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Madonna (r.) has played coy about Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ and any similarities to her very own song, ‘Express Yourself’…until now.

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What’s more cool . . . acoustic guitar strings or the trigger of a gun?

R & B singer Joe is building an ambitious plan to lure New York’s young troublemakers from the temptations of picking up a pistol, using music as the bait. The 39-year-old crooner, who released his album “The Good, The Bad, The Sexy” on Tuesday, said he’s giving out guitars to youths in hopes learning to play the instrument will soak up energy normally used for fighting.

“Someone really has to take a stand. Things have really gotten out of hand. I want to take these kids under my wing and show them a different lifestyle,” Joe – a.k.a. Joe Thomas – told the Daily News.

“Music is very powerful.”

The high rate of black boys and men shooting each other in New York neighborhoods such as Harlem and the South Bronx, as well as in Baltimore and Detroit, sparked the idea.

New York City statistics are shocking: A NYPD analysis of 2010 homicides showed that while blacks make up 25 % of the city’s population, two-thirds of the slaying victims – 357 out of 536 – were black.

While male blacks, ages 15 to 29, make up 3% of the city’s population, the group made up one-third of the death toll.

And 85% of black suspects arrested for homicide had attacked someone of the same race.

“A lot of kids have broken families, mothers in the home but no fathers around. But that shouldn’t be an excuse,” Joe said. “Just touching an instrument for the first time can change your life, other than touching a gun.”

Joe is going to the Kaplan House, on St. Mark’s Place, tonight at 7 p.m. to give his first music lesson to about two dozen young men, ages 17 to 20, who grew up in foster care and are now living in the East Village group home. He’ll also give away guitars.

Some teens were skeptical that hardened hoodlums would leave the streetcorner to strum a few chords, but Kaplan resident Theo Vidal, 19, said studying music keeps him from being “locked up.”

“Dealing with music, you are dealing with parts of yourself that nobody understands,” said Vidal, who grew up in the South Bronx and now is interning at a hip-hop radio station.

Harlem and Washington Heights kids will meet Joe next week when he pairs up with the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network to start spreading the guitar strings Uptown.

“Kids can realize ‘I can do this too,” said Victoria Pannell, 12, a NAN student leader and seventh grader at Intermediate School 218 in Washington Heights who is already planning ways to keep the music-not-guns push active after Joe’s visit.

“Teaching music would really help,” she said. “They won’t have time to think about bad things.”

simonew@nydailynews.com

NYDailyNews.com – Music

The bizarre look was completed by a pair of clunky platform shoes, which did
little to enhance the Bajan star’s cracking figure.

Rihanna is back at work after returning from a no-expenses spared trip around
Europe.

The star forked out £200,000 hiring a yacht for her and her pals, visiting St
Tropez and Cannes in the south of France, and Portofino and Sardinia in
Italy.

A month earlier the Grammy-winner made a rare return to her homeland Barbados,
where she sported a much more flattering bikini number during a carnival.

Carnival queen … Rihanna enjoys festivities in Barbados

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The chart-topper had new prosthetic shoulder lumps on show, which would keep
any kid guessing about which lady bumps to latch on to.

And talk about inappropriate babysitting threads – fishnets and leather.

She wouldn’t be watching Toy Story 3 with my wee boy dressed like that.

GaGa showed her maternal streak on Monday while promoting new album Born This
Way in New York.

Like it or lump it … Lady GaGa shows off odd prosthetic shoulders

MAVRIXONLINE.COM

Later she looked equally as barmy for an appearance on the DAVID LETTERMAN
show.

GaGa is heading to No1 here on Sunday after Born This Way shifted 100,000
copies on the first day of its release – breaking ADELE‘s
16-week run at the top.

Hitting a bum note … Lady GaGa’s dress fails to cover her derrière

GaGa’s also likely to smash the London girl’s first week sales record of
208,000, which she set with 21 back in January.

That should pay for those Toblerone implants to be removed.

Dressed to impress … Lady GaGa

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It probably is not worth dancing in the streets just yet, but Billboard has reported the good news that so far in 2011 music sales are up 1.6% over the same time last year. This is the first time we have been looking at real potential for growth in the recorded music market in nearly a decade. The total sales figure is one which combines albums with sales of individual tracks for a “track-equivalent album” number. Album sales have dropped slightly this year, 1.5%, but track sales have increased nearly 10% offsetting the drop in album sales. Billboard is pointing out that the increases seem to be driven by growth in the catalog market meaning music that is 18 months or more old while sales of current releases has dropped a bit. However, any way you look at it there is improvement. Most years recently we have been looking at losses of 10% or more year over year in music sales.

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50 Cent is appearing on the track – which will be on new album Killer Love –
to help propel her solo career in the US.

Bendy … Nicole rocks her body in a unique outfit

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It’s no wonder the girlfriend of LEWIS HAMILTON, currently busy
on the F1 tour, looked a bit angry in some of the trouser pics. Although
that could just be the Croydon facelift.

At least she got to dress up in some Planet Of The Apes clobber later on,
below.

Either that or she was going on a hen night for Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.

Smoking … Nicole Scherzinger works her magic for the cameras

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ERIC CLAPTON and Wynton Marsalis entered Rose Hall from opposite sides of the stage Friday night – a telling gesture.

While they both arrived ready to “Play The Blues ” – as the show’s name instructed – they found their greatest connection in very different expressions of the form.

Guitar god Clapton initially fell under the spell of the blues after hearing its 1950s electric amplifications. Trumpet czar Marsalis found his closest connection to the genre in its 1920s-era marriage to jazz. Would they find common ground at this first-ever joint show (one held in a venue 1/20th the size Clapton normally plays)?

Clearly, Clapton wondered the same thing. “It took a lot of courage for me to come here and put my little jingle in,” he said at one point.

It’s a typical expression of Clapton’s humility but, in truth, he was indeed outnumbered. The eight-member backup band contained no fewer than seven players from Marsalis’ group, while Clapton only had the classic-rock keyboardist Chris Stainton as his safety blanket. Given Clapton’s stated intimidation, one worried he might work too hard to blend in, losing the power of the sonic contrast.

That fret faded with the rollicking first number, “Ice Cream,” a jump-jazz/blues ditty that energetically integrated crowded and giddy horn solos with Clapton’s own fast-fingered guitar. The piece, like the best of this night, mashed up regions and eras of both blues and jazz with a defiant ease. In these riffs and solos thrived the sounds of both ’20s New Orleans and 1950s Chicago, with Clapton adding some 1960s rock spine, and the pianist Dan Nimmer and standup bassist Carlos Henriquez throwing in some chords from more modern jazz.

In the cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Forty-four,” Clapton drew on more of his early influence, aping the hard stomp and growl of Chicago blues, while the four horns fell all over each other in a traffic jam of New Orleans exuberance. The band found just as sure a groove in a lighter number, like “Joe Turner’s Blues,” a swoon in which the horns gently finished each other’s phrases and Clapton teased out a silky solo that, like many this night, was quieter than his usual but no less fleet.

Songs by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and W.C. Handy may have dominated the 90-minute program, but it also found room for a piece the playbill insisted the band wouldn’t play: “Layla.” Clapton, who otherwise chose the material, blamed this one on Henriquez. But he should be proud to take the credit. The song transformed into a sexy, slow blues vamp to which Marsalis’ trumpet added a graceful counter-melody. Like everything this night, it proved how portable the blues can be when played by the right hands.

jfarber@nydailynews.com

NYDailyNews.com – Music

James Otto jokingly calls himself “the love child between Ronnie Milsap and Barry White.” One listen to the single, ‘Groovy Little Summer Song,’ off his soon-to-be-released album ‘Shake What God Gave Ya,’ and who could disagree? That and the other songs on the album are country-meets-soul … Nashville-meets-Memphis … and to James, they completely define him as an artist.

“This is a declaration of who I am,” James tells The Boot of the September 14 release. “This country-soul sound is where we’re going, and if you like it, this is for you.”

As if to underscore his point, James tells The Boot about his collaboration with Ronnie Milsap on the song ‘Good Thing Gone Bad,’ that he says was “one of my favorite parts of this record — being being able to collaborate with one of my favorite artists of all time, a guy I consider the godfather of country soul. He’s the guy I point to most often when I bring up my style of music, because he is the guy who bridged the gap between those types of music.”

The Boot

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