Lisa Van Allen that she received $100,000 in exchange for a videotape of a three-way sexual encounter with Kelly, Van Allen and his underage goddaughter.

Van Allen, who testified that Kelly videotaped their sexual encounter, said that one of the singer's employees told her she should have been "murked," street slang for murdered, for going to authorities, reports the Associated Press.

Kelly's representatives have portrayed Van Allen as a "thief and a liar".

The documents also revealed that prosecutors examined financial records of the alleged victim and her parents, most likely to determine whether they had been compensated, but the results were never admitted into court.

--By our Los Angeles staff.
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James McMurtry draws detailed portraits in song on new disc 'Just Us Kids'

NEW YORK - James McMurtry never wrote political songs because he didn't like listening to them much.

His exception was the music of fellow Texas native Steve Earle. When Earle released "The Revolution Starts Now" in the midst of the 2004 presidential campaign, it inspired McMurtry to pick up his pen.

The result was "We Can't Make it Here," a sneering, searing indictment of the Bush administration released online just before George W. Bush won a second term. He invited fans to make their own videos, making it a YouTube hit viewed more than 150,000 times and the best-known song of a 20-year musical career.

A Democrat in Texas, McMurtry felt like his vote didn't matter. "The one power that I did have was the record deal," he said. "I went for it and it turned out to be a song, not a sermon. It turned out to be a song with a narrator that a lot of people could relate to."

The momentum from "We Can't Make it Here" carried over to the new disc, "Just Us Kids," which topped the Americana chart for more than a month this spring. He gets in another shot at Bush ("Cheney's Toy"), but the disc's strength lies in McMurtry's ability to draw detailed portraits in song, mostly of flawed figures too often overlooked by society.

There's the dot-com millionaire trying to cover up the emptiness inside, the lonely man isolated when a hurricane blows down his telephone lines, the crank addict living "in a cinder block cell."

The narrator of "Bayou Tortous" looks out at the world through "the hole in the bottom of my heart."

They are themes that run throughout his career. "Where's Johnny," released in 1992, is a devastating portrait of a former high school hero who returns home with no ambition or drive. It baffles his parents, who must come to terms with the fact it's "just life."

The rollicking title cut to "Just Us Kids" tracks a gang of teenagers who keep hanging out as they age. "We could really have it all," he sings. "Our kid's gonna graduate next fall. I could take retirement in 10 years. It's a damn short movie. How'd we ever get here?"

He has a novelist's eye for detail, fitting them into the compact literary form of a song, and a dry vocal tone.

If bloodlines matter, the writing ability comes naturally: he's the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove"). James' experiences growing up, listening to the likes of Johnny Cash, influenced the kind of writer he'd become.

"I didn't want to write long-form pieces because I haven't read a lot of long-form pieces," he said. "I listened to music. My father learned to do long-form writing because he read it. He was a voracious reader. The song was my first connection to the world beyond my living room - a mono record player."

What sealed the deal for him was sitting in the ninth row of a Kris Kristofferson concert one night.

"I got to see up close how much fun the people seemed to be having," he said, "and that's what drew me to it more than anything."

McMurtry's first album was produced by John Mellencamp, the sort of adoption by a star guaranteed to draw attention, and had the major-label backing of Columbia. Dropped after two albums, he's made the rounds of smaller labels. His current Lightning Rod Records is simply an imprint by a former A&R man who stuck with him. He's been left to pretty much develop and practice his craft on his own, picking up a devoted fan base.

He downplays his guitar playing, but through years of playing guitar as part of a three-piece band, he's become a good one. That was most evident on a 2003 live album that McMurtry's quite proud of, but felt it was unjustly dismissed because many people consider live discs throwaways.

"His songwriting has always been great," said Logan Rogers, who started Lightning Rod Records to release McMurtry's new album. "The lyrics have always been great. Now the musical side has caught up."

-

On the Net:

http://www.jamesmcmurtry.com

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Lars Ulrich Talks New Metallica Album: 'It's More Like Some Of Our Earlier Records'

For well over a year, Metallica have been working on material for their yet-untitled ninth studio offering. And in all that time, the boys have managed to keep a lid on any information regarding the effort, which they've decided to work on with producer Rick Rubin (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slayer), severing their ties to longtime producer Bob Rock.

On Thursday, Metallica's outspoken drummer Lars Ulrich spoke about the record, which the band expects to finish recording next week.

He said there will be "a couple of nips and tucks next week, and then we should be done with it — hopefully by Wednesday or Thursday." The album will be in stores "in mid-September, and literally, just yesterday, our graphic designer came down from San Francisco and showed us a few things. We should have an album title very, very soon, and all our songs — which are [currently] entitled 'German Soup,' '19,' '10' and 'Casper, Wyoming,' and whatever else they've been called over the last year — are going to get some real song titles attached to them."

However, Ulrich said the band probably won't be previewing the new material during its set next month at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. The group also recently signed on for the one-day Ozzfest this summer.

After spending the past year in the studio honing the material, Metallica are about to enter album-promotion mode. "It's all just starting right now," he said. "We sort of promised ourselves that, unlike all the records we made in the '90s that were just completely f---ing stressed out and nutty, that we were going to try and have a little bit of a more sane environment. And surprisingly, mostly for ourselves, we've been able to keep that."

Ulrich said the band entered the studio with 26 songs written, and had to whittle that down to 14. In all likelihood, the record will feature 10 cuts, because "they haven't made a CD yet that can contain more than 80 minutes of music." He said most of the songs are epic in length — "they're long songs, maybe seven-, eight-, nine-minute, nutty-ass songs" — and are as diverse as the band's albums.

"It's definitely pretty all over the place: a lot of variation, a lot of fast, slow, melodic, hardcore, nutty, super-fast speed stuff," he said. "It's more like some of the earlier records, which were a little more dynamic within the songs. And on those records, there were a lot of long songs that were — without sounding too corny — journeys. You'd go here and then you'd go over here and then this, and then that would happen. It feels like kind of a lot of that stuff. It's difficult for me to sit down and brand it yet, because I'm still so close to it."

Ulrich said that the release of their next one would be followed in October with a full U.S. tour, but had no additional information about the run.






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Hogans Blasted By Car Crash Victim's Family

Hulk Hogan and his family have been criticised by the parents of the teenager left critically injured by their son Nick's 2007 car crash.

Nick Bollea, 17, is currently serving an eight-month prison sentence at Florida's Pinellas County Jail, after pleading no contest to felony reckless driving following a horrific car crash in Clearwater, Florida - which has left passenger John Graziano brain damaged.

But Graziano's parents Ed and Debra are furious at the teenager's apparent lack of remorse, after hearing Nick discuss plans to win an early release from jail in taped telephone conversations that were leaked online at the weekend.

On the tapes - obtained by TMZ - Bollea can be heard telling his dad that he wants to turn up for a court hearing "in my jumpsuit, for the sympathetic factor".

A statement released by the Grazianos via their lawyers reads:
"These tapes clearly show what the Bolleas said in court was calculated to give the Court the impression that Nick deserved a break. It was a true Academy Award performance. They (the Bollea family) spoke of their love for John and they expressed how sorry they were, but their true feelings have now been revealed in the tape..."

The Grazianos also slam the Bolleas for trying to cash in on their grief - by turning Nick's prison stint into a money-spinning reality TV show.

They add: "Nick Bollea and Terry Bollea are already planning a new reality show. Cameras are set to film Nick Bollea as he is released from jail and while he serves his probation.”

Ed Graziano goes on to say: "The reason he (Nick) was put in jail is to think about what he did to my son. (But) that's the last thought on his mind."