Heartening News - Listening to the right kind of music can slow the heart and lower blood pressure, a study has revealed. Rousing operatic music, like Puccini's Nessun Dorma, full of crescendos and diminuendos is best and could help stroke rehabilitation, say the authors. Dr Luciano Bernardi and colleagues, from Italy's Pavia University, asked 24 healthy volunteers to listen to five random tracks of classical music and monitored how their bodies responded. They included selections from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, an aria from Puccini's Turandot, Bach's cantata No 169, Va Pensiero from Nabucco and Libiam Nei Lieti Calici from La Traviata. The researchers tested out various combinations of music and silence on the volunteers and found tracks rich in emphasis that alternated between fast and slow, like operatic music, appeared to be the best for the circulation and the heart.
Off The Beach - DJ Fatboy Slim has cancelled a beach concert planned for his home city of Brighton in September. Big Beach Boutique 5 was due to take place in Madeira Drive on the weekend of 4 and 5 September following a sell-out event for 20,000 people last year. Fatboy, aka Norman Cook, has been battling an alcohol addiction and spent time in rehab earlier this year. Brighton and Hove City Council confirmed the planned dates were off and said it was a disappointment.
Unhappy Returns - Noel Gallagher has criticised the 20,000 fans who asked for their money back after his band's homecoming gig was marred by technical problems. The Oasis guitarist called them "cheeky", and wrote of his surprise that so many took him up on his offer of a refund after the Heaton Park show. The band twice had to leave the stage in Manchester because of a power fault. In his blog, Gallagher wrote: "So you were genuinely disappointed? There wasn't a 20,000 gap in the crowd."
About 70,000 people saw Oasis abandon the opening track, only to return and be driven off the stage once more when the band tried a second song. At the end of gig, Gallagher said, "Thank you very very much, this is a free gig - let's have it. Anybody who has kept their ticket will get a full refund." If every fan asked for their money back it would cost £3m to refund them all. Organisers had been planning for the gig for six months and said the event was the biggest at Heaton Park since the Pope's visit in 1982.
(Jim Evans)
