Valleywag: rock star

'80s pop star plans to Rickroll England in eight arena gigs

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:40:00 PDT

Yes, Rick Astley, the reclusive British pop star responsible for "Never Gonna Give You Up," has himself been Rickrolled. But it's all been within the last six months, he told the Los Angeles Times. In fact, Astley didn't know about Rickrolling — the act of labeling a link to a YouTube video of his one hit song as something else — until last year. Now he's finally prepared to capitalize on the Web phenomenon with an eight-show 1980s reunion tour planned for England.

Gene Simmons sex tape leaked on Web (NSFW)

Owen Thomas — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:06:28 PST

"Watch the sex tape Gene doesn't want you to see," GenesSecret.com promises. The website purportedly hosts a NSFW sex tape of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons. Leave aside the question of whether anyone wants to see Simmons in flagrante. Does Simmons himself really object to the site? Nothing revives the Q factor of an aging rocker like a bit of scandal. Since he's no longer recording, just touring, he doesn't have a skittish label to appease. And thanks to the Internet, he doesn't have to rely on the tabloids to get his name out. Welcome to the age of DIY career makeovers. Is it really Simmons? Judge for yourself from these excerpts in which his face is most visible:

Update: Gene Simmons's lawyer has confirmed the sex tape's authenticity in a cease-and-desist letter sent to Valleywag. With Simmons's identity established, we've shortened the excerpts to the bare minimum: Simmons's face, unquestionable; the activity he's engaging in, unmentionable.

As Chubby Wombat, Roger McNamee fails to rock

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:00:43 PST

Roger McNamee founded Elevation Partners, a tech private-equity firm with $1.9 billion in assets. He can claim Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg as friends. Bono is his coworker. He earned a 700 percent return saving Seagate Technology in the 1990s. But according to Portfolio, McNamee can't succeed in the one thing he really loves: rock and roll.

Here's Moonalice and its lead guitarist Chubby Wombat — McNamee's onstage alter ego — playing "The Nectar." The band is made up of the best musicians money can buy (literally: McNamee pays them), but its sound, to my ears, died about five years before I was even born.

The synching man's rock band

Owen Thomas — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:00:26 PST

Apparently someone told Joseph Smarr, Plaxo's chief platform architect, that he's a "rock star." Joseph, Joseph, Joseph. They were referring to your programming skills. Smarr does have the rock-and-roll look down, if not the sound. Here's a pic of him striking a hot pose.

Philip Kaplan releases "greatest and best song in the world"

Owen Thomas — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:15:09 PST

Why did FuckedCompany creator Philip "Pud" Kaplan record a profane song, "Fuck," in August under the name "Farty McPoopants"? The pseudonym is easy enough to explain: His current venture is AdBrite, an online-advertising network. And selling ads is a business that's all about keeping up appearances. Given his past, you'd think Kaplan wouldn't be so sensitive. But even Kaplan knew he couldn't blow his cool. His company, an online-advertising network, was in the midst of a tense negotiation with porn-ads partner AVN, and trying to raise a new round of financing.

August 30 was an especially bad day. The previous month, an outage at the 365 Main datacenter had brought down AdBrite's entire ad network. Subsequently, AVN and AdBrite had jockeyed over their joint network's AVNads.com website, and the spat had threatened the company's efforts to raise more money — a fact Valleywag reported the day before Kaplan uploaded his song. Anyone would sing the blues.

Things got better after Kaplan got "Fuck" out of his system. Sequoia Capital, AdBrite's previous venture backer, came through with $23 million in fresh funds. And AdBrite and AVN finally worked out an amicable split, with both companies starting their own, competing ad networks — and sneakily trying to poach each other's customers.

Kaplan, driven, he admits, by vanity, has now come out as the author of "Fuck", a brilliant ditty one blogger called the "greatest and best song in the world". I'm having a hard time disagreeing. You can play the song below and judge for yourself.

Fuck
by Farty McPoopants

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(Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)