Odds & Ends: John Lennon, David Bowie, Ricky Gervais

Today’s ticket onsale for the pair of shows billed as David Brent and Foregone Conclusion of Britain’s “The Office” fame has inspired Ricky Gervais to pursue a new life goal.

“A new item has been added to my bucket list…End Animal cruelty, Separate state & church, increase peace & kindness, destroy all touts,” Gervais tweeted. (Touts is Brit-speak for ticket scalpers.)

Gervais, who co-wrote and co-directed “The Office” in addition to starring as paper merchant manager David Brent, tweeted earlier today, “OK, so apparently, the Brent tickets sold out in under a minute. How is that even possible? Sorry.” He retweeted a fan who pointed out that three Brent tickets were available on a secondary ticketing site for £3549.95 ($5,753) and added, “fucking disgusting. Please no one buy them.”

The good news is that Gervais says “there is still hope” for fans who didn’t get tickets because he’s got a competition to win tickets that “fun … and absolutely tout proof!”

The shows are scheduled Oct. 14 & 23 at London’s UCL Bloomsbury Theatre.

Temper Trap has parted ways with its guitarist, Lorenzo Sillitto.

“I leave the band with a heavy heart but it was time for me to try new things,” said Sillitto, who joined the band in 2006. “I’ve loved everything about The Temper Trap. It’s been an incredible experience. I want to thank the boys for all the amazing times, places we have seen and played and laughs along the way, management, record labels, the many people who’ve supported the band throughout the years, the many friends I’ve made and of course the fans – it has been an amazing journey, an experience I will never forget and one that changed my life.”
The Australian indie band, which is in the studio working on its third album, hasn’t revealed Sillitto’s replacement.

If you’re looking for a new book to read, why not take a recommendation from David Bowie?

The curators for the new Art Gallery of Ontario exhibit, “David Bowie Is,” have released a list of Ziggy Stardust’s top 100 books.
The list includes “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon, Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” and “The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby.

Click here for the full list.

September’s real estate news included Kurt Cobain’s childhood home in Aberdeen, Wash., being listed on the market as well as Eminem’s childhood home in Detroit going up for auction. Now you’ll also have the chance to buy John Lennon’s first home in Liverpool, England.

According to the property description on the website for the estate agent, Entwistle Green, the three bedroom terraced house on 9 Newcastle Road is where “Lennon started his life … living with his mother, grandparents and his sea-going father.”

The house, which is located near Liverpool’s Penny Lane area, will be on the auction block Oct. 29, sold by Auction at The Cavern Club. The auction guide price begins at £150,000 ($243,105).

NME notes that Lennon lived at 9 Newcastle Road until he was 5.  

Little Richard credits Jesus and an aspirin for saving his life last week. He revealed to a crowd at a Recording Academy fundraiser Sunday that he recently suffered a heart attack.

“The other night, I didn’t know I was having a heart attack,” Little Richard said, according to Rolling Stone. “I was coughing, and my right arm was aching. I told my son, ‘Make the room as cold as ice.’ So he turned the air conditioning on, and I took a baby aspirin. The doctor told me that saved my life. Jesus had something for me. He brought me through.”

After one too many misogynistic comments directed towards her on the band’s Facebook page, Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry wrote an op-ed in The Guardian in hopes of starting a “conversation … encouraging others to reject an acceptance of the status quo.”

Mayberry, who says she personally reads through the comments on Scottish synthpop band’s Facebook page, gave a few examples of some of the worst remarks including “This isn’t rape culture. You’ll know rape culture when I’m raping you, bitch.” Another person suggested she should just “learn to deal with” offensive comments if she wants to work in the music industry.

“But why should women ‘deal’ with this?” Mayberry wrote. “I am incredibly lucky to be doing the job I am doing at the moment – and painfully aware of the fact that I would not be able to make music for a living without people on the internet caring about our band. But does that mean that I need to accept that it’s OK for people to make comments like this, because that’s how women in my position are spoken to?

She added, “What I do not accept, however, is that it is all right for people to make comments ranging from “a bit sexist but generally harmless” to openly sexually aggressive. That it is something that ‘just happens.’ Is the casual objectification of women so commonplace that we should all just suck it up, roll over and accept defeat? I hope not. Objectification, whatever its form, is not something anyone should have to ‘just deal with.’”

Mayberry said she hopes Chvrches can “continue to do what we are doing in our own way and on our own terms. For us, this has always been – and hopefully will always be – about the music, and that is what we will be getting back to now.”

Earlier in the article she noted, “We have thus far been lucky enough to do things our own way and make a pretty decent job of our band without conforming to the ‘push the girl to the front’ blueprint often relied upon by labels and management in a tragic attempt to sell records which has little to do with the music itself.”

To read the full article in The Guardian click here.