Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe BONEARAMA BITES BIG APPLE Bonearama, the innovative trombone band led by one of New Orleans' brightest young stars, Mark Mullins, made its New York debut before a packed house at Tobacco Road Saturday. Mullins, a brilliant trombonist and arranger, also is a member of Harry Connick Jr.'s big band, and he's taken some performance cues from his charismatic boss. Mullins was poised and confident as he led his lineup of four trombones, tuba, guitar and drums through a set that lasted well over three hours and kept the dancing, cheering crowd in the room until the very end. Advertisement Mullins' brass arrangements are nothing short of brilliant, the most innovative approach since Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears came up with new strategies in the late 1960s. Songs like the Eagles' "The Long Run" open up in this context, thanks to the front line's ability to alternately blast in unison, like a rock band, and play four or five lines in funky counterpoint, like some New Orleans outpost of the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Mullins straddles pop and jazz as a conceptualist, and one of his biggest influences is rock guitar innovator Jimi Hendrix. Advertisement A great open-tone trombone player, Mullins also is the most accomplished electric 'bone player in the business, and when he takes a wah-wah solo it often sounds like a guitar. Versions of the Hendrix classics "Foxy Lady" and "Crosstown Traffic" offered great examples of this technique, as did the set-closing version of Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein." Big Easy jam-funk superstars Galactic, who played to a sold-out audience at Hammerstein Ballroom earlier that night, dropped in to jam. Drummer Stanton Moore sat in on "Foxy Lady," and vocalist Theryl "Houseman" deClouet took over for the New Orleans funk classics "Just Kissed My Baby" and "Big Chief." Other guests also chipped in -- at one point there were six trombones going at once after Tom Lonegan from the Flying Neutrinos and Dan Levine joined in. SWEPT UNDER THE RUG Guy Ritchie, Madonna's film director husband, admitted to students at England's Oxford Union the couple's collaboration on a remake of "Swept Away" was a disaster, reports the London Daily Mirror. The film was not even released in theaters in Great Britain, where it will debut on the home video market. "People think it's s---," Ritchie told the audience. "I'd like to answer that more eloquently, but I'm afraid I can't." Advertisement TIMBERLAKE BASHES BRITNEY AGAIN Justin Timberlake took yet another shot at former girlfriend Britney Spears in the December issue of Details. Timberlake, who's been trashing the pop tart from stem to stern after their much-publicized breakup, ridiculed her screen debut in the dud "Crossroads" and claimed public support he showed at the time was only fealty to his beau. "If she had a clue, she wouldn't have made that movie," Timberlake said. "Everybody knows that what she should have made was 'Pretty In Pink'." STELLA MCCARTNEY NIXED The London Daily Telegraph reports Paul McCartney's daughter Stella is having all kinds of problems with her neighbors in the Notting Hill section of London. The fashion designer recently installed a rooftop shower at her townhouse but was forced to take down. Then she purchased a building formerly used as a church as a potential office for her design company, but the Telegraph reports local residents are miffed the site where the church is being renovated is covered with graffiti, including the slogan "Stella Is Starbucks."
