HomeMailFlickrTumblrNewsSportsFinanceCelebrityAnswersGroupsMobileYahooSearchSkip to NavigationSkip to Main ContentSkip to Related Content0Mail•May 29, 2014Craig Brazier, of Mansfield Woodhouse, England, has just scored a lot of money. This past Saturday, Mr. Brazier, a 39-year-old waste container cleaner, was getting ready for an upcoming fishing trip. Just when he was about to buy some more maggots for bait, he changed his mind and decided to head over to Betfred, a United Kingdom bookmaker. He wound up betting £2 ($3.35) on the Scoop6, a pool bet that challenges gamblers to, “select all 6 winners from 6 (horse) races.” As the Daily Mirror reports, it’s a good thing he didn’t decide to buy more maggots.After he placed his bet, Mr. Brazier went home to watch the races. The races quickly became far more interesting to watch for the married father of two. He told the Daily Mirror that while his wife, Tracy, was asleep, he was wide awake and, “panicking after I got three out of three.
After the fourth winner I went and told her but she said, ‘You aren’t lucky enough’ and dozed off.” As it turned out, Tracy’s husband was lucky enough. And as Chatez the racehorse won the sixth race, so did Mr. Brazier. His miniscule bet, almost spent on maggots, wound up scoring him a cool £1,342,599 ($2,244,557).According to the Nottingham Post, Mr. Brazier and his family will now look for a new home to live in and are planning on visiting Disney World. The new millionaire originally thought about buying a horse for himself, but after looking into the cost, he’s less keen on the idea. The Guardian notes that both Craig and Tracy plan on keeping their jobs, and that one daughter asked for new shoes, and the other a new desk.On Wednesday, Mr. Brazier got to meet Chatez, the horse that helped secure his jackpot. All in all, it’s been a stellar week – that could possibly be surpassed depending on what happens this weekend. As the BBC notes, he has been entered into a pool for an upcoming bonus race that could win him another £5 million ($8,359,000).
More info: Daily Mirror,Nottingham Post,The Guardian, BBCPopular in the CommunityThe page you have attempted to load is not currently available on the BZPower server. Please use the site search, return home, or check the discussion forums to find the page you were looking for:On April 17 at 7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. ET, Yahoo Live will live stream RX Bandits' concert from the Trocadero Theatre in Philadephia. Tune in HERE to watch!Sometimes touring can be a drag for a mid-level rock band, driving from city to city on an seemingly endless road to nowhere. But earlier this week, RX Bandits singer/guitarist Matt Embree is thrilled to be on the road between East Coast dates. "We're going on a tour of places that were in The Wire, all the cool places where they shot that show," he says, as the band heads toward the Baltimore area. "It's my all-time favorite television show." When we inform him that's one series we hadn't had the chance to catch up on, he recommends binge-watching. "Well, you're stoked, because you can watch literally every episode in a row," he says.
We try to delve a little into the band's current tour, but Embree isn't finished talking about HBO crime drama, which originally aired for five seasons from 2002 through 2008. "If you're not into the kind of show that's really slow-going and takes its time to build characters, you won't like The Wire, but I implore you to give it a shot. It's like watching a book. There's a ton of dialog and every character is really developed, way more than the average TV drama... Even people you'd consider the bad guy are humanized to the point where you're not really rooting for one person over the other."You could say that RX Bandits' music has evolved into sort of the audio equivalent of The Wire — if you were watching in on hallucinogens. Not that it has anything to do with crime, but it too is dense and not immediately easily accessible, but if you take your time to get into it, you'll find your just rewards. Over the years, RX Bandits — which also includes guitarist/keyboardist Steve Choi, bassist Joseph Troy, and drummer Chris Tsagakis — have evolved dramatically from their early days as a ska-punk band to their current incarnation of a modern prog-rock outfit.
The transition was so dramatic that Adam Lovinus of the O.C. Weekly once wrote it sounded "as though the band spent a year studying the vintage East Coast punk stylings of Television."We ask Embree about that comparison and joke maybe the writer was thinking of Embree's obsession with The Wire on television, which he can appreciate, but he feels no kinship with Tom Verlaine and company. "It's not that I don't respect Television, but I'm not really a fan of the music they created, so I don't know where that comes from at all," he says.While Embree may not be tripping on Marquee Moon, he's OK with the prog-rock connection. "That's a good description as far as music monikers go," he says. "Music monikers are usually totally annoying, but as far as what that means, which I'm assuming for most people it just means music that has a lot of parts and changes that is also rock 'n' roll. We do have a lot of changes and a lot of different parts in our songs, so I'm alright with that."Released last year, Gemini, Her Majesty, the band's seventh album, undoubtedly has the most musical changes of RX Bandits' career.
The band went into the sessions for the album with the thought of making a pure studio creation and would deal with figuring out how to perform the songs live later, which ended up posing a challenge. "There are a few songs that are really hard to pull off live, mainly because of the tons of layers of harmonies," Embree says. "The other guys are also playing intricate parts, so it's hard to be able to pull off those harmonies. We haven't been able to do two or three songs live, but we're getting there." With the use of additional technology, though, the band has been able to tackle some of its more adventurous musical creations. "Tsagakis has like a sample pad, where you can load different samples on it, but we're not like playing along with tracks. We'd never do that, but he's triggering different sounds that are on the album while he's playing drums, so it adds a whole new element to the live thing."While RX Bandits may be pushing toward the future in their latest recordings and live performances, Embree admits his latest musical inspiration comes from the past and is probably not who you'd think.
"The last person I ever studied on guitar — and this is going to sound pretty silly — is Slash," he says with a laugh. "About a year ago I started going on YouTube and watching Slash solo sets over the years and then I started watching Guns N' Roses over the years and learning all the solos."This discussion gets Embree riding a wave of nostalgia. "The first music I ever got into big time was metal," he says. "Then I got into the harder alternative stuff like Faith No More's The Real Thing. I was like 10. I was super pumped on that. Pearl Jam Ten, Metallica The Black Album, and then I went back and bought To Kill 'Em All and everything before the Black Album and Guns N' Roses, especially since I loved Terminator 2."Embree goes on to enthuse about the "You Could Be Mine" video, which pits Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator against Axl Rose. "I was like, yeah, Axl, chills with the terminator, dude," he says.The wave of nostalgia continues as Embree recounts how his parents bought him a Fisher Price record player when he was about 4 years old.