The Daily Swarm

Billboard:

When Billy Morrison heard his friend, bassist Scott Ford (Twilight Singers, the Gutter Twins, Camp Freddy), was suffering from an advanced bone loss medical condition resulting in severe blood infections, the guitarist and former member of The Cult sprung into action. The result is the Scott Ford Benefit show, which features a who’s who list of Los Angeles musicians getting together Sept. 26 at The Roxy. All money raised will go towards Ford’s mounting medical bills.

The list of guests include McKagan (Velvet Revolver, Duff McKagan’s Loaded), Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction), Scott Shriner (Weezer), Dave Kushner (Velvet Revolver), Chris Chaney (ex-Jane’s Addiction), Dulli, Morrison, Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp) and Wayne Kramer (MC5). Also appearing are emcee Donovan Leitch (actor) and Steve O (“Jackass”).

Morrison said a tentative list of covers includes material from Nazareth, David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC, The Stooges and Bad Company.

”...It’s a great group of musicians and Scott Ford is a great guy. It’s a positive thing.” 

Some details of Scott’s condition, from his blog:

As far as what’s going on, I have developed bone loss which has resulted in advanced periodontal disease, which basically means all my teeth have become loose and I have developed infections in my jaw which are life threatening. There is apparently so much poison being pumped into my bloodstream that a heart attack is a matter of when not if.

So you see, I can’t really waver on having this operation. Maybe if I didn’t have a wife and kid I might pretend it’s not happening, but they won’t let me do that.

Apparently it’s been happening for about the last five years, which explains why I feel so tired, sluggish and generally sick most of the time. It’s now reached a critical point.

So next Wednesday I will be having all my teeth removed, something I am totally terrified about, and the doc’s will attempt to remove all the infections in my jaw and thus remove the risk of heart attack. They will fit me with dentures which is both humiliating and painful, they told me that it will take me some time to learn how to eat and talk again. As scared as I am, this operation will save my life so I am trying to look at it as a good thing.

You can purchase tickets to the Scott Ford Benefit Show through Ticketmaster.

If you can’t make it to the show, you can donate to Scott’s medical fund here.

Yahoo! News:

Long before botched plastic surgery ruined a movie star’s career, they were the original showbiz victims.

Castrati were young opera singers in past centuries castrated to preserve a high-pitched voice, and they are now being honored by Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli in a new album.

The opera great dedicated her upcoming work “Sacrificium” — “Sacrifice” in Latin — to the thousands of boys, often from poor families, who went under the knife to achieve stardom, but often ended up destitute and isolated from society.

“Families that were poor and large allowed the mutilation of a son hoping for success, pushed by unscrupulous impresarios,” Bartoli said in an interview published Friday by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Because women were banned from the stage, for many centuries operas featured castrated male singers from Italy, then the global genre’s hub, and other countries. The practice peaked in the 18th century, when up to 4,000 boys were emasculated annually in Italy alone, Bartoli says in an interview on her Web site.

In the album, to be released worldwide Oct. 2, Bartoli sings rare arias, some never recorded before, written specifically for castrati by composers including Handel and Nicola Porpora, who ran the top school for these special singers in Naples.

New York Times:

Trevor Rhone, the award-winning Jamaican playwright, director and actor who brought his island’s culture to the world as a writer of the groundbreaking film “The Harder They Come,” died on Tuesday in Kingston, Jamaica, where he lived. He was 69.

The cause was apparently a heart attack, his wife, Camella, said.

Renowned throughout the Caribbean for plays like “Smile Orange” and “Old Story Time,” Mr. Rhone helped pioneer Jamaica’s indigenous theater, bringing pitch-perfect dialect and character studies to the local stage.

“He loved the music of our language,” said his lifelong friend, the Jamaican actress Leonie Forbes, who studied with him in England.

The Jamaican actress and broadcaster Fae Ellington, a longtime friend, said, “If he wrote five words for you, they were the best five words.”

Jamaica Gleaner:

The cultural community mourns the sudden passing of Trevor Rhone, multi-talented theatre practitioner. With his departure, the Jamaican cultural arts scene is undoubtedly the poorer. This is the time when, according to the contemporary custom, the designation of ‘icon’ is easily applied. Although overuse of the term has created some reservations as to exactly who is an icon, and what qualifies them for the honour, in the case of Trevor Rhone, we can with certainty agree that his extensive contribution to the cultural development of Jamaica, indeed, the Caribbean, is worthy of recognition as one of our iconic cultural figures.

Trevor Rhone, who died suddenly on Tuesday at the age of 69, was a multi-talented, multi-skilled practitioner of his craft. He was known perhaps best of all for his mastery as a playwright, exploring themes of the experience of ordinary folk, from urban to rural, and bringing them to the stage where, in the hands of accomplished actors, they came alive.