Last Thursday (August 18th), Le Monde, one of the largest national newspapers in France published an essay on the significance of The Cranberries’ “Zombie” to mark its 10th anniversary as a hit.

Here is the English translation, followed by the original French text:

Zombie
Le Monde / 18 August 2005

Summer Hit 1995

Let’s get back ten years ago. It is the summer and the weather is good. Suddenly, on the radio, a voice vibrates, rumbles, and roars. All at the same time, and upon a single word, haunting: “Zombie, Zombie, Zoooooooooombie…”. The sentence ends with incredible vocal performances, almost yodels, bathed in saturated electric guitars reminiscent of those of Nirvana that emerged with the grunge in 1992. That vocal assault is named Dolores O’Riordan. She is 23, has short hair, piercings lined up on her ear, a strong Irish accent and, from her 1.60 meters, she shouts to the world about the misfortune of her island and of the victims of the Ulster conflict. For a summer hit, it is as far from La Lambada as one can be.

The Irish “Troubles” theme is not new: in 1983, U2 had already sung the endless violence striking the civilians stuck between the IRA’s bombs and the British army. The famous Sunday Bloody Sunday, “non-partisan” hymn, where the drums imitate the sound of a marching drum, was recalling that “bloody Sunday” of 1972 when the British army had opened fire on a Catholic demonstration in Derry. Ten thousand people that had come to protest against the arbitrary imprisonment policy lead by Great Britain were welcome by a sustained fire killing 14.

Ten years later, the Cranberries make their breakthrough on that same topic, among the “political” bands. The 20th of March 1993, they are touring Great Britain when they learn that two bombs planted by the IRA have spread terror in a commercial center in Warrington, in the north of the country. Two children have been killed – one was sitting on a bin that exploded, the other was killed the following day while he was looking for a Mother’s Day card.

The event doesn’t have the same political impact as the Bloody Sunday – which convinced Great Britain to administer Ulster directly from Westminster. However, the emotion is great in the United Kingdom. Dolores O’Riordan follows her glorious predecessor’s lead and writes Zombie: “Another head hangs lowly / Child is slowly taken / Who are we mistaken”. The song describes the inner anguish of a man – a zombie – traumatized by the civil war that lasts since the “Easter Insurrection”, date when the Republic was proclaimed: “It’s the same old theme since 1916 / In your head they’re still fighting”. The Cranberries are not very subtle. In the video, shot in Belfast, children play war in a gloomy city patrolled by armed, threatening soldiers. A divine figure (Dolores O’Riordan painted in gold) shouts her rage from the top of a cross, surrounded by scared cherubs.

Unfortunately, the song is released in 1994, when the IRA just signs a ceasefire and the civil war pauses. The singer is accused of needlessly relaunching the debate. Moreover, the song, which is meant a call for peace, comes in the media with declarations far less politically correct.

“In some cases, I am in favor of the death penalty,” Dolores O’Riordan explains to the Inrockuptibles in 1995. “In Singapore, they cut off theives’ hands and they cut off murderers’ heads. Result: no more crimes.”

She is also blamed for definitive tirades on subjects like abortion or feminism (“As far as I’m concerned, it is a thing for girls who have been ditched thirty times in their lives and decide that all men are filth”). Undoubtedly, the muse of the Cranberries, a timid teenager gone a star in a couple of months, remains marked by her childhood in the island she personifies almost caricaturely. The last of seven children, she sings in the church at the age of 5; she reads Gaelic fluently; she plays the traditional tin whistle skillfully. And, of course, she is Catholic. “At school, we had to confess,” she says. “As I hadn’t done anything bad, I had to make up sins to please the priest who was listening behind the screen. (…) But without that education, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated. And if I hadn’t been so frustrated, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Just like her, the other members of the band, the brothers Mike and Noel Hogan, bassist and guitarist, and the drummer Fergal Lawler originate from the Limerick area ; they have grown up drinking Guinness and doing small jobs. Polemics don’t prevent Zombie from going supernova. The album No Need To Argue sells more that 15 millions copies. For the Cranberries, 1995 is a sumptuous year. Dolores O’Riordan, who got married – in the church and in Doc Martens – joins her voice with Luciano Pavarotti to sing an Ave Maria during a concert for Bosnia children. A song that will belong, nine years later, to Mel Gibson’s Passion of The Christ original soundtrack. Then, Ireland decidedly becomes fashionable.

But, unlike their great predecessors, U2 or Sinead O’Connor, the bands assaulting the global market are often keen to avoid politics and polemic. The boys band Boyzone or the Corrs siblings prefer to remember their homeland’s folklore only, and barely tint their sentimental ballads with harp and tin whistle.

Claire Guillot

And here is the original French version for our francophone readers:

ZOMBIE
Jeudi 18 août 2005 / Le Monde

REVENONS dix ans en arrière. C’est l’été et il fait beau. A la radio, soudain, une voix vibre, gronde, rugit. Le tout à la fois, et sur un même mot, lancinant : ” Zombie, Zombie, Zoooooooombie… » La phrase s’achève sur d’incroyables vocalises, presque des yodles, baignées de guitares électriques saturées qui rappellent Nirvana, surgi avec le grunge en 1992. Cette déferlante vocale s’appelle Dolores O’Riordan. Elle a 23 ans, les cheveux ras, des piercings en rang sur l’oreille, un accent irlandais à couper au couteau et, du haut de son 1,60 m, elle hurle à la face du monde les malheurs de son île et des victimes du conflit nord-irlandais. Pour un tube de l’été, c’est aussi loin que possible de La Lambada.

Le thème des ” troubles » irlandais n’est pas neuf : en 1983, le groupe U2 avait déjà chanté l’interminable violence frappant les civils coincés entre les bombes de l’IRA et l’armée britannique. Le célèbre Sunday, Bloody Sunday, hymne ” non partisan », où la batterie imite le roulement du tambour, évoquait ce ” dimanche sanglant » de 1972 où l’armée britannique avait ouvert le feu sur une manifestation catholique à Derry. Dix mille personnes, venues protester contre la politique d’emprisonnement arbitraire menée par la Grande-Bretagne, avaient été accueillies par un feu nourri faisant 14 victimes.

Dix ans plus tard, les Cranberries font leur entrée, sur ce même thème, dans les rangs des groupes ” à thèse ». Ils sont en tournée en Grande-Bretagne quand ils apprennent, le 20 mars 1993, que deux bombes de l’IRA ont semé la terreur dans un centre commercial à Warrington, au nord du pays. Deux enfants ont été tués – l’un était assis sur une poubelle qui a explosé, l’autre a été fauché, le lendemain, alors qu’il cherchait une carte de voeux pour la Fête des mères.

L’événement n’a pas le retentissement politique du Bloody Sunday – qui convainquit la Grande-Bretagne d’administrer l’Ulster directement depuis Westminster. Néanmoins, l’émoi est grand dans les îles Britanniques. Dolores O’Riordan emboîte le pas à ses glorieux aînés et écrit Zombie : ” Encore une tête qui pend / Un enfant est évacué lentement / Qui sommes-nous, trompés. » La chanson décrit le tourment intérieur d’un homme – un zombie – traumatisé par la guerre civile qui dure depuis l'” insurrection de Pâques », date de la proclamation de la République : ” C’est la même rengaine depuis 1916 ; dans ta tête ils continuent à se battre. »

Les Cranberrries ne font pas dans la dentelle. Dans le clip, tourné à Belfast, des enfants jouent à la guerre dans une ville lugubre, arpentée par des soldats armés et menaçants. Une figure divine (Dolores O’Riordan, peinte en doré) hurle sa rage duhaut d’une croix, entourée d’angelots effrayés.

Manque de chance, la chanson ne sort qu’en 1994, alors que l’IRA vient de signer un cessez-le-feu et que la guerre civile fait une pause. La chanteuse est accusée de relancer gratuitement le débat. D’autant que sa chanson, qui se veut un appel à la paix, s’accompagne dans les médias de déclarations bien moins politiquement correctes. ” Dans certains cas, je suis pour la peine de mort, explique Dolores O’Riordan aux Inrockuptibles en 1995. A Singapour, on coupe les mains des voleurs, on coupe les têtes des meurtriers. Résultat : il n’y a plus de crimes. »

On lui reproche aussi des tirades définitives sur des sujets comme l’avortement ou le féminisme (” Pour moi, c’est quelque chose pour les filles qui se sont fait plaquer trente fois dans leur vie et qui décident que les hommes sont tous des ordures »). Sans doute l’égérie des Cranberries, adolescente timide devenue rockstar en quelques mois, reste-t-elle marquée par son enfance dans son île, qu’elle incarne jusqu’à la caricature. Petite dernière d’une famille de sept enfants, elle chantait à l’église dès l’âge de 5 ans ; elle lit le gaélique dans le texte ; elle maîtrise le tin whistle, la flûte traditionnelle. Et, bien entendu, elle est catholique. ” A l’école il fallait toujours se confesser, raconte-t- elle. Comme je n’avais rien à me reprocher, j’étais obligée d’inventer des péchés pour faire plaisir au prêtre qui m’écoutait derrière la grille. (…) Mais, sans cette éducation, je n’aurais jamais été frustrée. Et si je n’avais pas été frustrée, je ne serais pas ici aujourd’hui. »

Les autres membres du groupe, les frères Mike et Noel Hogan, bassiste et guitariste, et le batteur Fergal Lawlern sont comme elle originaires de la région de Limerick ; ils ont grandi en vivant de Guinness et de petits boulots. Les polémiques n’empêchent pas Zombie de faire le tour du monde : l’album No Need to Argue s’écoule à plus de 15 millions d’exemplaires. Pour les Cranberries, l’année 1995 est fastueuse. Dolores O’Riordan, qui s’est mariée – à l’église et en Doc Martens -, joint sa voix puissante à celle de Luciano Pavarotti pour chanter un Ave Maria lors d’un concert en faveur des enfants de Bosnie. Une chanson qui figurera, neuf ans plus tard, sur la bande originale du film La Passion du Christ, de Mel Gibson. Puis l’Irlande devient décidément à la mode.

Mais, au contraire des grands anciens, U2 ou Sinead O’Connor, les groupes qui se lancent à l’assaut du marché mondial sont soucieux d’éviter politique et polémique. Le boys band Boyzone ou la tribu des Corrs préfèrent ne retenir de leur patrie que son folklore, et se contentent de teinter leurs ballades sentimentales de harpe ou de pipeau.

Claire Guillot

Thanks to Sir Thomas Montagné, Esq., for the scan and laborious translation.

Source: Le Monde (France)

Universal Music Distribution today announced the tracks that will appear on The Cranberries’ 20th Century Masters CD, due to release in the United States on September 27, 2005.

The eleven tracks make this a strictly “greatest hits” release, nearly half the number of tracks that appeared on The Cranberries’ more complete Stars: The Best of The Cranberries 1992-2002. However, like all installments in the 20th Century Masters,
the CD will be available at a budget price of less than $10.

Universal has released the cover art (medium and HUGE resolution) and a tracklisting (see PDF sell sheet) for 20th Century Masters: The Best of The Cranberries: Millennium Collection.  (LINKS NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

The tracklisting is:

1. Dreams
2. Linger
3. Zombie
4. Ode to My Family
5. I Can’t Be With You
6. Salvation
7. Free to Decide
8. When You’re Gone
9. Animal Instinct
10. Promises
11. Analyse

The Cranberries Millennium Collection: 20th Century Masters CD is due to be released on September 27, 2005 in the USA.

Meanwhile, the previously announced The Cranberries 20th Century Masters: DVD Collection will release next week in the USA and is available to order from DeepDiscountDVD.com for $5.99 with free shipping.

Source: Universal Music Distribution (Exclusive)

The unconfirmed word out of London is that Dolores O’Riordan recently held a dinner and reception for music industry types to announce the details of her forthcoming solo album.

One person in the music biz said she got a personalized invitation at the beginning of July to attend the dinner in London, but couldn’t go due to travel obligations.

More than likely, Dolores held the reception to get a pre-release buzz going within the industry, and perhaps look for a record label and/or distributor.

No other details are available at the moment. Dolores’s solo album is due in 2006.

Thanks to Jordan on the Forums for the news.

Source: Exclusive

Original Cranberry Saw Us lead singer Niall Quinn has discovered what he believes to be the first printed reference to “The Cranberries,” the shortened moniker that The Cranberry Saw Us adopted after the addition of a certain member named Dolores O’Riordan.

The article comes from the October 27, 1990

issue of “City Limits,” a section from the Limerick Tribune. The third paragraph in “Getting the Balance Right”

describes the swelling praise for Water Circle, The Cranberry Saw Us’s first demo with Dolores. The article was written by Stuart Clark, who is now Assistant Editor for Hot Press

This is “one of the first newspaper clippings about the Cranberries,” Niall Quinn told Zombieguide today, “and I’d say it actually IS the first time they’re referred to as ‘The Cranberries’ in print as opposed to ‘TCSU’ – a name they’d still have been going by at that point and I’m guessing for another few months. We used just refer to them as The Cranberries for short –like we’d refer to They Do It With Mirrors as The Mirrors.”

The article also describes further sessions at Xeric Studios which were released as Nothing Left At All, the band’s second demo with Dolores in 1990.” The songs that they were going in to Xeric to record would be “Nothing Left At All” and the other tracks from that same cassingle which came out around Christmas (still under the name TCSU),” Niall said.

The band continued to use the name “The Cranberry Saw Us” for months after Niall Quinn’s departure until it was briefly shortened to “The Cranberry’s,” and then “The Cranberries.” (“We discussed them and eventually settled on ‘The Cranberry Saw Us’. I remember favoring it over ‘The Cranberries’ – which I reckoned sounded like a band a girl would be singing with – like ‘The Darling Buds’ or ‘The Sugar Cubes’. Maybe that’s why long after my departure they shortened it back to its source name – because it fitted perfectly a band fronted by a female,” Niall wrote in 2002)

Niall has previously posted more Hitchers and early Cranberries-relatedarticles on the Hitchers website.

Update:
Niall has uncovered an even earlier Cranberries reference from August 1990, two months previous to the prior October 1990 article. The article appeared in the now defunct Limerick Tribune by the now renowned Hot Press editor Stewart Clark.

Niall writes, “The article appeared in The Limerick tribune (long gone) and was again written by Stuart Clark who’s interviewed the band many times and is a nationally renowned journalist and commentator here in Ireland now.

“I remember this gig quite well as some of the older lads in The Hitchers would’ve have got their Leaving Cert (High School final exams) results that day and were pretty pissed drunk by the time it came for The Hitchers to play. So that puts it in and around the 3rd Wednesday in august as that’s when these results are always released.

“Incidently, the ‘Termite Club’ referred to is STILL GOING here in Limerick 15 years later. It’s moved home several times but is still the place the indie kids head for on a Friday or Saturday night.”

Thanks to Niall Quinn for the scan and info.

Source: Exclusive

Zombieguide has learned that Fergal Lawler has begun recording and writing sessions with at least one former member of fellow Limerick band Woodstar.

Fergal has started recording with Kieran Calvert, guitarist for Woodstar, and the project could possibly also rope in Al Sheahan, Woodstar’s keyboardist.

A source close to Mono Band tells Zombieguide, “Fergal remains a very close friend of the Hogan brothers and is constantly seen out socialising with them around Limerick City. Fergal is busy doing his own thing now, writing and recording in his studio at home.”

“As for Fergal, I spoke recently to him, not about anything in particular, but I know he has been writing with Keiran Calvert from Woodstar, Im not sure if Alan (his Sir name escapes me) but any time I meet them out, they are always together, I would only be speculating if I said he was involved. Its not that Fergal is secretive about what he is doing, I don’t think there is much to tell.”

The project is said to be “in its infancy” and still very tentative as of the time of writing. As such, any announcements of a solid project are still down the road.

Attentive fans know that this is not the first collaboration between members of The Cranberries and Woodstar. The professional relationship begain in 2002 when Woodstar opened for The Cranberries’ tour dates in Ireland and continued with vocalist Fin Chambers’s contribution to the Mono Band album this year.

Thanks to monoman for the news.

Source: Exclusive

Universal Music Distribution on Monday announced the release of a new Cranberries DVD and CD in the 20th Century Masters series for August and September, respectively.

Although details are still forthcoming, both releases appear to be “greatest hits” type offerings and there is no word yet of any extra bonuses.

Universal yesterday released cover art (medium and
HUGE resolution) and a tentative tracklisting (see
PDF sell sheet) for The Cranberries 20th Century
Masters: DVD Collection, which is scheduled for
release on August 30, 2005 in the USA. The tentative tracklisting for the DVD is:

1. Linger
2. Zombie
3. Ridiculous Thoughts
4. Salvation
5. Animal Instinct

If these are simply music videos, you’ll be better off picking up the superior Stars: The Best of Videos 1992-2002 DVD released in 2002.

The Cranberries Millenium Collection: 20th Century Masters CD is due to be released on September 27, 2005 in the USA. No tracklisting or cover art has been announced for the CD, though you can count on more details right here in the coming weeks.

(Note to our friends at The Official Community Corp.: If you would like to “borrow” this news, please kindly credit us.)

Source: Universal Music Distribution (Exclusive)

Yesterday’s Sunday Times (UK) published a lengthy interview with Noel Hogan about his previous home at No. 1 Clogrennan Terrace in Limerick, the Victorian house where he says he wrote the majority of Bury the Hatchet.

You can get it online here, the full text is below:

The Sunday Times – Property
July 24, 2005
Time and Place: Dreams of being at No 1
NOEL HOGAN of the Cranberries turned an end-of-terrace Victorian house into a happy family home

No 1 Clogrennan Terrace in Limerick city was my first proper home. Until then, I had lived with my parents. Because I was on tour so much of the time with the Cranberries, it had never made sense to move out. When I took the plunge, it was 1996 and I was 23.

I knew the road well, having passed the terrace of houses all through my teens. I always thought it would be a great place to live. The house was an old red-brick Victorian end-of-terrace, right in the middle of town. It was 130 years old and had huge bay windows and oodles of space.

I shared with Catherine Nash, then my girlfriend and now my wife. There were four bedrooms and a converted attic, accessed by a spiral staircase. We got rid of that very early on and continued the main staircase up into the third floor, which lent the house a better sense of continuity. I used the attic room as a home cinema.

We invested in a big couch that could seat three or four, as well as a chair just for me. We would have people over to watch films and occasionally even did popcorn.

During our first two years living there, it was a party house. As we were doing it up, we didn’t mind making a mess. We invited 20 to the housewarming and 70 turned up. Next morning it looked like a bomb had gone off.

The bathroom was tiny so we decided to knock through into one of the adjoining bedrooms and expand the bathroom into a great big statement room.

Downstairs, there were two reception rooms, a kitchen and utility room. The front room was home to a beautiful imposing, black, grey and white marble fireplace.

The former residents, the Clancy family, who owned the first cinema in Limerick, had taken it with them when the picturehouse closed and installed it in the house. For me, it was the biggest selling point of No 1.

Double doors divided the front and back rooms. I used the back room as a CD library. I did most of the Bury The Hatchet album in the front room. During the day I would camp on the couch, writing everything into a notebook on the coffee table with the television on in the background.

At the back of the house was a big kitchen built from recycled red brick with wooden rafters. The brick was salvaged from the old Milk Market, also in the city.

Generally I was left alone during my time there but occasionally fans would knock on the door to say hello. More often they would leave flowers on the doorstep. One day I opened the door to a guy asking me if one of the Cranberries lived around here. I sent him off down the road to ask one of my neighbours and he never came back.

Thankfully, the house needed little refurbishment when we bought it. We had it rewired and had an external wall repointed but it was in fine condition for its age.

When we were decorating, I would buy bits and pieces while away on tour. Each time I returned home, I had to buy an extra suitcase to carry all the purchases. I must have had 40 or 50 suitcases, which ended up in the garden shed stacked floor to ceiling.

Asia and North America were great for furniture. One of my best finds was a Mexican sideboard I picked up in Vancouver and had shipped home. It stood in the kitchen. Another memorable piece was a stone kitchen table that’s now in storage because it doesn’t suit our new home. We used up every available square inch and it began to resemble a furniture shop.

When I decided to sell, I had to find a home for all the furniture. We sold up in 2001, when our eldest daughter Rachel had just turned one. We stayed in the area; in fact, I don’t think I’ll ever leave.

Hogan’s Mono Band, who have just released their self-titled debut album, play the Hard Working Class Heroes festival in Temple Bar in August, www.hwch.net.

Interview by Alanna Gallagher

Source: Times Online

Dolores O’Riordan has turned over the directorship of her solo company, Helter Limited, to her husband, Don Burton, Zombieguide can confirm.

Public documents filed in January show that Dolores has given the position of director to her husband. Dolores served only a short two-month stint as Helter Ltd.’s director. Dolores became director on November 10, 2004, replacing Grainne Riordan. Dolores continues to serve as Helter’s secretary.

Thanks to Kama for the news.
Source: Exclusive

Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple Computer in 1975, said in Tuesday’s issue of Digital Life magazine that The Cranberries are one of his top three favorite bands.

The engineering genius told Digital Life that listening to music is one of his biggest hobbies, with his favorites being Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and The Cranberries: “[My] PowerBook is with me all the time. It’s the high-end version, 17-inch screen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 2GB RAM. And of course, I have my music in it.”

“I have six iPods including the iPod Photo, the Shuffle and the iPod minis,” the creator of the Apple I and II said. “My favourite is the U2 iPod. Each iPod contains a different type of music.” Apple’s other co-founder, Steve Jobs, used The Cranberries’ “Dreams” in the press conference to launch iTunes in 2003.

Wozniak joins a list of notables including Madonna, Dido, Rufus Wainwright, and Ben Stein, who have all professed their love for The Cranberries in the past. That should flatter a certain Apple-loving friend of ours.

Wozniak’s autobiography, tentatively titled I Woz, is due in 2007.

Source: Digital Life magazine, June 28 (Singapore)

Australian harpist Anna Louis has released a new album which includes harp arrangements of songs by The Cranberries and Sinead O’Connor, Australia’s The Echo reported yesterday.

The album, which she says has a “slightly Celtic, slightly jazz feel,” includes a mix of traditional harp pieces combined with her arrangements of rock songs.

“It is breaking the bounds of where the harp is going,” she says. “Because I use an electric harp I can get away with it.”

While there are some purists who frown upon her turn to covering rock tunes, she thinks she can win them over: “”Yeah, I’ve had a few people look down on me for doing it, but they soon come round,” she says.

She told The Echo that it’s the versatility of the electric harp that has allowed her to go beyond traditional harp pieces into experimental fields.

“Before you would be completely drowned out by the other instruments. Now I can plug it in with effects units and it is something really different and incredibly unusual,” she says.

“The new recording is completely live and was recorded in Barwon Heads… I wanted to catch the ambience of the live sound — I’m pretty proud of it,” she admits.

The album is supposed to be available from her website www.noangel.biz(which appears to be down at the moment). In the meantime, you can visit a mirror of her website here. (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

We’ll have more on Anna Louis as we know it — hopefully with a tracklisting soon. If you know more about her new album, please let us know.

Source: The Echo (Australia)

The Chicago Tribune has posted a new interview with Storm Thorgerson, the designer of The Cranberries’ Bury the Hatchet and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee album covers, not to mention a whole catalog of iconic rock covers for Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Audioslave, The Mars Volta, etc.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Cranberries: “Bury the Hatchet” (1999)

“The band, especially the singer [Dolores O’Riordan], was interested in the desire to bury the hatchet. The cover is a diptych. It’s an affirmative statement about paranoia, and the want to stand up against nameless authority — the capitalistic rich, parents, police. But the all-seeing eye of consciousness is threatening the man, and pursues him everywhere. He can’t get away, and the eye pushes him into the corner of the picture. On the back, he’s standing and shouting at the eye to go away.”

Facts: While shooting in Monument Valley, Thorgerson nearly got busted by the Navajo police, who initially thought he was being disrespectful but later asked for his e-mail address.

An essay on The Cranberries’ “Dreams” will be among 41 essays on Irish music published in Beautiful Day: 40 Years of Irish Rock when it goes to press later this year.

Beautiful Day, published by Cork University Press, will cover the dynamic changes in Irish music from 1964 to 2004. Each year will have a feature song and 1200-word essay on that song. The Cranberries’ “Dreams” will be the highlighted song for the year 1992. Each essay will include photos from the featured artist.

Preliminary information for the book says, “This book will place representative material by a variety of artists – including U2, The Corrs, Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison, and Sinéad O’Connor – in their musical, cultural and historical contexts, while also introducing a range of less well known, but no less interesting, Irish popular musicians from the 1960s down to the present. Although the style is accessible, the research is thorough, and is intended to challenge many received ideas relating to the development of Ireland during this key stage of its political and cultural history. The overall intention is to combine written text with photographs to produce an attractive book that is evocative, informative, and controversial, and that has widespread, cross-demographic appeal.” The book will also include essays on Snow Patrol, My Bloody Valentine, and The Frames.

The book is being penned by two lecturers in Irish studies, Sean Campbell from Anglia Polytechnic University and Gerry Smyth from Liverpool John Moores University.

The book’s publishers are in negotiations with Apple to include an iTunes voucher to download the songs featured in the book. For now, the book hasits own iMix in case you want to hear a sampling of the tracks early.

Beautiful Day: 40 Years of Irish Rock will be published on September 1, 2005, by Cork University Press. Zombieguide will try to have a review of the book once it’s published. You can pre-order the book for €20 (€5 less than the cover price) from the Beautiful Day site.

Source: Beautiful Day site

Yesterday, the Sunday Mirror tabloid (Eire edition) published a new interview with Noel Hogan that should warm the heart of any Cranberries fan: He insists the band will regroup, but he’s not sure when.

Noel also revealed that the Cranberries didn’t intend to start doing solo projects until they had finished their uncompleted sixth album. However, with a number of personal issues, including the illness of Dolores’s mother- in-law, the band decided to take a break earlier than planned.

Here’s the full article:

HOGAN GOES OUT ON HIS OWN WITH THE MONO BAND; BUT HE WILL RETURN WITH CRANBERRIES
By MAEVE QUIGLEY

CRANBERRIES guitarist Noel Hogan said the band WILL be back – but not until they have finished their own solo work.

Millionaire Noel – who wrote some of the band’s biggest hits including Linger and Dreams – has just released a new album with his Mono Band.

But he insists that some day he will reunite with his band members and make more Cranberries music.

He said: “We went into the studio almost three years ago and we had started to demo the next album.

“We only had about four or five tracks done when Dolores’s mother-in-law became ill and she had to go back to Canada for a while.

“There was no real rush to get another album out – we weren’t under any real obligations to anyone to get one done.

“We had originally planned to take a break and do our own projects after another album but because of the circumstances we decided to just go and do what we wanted there and then.

“We will see what happens down the road and we haven’t given ourselves any time frame as everyone wanted the time and space to do their own projects properly.

“But definitely at some point we will pick up the phone to each other and say that it’s time to regroup.”

Dolores O’Riordan is working on a solo album which is scheduled for release next month [Editor’s note: this should say “next year,” not “next month”] and Fergal Lawler is also working on his on projects.

Noel said: “Obviously I see Mike as he’s my brother and he’s been helping me out with my live shows by playing in my band.

“I still speak to Ferg and Dolores the odd time on the phone but it’s not like it used to be when we were practically living in each other’s pockets for years.”

Already Mono Band are in demand in America and Noel admits that being in The Cranberries has helped his solo project take off.

But he also has a lot to live up to which is making the 33-year- old very nervous.

Noel said: “There has been a lot of interest in the album in America – we’ve already done a few gigs out there and a few of the tracks have been picked up by radio.

“Being in The Cranberries has opened doors for Mono Band – it has made us much easier than if we were fresh out of the box.”

Noel still lives in Limerick with his wife Catherine and children Sophie, five, and Rachel, four.

He said: “I think it is possible to have an international music career and still be based in Ireland.

“In many ways if I hadn’t stayed in Ireland my personality and everything would have changed and I would have lost the whole idea of what it is to be in a band.”

The Sunday Mirror is also giving away tickets to Mono Band’s gig at Whelan’s at the Budrising Festival. Here’s how to enter:

NOEL Hogan’s Mono Band is just one of the acts that play the BudRising Dublin City Festival from June 1-7.

BudRising will bring music lovers seven days and nights of inspirational sounds in 23 indoor and outdoor venues across Dublin city centre.

Beck, The Las, Jimmy Cliff, Dizzee Rascal, Echo And The Bunnymen and Noel Hogan from the Cranberries’ new outfit Mono Band are just some of the great acts that will be playing.

The BudRising Festival Club at the POD will kick off proceedings at 6pm every evening with a FREE BBQ and end the party with serious dancing shenanigans once the gigs are over.

For more information see www.budrising.ie

We have three pairs of tickets to give away to one lucky reader who will get to see The Las, Jimmy Cliff and Dizzee Rascal at the festival.

Simply call or text us with your answer to the following question, plus your name and contact details.

Q: Which famous multi-million selling band is Noel Hogan a member of?

Is it:

A: THE CRANBERRIES B: THE BLUEBERRIES C: THE STRAWBERRIES

You can e-mail your answer to m.quigley@mgn.co.uk with name address and telephone number or text answer to 086 055 5657 To arrive before midday Tues 31

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

CALLS cost standard rate. One winner will be randomly selected, after the closing date, from all correct entries received. Usual MGN competition rules apply.

More Mono Band news soon!

Source: Sunday Mirror (Eire edition)

An article published today by Ireland’s Sunday Business Post reveals, unsurprisingly, that The Cranberries scaled down their self-owned management business, Curtain Call Ltd., at the end of 2003.

Curtain Call shrank in size, from €119,000 in tangible assets in 2002, to€28,000 at the end of 2003. Additionally, the company sustained a loss of€700,000, with retained losses of €1.3 million.

Notes filed with the financial reports confirm that the band intended to “take a break from recording, touring and related activities to facilitate individual band members to pursue solo projects.” As a result, the reports note, “the company’s activities are considerably less than in the past.”

Despite the losses, the company’s four shareholders — Dolores O’Riordan, Fergal Lawler, and Noel and Mike Hogan — will continue to support the company financially. The four shareholders “have confirmed that they will continue to provide the company with the financial support necessary for it to meet its obligations.”

The reports also show that Artwest, a separate company owned by Dolores O’Riordan, received €75,000 from Curtain Call. O’Riordan herself received €21,000 for studio rental costs. Curtain Call also owes €118,000 to their self-owned touring company, All Around Touring.

Source: Sunday Business Post

If you’re wondering what Fergal’s been up to lately, he’s just pocked a modest €895,000 and is moving back to Limerick full-time, the Sunday Tribune reports.

The Lawlers have arranged to sell their Dublin home in the Ranelagh area, just a short walk away from Dublin’s town center. The house has been on the market since March. Until recently, the Lawlers rented out the red brick house, and are instead living in their home in the Cratloe area in Limerick.

If you’re curious, there are photos and a lengthy description at the Mannon Auctioneers website. (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

Source: Sunday Tribune

There’s another interview with Noel on Untitled with David O’Doherty. The interview is available as MP3s, so download them and keep ’em forever.

In the interview, Noel describes why The Cranberries’ effort to record their sixth album didn’t come together:

“Just before I started this, we were getting ready to go in and do the fourth or fifth album [sic]… or one of those. Nobody was really in the mood to do it. We did some demos.”

David O’Doherty buts in, “You can do that when you’ve sold 36 million albums. Let’s just leave it for a few years…”

Noel agrees, “Yeah, it got a bit like that. Everbody kinda wanted to do other things, away from The Cranberries for awhile. So we just decided, hey, lets do that. Let’s go off and spend whatever amount of time you need and see where it’s at then in a few years. We didn’t give ourselves a year, or five years, or ten. We just said, when we feel like it again. So that’s where it is, it’s just kinda left hanging there.”

Later, O’Doherty asks, “Did you ever sing?”

Noel’s response? “Oh God no! In the bathroom, and that’s just about it. It’s bad.”

Zombieguide will have a full lineup of all of Mono Band’s promo work, which we will post tomorrow.

Source: Untitled with David O’Doherty

In response to an article published a week ago by the The People, Noel Hogan wrote in to Zombieguide to say that he was misquoted and that more skewings of his words may pop up over the next few weeks as he does promo in support of his solo outfit, Mono Band.

Here is the email in full:

Hi Alex.
How are things? I am just getting back to normal after the long flight home, I did not see the article in The People, but by the looks of things I have been misquoted. I never said, there was no plans to get back together, I did say, there were no plans to get back together at the moment.
Also I never said that The Cranberries ‘PREVENTED ME EXPLORING” this is not true. I am doing this now because this is where my head is at now, we in the band always explored any kind of music we were into at that time. It true that right now the kind of music I am doing, is the kind I am interested in right now. This may change again in time.
I hope this clears things up a bit, this kind of thing may happen a lot over the next few weeks as I do a lot more press.
Take care.
Noel.

P.S. If you can have a look at this weeks HOT PRESS.

There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth.

We’ll have more of Noel’s ongoing press interviews (hopefully with 53% less misquotings) over the next few weeks as they happen!

Source: Exclusive

In a thoroughly disappointing article published yesterday by Ireland’s The People, Noel Hogan told the paper that there are no plans for The Cranberries to get back together.

“We haven’t talked about it at all and there are certainly no plans to give it another go or get back together again,” he said.

“The way it was with The Cranberries was that the three lads just got on with it and let Dolores do the rock ‘n’ roll thing. She was the public image of the band and that’s the way we preferred it.”

Rather, he said, Mono Band is the band that he “always wanted to do,” but his commitments with The Cranberries prevented him from exploring that avenue.

“I was always into computers and wanted to work with them to make music instead of just using guitars and traditional instruments. I’d always been tinkering away at home creating new sounds and Mono Band came from that.”

Despite heavily making the rounds to promote Mono Band, Noel told the paper that Limerick is still his home and that he has no plans to move out. “It’s a vibrant place to live and it has so much going for it.”

Click here to read Noel’s response to this article. (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

Source: The People

A statue commemorating Michael Hogan, a noted Limerick poet and ancestor of brothers Noel and Mike Hogan, is set to be built in the middle of the city, today’s Limerick Post reports.

An American decendent, Peter Hogan of Savannah, Georgia, donated over 10,000 Euro for a statue of Hogan, popularly known as the Bard of Thomond, to be erected in the city’s Castle Plaza, outside of King John’s Castle.

Hogan, who died in 1899, did not get much recognition — or wealth — for his work during his lifetime. It was not until 1924, 25 years after his death, that his Lays and Legends of Thomond was put into hardback edition.

In 1999, Noel and Mike Hogan funded a reprint of Lays and Legends of Thomond almost entirely out of their own pockets. Though Michael Hogan had no children of his own, the Hogan brothers are indirect decendents of the poet.

You can read the full article over at the Limerick Post. Thanks to an Irish fan for the tip.

Source: Limerick Post

In a new interview in promotion of his ongoing exhibition world tour, Storm Thorgerson revealed for the first time that a Navajo guard demanded to confiscate all of the film containing Bury the Hatchet’s cover art during the photo shoot — only to find out that it was a joke.

Thorgerson admitted to Fmagazine that he and his crew were trespassing on Native American reservation grounds in Monument Valley, Utah, to photograph the cover for Bury the Hatchet.

“So what did I have here in Monument Valley? I had an eye and a naked man. We were filming in what are the sacred lands of the Navajo Indians and out of nowhere in this big, wide-open space, a Navajo appears in a truck. He jumps out of the truck, a big huge guy, broad rather than tall, with incredibly jet-black hair and he walks over. We’re all going, ‘Oh my God, what is this, what’s happening?’ He comes over, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says, ‘I confiscate all your film and your props.’”

“He just appeared out of nowhere and he was built like a brick house. He had no neck at all, it just went from his head to his huge body,” he recalled.

Thorgerson, who said he’s never had his equipment confiscated, said, “For one moment, I was utterly terrified.”

“Then he burst out laughing and we start swapping e-mail addresses. We couldn’t believe it! It was absolutely hysterical.”

“You always worry as a photographer if they’ll take away your camera and confiscate your film. Then you’ll come back empty handed. Coming back empty handed is a very difficult to say to the client. If you say, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have the shot,’ then it doesn’t sound very good. Most clients are very unimpressed. It’s easy to fail. It’s easy not to do it. So to not come back with a picture is like a cardinal sin. You always have to come back with something. If the stuff has been taken by police — or in this case, a Navajo — what are you going to say? Will the band ever believe you anyway? So when you get home, and you tell the band, they go, “Oh yeah right! Pull the other one! Are you fucking kidding? You must be mad! I’m not going to believe that!”

Thorgerson also got the chance to talk about the making of the Wake Up and Smell the Coffee cover: “We built a tower and put 100 gym balls on top of the tower. It has a tilting ramp. We’d bounce them off the tower and onto the beach. It was fantastic, absolutely fantastic, just the way I had imagined it. They all bounced like crazy.”

You can listen to them both at Fmagazine (Oct. issue) or download the audio clips for Bury the Hatchet and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee here.

Thorgerson’s US exhibition tour kicks off in Chicago on May 12.

Source: Fmagazine

The 2005-2006 “Taken by Storm” US tour of the art of Storm Thorgerson will officially kick off on May 12, 2005, at Chicago’s Inspire Fine Art. Thorgerson, who designed some of the most iconic album covers in rock history, such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, created the covers for The Cranberries’ Bury the Hatchet, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and Beneath the Skin: Live in Paris.

The US tour will be a continuation of the premiere exhibition in London that took place on September 21, 2004.

The Chicago exhibit will run from May 6th – June 5th, with the official opening night on May 12th. There will also be an “Experience the Storm” event on May 13th, and a fan club night on the 20th.

For those on the west coast, the “Taken by Storm” exhibit will be moving to Los Angeles (Glendale), CA, from July 31st – October 9th. The exhibit will be part of the larger “Art in Music” exhibition at the Forest Lawn Museum.

For more information on the upcoming US exhibitions, check outTakenByStorm.us for the latest information. You can also purchase prints from the site, including the 19′′ x 19′′ Bury the Hatchet print, limited edition of 125. The tour will be sponsored by Wines.com and promoted by Media Bitch, who generously donated our “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” artist’s proof giveaway last fall.

Source: TakenByStorm.us

Joy Fahy says she is putting the pieces of her life back together, one year after losing an expensive lawsuit against Dolores O’Riordan and Don Burton in the Irish High Court.

Ireland’s The Sunday Independent caught up with her this past week at London Heathrow Airport. Fahy is flying off to Manhattan, where she will continue to serve as nanny for U2’s Larry Mullen and his partner Anne Acheson while U2 tours the States.

“Larry and Anne have always been very supportive of me, as have Elle and the Rothschilds. Larry and Anne are great people,” she said. Acheson accompanied Fahy to the courts during every day of the trial last year.

The paper now dubs Fahy “Ireland’s most famous nanny” for the lawsuit that captured the covers of Irish tabloids one year ago. Fahy originally planned to appeal the verdict, although there have not been any developments since the suit closed last April.

Fahy told The Sunday Independent that her disastrous loss against O’Riordan has not affected her relationships with her other clients. Her previous clients have in fact all remained firm friends — she had lunch with Elle Macpherson, one of her most high profile clients, just days ago.

Despite being stuck with a legal bill topping €200,000 (approx. $250,000), Fahy says things are starting to brighten up.

“Life has never been better for me. I’m looking forward to America.”

Source: The Sunday Independent

The Everett Symphony, based out of Everett, WA, will be giving Irish rock artists the orchestral treatment this coming Sunday in preparation for St. Patrick’s Day. Arranger Peter Brennan has produced several orchestral versions of classic Irish rock pieces to be performed live.

Performing together with the rock band Jeans n’ Classics, the Everett Orchestra will be performing tributes to The Cranberries, U2, Kate Bush, Sinead O’Connor, The Corrs, and Enya.

The orchestrations will be arranged by Peter Brennan, who has over 1000 rock arrangements in his repertoire, including pieces for Elton John, among others. Brennan says he is tweaking his arrangements with a Celtic tinge for the upcoming concert.

The Everett Symphony’s “St. Patrick’s Celebration of Irish Rock” will take place on Sunday, March 13, at the Everett Civic Auditorium in Everett, WA.

Source: HeraldNet

Bell Canada announced Monday that The Cranberries will be among the first 150 songs introduced for their Caller Ring Tunes Service. The service will play a song for people who call Bell Mobility customers while they wait for the call to be answered rather than hear the traditional ringing sound.

The new service, introduced to Canada for the first time, is the result of a partnership with Universal Music Canada. Other artists available in the initial batch of songs include 3 Doors Down, Toby Keith, Mary J. Blige, Bon Jovi, Sam Roberts, Jann Arden, Supertramp, Kiss, Steppenwolf, and The Mamas & The Papas.

“The ability to download real music clips and have actual songs played on phones changes the way our customers, and the wireless market in general, will view music on a mobile phone,” said David Inns, VP of Wireless Marketing.

For more info, go to Callerringtunes.ca.

Source: Press Release

French music site MusicActu has put up a review of The Cranberries’ newly released “Live” on DVD. “Live” will release on DVD in the United States on February 8. Here’s a translation of the review:

The Cranberries · Live (27/01/2005)

While waiting for a possible and much-hoped for new album, The Cranberries offer “Live” for us to spend the winter. Not completely new, this DVD plunges us back into the environment of the mid-Nineties. It is true that the rock’n’roll so characteristic of the Cranberries evokes a crowd of unforgettable memories in us, particularly with the listening of the traditional track “Zombie”, which was incontestably the most significant hit of the group in the middle of the 90s. Ten years later, Dolores and her comrades returns to the DVD shelves this winter with a disc simply entitled “Live”, composed of a series of titles recorded during a concert given at the London Astoria II, a famous room belonging to the same house which in particular saw ravelling on its scene U2, David Bowie and Oasis.

“Live” is quite simply a beautiful scenic experiment undertaken by the Irish group, certainly one of best given during their career. The quartet is shown there in form, in sometimes powerful environments, sometimes calmer, in airy rock’n’roll roles. It is a true happiness to view the performances of “Linger”, “Zombie” and the poignant piece “So Cold In Ireland”. We regret simply the absence of some interesting bonus extras, which would have been welcome, but the live performance of the Cranberries largely makes up for it. Undoubtedly, this DVD is to be added to the beautiful collection of the group, which already counts, among others, the superb Live in Bercy [Beneath the Skin].

by Emily Warner

Source: MusicActu

Retail stores in France and Germany are selling the DVD re-release of “Live” two days early. The Fnac store in Toulouse is confirmed to be selling the DVD. Other Fnac chain stores are likely stocking the DVD. Because of delays in Mexico, France is the first region to have the DVD in stores.

The bonus “photo gallery” only carries screenshots from the DVD and the jukebox only allows you to play audio from the concert.

According a post by Thomas on the Zombieguide Forums, the DVD video is not remastered: “They didn’t remaster it. The quality is the same as the 3 tracks we already had as bonuses for the Stars DVD.” Packaging is also minimal: “There isn’t any booklet. Just the DVD case.”

Check below for scans of the packaging and menu screen captures. Thanks to Thomas for the news and scans.

Dolores O’Riordan appeared this week in several episodes of VH1’s “I Love the 90s Part Deux.” She appears in the 1990 episode talking about the Rugrats cartoon and in the 1991 episode talking about MTV Unplugged, among others.

VH1 cuts up celebrity interview clips and distributes them throughout every episode in the series, so we’ll see more of Dolores in the upcoming episodes, which debut every night this week. We will update this news page with her other appearences in the series, stay tuned…..

Don’t forget that there will be a special segment on The Cranberries’ “Zombie” in the 1994 episode which premieres Wednesday night at 10 PM EST. For the rest of the episodes, check the VH1 Schedule.

Click here to download a compilation of all of Dolores’s appearances of “I Love the 90s Part Deux” (DivX 5.2.1, 37mb)
(LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

1990 Episode
Other celebrities comment on how ugly the Rugrats babies are. Dolores pipes in that they have “massive heads, completely… BLAH!” When she says “BLAH,” VH1 uses an effect to stretch Dolores’s head to double its normal size.

1991 Episode
Dolores appears twice in the MTV Unplugged segment. At first, she says, “It’s great because it just makes you think about the music and not the style or the image.” A minute later, she says in a second clip, “The one that stuck out to me was the Nirvana one.”

1993 Episode
Dolores sings a line of Radiohead’s “Creep”: “I don’t belong here.” She then adds, “But we’re all creeps really, aren’t we?” Later, she announces the title of the movie Leprichaun and narrates that the leprichauns are are all “obsessed with money, money, money, money… uwaa!” while making her scariest possible face.

1994 Episode
The Cranberries get their own 3-minute spotlight. Several celebrities express their love (or hate) of the band. Comedianne Rachel Harris admits, “The Cranberries were an interesting band. I have to be honest, the reason that I found them interesting was the name Cranberries was weird. Cranberries: happy, red, juicy cranberries! They should have been called The Olives because that’s a little more robust and subtle.”

“I kind of was a little bit of a fan when they came out. She was kind of cute,” says Lit’s guitarist Jeremy Popoff.

“There’s something about those Irish female singers that just…. I’m going to say ‘raises my cockles,’ but I think you know what I’m saying when I say ‘cockles,'” jokes comedian Michael Ian Black.

Michael Colton proclaims, “Any band that names a song ‘Zombie’ automatically gets my vote!” (“Tanks/bombs/guns” jokes follow.)

Asked if he can imitate Dolores O’Riordan’s trademark yodel, Jamie Cullum responds, “I can’t really imitate it. I’d need someone to grab hold of my testicles to make it happen properly.”

But Dolores gets a chance to defend her yodel: “I didn’t think it was cool, but I just knew it was kind of different.”

Then several commentators try to sing the chorus of “Zombie,” with everyone except early 90s act Nelson falling flat on their face. (Though Nelson does an admirable job, in my opinion.)

1998 Episode
Dolores sings a line of Alanis Morisette’s “Thank You”: “Thank you silence.” In a segment about rave music, VH1 samples Dolores saying “boom” and makes a quick all-vocal dance beat (eerily similar to Björk’s new single “Triumph of a Heart.”). She then says, “I think you have to take something to get this music” with a knowing grin.

Thanks to several ZG’ers for the tip!

Source: Excusive

New York-based synthpop band Elkland is gearing up to release their first single, “Apart,” on February 1 on Columbia Records. The single contains a cover of The Cranberries’ “Salvation” as a B-side, though we can probably expect something more electronic than punk.

Elkland count Joy Division, The Smiths, New Order, and Björk among their biggest influences. In fact, the band recently got praise from the UK’s Record of the Day, who said “….no one else has recalled New Order quite so recently or so enjoyably.”

You can listen to their debut single “Apart” from Elkland’s website, with a video to come soon. “Apart” comes from their forthcoming 12-track album “Golden.”

Source: Press Release

Universal released The Cranberries’ “Live” on DVD today in Mexico. Mexico is the first region in the world to get the DVD.

Online Mexico-based retailer Mixup has the DVD available to purchase on their website for $189.00 pesos MX (~$16.85 US).

Sigma of the This Is the Day Cran Fan Club tells us that he preordered his DVD from Mixup and that they shipped his order today: “My online order is already done and accepted! I also asked about how long it will take to arrive at my home and they told me around 2 or 3 days, so… I’ll have it before Friday. Also, the pre-sale was until today so no more orders will be taken [for the pre-sale price].”

Update: A Universal representative told Sigma from the Zombieguide Forums that the DVD has experienced a delay and that it should be distributed within the next few days. Addiitonally, an email sent from MixUp to customers states:

Unfortunately UNIVERSAL MUSIC MEXICO had an important delay in the distribution of this edition. With all and the compromise that they had with is for this DVD’s delivery, this one will be after the date told, by the moment we still don’t have the new distribution date but in the moment we have more news we will tell you. That’s why we apoligize with you, because the delay in distribution is out of MixUp’s control.

Zombieguide will have a full report on the contents of the final DVD once some fans get their hands on it! “Live” will release on January 24 in Europe, February 2 in Japan, February 8 in the US, and February 9 in Canada.

Source: Exclusive

We’re not sure how they missed them the first time around, but VH1 is including The Cranberries in the 1994 installment of the new series “I Love the 90s Part Deux.”

Running with the theme that 1994 was “the most frightening year of the 90’s,” VH1’s summary page says, “Dolores O’Riordan was yodeling about zombies, Beck was singing in Spanish, and the Benedictine monks were chanting about. Only god knows what – literally.”

As has become the standard with VH1’s “I Love the…” series, we can expect other artists and celebrities to chime in with their memories of the song and any special stories they have about it — and probably some making fun of Dolores’s characteristic vocal tics as well.

You can catch the 1994 episode of “I Love the 90s Part Deux” when it debuts on Wednesday, January 19, at 9:00 PM EST in the US. It will also repeat several times, so check the schedule for more dates.

If you miss it, Zombieguide will cover it as soon as it airs, including a video capture.

Thanks to imnotblind for the tip!

Source: VH1

Today’s Sunday Mirror published an exclusive scoop that organizers in Ireland are putting together two massive concerts to benefit Asian tsunami victims, and that members of The Cranberries may be asked to perform.

While most of the details are still not finalized, the massive benefit concert will be split between a Republic-sponsored Dublin concert and a UK- sponsored Belfast concert. Organizers would ideally like to see U2 headline the benefit concert. A host of other A-list artists to be invited to perform include Westlife, Brian Kennedy, Girls Aloud, The Corrs, Enya, Van Morrison, Daniel O’Donnell, The Undertones, Ash, Samantha Mumba, The Thrills, Christie Moore, Ronan Keating, and The Cranberries. Also invited are Irish- rooted acts Lisa Stansfield, Joe Elliott and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones.

The article states that only a few artists have been contacted thus far, but that the interest has been “very, very positive.” If the Cranberries accept, they will play in Dublin. No date has been announced, but this would be pivitol, as Dolores is due to give birth in March.

The Irish government has already pledged 10 million Euro while the UK has pledged £50 million to sponsor such a gig, though the proceeds raised are expected to be much greater.

The concert will also be simultaneously broadcasted by the BBC and RTE. Pop star Dana, who came up the idea for the concerts, tells the Sunday Mirror: “I spoke on the phone to RTE Director General Cathal Goan and Mike Edgar at the BBC in Belfast last Friday and they were both very receptive to the idea. What we have in mind here is staging two concerts, one in Dublin, the other in Belfast in a hands-across-the-border co-operation style with both shows being broadcast on BBC and RTE simultaneously.”

Further details on concert venues are expected to be decided by next week.

Source: Sunday Mirror (Ireland)

With the Cranberries “Live” DVD release pegged for a January 24 release in Europe and Feburary 8 in the US, Universal is prepping retailers with promo media for the upcoming release.

French online vendor Alapage has the DVD listed with the cover and extras. According to Alapage, the only (rather disappointing) extras on the DVD will be a “photo gallery” and “jukebox.” (Thanks to Pavel for the tip.)

Meanwhile, in the US, Universal Music Distribution yesterday posted its retail sales sheet for the DVD, which Zombieguide has exclusively here in PDF format. (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

Source: Alapage, Exclusive

Not too long ago, Zombieguide reported that Canadian singer-songwriter Kevin Fox has been working with Dolores O’Riordan on string arrangements for yet unspecified solo material.

This week, Zombieguide caught up with Kevin to ask him about his current projects with Dolores in Toronto and here’s what he had to say…

ZG: What was your involvement with the new songs?

KF: I composed string arrangements for 4 songs she was in the process of recording.

ZG: How did you get approached to do these songs?

KF: The studio in which she was working was familiar with my work and got us in touch.

ZG: How long ago did you work on these songs?

KF: In the last 13 to 14 months I was approached twice, each time to arrange for two songs.

ZG: How did you go about doing the string
arrangements? Did you have alot of interaction with
Dolores? Did you have alot of freedom or did Dolores have a set plan for what she wanted?

KF: Freedom was definitely offered in the process of writing the arrangements. It was just me working with what conceptual ideas she had expressed on the phone. In the studio we collaborated to exercise what specific or responsive ideas she had. She has a wonderful sense of melody.

ZG: Can you maybe give us any song titles?

KF: I’d prefer not to reveal anything too specific that she may want to remain private.

ZG: Any idea what the songs will be used for? Her solo album or maybe soundtrack contributions?

KF: She simply expressed to me a desire to explore new musical paths. No specific plans.

Zombieguide would like to thank Kevin Fox for his time in answering these questions.

Source: Exclusive

A news report released yesterday by ANSA’s English news service indicates that Dolores O’Riordan has already been named the winner of the 2004 Capri Music Award for her rendition of “Ave Maria” for Mel Gibson’s “Songs Inspired by The Passion of the Christ” soundtrack

According to ANSA, she is expected to appear in person to accept her award at the Capri, Hollywood Awards ceremony on December 27.

The “Capri, Hollywood” panel also selected “The Passion of the Christ” to receive two other awards, Best Film of 2004 and Best Costumes.

Dolores O’Riordan may soon be adding another award win to her resume. She has been nominated for an award presented by The Capri Film Festival, held during the month of December on the island of Capri, most famous of Italy’s Mediterranean islands. Nominated for her recording of Ave Maria for Mel Gibson’s blockbuster smash, The Passion of The Christ, Dolores could take home a shiny new note of recognition at the end of this month. Her nomination was no doubt aided by a stunning live performance of “Ave Maria” as the grand finale to Italy’s Sanremo Festivalearlier this year.

No word yet if Dolores will actually attend the festival, which begins on December 27.

Source: The Official Cranberries Site, ANSA

Universal Music Distribution confirmed this week that they will release the DVD re-release of The Cranberries “Live in London” in the United States onFebruary 8, 2005.

Additionally, Universal Music Canada’s websiteconfirms that our hockey-loving northern neighbors will receive the DVD a week later on February 15.

Details on DVD bonuses are still forthcoming, although Zombieguide can confirm that the main concert will carry the same 15-song tracklist as the original VHS release. (Two songs, “Put Me Down” and “Sunday,” were performed at the Astoria, but for unknown reasons, were removed from the VHS release.)

Source: UMG Distribution, Universal Music Canada

Britain’s Word Magazine has published a list of their picks for the worst song lyrics of all time in their new January issue. Their top (or bottom?) pick for the worst lyrics of all time? The Cranberries’ “I Just Shot John Lennon.” 

However, on Thursday (Dec. 9), the British newspaper The Independent published a short rebuttal to Word’s article. While The Independent editorial agreed that IJSJL’s lyrics are “tosh,” the paper doesn’t think The Cranberries deserve the dishonorable mention, retorting, “Is it any worse than Des’ree’s famous lines from ‘Life’: ‘I don’t wanna see a ghost/ It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast/ And watch the evening news?’ Wordsworth, thou shouldst be living at this hour, and all that… “

Source: Exclusive

Tomorrow, November 15th at 5:30 PM, MTV Brazil will be highlighting The Cranberries on the “Cliperama” program. On the show, two Cranberries fans — Kelly from the Official Cranberries Brazilian Fanclub (from Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Iuri (Ceara, Brazil) — will be competing for a prize by answering Cranberries trivia questions. The show will repeat again on November 16th at 10:30 AM.

Thanks to cranspecktrum for the tip!

Hot Press, Ireland’s largest entertainment magazine, is compiling votes to determine the Top 100 Greatest Irish Albums of all time. They have selected “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We” in their shortlist, and also give voters the option of including write-in votes.

Click here to go directly to the voting page. You will need to register a free Hot Press voting account to access the poll. There are write-in blanks at the end of the voting page, where you can add The Cranberries’ other four albums as options. (Because you wouldn’t dare consider voting for Sinead or U2, would you?) Voters may select up to 5 albums.

Once you make your selections, voters are asked to rank their top 5 in order and then write a 400-word-max opinion on why they picked their selection for #1 album.

Source: Hot Press

Popular New York-born indie singer Rufus Wainwright — of whom Sting, Diana Krall, Tori Amos and Erikah Badu count themselves as fans — recently told Mexican newspaper “Reforma” that The Cranberries’ “Linger” is one of his favorite songs and that he thinks that too many people don’t give the song enough credit. In the October 16th issue, an interviewer for the paper asked him whether there were any songs that have a particularly deep message for him:

What pop songs do you think have a deep or worthy message of reflection?

There is a lot. “Linger,” by The Cranberries, which some people might think to be a little old these days, has a story about fierce love, if you think about it, and few people truly understand it. “Boys of Summer”, by Don Henley, has a very beautiful background, and it’s only pop. When the New Radicals released “You Get What You Give,” it had a fantatstic melody with interesting lyrics and not many people got the true sense of it.

Source: Reforma (Mexico)

Media Contemporary Arts this week informed Zombieguide that the recently-held exhibit Taken By Storm: Art of Storm Thorgerson will be globe-hopping come 2005. Robin Headlee of Media Bitch tells us, “We will be taking the exhibition travelling in 2005. Our plans are for USA, Asia, Continental Europe, and then UK. I’ll keep you posted as the plans develop.”

An exhibit for Chicago is tenatively scheduled for April 8, 2005, with a date for New York to follow shortly thereafter (Gallery TBC). Several cross- continental dates in the USA and then to Asia, Continental Europe, and the UK will follow.

Although the London exhibit is now closed, you can still purchase signed and numbered prints from the John Martin Galleries London website or schedule an appointment at John Martin Chelsea in London by calling +44 (0)20 7351 4818.

Also, don’t forget to enter our contest to win an unsigned “Wake Up” proof, which will end on or about November 9th.

Below you can also find some photos from the opening night of the exhibition in London on September 21st. Headlee tells us, “It was a huge success with quite a few of the band members that Storm has worked with in attendance.” Guests included members of Muse, author Finlay Cowan, and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, to name but a few.

Source: Exclusive!

The Cranberries Official Site updated today with its long-promised slick redesign. The site now boasts a number of new features, including a search function and an events calendar. The new redesign links heavily to outside sites for content like reviews, interviews, and guitar tabs.

While most of the content is essentially the same, the Frequently Asked Questions section now includes two new questions, one of which surprisingly states: “No, Dolores has no plans to record a solo album.” This comes as a shocking contrast to numerous reports over the past 2 years of her intentions to do so — even from Noel himself. At the moment, Zombieguide is trying to get a confirmation from Lindsey Holmes Publicity regarding this change.

Update 10/23/04: Thomas points out that the FAQ response regarding a solo for Dolores was posted in March 2003 and is not a new update, and therefore may not be current information.

The other question is:

“Are you splitting up? Now , or after the next album? A: No! Not at all. The band last toured in 2003 and released a collection of the hits from years past. Keep an eye on the What’s New section for more updates as the [sic] become available.”

The “Talk” section also now contains a Discussion Board page which links toCranberries fan forums across the net.

Source: Exclusive!

Speaking to Zombieguide via email on Thursday, The Cranberries’ Noel Hogan cleared up a few recent rumors and miscellaneous reports.

Noel tells us that despite a BMI catalog registration for a song titled “When I’m 21”, there is no such song with that title. He says, “I only remember one track with “TWENTY-ONE” in the title. That being the track that we all know. “When I’m twenty-one” could have been an earlier version of the track. Or sometimes when one of the crew is printing out a set list for a gig, they put down the wrong name of a song. Then it gets registered by someone in the office for performing rights.”

We then asked Noel whether fans will ever be able to hear unreleased songs like “Seven Years” and “Yesterday’s Gone.” To that, he replies, “Other songs like “Seven Years” & “Yesterdays gone”… We sometimes write songs, do them once & in time forget about them. We may not like them or just forget in time. There have been many tracks over the years that have been recorded like this. Sometimes @ a radio session or TV thing. We may start playing with something in the studio, put some of it down & mean to go back to it but run out of time and then forget about it. There are lots of bits out there, but it would take a long time to find them all. Maybe someday we might have the time.”

Lastly, Noel tells us that despite the band having left Universal Music in January of last year, the label has asked the band to get involved with the upcoming DVD re-release of “Live.” Universal has asked the band to locate video footage from the 1994 era to use as bonus features for the DVD. Noel explains, “Universal have been in touch once so far about the new DVD. They are looking for any extra footage we may have from around the time. We are trying to locate anything we might have @ the moment.”

That’s it for now, more to come…

Source: Exclusive!

If you’ve been conscious and reading Zombieguide often, you’ll know that last year, The Cranberries went into the studio to record a demo of four songs with longtime producing veteran Stephen Street. The band plans to use these songs sometime in the indefinite future as a basis for their sixth album, which has been put on hold.

Noel Hogan, speaking to Zombieguide in July about the demo, told us “They’re recorded, but they haven’t been mixed, so we have rough mixes of them. They’re in the bag and ready there to go. So I guess when we’re ready to go, we’ll have those four titles to fall back on.”

Earlier today, Noel emailed us the titles of the four songs: “Sorry for taking so long to get back to you with the names of the tracks we recorded with Stephen. The tracks are…”

1. Astral Projection
2. Someday
3. Raining in My Heart
4. The Fall

The band first played “Astral Projection” at the beginning of last year’s summer tour (which included dates with The Rolling Stones). Surprisingly, the other new song, “In It Together” is not part of the demo.

Longtime fans may recall an old rumor of an unreleased song from the No Need to Argue period called “The Fall.” We do not know if there is any relation between the old rumor and the new song, but we will see if Noel can perhaps shed some light on that particular point of interest.

Noel also told us today, “I have most of the track names for my own album now. If you like, I can also send them on.” He promises to send updates along as they happen, so stay with Zombieguide for the latest Cranberries buzz…

Source: Exclusive!

Yesterday’s “Sunday Times” (London) published the first details about Dolores and Don Burton’s new home in Howth, Co Dublin, Ireland. The article says that the relatively new 5-bedroom home is far from the lavishness of Riversfeild Stud — no recording studio, pool, or even a garage.

Thanks to Nigel Bernstein for sending it in. Read the full article below:

Changing her tune
Why has Dolores O’Riordan bought an unprepossesing house in the Dublin suburbs, wonders Colin Coyle

Dolores O’Riordan has bought a new home in Howth, Co Dublin, and it’s . . . . well, not very rock ’n’ roll. The house, on the edge of the unassuming Thormanby Woods development in the upmarket suburb, doesn’t have a swimming pool, gym, recording studio or even a garage. The only suggestion of exclusivity is its sale price: the Cranberries’ lead singer is believed to have paid about €2m for the five-bedroom, 5,800-sq-ft property.

O’Riordan’s no-frills new home is in stark contrast to her last Irish base, Riversfield Stud in Kilmallock, Co Limerick, which she sold earlier this year.

The 150-acre estate, which fetched close to €4.5m, included all the rock- star trappings and then some: a swimming pool, gym, tennis court, bar, wine cellar, sauna, stables, enough garaging for a fleet of cars and a mini- pizzeria. A stained-glass window in the reception hall was even engraved with the lyrics to Zombie, the Cranberries’ biggest-selling hit.

The switch to Howth is largely down to its proximity to Dublin airport. O’Riordan and her husband Don Burton, who was born in Toronto, are frequent visitors to Canada and own a log cabin on Big Bald Lake in eastern Ontario.

It’s not clear whether the couple and their two children will use the Howth property as their main residence or whether they’re planning to spend more time in Burton’s native Canada. The house’s selling agent, HOK Residential, refused to comment on the sale or the couple’s plans, although the neighbourhood is already abuzz with talk of the new arrivals.

Built in the past five years, the couple’s new home is just off Thormanby Road, on the edge of a development of roomy but restrained executive-style family homes. The last house to sell in the 1980s-built scheme, a four- bedroom dormer bungalow, went for close to €1m at auction late last year.

The diminutive superstar is the latest in a growing list of celebrities to favour Howth over its mirror image on the south side, the twin peaks of Dalkey and Killiney.

O’Riordan joins Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the Riverdance duo, Larry Mullen of U2, Gay Byrne, the television presenter, and Feargal Quinn, the supermarket mogul, in the pretty fishing village.

David O’Leary, the Aston Villa manager, also recently invested in an apartment in the Howth Lodge development, while Michael O’Leary of Ryanair is building a mansion on Howth Head.

O’Riordan’s decision to swap a gated estate for a house where passers-by can sneak a peek in the window is all the more surprising given that she sold her first Irish home to escape prying eyes. Following the initial success of the Cranberries, the feisty rock star built a hill-top mansion, with a slated round tower at its centre, in Dun Chaoin in west Kerry.

Set on 16 acres and with four bedrooms, a bar, wine cellar, gallery, office, recording studio and guest apartment, it seemed the perfect retreat for O’Riordan and Burton. Dubbed Dolly’s Folly by locals, the multi-millionairess decided to sell the property in 1997, complaining that she was “plagued” by sightseers. Apparently, tour buses headed for the Ring of Kerry would stop for a photo opportunity outside the contemporary cut-stone construction.

While O’Riordan hasn’t lingered longer than a few years in any of her homes, all her property investments have yielded a profit. While it’s not clear how much she paid for the 16-acre site and the construction of her Kerry mansion, she is likely to have made a profit from its €1.3m sale in 1997. She is likely to have made even more on the sale of her Co Limerick stud farm. Bought for €2.5m, it recently sold for close to its €4.5m asking price.

No stranger to moving house, the 33-year-old’s childhood home in Patrickswell in Limerick burnt to the ground when she was seven. By the time she was 14, she had lived in three different houses in Limerick.

The Cranberries have been on a two-year break since the release of a best- of compilation in 2002.

The singer spent the early part of this year locked in a bitter legal battle with her former nanny, Joy Fahy. In April, the High Court dismissed Fahy’s claims that she and her husband had falsely imprisoned her and broken the terms of her contract.

Her latest home, unsurprisingly, has no separate accommodation for a nanny.

Source: Sunday Times

Scandinavian online retailer CDON.com has begun listing the upcoming “Live” DVD re-release with a slightly modified title: “Live in London”. The change suggests that Universal will release the DVD under the new title to avoid confusion.

Additionally, the site lists a catalog number, UNI-982335 -7, and a preliminary price of €20.80. The release date is still set at November 29th.

Source: CDON.com

Universal Music Australia yesterday revealed its list of 100 top songs that it will pursue in a lawsuit against Sharman Networks, makers of the peer-to- peer file sharing software KaZaA. Universal’s laywer, John Nicolas, presented the list yesterday, which includes songs from the Universal catalog that seem to have been picked for their ironic titles — among them, The Cranberries’ “No Need to Argue” and Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.” The prosecution will focus on these 100 songs as the primary evidence during the trial.

The Universal parties were forced to compile the relatively select list of 100 songs after the prosecution was asked earlier this year to reduce the scope of their proceedings. Even still, this case will mark one of the largest music copyright infringement cases that Australia has ever witnessed.

One of the case’s main goals is to uncover the identity of the owner and corporate structure of Sharman Networks, which remains a well-guarded secret, despite legal scrutiny. In a preliminary hearing, Nicolas asked the judge, “So we will at some time have to make an application, your Honour, for an order that those documents (relating to the identity of Sharman’s owner) be produced. They are not going to be volunteered and despite the best will in the world as between my learned friend and myself, that’s not going to bring them out.”

More hearings on the case will occur before November 29, the date when the main part of the trial, regarding the 100 key songs from Universal’s catalog, will begin.

Thanks to Cold Winter for the tip.

Source: ZDNet Australia

According to the latest promotional materials sent out by Universal Music in Europe, Universal will be re-releasing The Cranberries first video release, “Live,” on DVD later this year. The latest issue of “Universal News” highlights releases for the upcoming autumn-Christmas season and lists “Live” for a possible November 29th release in Spain. Other details are still “TBC.”

No word yet on any bonus features, or on any other international release dates. You can expect Zombieguide to have the very latest when we know it.

Thanks to supervago for the news!

Source: Exclusive

A news story posted today on the website for the Irish newspaper The Western People includes some quotes from Dolores O’Riordan’s father, Terry O’Riordan, on the subject of the 125th anniversary of an apparation of the Virgin Mary at Knock Church in east Mayo.

On August 21, 1879, fifteen people witnessed an apparition of Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist at the Knock Church. Since then, the church has become the largest attraction in Ireland, drawing in nearly 1.5 million visitors each year. From August 14th to the 22nd of this year, it is estimated that nearly 100,000 pilgrims visited the shine, including Terry O’Riordan, Dolores’s father.

O’Riordan, who had a debilitating motorcycle accident earlier in his life, believes that the miracle at Knock has blessed his recovery: “I’ve had a few bad crashes and if it weren’t for Knock, I wouldn’t be here today.” According to reporter Marian Harrison, O’Riordan also said that he thanked God for his daughter’s success.

Source: The Western People

Speaking to Zombieguide today, Cranberries spokesperson Lindsey Holmes confirmed an earlier unconfirmed report The Cranberries’ album sales have topped over 40 million copies to date. In a message this morning, Holmes stated, “To the best of my knowledge total sales have surpassed 40 million.”

The last official total of the band’s album sales put them at 38 million in November 2002, with nearly 2 million of those sales comprising of special and limited editions. (Sales were at 28 million just before the release of Bury the Hatchet, and 33 million before the release of “Wake Up.”) Note that these figures do not include singles such as “Linger” and “Zombie,” which have sold millions on their own.

Source: Exclusive

London’s John Martin Gallery and Media Contemporary Arts are jointly preparing for a major exhibition of Storm Thorgerson’s art to open next month. This will mark Thorgerson’s first public exhibition since he suffered a stroke last October.

Thorgerson’s surrealistic album covers are some of the most easily recognized in rock ‘n’ roll history. His credits include Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here,” “The Division Bell,” Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,” and Audioslave’s self-titled CD. Of course, Cranberries fans will recognize him most for his work on the art for “Bury the Hatchet,” “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee,” “Beneath the Skin: Live in Paris,” and design elements of theCranberries Official Website.

The exhibition will be held from September 21th until October 9th at the John Martin Gallery in in Chelsea at 6 Burnsall Street, Off Kings Road, London SW3 3ST. The exhibition will be free to enter.

Robin Headlee, Director of Media Contemporary Arts, confirmed to Zombieguide that Thorgerson’s work for The Cranberries will be a definite inclusion at the exhibition. “We will definitely have Bury the Hatchet and we [will] do a special large edition of [Wake Up and] Smell the Coffee.”

Headlee told Zombieguide last Saturday, “We will definitely be doing a special exhibition print of Wake Up. It will be larger than the other prints with an image size of 30 inches square and a 5-6 inch border. It will be signed and archivable… I’m hoping to get the first proof done by the end of next week. No doubt it will take a few proofs until it is accepted; Storm is incredibly fussy – which is good – about his work.”

Beginning on September 1st, the John Martin Gallery Website will have prints all of the exhibition’s featured work available for viewing and purchase. Headlee confirmed to Zombieguide that the massive special edition “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” print will also be available for purchase online, although it may not ship immediately due to its late production: “We will though start taking orders from the website www.jmlondon.com from 1st September, there just may be a slight delay (1-2 weeks) on printing until Storm is happy with the quality.” Headlee adds, “Although not limited, it is a special edition only for sale in conjunction with our exhibition … so limited in that only for sale from September 1st until December 31st at John Martin Chelsea or on www.jmlondon.com. They are all archivable and signed by Storm Thorgerson. The price is £175 plus VAT (but anyone outside the EU doesn’t have to pay VAT). That is approximately $315… Larger than others but less expensive than others, as it’s not limited in number just limited in time on sale.”

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee cover, high-resolution, .JPG format, 109k, courtesy of Storm Thorgerson (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

The normal-sized “Bury the Hatchet” is already available for purchase fromwww.jmlondon.com. A 19″x19″ design is silkscreened onto a 33″x25.5″ paper by Coriander Studios. The “Body Series” print is limited to an edition of 125. Cost for the “Bury the Hatchet” print is £300.00 + VAT (UK only), or about $540.

A press kit for the exhibition describes now now-classic Cranberries cover: “The Cranberries cosmos is reflected beautifully with the diptych images used for ‘Bury the Hatchet’. Two themes are represented in this picture: that someone may always be watching (eg big brother, surveillance, terrorist measures) and the internal eye of guilt and paranoid (one’s conscious). In this particular image, the ‘dreaded eye of paranoia’ is hovering over the naked and vulnerable figure. Afraid and pressing down on him with nowhere to escape, the figure covers his head to hide but the eye is still watching. The second image (not shown) illustrates the same figure standing facing the eye, screaming in retaliation and fighting back. We may not be able to escape the all-seeing eye, but we can tell it to fu*k off when we want to!”

Bury the Hatchet cover, high-resolution, .TIF format, 4mb, courtesy of Storm Thorgerson (LINK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

In his 1999 book, “Eye of the Storm,” Thorgerson narrated the snags that his crew went through in photographing the cover for “Bury the Hatchet”: “When we arrived in Flagstaff [Arizona] it actually snowed. Couldn’t believe it. Miraculously the weather cleared further north, providing two glorious days of perfect winter light. On location on the first morning our truck broke down in the middle of nowhere. We got the Navajo heebie jeebies about working on what might be the sacred land, and with what exactly? An evil eye and a naked man! Should be easy to explain (especially to a Navajo). And then we were caught speeding twice.”

Source: Exclusive