Remember the little disasters too

MUCH has been made about

Kanye West’s off-script remarks during the live, Sept. 2 NBC-TV fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Something about someone not doing something-or-other for people of certain ethnicity. You remember.

Less was made of the reaction of West’s on-screen partner, actor Mike Myers.

“Wh ... ggh ... sppp ... czzz ... ,” he managed to utter, his mouth moving like a beached guppy gasping for air, perhaps as he scrolled through his mental database for some “Austin Powers” catchphrase that would be fitting for the situation.

Hold on to that image of Myers, momentarily apoplectic. Regardless of the charged moment that inspired it, it seems an appropriate response to many things qualifying for honors in Pop Eye’s annual roundup of the music world’s Dubious Distinctions.

In other words, it was business as usual.

Take the creative ways with which music companies faced the challenge of trying to sell CDs to people who, increasingly, are not interested in buying them, as music becomes more and more available online -- legally or otherwise.

You wonder how those conversations went in the Sony BMG executive conference rooms:

“Maybe more people will buy our CDs if along with copy protection software we secretly add programs so that when the disc is put into a computer, it installs spyware, opens the system to hackers and causes damage if the customer attempts to uninstall it!”

Cue Mike Myers reaction shot.

The best response, though, may have come from San Diego band Switchfoot, which was not happy at all about the copy protection elements Sony BMG put into discs of its latest album, “Nothing Is Sound,” released in September. Bassist Tom Foreman went online himself with an apology to fans, and provided detailed instructions on how to defeat or disable the program.

He posted that information in a note on the band’s official fan message board -- which just happens to be owned and hosted by none other than, yup, Sony BMG.

Other kudos to My Morning Jacket, whose management mailed unprotected copies of the recent “Z” album to some fans who complained about the extra software, and to Damian Kulash of the band OK Go, who wrote a New York Times editorial against the various Digital Rights Management steps and got Capitol Records to agree not to add such elements to his band’s CD.

A hero for our times

While Ashlee Simpson seems to have learned her lesson from her “Saturday Night Live” embarrassment in 2004, she still may want to steer clear of Turkmenistan. In August, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov issued a firm ban on lip-syncing.

Niyazov, who has headed the former Soviet republic for more than 20 years, ordered an end to lip-syncing at all public events, TV performances and even weddings and other private functions.

“Unfortunately, one can see on television old voiceless singers lip-syncing their old songs,” he explained to his cabinet. “Don’t kill talents by using lip-syncing. Create our new culture.”

A matter of synchronicity

Perhaps fearing a Turkmen reprisal, Justin Timberlake’s publicists fought reports that the pop star would be lip-syncing through a performance at a May bar mitzvah in the resort city of St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera. The former ‘N Sync singer, who’d had throat surgery in early May, was hired for a cool $1 million for the gig by the bar mitzvah boy’s pop, British retail tycoon Philip Green.

Dialing for dollars

Usually with telethons, it’s donors who make the phone calls. Brian Wilson did it the other way around, personally phoning to thank each of more than 500 fans who made donations through his website to relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. The effort started after Wilson, who performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last spring, put a note on the site’s message board. A fan reading it didn’t believe it was actually the former Beach Boy who had left the message, and challenged him to call. Wilson said he would -- if the fan made a donation.

From that he got inspired to call everyone who made a contribution of $100 or more. Wilson and his wife, Melinda, also matched the donations dollar for dollar, bringing the total they raised to $210,000. Nothing dubious at all about this -- just a notable contrast in a world where people pay $1 million for a singer at a kid’s party.

It’s udderly ridiculous

Tom Waits has long waged battles against advertisers who have used singers with voices he has believed were intended to imitate his distinctively gruff style. But the depth of his despair over such things became clear as he described his feelings about a TV commercial Opel automobiles aired in Scandinavia earlier this year, using a Waits-like singer.

“Commercials are an unnatural use of my work,” he said in a statement, released after Scandinavian fans contacted his record company believing he had actually done the commercial. “It’s like having a cow’s udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful and humiliating.”

Please-Izzle don’t sue-shizzle us

Snoop Dogg filed a $2-million lawsuit in August against Philadelphia car dealer Gary Barbera claiming that he ran newspaper ads without permission using Snoop’s image and the Izzle-speak style popularized by the Long Beach rapper.

“Is the Bar-Bizzle the Sh-izzle?” read the ads. “Boy I Gu-izzle.”

Perhaps Snoop could sew a cow’s udder to his face to demonstrate solidarity with Waits.

Meat the Beatle

Paul McCartney won’t be sewing a cow’s udder to anything. For his performance at the Super Bowl in February, the well-known vegan insisted that all animal flesh products be removed from his hotel suites, dressing rooms and even where he held a press conference -- not just food, but furniture. And that football he was photographed holding? Not pigskin, but foam.

Vegetable matter proved a bit controversial, though, in his halftime show, as two viewers filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about lyrics they believed were references to marijuana. Two other viewers also lodged official complaints with the FCC. Their, uh, beefs? They said the music was boring.

A pope, a nun and a rabbi ...

Last year, Madonna announced that she’d taken the Jewish name of Esther as part of her cabala studies. So this year, when she attended a cabala party for Purim, the Jewish festival celebrating the time when the historic Queen Esther saved the Jews from extermination in Persia some 2,500 years ago, naturally she went in costume as ... a nun?

And it wasn’t even that which drew criticism from several rabbis. That came with news that her new “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album contained a song, “Isaac,” inspired by 16th century Jewish mystic Yitzhak Luria.

“Jewish law forbids the use of the name of the holy rabbi for profit,” said Rabbi Rafael Cohen, head of an Israeli seminary named for Luria. “Her act is just simply unacceptable and I can only sympathize for her because of the punishment that she is going to receive from the heavens.”

Perhaps her hubby Guy Ritchie can intercede. After all, he went to the Purim party dressed as the pope.

Age is only a number

Dr. Dre, it’s your birthday .... Shhhh, not so loud. Rap producer-artist-mogul Dr. Dre turned 40 in February, but apparently didn’t want people to know about it. A BBC radio channel planned to celebrate that milestone with a day of special programming, but reportedly was asked by Dre’s Aftermath Records to avoid stating the actual age. In an e-mail to employees, station management instructed staff that the request to “tone down the mentions of him turning 40” would be honored.