Rock 'n' Rolliggers - Said Courtney Love on Twitter

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BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bon Jovi supports Cobain protest

Bon Jovi supports Cobain protest

By Mark Savage Entertainment reporter, BBC News

Bon Jovi have sold more than 120m albums worldwide

Rocker Jon Bon Jovi says he understands why Nirvana's former members protested over the use of Kurt Cobain's image in video game Guitar Hero 5.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl said last week they were "very disappointed" that Cobain's avatar could be used to play songs by other acts in the game.

"I don't know that I would have wanted it either," Jon Bon Jovi told the BBC.

"To hear someone else's voice coming out of a cartoon version of me? I don't know. It sounds a little forced."

Guitar Hero 5 entered the UK games charts at number one last weekend, beating its heavily-promoted rival, The Beatles: Rock Band.

The late Nirvana frontman features as an unlockable character, allowing players to see his image performing a multitude of other tracks, including Bon Jovi's You Give Love A Bad Name.

'Breach of contract'

In a joint statement last week, Grohl and Novoselic said they "didn't know" Cobain's image would be used in this way.

"We are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game".

The pair also urged game makers Activision to "do the right thing in 're-locking' Kurt's character".

Guitar Hero allows players to recreate rock riffs on replica instruments

Activision said permission to use Cobain's image had been granted by the singer's estate.

The company said Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, had provided a written agreement which allowed the singer's likeness as a fully playable character in the fifth game of the series.

Writing on Twitter, Love claimed she had "never signed" a contract on the game, and threatened legal action against Activision.

"For the record, this... is breach of contract on a bully's part and there will be a proper addressing of this and retraction," she wrote.

Jon Bon Jovi, who is promoting his band's 11th studio album, The Circle, said he had declined the offer to appear as a playable character in Guitar Hero.

"I had the paperwork, they wanted me to be on that game and I just passed," he said.

"But no-one even broached the subject with me that I would be singing other people's stuff. I don't know how I would have reacted to that. I don't know that I would have wanted it either."

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Bon Jovi supports Cobain protest

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5 solar eclipses

1980 Eclipse

Having witnessed 5 solar eclipses, one of which was a totality - over a period of 14 years, and having read about the one from 1980, I am going to try and chronicle how the eclipse viewing has changed over the past 29 years.

The photo at the top shows a normally busy income tax office square in an Indian city bereft of any people during the eclipse of 1980.

	1980	1996	2009
TV	Showed a movie to keep people indoors	Showed a live telecast of the eclipse	Let people just watch on their own, nothing special
People	Stayed indoors mostly. Only the scientists watched the eclipse.	It was quite a people event, the educated watched the superstitious didn’t	Everyone watched! Right from the bathing sadhus to the city dwellers
Advise by the ophthalmologists	Don’t watch! Not even with filters.	Don’t watch! Not even with filters.	Forgotten
Media	Newspaper	Newspaper / TV	Newspaper / TV / Web / Flickr
Astrologers	Spreading doomsday	Spreading doomsday	Spreading doomsday

In 1980, the eclipse was watched in 15 eclipse camps - it was a first in 82 years. Some interesting news items from that time:

• No let up in rituals. Normally people try to ward off the harmful effects of the eclipse by putting pieces of ‘Durva’ into food items like milk, butter, ghee and drinking water.
• With the repeated warnings of all the mass media still ringing in their ears, the elite class didn’t not date to have a direct look at the eclipsed sun.
• ‘It was simply beautiful’ said an observer in Taita hills, Kenya. ‘We had 3 minutes 50 seconds of totality’. ‘The elders say we should go inside’ said Henry Kazungu 28, a member of the rat eating Giriama tribe. ‘But I want to stay out and see it. I want to be able to say later that this great thing happened in this year and I was there’.

Some news items from the 1995 eclipse:

• The council of astrologers: “The sun signifies the rulers. Thus in the region where the total solar eclipse will be visible the heads of the governments will be adversely affected.”
• With barely three days left for the solar eclipse, a serious controversy among scientists and ophthalmologists has put the West Bengal government in a quandary and the people in a fix.
• One publication showed a photo of an elephant at Yamuna Ghat waiting patiently for the sun to be freed from its lunar embrace so that it could have a holy dip.
• Unlike in 1980, millions of people watched the event last fortnight, turning it into a mass science festival.

From 2006:

• Schoolchildren clapped and cheered as the first total eclipse in years plunged Ghana into daytime darkness, a solar show sweeping northeast from Barzil to Mangolia.

In 2009, the clincher was a photo in one of the national dailies showing the bathing sadhus wearing solar goggles and watching the eclipse. Flickr also made a world of difference: we could see various cultures in various countries trying to watch the eclipse, and interpreting it in their own ways.