Ok, so they are from Madison, WI..but close enough..:)
iTunes Ping may well be one of the most important features implemented in Apple’s iTunes, more important than Genius and we’re reminded today why this is the case.
Apple used Lady Gaga’s profile to illustrate Ping’s artist profile section and what’s supremely impressive is the rate at which the number is growing; we’ve calculated that Lady Gaga’s number of followers is growing at the rate of 1000 every 12 minutes or roughly 120,000 in a day which is simply astounding.
Given that she has six million followers on Twitter and a following of nearly 17 million people on Facebook, this doesn’t really come as a surprise for a global superstar.
Interestingly, Gaga’s account was launched back on the 3rd of August, four weeks before the launch of Ping and what’s more, we’ve notice that some entries seems to have been published on Apple’s social network first and then on Twitter.
Source: Desire Athow, ITPro Portal
She cut a direct path up to Lady Starlight and put a dollar bill in her underwear. Stefani Germanotta, an NYU dropout celebrating her 20th birthday at her much-older boyfriend’s Lower East Side rock club, St. Jerome’s, was transfixed by this leather-studded hottie shaking her ass in the skimpiest leather thong in history.
Germanotta’s eyes lit up with fascination. Who is this girl?
It was as if Lady Starlight had been transported from a sleezy-hot, mid-1980s David Lee Roth video to this downtown rock club in 2007. But as perfectly as she had the whole pole-dancing, hair-metal video vixen thing down, who Lady Starlight was really channeling was the lurid, swaggering frontman.
“I just loved to dance,” Starlight (born Colleen Martin) tells PopEater. “There was an aggressive thing about what I was doing on stage. I captured Axl Rose and David Lee Roth. I mixed c**k rock frontman with feminine go-go dancing. It just came from within.”
Lady Starlight would serve as Gaga’s DJ, but it was her encyclopedic knowledge of music and fashion subcultures, which came from her countless years as a dedicated scenester, that Gaga found the most useful. Starlight’s been through more incarnations than the Dali Lama, from British psychedelic ’60s mod to NYC club kid (“I was a dead ringer for Amanda Lepore”) to Sunset Strip ’80s sleaze/metal. It also didn’t hurt that she was a master costume designer and makeup artist.
“All the stuff you see Lady Gaga do now — the fire and fog and the elaborate outfits — were things we wanted to do, but we didn’t have any money. We tried to give our outfits as much visual impact as possible for the least amount of cash. That usually involved going to the fabric store and buying mirrors, sequins, fringe and then gluing it on to our underwear.”
“It was really more of my attitude towards art that was influential to her, rather than any specific look or style,” Starlight says. “Do it as big as you can, as loud as you can. Whatever it is. The more shocking the better.”
Whereas Gaga’s parents and classmates had been asking her to tone it down, Starlight encouraged Gaga to push things to the limit. To push them past the limit.
“The people from her upbringing were more conservative. She was finally connected to a group of artists who encouraged her to just go for it. Before that, I don’t think she had found that crew where she could really be herself.”
She also showed her that the one thing a performer must be, above everything else, is committed to the role.
“That’s what makes me stand out, especially to people who are a bit younger than me, like Gaga, that grew up in this alternative culture being a mash-up of things. She saw how specific, focused and disciplined I was to my look and style, and she admired that.”
Lady Gaga talked to New York Magazine about her total commitment to living the heavy metal ethos. “In those days, I’d wake up at noon in my apartment with my boyfriend and his loud Nikki Sixx hair, jeans on the floor, his stinky sneakers. He’d have his T-shirt on, no boxers. Then he would go do the books at St. Jerome’s. I’d spin vinyl of David Bowie and New York Dolls in my kitchen, then write music with Lady Starlight.”
It’s during this time that Lady Starlight became something of an Obi Wan Kenobi to Gaga’s Luke Skywalker, encouraging her to unleash her wild side, to become one with her sexual force.
Which brings us to the final lesson: take off your clothes. “I was the one who told her to take her trousers off because I rarely wore any myself,” says Lady Starlight. “The attitude of that scene was to shock people and make them pay attention. Not just in a sexual way, which often happens. It was more, like, let’s freak people out. It was very basic. Let’s freak people out.”
Was it hard for Lady Gaga, a Catholic girl, to come out on stage with her arse hanging out?
“She was never, like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’” says Starlight. “She was down. She was excited. And I was like, ‘More, more, more, more, more!’ She never put on the breaks. We were encouraging each other to go bigger and bigger. More and more outrageous. And it did get more outrageous.”
And the response of the crowd?
“People would just sit there and stare. Sometimes I would think that they hated us. But they would come up to me after the show and say, “Oh, my God. That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
While their burlesque act lasted less than two years, it’s impact on Lady Gaga was immeasurable. She always had the musical chops to be a rock star, but she lacked the laser-focused commitment to the role. Lady Starlight is the reason Lady Gaga is never not Lady Gaga, even when walking through an airport or attending a Yankees game.
“It was a call to arms,” says Starlight, recalling how their burlesque show was about challenging societal norms. “What Lady Gaga was doing was not pop. It really was performance art. We weren’t referencing a certain look or time period. That’s what’s so cool about Gaga. She’s never lost that attitude from those days in the scene.”
So, is Lady Starlight bitter that her friend and creative partner has gone on to unfathomable stardom while she’s still getting by performing her go-go dancing DJ routine, mostly in small clubs? Not at all — Starlight is proud of her young Jedi student. She even designed an outfit for Gaga to wear on her current tour.
Starlight, 34, is performing these days as the opening act for Semi Precious Weapons. Back in their early days, she and Gaga would open for SPW at tiny downtown venues like Pianos and St. Jerome’s.
“It’s a DJ performance with go-go dancing. Everyone will see what made Lady Gaga stop and say, ‘Who is that girl?’ I’m showing the world that now. Every night, I’m retelling the whole New York story.”
Source: PopEater.Com
According to Ticketmaster.com, starting 19th February 2011 in Atlantic City, the Scissor Sisters will be an opening act on the Monster Ball! I’m not a fan myself, but even I couldn’t resist downloading songs like “Laura” & “I don’t feel like dancing”, Gaga however has said previous how much of a big fan she is of the group.
I’ve decided to commemorate each city on the Monster Ball tour with a video from my favorite hometown band.
Minneapolis! Ur up!
See more on Starlight’s Rock & Roll School
Oh dear god. Sybil Danning is the LOOK! She was an actress who starred in a string of 70′s/80′s B-movies, fantasy/sci-fi and action films. Some of the cinematic classics she starred in include Battle Beyond the Stars as an extraterrestrial Amazon named Saint-Exmin, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf as Stirba, an evil werewolf queen, Reform School Girls as a sadistic women’s prison warden and as Amazon Queen Lara in Amazon Women on the Moon. She did most of her own stunts and fight scenes, was always scantily clad in a plethora of sci-fi, barbarian chic looks….and of course lot’s of leather and thigh high boots. WIN TOWN.
See more on Darian’s Blog
Lance Chung is gaga for Lady Gaga, but letting go a pair of his own tickets for Friday night’s big concert was worth it, he says.
Chung gave up the tickets — worth $250 — to Kathy Chia, a 22-year-old student from the University of Alberta, as part of a contest he launched after his mother Helena, 49, was diagnosed with stage three multiple myeloma.
It’s the most severe stage of an incurable cancer of plasma blood cells affecting the immune system.
“It was hard for me on Friday and Thursday night because everyone’s Facebook status was buzzing about the concert,” said Chung, a University of Alberta business school student who dropped out of the last semester of his third year of classes to help his mother.
“Until I saw what we were able to achieve from this contest, I have no regrets.”
The “Monsters Against Myeloma” contest raised more than $2,000 for the U.S.-based Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, but Chung says it created awareness “around the world.”
And Hollywood superstar Paris Hilton mentioned Chung’s contest in a tweet on Twitter, Chung said.
“The amount of awareness that we raised was beyond what we originally thought,” said Chung, 21.
Those who took part in the contest were encouraged to raise money for the foundation, and the person who raised the most was awarded the tickets.
Chia said personally raising close to $200 for the cause was more than just about winning the tickets.
“The least I could do was to raise money for the foundation — I didn’t care about winning it,” said Chia, Chung’s former classmate.
“It was a great concert, but (Chung) is a much bigger Lady Gaga fan than I am.”
The former student says plans are already in the works for a second contest that could include a trip to a U.S. destination to see Lady Gaga in concert.
After months of treatment, Chung’s mother, who he affectionately refers to as “mama bear,” is near a remission stage.
It’s expected she will undergo a stem-cell transplant that doctors say should help improve her quality of life.
Ninety-three cents for every dollar raised for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation goes toward cancer research, says spokeswoman Alexandra Karnell.
There are roughly 6,000 Canadians living with Myeloma.
To get involved with the campaign, go to the Monsters Against Myeloma on Facebook, or e-mail monstersagainstmyeloma@live.com
Source: Edmonton Sun
