Tom Jones International

It took a few days, but our new “stand-alone” section, “Jonesin’ for Photos” is finally organized. Check the menu on the right side of this page.

The new “Screen Shots” photo set is ready.

The first ones are shots from the April 21st Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. Tom looks great and, for those of us who couldn’t see the show, this is the next best thing. An added treat is a photo from the late 1970s-early 1980s.

If you have other screen shots — or other photos — you’d like to share, send them in. We are often adding to our flickr sets, so check them often.

To the envy of fans not able to see or hear the shows, Tom has been on UK radio and TV flogging away at Stoned In Love. (This is his new single with Chicane, in case you hadn’t heard.) Luckily for us, though, the intrepid mharding has been kind enough to listen/watch (and watch and listen) and send us details (including the fact that, “Tom was keen to point out that his receiving the title was due to the effort made by the public”).

So, thanks to one of our three favorite “Taffys,” mharding. We are grateful.

(On Wednesday, April 26, mharding noted that you can access the Popworld interview on your computer. The screen shots on this post are from that interview.)

1 Leicester Square: Not as long an interview as the JR show. Tom and Nick Bracegirdle (he who is hovering at Tom’s shoulder in the Western Mail photo) were interviewed by Russell but there was no performance. An interesting factoid to mention is that Tom’s vocals were recorded in Malibu and Nick brought the track out to him. Nick said it was “very cool” to work with Tom.
It was a light-hearted interview as was the Ross show and Russell made Tom and Nick giggle a lot. He spoke
to Tom mostly:

“Did he have protection from gangsters?” “No, but it had been offered.”

Standard questions, really. Russell referred to Bracegirdle’s surname as sounding like that of a Victorian undertaker and ratcatcher and accused him of manipulating Tom’s talent for his own “evil” ends. Knighthood wasn’t mentioned as this is youth telly and nobody cares.


Popworld: This interview on Saturday morning had Tom on his own with two zany, postmodern youth presenters who were all hipster jeans and smart-arsed irony. Tom walked through it on his hands to be honest and played along with the stream of consciousness ramblings of the two interviewers though there were a couple of moments where you could see he was waiting for them to stop rambling and get on with it.

“Was he condoning robbery with the new video?”


“No, they were worried about that when making it but it was intended to be a joke.”

Given that he now works with Ibiza legend Chicane has he ever larged it (meaning “lived it large” or partied
excessively) in Ibiza clubs? No, but he had been to similar club resorts like Monte Carlo.

What did he think of Grime?*

“Wellll…what IS grime”? Tom mused, entering into the postmodern irony mode. “It’s just a grimy thing really isn’t it” he shrugged.

Would he ever do French-Canadian Post-Rock? “I don’t know what that is. It would depend on the song.”

Good enough answers, I thought.

They asked him if he thought the American Church that is dedicated to preaching through Tom (Pastor Jack at www.churchoftomjones.com/) was weird and he said he thought it was okay as it was a positive thing with it being a church.

They played him the new Orson video
(http://www.orsonband.com/orsonband.htm) and asked his opinion.

One of the presenters said the band had been described as “Slipknot meets Engelbert Humperdinck”. Tom let
that pass, commenting “It’s a good hard sound, which is very important to me”.

What about the trilby hats? Tom opined that you have to do something to look different. One of the presenters countered “It’s not really that different though is it, Tom?”

They all agreed (ironically and post-modernly) that Tom had caught them out when he retorted “Who else is doing it then? With the hat?”. Will Young
(http://www.will-youngonline.com/) was the best they could come up with.

On HTV Wales News April 24: Tom was interviewed from his hotel room. Standard stuff again but he did say he was told about the Knighthood at Christmas and that he read up on the history of it at that point and when the importance of it sank in he started to question his character, worthiness, etc. He said that he’d like to thank very much all those who campaigned for him to receive the title and stressed that Downing Street (the Prime Minister makes the recommendations) needs to be made aware that there’s a public demand for a particular person to be acknowledged.

Tom was keen to point out that his receiving the title was due to the effort made by the public.

Paul O’Grady Show:
Tom took part in a regular musical phone in game they have and had to act as a dog handler for a homeless dog.

London Tonight:
Here he was with Nick in the hotel
room. There’s been a rumour going around that Tom doesn’t like J. Timberlake and he again tonight was asked about it. He claimed it was a misquote and he doesn’t think JT is crap.

Then he pointed out that they could edit the tape to make it look as if he had just said “Justin Timberlake is crap”.

Nick had his head in his hands laughing; he’s heard these questions a million times now.

---

Tom also said he was to appear with Chicane last night (Monday, April 24) at Carling Academy in Islington.

---

*Grime (As defined by wickipedia.org): a genre of urban music which has been developing in London’s underground since 2002. Grime’s tempo is typically around 140 beats per minute. Style of flow also varies but its most common for rappers to “spit” double time or aggressively over the beat. In contrast to its more soulful progenitor, Grime can often be dark and aggressive, featuring MCs as opposed to singers and jettisoning the R&B influences of earlier 2 step UK Garage. In contrast, the success of grime is inseparable from its connection with pirate radio, with many performers honing their skills and achieving underground success before approaching the mainstream. Grime has roots in both hip hop and electronic music and is characterised by rapid and rhythmic rhyming over sparse break beats, futuristic bleeps and guttural bass growls. Perhaps due to its experimental nature and diverse stylistic influences, grime resisted attempts to classify or pigeonhole it for a long time, but in the past has also gone by the names sublow, 8bar, nu shape or eskibeat.

An interview with Tom is available via podcast. In it, he describes how he heard about his Knighthood, discusses his music and collaborators — for a relatively short interview, there’s some real substance. There is no fee for the download.

If you have iTunes, open it and go to the “Advanced” menu (above the iTunes screen) and, then, to “Subscribe to Podcast.”

When the subscribe screen comes up, put in the url: http://www.umtv.co.uk/tomjones.xml and the podcast will download.

If you do not have iTunes, go to www.apple.com/itunes/download (or, in the UK to www.apple.com/uk/itunes/download/) then download iTunes and, then, the podcast by following the directions above.





(Remember, you do not need to have an iPod to use iTunes.)

Stoned In Love is for sale.




Overseas (non-UK) fans can buy it on eBay, at eil.com in both CD and vinyl (!) format, at amazon.com and, of course, from amazon.co.uk

---

From MTV-UK

It’s official: Tom Jones is the daddy…




Chicane are number one in this week’s Galaxy Dance Chart with Stoned In Love. The Galaxy Chart premieres on MTV Dance (MTV UK) every Sunday at 9 pm. And you can vote any time going to the link above.

The Galaxy Dance Chart is your weekly countdown of the hottest tracks in clubland — voted for by you.




Congratulations, Tom!

Once more: Thanks, Matthew

From the April 20 Western Mail, this article is notable mostly for the photo, we think. But you can check it out at icWales.

There’s also a review of the new CD and a rundown of Tom’s past Welsh collaborators, as well as a list of the the TV shows he’s doing through Monday (and, even, will be on Top of the Pops on April 30).

It’s odd, isn’t it (or, as they say in Welsh, “inn’t it?”) how UK fans complain that he never plays there in person and fans outside the UK that he’s rarely, if ever, on TV or in print interviews elsewhere?

Is this an issue of never being able to please everyone? Or is it an issue of balance? The bulk of his personal performances are in the US and Canada, but the recordings and new, positive media exposure seem only to be for the UK. Is there a solution?

Thanks again, Matthew!

The Sunday Times of London’s 2006 list of Britain’s 1,000 wealthiest people was published today, April 23, 2006.

With £185 million, Tom is tied with Sting at #9 in the music list. He’s also #9 overall in Wales. The full music list is in PDF format at the Times Online Check it out.

The wealthiest Brit in music is a man named Clive Calder, a famously — and rigorously — publicity shy record label mogul who sold his Zomba Recordings, onetime label for Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, to BMG for $2.7 billion in 2002. Today his fortune is estimated at £1.3 billion. At one time, Zomba owned the Jive label on which Tom’s Move Closer CD was released in 1989.

As is to be expected, Paul McCartney is the highest-ranked musician on the list.

If you want to know how the newspaper compiles it’s list you can read the full story here.

Well, as the song says, Tom sure works hard for the money. Once again, we say he deserves it.

This is a good interview with Tom from iVillage the women’s website in the UK. Our only quibble? We’ve not seen Sir Tom in leather slacks since…..well, we cannot remember when. Why do writers seem to always talk about them?




Sex Bomb Tom




by Peggy Nuttall

As Sir Tom Jones tries his luck in the dance music scene, we talk about his knighthood, his hair and his soft spot for Charlotte Church

From his humble beginnings in Pontypridd, South Wales, where he sang at local YMCAs, bunked off school and courted the local Catholic girls (one of whom was to become his wife) to internationally acclaimed and newly knighted superstardom — Sir Tom Jones has come a long way.

And now, after over four decades in the business he turns to unlikely collaborating partner, Nick Bracegirdle — mastermind of dance act Chicane to experiment with a new modern sound with their single Stoned in Love.
‘It’s not a drug reference,’ insists Nick, talking of the suggestive title. So it’s a (rather strange) allusion to biblical punishment, is it? Unlikely, and the lyrics are no more enlightening.

The single’s contemporary sound is similar to that of the recent number ones dominating the UK charts — upbeat tempos and familiar vocals, usually sampled from old TV theme tunes or aging rockers’ hits from way back. But this song, Nick asserts, is an original piece of writing. ‘There’s a real trend at the moment to take a huge chunk of someone else’s work, slap some beats on top and have a hit with it,’ he says. ‘You get a bit tired of it, to be honest.’

Stoned in Love was Nick’s self-penned brainchild, and enlisting Tom for the vocals didn’t occur to him till later on the process when he realised that it needed a ‘serious pair of lungs.’ And Tom, closet MTV addict, is very excited. ‘I was looking for something new and thought, “Christ, this sounds like a hit to me!”‘

With softer falsetto vocals and not a hint of the brassy-backing that set the Welsh wonder’s hips gyrating back in the day, you’d be forgiven for not recognising this as the work of the original sex bomb.

For those of you who’ve never heard Delilah, missed his stint as premier Vegas headliner or failed to catch his cartoon appearance on the Simpsons, Tom’s credentials are old-school and heavyweight, and although ‘Stoned in Love’ is certainly a new sound for him, it’s far from the biggest musical adjustment he’s undergone.

The real music revolution for Tom happened in the mid-50s when the big band crooners made way for the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley (who became a close friend) and Fats Domino. And after baffling his school choir teacher by singing the Lord’s Prayer like a ‘negro spiritual’, he came into his own in the rock ‘n’ roll movement. ‘I just sang along with it. I went to see if I was singing correctly and they just said “you’re doing it right.”‘

‘Only black people were doing it really,’ Tom recalls ‘until Elvis kicked in’. And he has a lot to thank his close friend for, with a consistent run of hits and probably enough pairs of women’s knickers to insulate the roof of the giant LA mansion in which he currently resides.

Although Tom has moved on from the knicker-throwing days it would surely be unfair of him to abandon the loyalists after all they’ve given him, so what will they make of the new sound? ‘They’ll like it because it’s a proper song. Everybody I’ve played it to loves it, so I don’t think there’s a problem there at all.’
With numerous collaborating partners under his belt – Cerys Matthews from Catatonia (for Baby It’s Cold Outside) and Stereophonics (for Mama Told Me Not To Come) to name a couple of recent picks — are there any more Welsh partnerships on the cards, say Charlotte Church for example? (well, we had to ask!) ‘I couldn’t tell you what my next project will be,’ he says. ‘But I’m so pleased that she did the cross-over, I’m very, very happy for her. She’s a cracker.’

One thing he promises is that there will be no style makeover — he’s still working the leather slacks with the tan that never fades. ‘It just works,’ he modestly asserts. And with a knighthood under his belt (meeting the queen for him was like catching up with an old friend ‘I met her in the ’60s. I think [meeting her again] might have made her realise how long she’d been around’), Tom remains solidly British. After more than 30 years in LA he’s sounding as Welsh as ever – and it looks like we’re set for a few more years of the roaring rogue we know and love. There is one area, he coyly suggests, that might get a bit of shake-up: his hair. ‘I might put a bit of a rinse in, you never know.’ Watch this space.

---

Here’s one from April 20′s Manchester Online in which some quotes from other interviews are lifted and combined with a few new quotes.




Thanks again, Andre! You’re the best!