Part 1(4/21/14--6/20/14)Here: http://prince.org/msg/8/406964

Part 2(6/20/14--8/3/14) Here: http://prince.org/msg/8/4...?&pg=1

Part 3(8/4/2014--10/4/2014) http://prince.org/msg/8/409550

Q Scores: Quincy Jones on Sinatra, Mentorship and His New Documentary

By Eric Hynes | October 3, 2014

Quincy Jones likes to get into things. Even at 81, he's got his fingers in more pies than you can ever even think of baking. The man is still producing, composing, conducting, teaching, publicizing, fundraising, discovering. He's so busy, and has so many credits and causes and points of pride, that you can talk to him for 45 minutes and never get around to mentioning Thriller, "We Are the World," Sanford and Son, or the viewable-from-space acreage required to house all of his Grammys, Emmys, and humanitarian awards.

The musical legend's latest project is Keep on Keepin' On, a documentary about his mentor, the jazz trumpeter Clark Terry. Jones serves as a producer of the film alongside Oscar-winner Paula DuPré Pesmen (The Cove), as well as living proof of its subject's genius and generosity. The film recounts the moment that a barely teenaged Jones pursued Terry after a series of shows in Chicago, begging to be taken on as a student. The veteran musician relented, and with Jones as his first protégé, embarked upon what would become his greatest calling — serving as a tireless, beloved, and at 93 years old, still active mentor to everyone from Wynton Marsalis to the film's director, Alan Hicks. True to that spirit, Keep On serves as a dual portrait of Terry and his young ward Justin Kauflin, a talented blind jazz pianist, as the former struggles with diabetes and the latter's fights to make headway in a competitive field.

Over wine and cookies, high above Columbus Circle at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the man they simply call "Q" holds court about everything from music, movies, and mythology to mentorship, mathematics, and Mike Tyson. After all, when he drops names like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, and Will Smith, Quincy is invoking people who probably spend at least as much time bragging about knowing him. This is a man who wears a pinkie ring given to him by Frank Sinatra and who, after he's done giggling at your grade-school joke about Whoopi Goldberg's name, lightly reminds you, "I discovered her, you know. Oprah too." What follows is only a sample of what happens when Q gets into it.

Clark Terry is 93, and as we see in the movie, still stays up until 4am to talk music. You're 81 — does it even seem fathomable that you're in your 80s, considering your lifestyle and all that you do?
Johnny Mandel, he's one of my oldest friends — we go back to before electricity. And he always says, "Q, we're going to be the only two guys who ever went from infancy to Alzheimer's without passing through grown up." I don't want to grow up, do you? Boring, man. To my kids I say I'd rather you be my friends than my children. We hang out. We party. I can out-party my kids, too.

You've been conducting orchestras, running labels, and guiding whole industries from a very young age. How have you been able to preside over such major talent and serve as the glue between them?
It takes love and amazing respect, man. I never thought about it until I hit 80, but I have been blessed to work with every major music star in the history of America — including Louie Armstrong. You can't plan that. You can't say, "Mr. Sinatra, I want to work with you." No. You have to wait until he calls you.

So you were never a precocious 16 year-old going, "I want to work with Ellington and Sinatra?"
Hell no. I remember working in Paris and coming in one day, and they say Grace Kelly's office called, and Mr. Sinatra wants you to bring your 55-piece house orchestra down to Monte Carlo to the Sporting Club to play an event. Frank Sinatra — are you kidding? That's like gong to heaven, man. At that time I had Kenny Clarke on drums, I had Lucky Thompson on tenor, I had Stéphane Grappelli, who was with Django Reinhardt, the Double Six, the vocal group — they were all in my house orchestra.

So we took the train down there and played with Frank, and it was like working with a magician. We played "ba-ba-ba-bum bwam, bo-dee-do-do"...it's "The Man With a Golden Arm," you know? Frank is back there high-fiving with Cary Grant and Noel Coward and Grace Kelly and all these people, and I'm stupid enough to think, "I hope he heard because I don't want the applause to run out." So he hangs, has a drink, and we're like "ba-ba-ba-bum" you know. He was in the back of the room, and then he stops on his way up, he's got his little velvet shoes on. And he's looking for his cigarette holder, takes one out, lights a cigarette, and I'm like, come on man, hurry up. And as soon as he gets to the stage we go into "Come Fly With Me." You know, "ba-da-da, da-da-da-do-da-di-do-di-do."

And I saw something that night...I thought I was on Mars. Frank is singing and he takes a puff off his cigarette — cut down to pin, spotlight is dark. He sings, "when I get you up there"—no smoke. Then: "where the air is rare" and then there was smoke. Herman Leonard, the greatest photographer in the world, he takes that picture, a classic picture now, of him from behind with the smoke. That's from Sporting Club in '58. Afterwards, I didn't hear a word he said. "Great job, kid. Cuckoo." That was it. I didn't know how it registered on the scale. You don't know. But you pray, because that's a dream.

I don't want to grow up, do you? Boring, man. I can out-party my kids, too.

Four years later, I get a call. "Hey, Q." Nobody had ever called me that before. "This is Francis. I'm in Kaua'i, and I'm directing a film called None But The Brave, and I just heard that record you did with Basie last year, ‘In Other Words.'" So that was the first arrangement I wrote for him, in a hotel room in Lake Tahoe. Except Frank changed the title to "Fly Me to the Moon." I remember Sonny Burke said, "You can't change the title." And Frank said, "What's the first words you hear?" "Fly me to the moon." "That's the title." [Laughs] Frank didn't take no shit from nobody.

Clearly he was a musical genius, but I'd imagine your relationship extended to a whole lot more than that, right?
Everything. I'd be in my hotel room writing on Thanksgiving, and he'd be like, "What the hell are you doing? I'm coming to get your ass." They lived at 700 Nimes Road [in Los Angeles]. That's where Elizabeth Taylor died — she moved in afterwards. And it's where Nancy Sinatra lived, and where I met Michael Caine. We were running after girls back then. Oh god, so much fun. We had some fun, man. You forget that Harry James was married to Betty Grable. Artie Shaw had Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Rosalind Russell, all those girls were his girlfriends. Forget the movie stars, man — the bandleaders had them all. And Sinatra. Sinatra was with everybody.

Legendarily.
Them cats didn't play. Whoo.

The first thing you asked me when I sat down was where I'm from — where my people come from. Why is that important to you?
Each state in this country had a major influence. Kansas City had Lester Young, New Jersey had Basie. Philadelphia — Jimmie Smith. Columbus — Nancy Wilson. Jackson — Big Maybelle. St. Louis — Miles, Clark Perry.

Could you hear it in their playing?
Oh yeah. They used to have territory bands. The genesis and the evolution of our music has just been astounding. And Americans don't know shit about it.

In the film, we learn that Duke Ellington mentored Clark Terry, that Clark Terry in turn mentored you, and you've famously mentored countless musicians from James Ingram and Patti Austin to Michael Jackson. Where does that impulse come from, to both guide and be guided?
It's ancient, [the idea of] mentorship and apprenticeship. Ravi Shankar told me in 1956 that "my students can not play in public for 14 years when they study with me." 14 years, man.!

That's a strict regime. But that's not the situation in jazz, is it?
It's a similar situation. You don't go out until you're ready, is what they're telling you.

How did you know when it was time for you to start passing things on?
If it happens to you, you know. [Count] Basie got to me at 13, Clark around the same age. Ray Charles was there since I was 14 — when he was just 17. And Benny Carter, he walked me straight into television as a composer. And if that happens to you, it's an automatic instinct for you [to give back]. Automatic. You don't even have to think about it.

And you knew to pursue mentors when you were young?
No, it's just part of your subconscious mind. Now, all these years later, can you imagine what it feels like to look at the guy who taught you when you were 13 years old? It's ridiculous.

What's it like to watch another young musician, Justin Kauflin, get taken under Clark's wing?
It's fantastic, man. You can identify with him every step of the way. In fact, I was shocked to hear Justin using all the vernacular, talking about "your crib," "your pad." That's all Forties and Fifties talk, man. Every word is all jazz. It's like cockney, or prison language. There were the jazz guys, and the hip-hop guys took it from them. Lester Young was calling Count Basie "homeboy" 90 years ago.

And it remains alive because it's always an "in" language?
Yeah, it's a prison language. Speaking of, you know I did The Italian Job 45 years ago? After I leave here I'm going to London where there's going to be a celebration with Michael Caine, and I'm going to conduct the London Philharmonic with songs from The Italian Job. Michael Caine, we were born the same year, month, day and hour.

Same hour? Seriously?
Celestial twins. Truly, celestial twins. That's like magic and all.

When did you get involved with this movie?
Accidentally, about a year and a half ago, when I went down to Arkansas to start working on a Clark album we'd planned to do with Snoop Dogg. He'd rap, and Clark would do [his scat character] Mumbles. It fits; they're both from St. Louis, too. But Snoop had an injury to his leg, so we just talked, and Clark said I want you to listen to this blind Japanese piano player. And it was over. Now Justin is one of my Global Gumbo All Stars. That's a group of, to me, the most talented young people on the planet.

Who else did you consider a mentor?
Other than those four I mentioned before, it was Armando Travioli, and Henry Mancini when I got into films. Morricone.

Really, Ennio Morricone?
I just talked to him yesterday. He's a great guy. He did 408 movies. We helped get him that [honorary] Oscar.

How do you balance out the need for the history of jazz music to be understood and honored, while at the same time keep the music alive and in the moment?
You make it alive. And it's alive already. Everything you hear Justin play, in the movie, they blazed that trail years ago. Can you imagine Stravinsky's ears, from the days of the three B's — Brahms, Bach and Beethoven — when he first heard "shhh-tish-shh-shhh-tish, shhh-tish-shh-shhh-tish." It didn't exist before. Nowhere on the planet! He made all this stuff up, invented it all. It's gotta be told, the story about the genesis and evolution of jazz music. People don't know. It's very complex, man. All we've got are 12 notes, and you have to know what everybody did with them in order to set your priorities and to make it your own. You've got rhythm, harmony and melody — to me, melody is the voice of god, and it hangs out there in the universe. You married?

No, but I was.
Ok, well you remember when you had a wife. And you had "our song" right? Nobody can change that. That's hanging out in the universe. You can't smell it, you can't taste it, you can't see it, you can't touch it. But you can feel it.

It's like the conversation in the film between Clark and Justin, where the older man is saying that the music has to come from you. It has to get inside you and become yours.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You make it yours. It's astounding. And it's always been a challenge. Now, Stravinksy was Nadia Boulanger's mentor, and he said, "You'll never get it all. But if you keep working at it you'll get as much as you can." There's a lot too eat in music — retrograde inversion, counterpoint. It's heavy, man. [Pause] Sorry to veer off. I can't help it. I've got a jazz mind.

MUSIC

In Tove Lo Veritas

By Holly Rubenstein

ABOVE: TOVE LO.

Scandi-pop fever is set to strike again with the rise of Stockholm's Tove Lo. The 26-year-old (pronounced too-veh-loo) has hooked tastemakers both sides of the pond with the release of her debut EP Truth Serum, a brutally honest account of a love story gone wrong, brought to life in epic pop anthems. Her single "Habits," as well as its remix by Hippie Sabotage, retitled "Stay High," have been climbing charts worldwide, set to soundtrack summer parties all over.

Staying in California for songwriting sessions, Tove spoke to Interview from L.A., ahead of her debut West Coast show.


HOLLY RUBENSTEIN: Your entry into the music industry began with your writing songs for other people (including Icona Pop, Cher Lloyd, and Adam Lambert). Was it always your ambition to work in music?

TOVE LO: I knew when I went to a very hippie high school that focused on music that I wanted to do something in the industry. I spent a few years in a rock band playing all these shitty bars around Sweden, and then I went from that into starting to write and produce myself. I did session singing to get by. I met an English A&R guy at a party in Stockholm and forced him to give me his email. He liked what he heard, put me in touch with people in Sweden, and a few months later I got signed to Warner Chappell and got thrown into songwriting sessions. It was such a weird situation to be thrown into having been writing in my own little home studio, but it was very exciting.

RUBENSTEIN: When did you decide that you wanted to release music as an artist, or was that always on the cards?

TOVE LO: I always loved performing and being on stage. When I got the publishing deal, I hadn't performed for a long time, and I loved being in a space with all these writers, so I pushed that away a bit. But then some songs that I wrote became too personal for me to give away, especially when people often want to change lyrics to make it fit someone else. I started releasing stuff independently, and after a while it just took off.

RUBENSTEIN: How would you describe your signature sound to someone who hasn't heard you yet?

TOVE LO: I'd say it's pop. It's very raw, honest, with a lot of drums and vocals in your face. It's dirty pop—no relation to Justin!

RUBENSTEIN: So much amazing pop talent has come out of Sweden in the last few years. Why do you think that Swedes are so good at writing pop songs?

TOVE LO: It's really hard to say. There are a lot of theories—it's the melancholy, it's because we're good at following the rules to make a pop song... I think it's a combination of those, and also the directness in music speaks to the way we are. Of course, we are also surrounded by talent who are doing really well, and you get influenced by that. Sweden is a very inspiring place to be when you're a songwriter.

RUBENSTEIN: Who would you cite as your key musical inspirations as an artist?

TOVE LO: I was big into grunge, like Nirvana and Hole, when I was younger, which has been a really huge inspiration because of its rawness and honesty. But really I'd say there was one album in particular—Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM. When I listened to that album, I was like, "I can do this." That's what made me start to produce and write on my own. It was simple, had these cool sounds and quirky lyrics. It opened a new world for me sound-wise that inspired me a lot.

RUBENSTEIN: You're currently blowing up both sides of the Atlantic simultaneously, which is a rare feat. How do you feel about the success coming so quickly and being so widespread?

TOVE LO: It's a bit overwhelming, to be honest. Now it's nice to be in L.A., just writing and staying away from reading about everything that's going on. It's hard to grasp. But it's amazing to have my first U.S. shows, and to have had my first show in the U.K. I love to travel and being new places, so I find it really exciting.

RUBENSTEIN: Given the subject matter, was the process of writing and recording the EP very emotional for you?

TOVE LO: Yes, both the writing and the recording. Writing the songs is always emotional and most of the vocals on there are the first three takes from the demos, because they give so much more. You're in that moment, so it speaks for itself.

RUBENSTEIN: Which of the songs on the EP means most to you, and why?

TOVE LO: For me, it's "Habits." It's the song that made everything take off, and it's the one that's the most directly honest. The process of writing that song was huge for me, so it has the biggest place in my heart.

RUBENSTEIN: Like Adele, you've turned a failed relationship into a bunch of pop classics —will you need a similarly emotionally intense experience to inspire the album?

TOVE LO: I have so many songs already for the album—it's more me trying to figure out what I want the storyline to be. I've been in a long-distance relationship for a while now, so there's going to be a lot about frustration of being apart, watching each other through a screen. Everything that's been happening the last few months have been insane inspirations—all these ups and downs. I do also tend to get into a trouble a bit, so there's always inspiration there!

RUBENSTEIN: Will people recognize themselves in your lyrics, given that you are so honest?

TOVE LO: Yes. The guy who Truth Serum is about—he knows. I haven't spoken to him, but he actually sent me a very beautiful poem about when he heard one of the songs, which I thought was very big of him. He's a great person. There's no hate there.

RUBENSTEIN: Your SXSW show and your London shows were both critically acclaimed. What is it about a Tove Lo show that is so memorable?

TOVE LO: When I'm on stage, I turn into this rock person. I give everything I have. I sing with emotion, I'm loving it up there, and I think there's a lot of energy. In the same way that I'm open when I speak, I'm that open on stage. I feed off the energy of the audience too, so they're feeling what I'm feeling. And the set up is great—I have two drummers and a bass guy so it's just us four.

RUBENSTEIN: How are you feeling about performing in New York for the first time?

TOVE LO: I'm so excited, I can't wait. My feet are jumping now when I'm talking about it. It's been a dream—I've been there a lot of times but never performed.

RUBENSTEIN: Have you always loved performing?

TOVE LO: I've had a love/hate relationship with it. I was an attention seeker as a kid, doing all this stupid stuff to get attention in general, but it all depends where I am in my life. If I'm having a bad few months I'll hide away. But I've always loved acting too—I like having all the eyes on me, I guess!

RUBENSTEIN: How do you feel about fame?

TOVE LO: I have mixed emotions. I like the fact that a lot of people get to hear the music and I love performing with people cheering you on and you're feeling the love for what you're doing, but there's also the other side where if you give away as much personal information as I do it's hard not to take it personally when people are saying mean things about you. But I try not to read any comments. Right now I'm just feeling a lot of love.

RUBENSTEIN: Where would you like to be in a year's time?

TOVE LO: This is probably very ambitious but I hope to be starting on my world tour. That's my dream. I want to be in a bus, traveling with the band, almost in a bubble.

Bryan Adams Discusses New Album 'Tracks Of My Years,' Miley Cyrus And Two Forgotten Decades

By Alex M. Smith
Sep 30, 2014 12:01 PM EDT

Bryan Adams had such an obsessive work ethic early in his career that he's forgotten entire stretches of the '80s and '90s.

"I wish I could be kidding you," he said in a phone interview on Monday afternoon. "But I don't actually remember a lot of my career."

The Canadian singer, responsible for several Top 10 hits including "Summer of '69" and "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" blames the "volume of work" he went through for his memory loss.

He definitely remembers the '70s, though. That's the era from which he culled 12 cover songs for his new album, Tracks of My Years (out Tuesday). The tracklist includes re...ined songs written by Bob Dylan, Ray Charles and The Beatles.

We caught up with the 54-year-old to talk about the new disc, the few things he can still recall from his heyday and Miley Cyrus, among other topics.

You've got a big day tomorrow. What's it like to wake up on the morning of an album release?

I think it's pretty good. I'm grateful that it's coming out, and it should be kind of fun, I think.

I kind of remember releasing Reckless, because it was near my birthday in 1984. But I don't remember the morning of it. I kind of remember the anticipation because I was really excited about the release of the song "Run To You." I had a feeling that the track would really do something, and it did pretty good.

What was it like to promote a record back then? What else do you remember about that day?

I don't actually remember a lot of my career. It's not that I have some sort of amnesia or something, or that I'm suffering from memory loss. It's just the volume of work that went on between 1983 and 1999 was so intense that there are great waves of my life that I just don't remember.

Someone will say, 'Oh, yeah! I saw you at Birmingham in 1987. Do you remember that gig?' I'm like, 'I know I played Birmingham sometime. But don't ask me anything about the gig or what it was, because I don't remember.'

I always get, 'I saw you when you opened for Journey.' I hardly remember that because there were so many gigs.

Did you make a conscious effort in '99 to pull yourself away from that?

Yeah. I stopped touring like that. There's no point. It was just work at that point. Now I work differently; I do 10 shows a month as opposed to never going home.

What can fans expect as we get into your run of fall shows? How does the structure of the show work?

In October, I'm doing some Bare Bones [Tour] shows, which is kind of like a presentation of songs from the past 30 years acoustically. Then come November, I'm gearing up the band again, and we're gonna go out and do a 30th anniversary Reckless Tour. It should be good. I'm looking forward to it.

What are some of the pros and cons of having the band there vs. playing by yourself?

It takes a little more courage. It's not easy just to walk up there and do it. But I've gotten pretty good at it now. I've done six years of it. I think I've got it kind of figured out now.

Tracks of My Years seems like a fun project; you got to go back and try out a bunch of old songs you love. But how hard was it to make some of these choices?

It was a hard record to make because it's really hard to choose songs. In my humble opinion, a lot of songs are so sacrosanct they're untouchable. Especially the songs that really were the influences in my career. I just chose stuff that was sort of around the same time when I first decided music was what I wanted to do. I chose songs that were on the radio at the same time.

Instead of doing "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, I would do something else. It'd be silly of me to do that song. How can you beat that? You can't. I just chose songs that were great songs; not necessarily songs that I would've bought, even, but they stuck in my memory.

Back in the day in the '70s, radio didn't really play songs based on categories. They'd play songs if it was a great song. So you get a mix of country and rock and R&B. It was a good time for music, really — certainly inspiring for me.

So when it came time to choose the songs, it was just a matter of going through all those amazing songs and seeing which ones sounded right. They sort of had to sound like me.

(Photo : Verve Records)

Obviously, you're not writing the lyrics, but you had to rewrite a little bit of the music. How does that process work as opposed to new material you create?

Well, you just give it your best shot. Sometimes I get to the end of recording a song, and say, 'You know what? This is just sounding too much like the original. There's no point in doing that. Let's go back and do something else.' A lot of time in the studio was kind of wasted because we were just trying stuff all the time.

Verve Records' criteria was that the songs had to be Top 10 hits on Billboard, otherwise we're not recording them. So at least for the first 11 songs on the record, I had to do familiar songs. At the end of the day before the album came out, I snuck a few other ones in there. "C'mon Everybody" by Eddie Cochran. I don't know if that was Top 10. "You Shook Me" by Muddy Waters. I put some other stuff in there to rock up the album a little bit.

There were two different producers on the record besides myself, Bob Rock and David Foster. This is really David's thing. He likes making records like this. He can just buzz through a bunch of songs that are hits and he makes people enjoy it. He says, "Just give it a try and see what happens." A couple years later we finished the album.

When it came time to choose an album cover, I decided I wanted to have a photo of me when I was a youngster. I wanted to put a picture on there that was indicative of the time when I figured out music was what I wanted to do. As you can tell from that picture, I was kind of into hard rock. And I never looked back.

The only thing about having hair that long was, it was hard to get a job. So eventually I had to get it cut, which was a drag.

Looking back to that era: Do you think kids are still saving up money for guitars and playing in the basement?

No. I think people are saving up for iPhones. I don't think the drive to be a musician is anywhere near what it used to be. But I could be wrong, because, apparently, people are making more music now than they ever have. But I don't hear it in the same way.

Are there any younger artists that have caught your eye?

I hear songs once in a while that stand out. I heard a song the other day... [singing] "I'm all about that bass / About that bass." That kind of reminds me of something The Shirelles would've done, you know?

Actually, you know what, I really like that song by Miley Cyrus, too. "Wrecking Ball." I love that song. It's amazing. I wish I'd written that song.

What about "Wrecking Ball" struck you?

I just thought it was a good chorus. She's hot too, man. She's so hot. Give me a break. For an old soldier like me. It's pretty amazing. [Geezer voice] 'Wouldn't have done that in my day, let me tell you.'

Jack White Releasing 'Live At Bonnaroo 2014' As Three-Disc Vinyl Set with Plenty of Extras

By Ryan Book, The Music Times
Oct 03, 2014 12:42 PM EDT

Jack White is opening up The Vault at Third Man Records once again and this time he isn't reaching too far back in history to find its next release. The guitar whiz/vinyl revivalist will be releasing his set from Bonnaroo this year as part of a three-disc collection Jack White Live At Bonnaroo 2014.

The three records are white, blue and black respectively and come with a litany of extras, such a DVD of the performance, a USB of "bonus material," 8x10 photographs from the show, a patch and a poster.

Third Man was sure to emphasize that the product was well worth it, even with the live streams and videos of the performance available on the internet.

"(It) stands as a marked improvement over the on-the-fly board mix heard in webcasts, YouTube uploads and shady downloads," read a press statement sent to Consequence of Sound. No doubt house engineer Vance Powell had something to do with the press release.

The package might be especially appealing to those who couldn't attend the Tennessee music festive this year and heard stories about it afterward. The set has already been hailed as one of the best in the history of the huge music event, with White playing for 45 minutes beyond his set time. The guitarist played a ten-song "encore" that realistically qualifies more as a second set, and he included covers such as Led Zeppelin's "The Lemon Song" and Dick Dale's "Misirlou," as well as White Stripes classics, including a massive sing-along of "Seven Nation Army" as a closer.

.

.

[Edited 11/30/14 18:34pm]

Pictured left to right: Jim Valley, Paul Revere, Mark Lindsay, Philip Volk, Michael Smith

Paul Revere, the organist and ringleader behind the 1960s garage rock band Paul Revere & the Raiders, has died, Rolling Stone reports. He was 76.

Revere, born Paul Revere Dick, was an Idaho native pianist who met singer and sax player Mark Lindsay in 1959. In 1961, their band Paul Revere & the Raiders gained an instrumental hit with "Like Long Hair". Though the band temporarily went on hiatus after Revere was drafted, they soon reformed. In 1963, they became the first rock'n'roll act to be signed to Columbia Records.

Though their gimmick had them dressing up in colonial outfits—a U.S. response to the British Invasion—they made hits, too, including "Good Thing", "Kicks", "Hungry", their version of "Louie, Louie", and more. In 1965, they became the house band on Dick Clark's "Where the Action Is" TV show. Lindsay and Revere also co-hosted the TV show "Happening '68". In 1971, they got a No. 1 hit with "Indian Reservation".

Like the Dave Clark Five before them, Paul Revere was the band's namesake, but not their frontman. Still, the back cover of their album Spirit of '67 describes Revere as the group's leader—the "moneyman, organist, direction-finder, hirer, firer, wheeler, dealer," and "the man who holds the whip of group leadership."

He's also called a "very fine clown", which is echoed in the memorial about Revere on the band's website.

While the band went through many lineup changes through the years, Revere was always there. He finally took a break from the band in July 2014 when he was forced by doctor's orders to stay home while the band went on tour.

Read a note remembering Revere on the...'s website.

Dear Paul,

Where do I begin? How do I tell you how much I love you and what you have meant to me?

Have you ever met a person and felt like you've known them your entire life, sensed a familiarity and warmth? That's how I felt the very first time I met you, and the feeling only grew stronger the more I got to know you.

Like most people, my initial introduction to you was on television, radio and records, but none of those mediums gave me a real clue to the one-of-a-kind life force that was Paul Revere.

Sitting in an audience at my first Paul Revere and The Raiders concert introduced me to a larger-than-life dynamo of high-energy slapstick, outrageous and spontaneous humor and a genuine child-like joy. Everyone in attendance just knew that you MUST be a wonderful person offstage too, no doubt about it.

Meeting you after a show in the autograph line cemented the deal for everyone. Just as fun, funny and spontaneous as you were onstage, extremely nice and accommodating to everyone who waited in the long lines to meet you. Take a picture - "SURE, take TWO!" Sign these 20 albums? "Why NOT, you helped pay for my first house, and my first wife!"

Generous to a fault with your family, your friends and your band, there seemed to be no limit to your kindness. When you turned your attention towards someone, you made that person feel special and in your spotlight. You had a pet name for each person, and you never hesitated to tell them how exceptional they were. You appreciated the talent, beauty, skills and uniqueness you found in others, and you were never shy about telling them so. All the more reason for people to feel wonderful in your presence.

It's no accident that people called you "Uncle Paul". You were like a favorite uncle who's always fun to be around. Hug-gable, like a child's favorite stuffed animal, smart, funny, world traveled and so very interesting. (and as you would say, "Don't forget CUTE!!") You were also the epitome of a cool rock star, admired and respected by so many entertainers throughout the decades.

And how about people like Dick Clark? How many businessmen and showbiz people did Dick Clark meet in his lifetime? And yet he gravitated to you, and chose to work on many projects and business ventures with you. He saw something in you, even when you were a kid, that separated you from the pack of extremely talented and interesting people with whom he constantly came into contact. He was proud to call you his friend and enjoyed your company tremendously. The same goes for Andy Williams and many, many others.

You loved eating a hot dog at a truck stop with the guys as much as you enjoyed spending an entire evening in a classy restaurant appreciating the finer things. You loved taking your friends out to dinner, and you never let them pay. You always got to know the staff when you ate out too. By the end of the evening you not only knew your server's names, you knew all about their hopes, their goals, their family. You knew the manager's name and you made sure you told them how fantastic your server was. And you always tipped WAY too much. This is EVERY time, at EVERY restaurant. This says a lot about the kind of person you were.

Your deep love and devotion to your wife, Sydney, was beyond compare. Anyone could see the eternal connection you shared, the great marriage you were part of, what a doting and attentive husband you were. The way you made each other laugh, holding hands and your open show of affection. No one could make you happy like she did, and no one could make you laugh like she could. Hopeless romantics enjoying each other and the life you shared together.

You loved Christmas like no one else. You loved Disney World, old movies on TCM, rocking chairs on the porch, Sunday mornings at home with your wife, a nice fire in the fireplace and a big bowl of popcorn - you absolutely just loved life!

But now you have passed on. By your example, both professional and personal, you've left a blueprint of how to live a life full of love, laughter and happiness. The world will be a lot less fun, a lot less kind and gentle without Paul Revere in it. Your larger-than-life absence will leave a void in our hearts and our lives.

We are all blessed to have known you, and we'll miss you more than you could ever know.

Love forever,
Everyone who has ever met you.

Journey's Steve Perry Leads 'Don't Stop Believin'' Sing-Along at Giants Game

By Elias Leight | October 07, 2014 4:49 PM EDT

Steve Perry attends the US Premiere of DreamWorks Pictures "Need For Speed" at The TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, March 6, 2014.

I won't go see an Indiana Jones movie without Harrison Ford. Without him, there is no Indiana Jones.

purplethunder3121 said:

I won't go see an Indiana Jones movie without Harrison Ford. Without him, there is no Indiana Jones.

I agree PT, although Brad Pitt might be a good choice. I hope he can do it.

Today we celebrate together! Libras unite!

.

These guys Celebrate it today as well.

October 8 Birthdays

Bella Thorne, 17 TV Actress 1 Bruno Mars, 29 Singer 2 Nick Cannon, 34 TV Actor 3 Matt Damon, 44 Movie Actor 4 Dustin Breeding, 27 Singer 5 Mike Mizanin, 34 Wrestler 6 Barbara Palvin, 21 Model 7 Travis Pastrana, 31 Motorcycle Racer 8 Chevy Chase, 71 Movie Actor 9 Angus T Jones, 21 TV Actor 10 Cara Gosselin, 14 Reality Star 11 Molly Quinn, 21 TV Actress 12 R.L. Stine, 71 Author 13 Sigourney Weaver, 65 Movie Actress 14 Cece Winans, 50 Singer 15 Jesse Jackson, 73 Civil Rights Leader 16 Stephanie Zimbalist, 58 Movie Actress 17 Shontell McClain, 43 Family Member 18 Karyn Parsons, 48 TV Actress 19 Madelyn Gosselin, 14 Reality Star 20 Emily Procter, 46 TV Actress 21 Paul Hogan, 75 Movie Actor 22 Mikey Bolts, 23 Web Video Star 23 Johnny Ramone (1948-2004) Songwriter 24 Ian Hart, 50 Movie Actor 25 Bill Elliott, 59 Race Car Driver 26 Cody Lundin, 38 Teacher 27 Ksenia Solo, 27 TV Actress 28 Anne-Marie Duff, 44 TV Actress 29 Teddy Riley, 47 Producer 30 Juan Peron (1895-1974) World Leader 31 Nick Bakay, 55 TV Actor 32 Gauri Khan, 44 Producer 33 Jeremy Davies, 45 TV Actor 34 Reed Hastings, 54 Entrepreneur 35 Rona Barrett, 78 Journalist 36

Chicago-born actress Sarah Goldberg, 40, dead of natural causes

Sarah Goldberg landed her first show business break because of table linens.

She helped arrange tablecloths and napkins for “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” the Julia Roberts-Dermot Mulroney movie filmed at the Cuneo mansion in Vernon Hills.

Enchanted by the set, she wandered around. A film staffer spotted the glowing brunette and asked, “Do you have a purple formal?” He wanted her to be a wedding scene extra.

“She said, ‘No, but I could get one,’ ” said her mother, Judy Goldberg. They raced around and bought a gown, and the ingenue appeared briefly onscreen in the 1997 film.

Ms. Goldberg, who started out as a little bumblebee in a Chicago City Ballet production of “Cinderella” and grew up, moved to California and landed roles in the TV shows “7th Heaven,” “House,”

“Judging Amy” and the movie “Jurassic Park III,” died in her sleep at age 40 of natural causes, her family said.

An autopsy failed to determine a cause of death, but a heart ailment is suspected, her mother said. On Sept. 27, she died peacefully in her sleep, her computer in her lap at the family cabin in Wisconsin.

“She went to sleep and didn’t wake up,” her mother said.

Ms. Goldberg attended the Latin School of Chicago, earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Amherst College and was planning to study medicine until being bitten by the acting bug in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

She appeared as a college student seeking drugs in the gritty Denzel Washington movie, “Training Day.”

After five months of auditions, she landed her best-known TV role. In the long-running “7th Heaven,” she was Sarah Glass Camden, a medical student and daughter of a rabbi portrayed by comedian Richard Lewis. Her character fell madly in love with Matt Camden, the son of a Christian pastor played by Stephen Collins. Their whirlwind interfaith romance was a fan favorite.

“She would walk down the street here, or places in Wisconsin, and people would come up to her and say, ‘You played the daughter’ ” of the rabbi, her mother said.

“She wanted to go to medical school, and instead for three years she played a doctor on ‘7th Heaven,’ ” her mother said.

In “Jurassic Park III,” she was Cheryl Logan, a graduate student of Dr. Alan Grant, played by actor Sam Neill.

Ms. Goldberg had recurring roles as Colleen Sarkossian on the 2008-2013 series “90210” and as Heather Labonte on “Judging Amy.” She also appeared in “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “Without a Trace.”

She was thrilled to be cast in Patrick Swayze’s “The Beast,” a series set in Chicago. “She loved working with him. She thought he was incredible, especially after watching ‘Dirty Dancing’ 900 times,” her mother said. During filming, her trailer was in front of her alma mater, the Latin School.

Ms. Goldberg’s credits sometimes list her as Sarah Danielle Madison, a name she took because of her fondness for Madison the mermaid in the movie “Splash.” At Latin School, the young fan did a project in which she crafted a mermaid tail. “She would sit in the tub and flop around pretending she was a mermaid,” her mother said.

Proud of her Jewish heritage, she wasn’t interested in erasing her ethnicity, her parents said. She thought the stage name would better guard her privacy.

Ms. Goldberg returned to Chicago for the Jewish holidays and hadn’t yet returned to her Santa Monica home when she died.

She also did voice overs and appeared in a popular Taco Bell Super Bowl commercial featuring Carmen Electra.

She was born in 1974 in Springfield, where her father, Bill Goldberg, a litigator at Seyfarth Shaw, was then an attorney in the administration of Gov. Dan Walker. The family moved back to the Near North Side, and she was cast in a production of “Cinderella” at the Chicago City Ballet, founded by prima ballerina assoluta Maria Tallchief. She loved being onstage, where “she would almost walk in front of Suzanne Farrell,” said her mother, speaking of one of the greatest of American ballerinas.

The young Sarah was a skilled volleyball player at Latin School and Amherst, where she graduated in 1996.

A firm co-owned by her mother, BBJ Linen, was handling the table linens for the set of “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” where she caught a staffer’s eye and got cast.

When she headed to California, her only contact out West was an acting teacher, her family said. Soon, she landed an agent and roles.

A graceful athlete, she practiced yoga for 20 years and did trick skiing. “She could get on (skis) backwards and blow kisses to people and pretend she was a water skier,” her mother said.

Ms. Goldberg made many friends during a decade or so of visits to Campo Fiesta in northern Wisconsin, where she was a camper, and later, a counselor.

A dog lover, she had a Chihuahua-terrier mix, Bucket, whom she rescued the day she was to be euthanized. Her parents are showering Bucket with attention. “The dog’s going to be such a little princess,” her mother said.

She also is survived by her brother, Bradley.

Services were held.

In lieu of flowers, her family asked for contributions to the Sarah Goldberg Memorial Fund at PAWS, 1997 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60614.

JoeBala said:

purplethunder3121 said:

I won't go see an Indiana Jones movie without Harrison Ford. Without him, there is no Indiana Jones.

I agree PT, although Brad Pitt might be a good choice. I hope he can do it.

I think Brad Pitt would be an excellent choice to play Indiana's son, carrying on his tradition of adventure.

JoeBala said:

Today we celebrate together! Libras unite!

Happy Birthday Bruno Baby! :cake:

[Edited 10/9/14 7:32am]

NaughtyKitty said:

JoeBala said:

Today we celebrate together! Libras unite!

Happy Birthday Bruno Baby! :cake:

[Edited 10/9/14 7:32am]

lol I bet he heard you NK.

R.I.P. Jan Hooks of Saturday Night Live

TMZ is reporting the death of Jan Hooks, who proved herself one of the most reliable cast members in Saturday Night Live’s history during her 1986 to 1991 run. Her agency has since confirmed it, though an official cause of death hasn’t been released; however, it’s reported that she was suffering from a serious illness. Hooks was 57.

Like a lot of SNL players, Hooks got her training in the L.A. comedy troupe The Groundlings. After a brief television stint on HBO’s Not Necessarily The News, Hooks finally joined the late-night ensemble in 1986, during a year of merciless housecleaning.

A newly reinstated Lorne Michaels had spent his first season back stocking the show with budding movie stars and established faces like Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, and Randy Quaid—as well as Joan Cusack, who took Hooks’ spot.

After a mass culling that spared only Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Nora Dunn, and A. Whitney Brown, Hooks joined the show’s twelfth season alongside newcomers Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson, and Phil Hartman. Quickly, they coalesced into arguably the strongest cast the show has ever seen.

Though not a flashy breakout like Carvey or Miller, Hooks was—like Phil Hartman—a presence that elevated every sketch she was in. Her stable of memorable impressions included a perpetually weeping Tammy Faye Baker, a slinky, inappropriately seductive Diane Sawyer, and seemingly all the political women of the era: Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Kitty Dukakis.

Her impression of Sinead O’Connor in the classic “Sinatra Group” is a great example of what Hooks could bring to a sketch, disappearing into the role and allowing Hartman to land his jabs, and getting laughs with nothing but a slow burn.

Hooks was also well known for The Sweeney Sisters, a pair of obnoxious pop medley crooners she created alongside Nora Dunn. Their overenthusiastic scatting and cutesy, overly rehearsed patter became a mainstay of the show, and completely ruined “The Trolley Song” for everyone, forever.

After leaving the show in 1991, amid another shift toward a cast dominated by Chris Farley, Adam Sandler et al., Hooks took over for Jean Smart on Designing Woman, serving on the show’s two final seasons. She would also take a recurring role on 3rd Rock From The Sun as Vicki Dubcek, embarking on a tempestuous romance with French Stewart’s alien.

And she was Dixie, the alcoholic, completely out-of-it rock to Martin Short’s celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick, appearing in several episodes of Primetime Glick and the movie Jiminy Glick in Lalawood.

Though denied the movie career enjoyed by so many of her SNL colleagues, Hooks did have a few memorable roles—most notably as Tina, the perky, gum-chewing guide in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, where she delivers the devastating news regarding the Alamo’s lack of a basement.

Tim Burton would cast Hooks again in Batman Returns, where she played an image consultant tasked with making Danny DeVito’s Penguin look presentable (and avoiding his “French flipper trick”). Her other TV and movie appearances included roles in the films Coneheads, Simon Birch, and A Dangerous Woman.

She could also be heard as the voice of Apu’s wife Manjula on six episodes of The Simpsons, and as the fembot Anglelyne who catches Bender’s eye in an episode of Futurama. Most recently, Hooks turned up on 30 Rock as Verna Maroney, the scheming mother to Jenna Maroney.

Like her frequent partner and on-stage husband Phil Hartman, Hooks was often quietly great, a performer whose consistency may not have received all the accolades it deserved in its day, but whose death will certainly prompt a lot of belated recognition of how good she was. And suffice to say, losing her only makes watching Tom Schiller’s short �...A Dream” all the more heart-wrenching.

[Edited 10/9/14 16:55pm]

Austin City Limits Livestream: Watch Live Performances & More From ACL 2014

By Billboard Staff | October 09, 2014 10:00 AM EDT

Broadcasts begins daily at 3:15PM ET, starting Friday, Oct. 10

Can’t make it to weekend two of Austin City Limits? Don’t worry – we’re helping to bring the action right to you. Starting Friday, Oct. 10, Billboard.com will host Red Bull TV’s exclusive livestream of ACL 2014, which will feature artist interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and live performances from 45 artists, including Lorde, Skrillex, Foster the People, Spoon, Calvin Harris, Interpol and many more. Come back at 3:15PM ET on Friday when the show begins and get ready to rock all weekend.

ACL Weeknd One: 10 Best Moments | Live Photos

Elle Varner Talks New Album 'Four Letter Word,' Being Inspired by Eminem Following Release of Video For "F--k It All"

By Erika Benton-Martin
Oct 09, 2014 09:40 AM EDT

Elle Varner (Photo : Courtesy of Facebook)

Earlier this week, Elle Varner released her video for "F--k It All." She recently opened up about her new album Four Letter Word and talked about some of her inspirations, which include rapper Eminem.

Varner won fans over with her sweet love songs but as reported by Billboard, she's ready to show listeners "her natural progression -- both as a person growing up and as an artist digging deeper into her craft."

With that being said, its pretty much safe to say "F--k It All" has set the tone for the forthcoming project.

"The most haunting thing about the tune for me is that I never break from the light, airy, melancholic melody until the very end," she told The Fader of the song. "It was a challenge as a writer and singer to stay on one melody and chorus lyric - 'F--k it all' - and let only the verse lyrics grow in intensity."

Four Letter Word is due this fall and while putting the project together, Varner found herself opening up to a wider range of influences and collaborations, including Boy 1da, Hit Boy and Da Internz.

More specifically, the "Refill" singer praised Eminem when discussing her inspirations.

"There is a bit of a thread," she said. "It's telling a complete story. I haven't fully decided how deep I wanna go with it as I'm finishing up the little sequences and interludes. I'll just leave it at this: Eminem is one of my favorite artists of all time."

And Varner was just as excited putting the album together as she is for fans to hear it. In fact, the entire album was reportedly recorded in a matter of five days.

"It's definitely gonna be different from the first album, but I feel incredible about it," she said.

Stay tuned for more updates.

.

iHeartMedia Announces First Latin Festival

By Leila Cobo | October 02, 2014 10:04 AM EDT

Daddy Yankee performs at the 2013 Billboard Latin Music Awards

Rodrigo Varela/Getty Images

iHeartMedia's Fiesta Latina will go head-to-head with SBS’ Calibash Nov. 22 in Los Angeles.

By Daniel Kreps | October 9, 2014

Debbie Harry, David Johansen, the B-52s' Kate Pierson, Ben E. King and many more will be on hand for the Theatre Within's 34th Annual John Lennon Tribute, which will take place at New York's Symphony Space on Friday, December 5th. Joan Osborne, Marshall Crenshaw, the Fab Faux's Rich Pagano and Amy Helm will also appear at the event, while rock photographer Bob Gruen, who took pictures of Lennon's time in New York, will be the recipient of the first John Lennon Real Love Award.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the John Lennon Real Love Project, a new mobile songwriting program for children and teens undergoing long-term medical treatment. The program began last month at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. Tickets for the benefit gig are available now at LennonTribute.org.

"I share Theatre Within's belief that music and the performing arts have a special power to bring people together and inspire us to make a positive difference,” Yoko Ono said in a statement. "It's beautiful that the tribute continues to have such a powerful impact in John's memory."

Osborne's set will commemorate Lennon's last major live performance by playing the same three songs – "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "I Saw Her Standing There" – he performed with Elton John at Madison Square Garden on November 28th, 1974. The legendary Thanksgiving concert celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

By Daniel Kreps | October 9, 2014

It's a show that features conjoined twins, a boy with lobster hands and a terrifying, murderous clown, yet the strangest part of Wednesday night's American Horror Story: Freak Show premiere came when Jessica Lange's Elsa performed a rendition of David Bowie's Hunky Dory classic "Life on Mars?" The cover was jarring for two reasons: First, that German accent, and secondly, Bowie's track was released in 1971, but the show is based in 1952 in Jupiter, Florida. So, is time travel a subplot?

As creator Ryan Murphy tells the Wall Street Journal, the use of Bowie was inspired by the anachronistic utilization of music by director Baz Luhrmann, who notably filled his films Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby with contemporary songs. As Sarah Paulson, who plays conjoined twins Dot and Bette told Vanity Fair, "[Luhrmann] creates these worlds that are so hyper-real and hyper-fantasy-based all smushed into one thing. It lends itself nicely to the tone of the show."

"We're only doing songs by artists who have self-identified as freaks,” Murphy tells Speakeasy. "That they felt different. David Bowie said yes to that, Lana Del Rey said yes to that, Kurt Cobain's daughter said yes to that, Fiona Apple approved that. That for me was the theme of the season, so we went for it. And that's how we came up with the 'Life on Mars' idea."

Katy Perry Reportedly to Perform at Super Bowl XLIX Halftime

Getty Images

Naturally, Katy Perry made a quick stop at college before attempting to tackle the Super Bowl.

According to Ian Mohr and Emily Smith of the New York Post's Page Six, Perry is close to being confirmed as the halftime performer at Super Bowl XLIX:

Perry’s been rumored as a contender for the coveted Super Bowl slot, along with Coldplay and Rihanna (whose “Run This Town” was unceremoniously axed by CBS Sports as its Thursday Night Football tune when the season opened). The Super Bowl airs Feb. 1 on NBC. ...

“A deal is being hammered out for Katy to play the Super Bowl,” said an entertainment insider of the plan.

This news comes less than a week after Perry's heavily buzzed-about appearance on ESPN's College GameDay. She did a great job of picking games, correctly selecting Mississippi State to upset Texas A&M and Ole Miss to topple Alabama:

To see Perry floated as a serious contender for the Super Bowl halftime show isn't a huge shock. She's one of the most popular music acts in the country and would fit in with the NFL's recent trend toward younger performers. The Black Eyed Peas, Bruno Mars and Beyonce have all been featured during halftime in the last four years.

However, Perry did say on GameDay that she wouldn't perform at the Super Bowl if she had to compensate the NFL for doing so. Hannah Karp of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported in August that the league was considering making musical acts pay for the right to play at halftime.

"I’m not the kind of girl who would pay to play the Super Bowl," she told the GameDay crew, via Mohr and Smith.

Super Bowl XLIX is scheduled for Feb. 1, 2015 in Glendale, Arizona.

Five Things to Know About ABC's 'Cristela'

The family comedy stars standup Cristela Alonzo

ABC first brought race-themed programming to this season's TV line-up with Black-ish, and now it’s continuing its diversity push with Cristela.

The multi-cam comedy, which stars standup Cristela Alonzo is her television series debut, is based on the comedian's own life. The show follows the Mexican-American who, in her sixth year of law school, lands an internship at a prestigious law firm. But achieving the American dream is no easy feat amid her family’s concerns: her sister (Maria Canals Barrera) would rather her focus on her dating life, her brother-in-law (Carlos Ponce) wants to kick her out of his house, and her mother (Terry Hoyos) is afraid she'll forget the arduous upbringing she once had in Mexico.

Alongside series’ producers Becky Clements and Kevin Hench, Alonzo opened up about the story behind Cristela at recent PaleyFest panel. “I never wanted to tell the story of ‘Oh, pretty girl can’t find a date?’ Aww,” Alonzo said from the stage. “It’s about doing something that’s universal and honest. There’s too much math involved in TV trying to aim shows at Latinos.”

Ahead of her show’s Friday, Oct. 10 premiere, here’s five more things the star revealed about herself and the comedy:

The Sitcom is Autobiographical

That the show mirrors her own life is deeply personal for Alonzo and her family. The day the series got picked up, Alonzo called her sister. “She was driving and pulled over and started crying,” recalled Alonzo on stage. “She said, ‘Something like this doesn’t happen to people like us.’” In that moment, Alonzo realized the impact of her success on her loved ones: “It really hit me on such a strange level on how much it meant to my family and how much it meant to me.”

The Material is Mostly Accurate

How much of Alonzo’s own life is reflected in the series? “85 to 90 percent,” she said, adding: “100 percent on Natalie” (referring to her mom, who always wanted her daughter to be a haircutter because “if there was a recession, people still needed their hair cut.”) While the majority of the storylines are familiar to the comedian, the biggest deviation is her career pursuit. Comedy, as a profession, didn’t exactly translate the way the creators needed it to onscreen. “There aren’t any concrete steps to becoming a comic,” said Alonzo, who chose law instead because of her mother’s love for Mexican novelas, in which “everyone is a lawyer.”

She Never Expected Her Own Show

ABC’s series order came as a shock. “I wanted to do it as a kid,” Alonzo explained, “but the older I got, the more cynical I got about it because there weren’t a lot of people on TV that looked like me.” But Alonzo’s agents were more hopeful than she was, especially when they discovered her life story. Alonzo credits producer Clements, in particular, with spearheading her journey to the small screen: “She decided to take a chance on me and give me the confidence that I never had.”

People Are Getting Her Name Right

Alzono is still getting used to seeing "Cristela" spelled correctly. Her entire life, she’s seen her unique first name butchered more often than not. “When you have a different name, people just kind of take the liberty to spell it how they want,” she joked, remembering all the times she would leave stores disappointed because she couldn’t find anything personalized. “Now I go into the office and everything has my name,” she grinned.

The Comedy is Set in Her Home State, Texas

It was important to Alonzo that the show was set in Dallas, where she grew up. “The Texas thing is such a big deal because whenever I see Texas in a TV show, they always show slow-moving cattle and cowboys with the hats,” she said. “I wanted to show that Texas isn’t a stereotype.” The only time cowboys come into play is when Cristela and her family are watching the Dallas football team. The border town she grew up also inspired her love for television. Because it was known for cartel activity, Alonzo’s mom encouraged her daughter to occupy herself with inside activities. “TV was my best friend,” Alonzo acknowledged, citing The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show and Roseanne as her favorites.

.

'The Affair': TV Review

Showtime

"The Affair" on Showtime

The Bottom Line

More than infidelity. A lot more.

Airtime

Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showtime, beginning Oct. 12

Cast

Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney, Joshua Jackson

Creator

Sarah Treem

Excellent writing, acting and an intriguing structural device make Showtime's 'The Affair' the new show to watch

Sarah Treem's version — and vision — of infidelity is rendered superbly in The Affair, her new Showtime series that combines excellent writing, nuanced acting and an intriguing structural device to hook viewers.

The Affair comes at a time when the broadcast networks haven't delivered much meat, a good deal of buzz is being generated over on Amazon (for its excellent Transparent series), and cable is wrapping up some very good newcomers and trotting out some solid vets. Meaning, cable could use something new and electric right now, and The Affair fits the bill.

Treem (House of Cards, In Treatment), with the help of Hagai Levi (In Treatment), has managed to bewitch the pilot for this series, adding a Rashomon-ic element to the characters' recollection of events and teasing an as-yet-unknown crime. There's a lot of disparate threads, but The Affair deftly sets about twisting them all together.

Dominic West (The Wire, The Hour), plays Noah Solloway, a New York City public school teacher who has just completed his first book. Life is pretty good. He seems happy. His wife, Helen (Maura Tierney, ER), is mother to their four kids. Her father (John Doman, also The Wire) is a famous author who has parlayed his books into movies and riches, which causes problems with Helen and annoys the hell out of Noah.

Read more Fall TV: Tim Goodman Ranks 10 New Shows, From Best to "Heinous"

For the summer, Noah and Helen heading to Montauk to stay at her father's house.

There they will meet Alison (Ruth Wilson, Luther, etc.), a married waitress struggling to overcome the death of her 4-year-old son and the toll it has taken on her marriage to Cole (Joshua Jackson, Fringe), a member of a huge Montauk family who has owned a profitable ranch there for generations. Where Cole seeks solace in the support of his family, his many attempts to help Alison have gone nowhere, and he's grown bitter about it as the two drift apart.

Although critics only got to see the first episode, it was exceptionally well done and "a talker." Given the flashback sequences that Treem and Levi employ, you not only get memories of chance encounters but also important events — like when Noah's youngest daughter gets a marble stuck in her mouth at Alison's diner and almost dies.

In the hands of Treem and Levi, which character does what in those flashbacks is important, because it colors perception. Sometimes — but not always — Noah and Alison remember things in ways that show each being more valiant or understanding. One might paint themselves more romantic or present, instead of a jerk and distant. But it's the minute details — who really helped Noah's daughter in that time of crisis and who stood back, useless — that are telling.

Sometimes memories in The Affair are complete opposites. Sometimes one includes details that could prove important, while the other leaves out those details entirely. Which is the accurate recounting?

The show's first hour is worth rewatching to catch the numerous well-shot instances of such nuance.

Furthermore, every recollection may be a clue — possibly to a motive. Part of the intricate structure of The Affair has Noah talking, off-camera, to a man asking him questions. You first think he's talking to a therapist. But the tone is off. Later, in her version, Alison also talks, off-camera, then on it, with the same man, and we realize he's a detective, not a therapist. And there's been a time jump that has changed the characters' looks (and attitudes).

So, what's going on? Well, consider at this point the police investigation to be a hook that may really pay off later, but at present isn't that important. Treem telling the story of an affair — what the revelation does to the other spouses, what it does to those participating, or the kids who feel the fallout — there's enough emotional fireworks to make these episodes dense with complicated, mature, adult storytelling.

That the people we are only beginning to meet, only beginning to find out about in their affair, could in the present day be two vastly different people is a wonderful writing trick. As viewers side with Noah or Alison (or their spouses), as they no doubt will, they are learning about characters from a specific time, dealing with what might amount to a brief, forgotten summer, and now — with the passing of years — might not resemble in any way early Noah or early Alison. Hell, one or both could be implicated in a crime and our perceptions of them may change again.

This glimpse into identity and meaning is done with excellent acting and top-notch, emotionally fearless writing. There are times in The Affair when a character — let's say Noah — acts a certain way and it seems off, like a person wouldn't have that reaction. And you chalk it up, at that moment, to the writing not quite nailing the emotion — only to find out later that it's how Noah viewed himself and was thus skewed, altered by narcissistic elements. That's a nice touch to a series that will keep viewers guessing what's real, what's memory, and what, ultimately, is true.

That latter bit about truth may, in the end, be the twist that makes the show.

.

Shelby Lynne Recreates Grammy-Winning Breakout Album for Lucky L.A. Crowd: Concert Review

Chris Willman

The Bottom Line

The one-time Best New Artist winner revisits I Am Shelby Lynne, the 2000 masterwork in which she really was reborn — with all its sadness and sultriness.

Venue

Largo
Los Angeles
(Wednesday, Oct. 8)

The Grammys made a big mistake in 2001 when they gave Shelby Lynne the award for Best New Artist. It wasn’t so much that she was on her sixth album when she got her trophy — although, sure, there was that nagging point — as much as how she really should have taken home Album of the Year. Her declarative musical rebirth, I Am Shelby Lynne, came out less than a month into 2000, and at the time, it may have spoiled us into thinking we were due for a better century than the one actually in store. We still haven’t heard a better album this millennium.

The 15th anniversary of that not-really-a-debut “debut” album is being celebrated with this week’s repackaging of I Am Shelby Lynne, which might count as the reissue of the year. Lynne somehow got back the masters to her two Island releases and handed this one, at least, over to her new label, Rounder, which does it justice with six studio bonus tracks that prove a lot of greatness was left on the cutting room floor, too. Also included is a DVD of a 2000 show at Los Angeles’ House of Blues that seemed to establish her as a cocky, strutting rocker, even though she ultimately took a more acoustic direction. For those of us who were at that HOB show, it would have been hard to surpass, but Lynne came close Wednesday at Largo, one of only two shows (the other at New York’s City Winery) to have her doing a top-to-bottom recreation of I Am Shelby Lynne.

For the most sumptuous female voice in any pop-related genre today, the years have been kind. You wouldn’t necessarily have made a sure bet on that 15 years ago, if only because there was such a palpable ache to the deeply felt material that you could reasonably wonder if someone who made you believe she lived with that much heartache would take good care of her instrument. (For evidence that the connection between recorded lonesomeness and real-life wreckage isn’t always a fallacy, see Amy Winehouse, whose Back to Black is the only serious rival I Am... has as a 21st-century hurts-so-good classic.) It still seems like a freakish miracle that someone who spent her first five years as a straight-up mainstream country artist would have suddenly turned out to be more of a Southern R&B stylist than anything. Teasing out the notes in an irresistible drawl, Lynne has the ability to make you believe her deepest vulnerabilities are just a remembered millimeter from the surface, even as she impresses with a sexy, tough-chick swagger that’s always going to keep a tear ever so barely at bay.

The I Am… album represented the one-time intersection of two great talents, Lynne and producer/co-writer Bill Bottrell, besting the work he’d done even on Sheryl Crow’s estimable Tuesday Night Music Club by a country mile. She brought the soul and he the ability to single out the pop hooks and frame that raw honesty in strings-laden recordings that sounded right out of the Bobbie Gentry/Dusty Springfield era. Whose idea was it that the sublime album opener, “Your Lies,” would start right at the top of a soaring chorus, just like so many of the great mid-‘60s records boldly did? Which of them had the genius to put a smooth-funk guitar on “Thought It Would Be Easier” that made it even more of a bridge-gapper between Dusty’s ethos and Aretha’s? Who knows, but touches like these set up a dynamic that Lynne has continued to mine very effectively for a decade and a half, territory that few other singer/songwriters have the chops to even attempt, although occasionally you’ll find a fellow Southerner like Tift Merritt coming close.

At Largo, the arrangements occasionally seemed a little more country than they did on record. That was mostly due to the band-leading presence of MVP Ben Peeler, who’s best known in the musical community as a lap-steel go-to guy. Peeler also played greater and healthier amounts of pedal steel than Bottrell did 15 years ago, when there was probably a bit more concern about audibly partitioning Lynne from her Nashville past. Even with all that extra-added steel, Lynne’s sound is still so much more black than it is traditional country — and yet still so obviously rooted in the country — that you wish there could just be a bin in the record store marked “Southern.” “I’m a Southern Calibamian,” declared Lynne, who sounds just as Alabamian as she did when she migrated west 15 years ago.

Following the 10-track album, Lynne performed all six bonus tracks, only a couple of which were previously released, on an almost impossible-to-find British CD single. At least three of these would have proudly seemed in place on the original album. “Wind,” she explained, was inspired by living in Mobile Bay and having the boys who’d just gotten off work in the bayou circle around the neighborhood in their cars, offering beer for companionship. She took the beer, anyway, she explained. The easy balminess of the tune vividly suggested the kind of humid breezes that drive the guys crazy and make the girls just relax.

Two other tunes may have ended up seeming too personal to keep on the album. “Miss You Sissy” had Lynne reaching out to her then-estranged sister, fellow singer Allison Moorer. “Do you hurt like I do? Is it hard on you too?” is a question asked not just among siblings but one that Lynne inherently constantly extends to her audience. As for the previously unheard “Sky is Purple,” it turns out that 2011’s Revelation Road was not the first time Lynne addressed their parents’ murder-suicide on a studio recording after all: “Little sissy is crying and she says don’t look,” she sang in this earlier retelling of that tragedy. “Your daddy took your mama like a dime-store crook.” As Lynne herself might put it, in the words of another song of hers: That’s heavy as 10 rocks.

But Wednesday’s Largo show was all about lightness, even if the subject matter of 90 percent of the songs was intrinsically downhearted. A climactic rendition of “Wichita Lineman” found Lynne doing something she doesn’t do often, and that isn’t done in other covers of the song: belting. Jimmy Webb’s classic might have seemed like an odd choice of tune in which to go completely cathartic, but his lyric is more appropriate for her I-am-woman roar than you’d think. Fifteen years after making a break from a compromised musical past and going for the gutsiness, if not gold, Lynne is truly still on the line.

Set List:

Your Lies
Leavin’
Life is Bad
Thought It Would Be Easier
Gotta Get Back
Why Can’t You Be?
Lookin’ Up
Dreamsome
Where I’m From
Black Light Blue
Bless the Fool
Wind
She Knows Where She Goes
Miss You Sissy
Sky is Purple
Should Have Been Better
Wichita Lineman

Encore:

When Johnny Met June
Iced Tea

.

By Ryan Reed | October 10, 2014

In 1975, prog-rock legends Genesis lost their dynamic, costume-wearing frontman, Peter Gabriel. And though they held auditions for a new vocalist, they ultimately realized the best replacement, Phil Collins, was sitting behind the drum kit all along. This is an essential turning point in the band's story – and it's the focus of the above clip, a preview of the documentary Genesis: Sum of the Parts, which airs Friday, October 10th on Showtime.

"I didn't want to not be the drummer," Collins says in the video, which premiered this week at Radio.com. "This is what I did. 'This is my territory'. . . As far as I can remember, we did revisit some of the tapes and thought, 'Is there really nobody that we've heard?' And we decided that there wasn't."

The biggest question mark, notes manager Tony Smith, was whether Collins' expressive voice packed enough range and power to fill the massive void left behind by Gabriel. But the drummer-turned-frontman says he remembers "nothing but good vibes from the audience."

"They wanted this to work," he says. "They didn't compare me with Pete – I was one of the guys in the band coming forward, and I'd been there all along."

Gabriel, meanwhile, maintains that he had complete faith in Genesis' capabilities during this difficult transition. "I think I had more confidence in the band being able to be successful than they did initially," he says.

Genesis: Sum of the Parts – which aired earlier this month on the BBC under the name Together and Apart – traces the band's sonic development from prog-rockers to pop-rock sensations, along with spending time on individual members' solo careers. But guitarist Steve Hackett recently spoke out against the project on his Facebook page, calling it "a biased account of Genesis history" that ignored his solo work.

"It does not deliver the theme of Together and Apart," he continued. "In interview I spoke at length as much about my solo career as my time in Genesis, but was not given any editorial involvement. Whilst the documentary's sister project, the R-KIVE box set represents us all equally, the documentary does the opposite. I know the documentary will soon be on sale via various outlets, but I won't be selling this via my own website."

A DVD release of the documentary is scheduled for November 18th. The recently released three-disc R-Kive compilation compiles Genesis classics, along with three tracks from each member's solo discography.

By Kory Grow | October 10, 2014

Nothing says more about Robert Plant's current attitude about his career than his decision to play a bowling alley in Brooklyn. At midnight. On a Thursday. The former Led Zeppelin singer – who has done much to separate his solo career from his past life recently – told the audience at Brooklyn Bowl that late last month he had enjoyed a burlesque show at the 850-person-capacity venue ("I have to tell you, we'd be better at it") and scheduled this gig to take place immediately after his appearance on The Colbert Report. The show itself – which was announced earlier in the week and quickly sold out – was on his terms, and he appeared to love every second of it.

Related

"Thanks for coming out tonight, it's very late, I know – a lot of people I know have been in bed for hours," he joked at one point. "And a lot of them are single."

At this point, Plant seems most comfortable outside of his comfort zone. Over the past decade, the singer has drifted between playing with the globally-minded Strange Sensation ensemble (which shares members with his current backing band, the Sensational Space Shifters), folk artist Alison Krauss and, for one night, Led Zep. His most recent record, Lullaby and...the Ceaseless Roar, is a journey through cosmic post-blues and world-influenced folk, and throughout the 80-minute bowling-alley concert, the Space Shifters pushed the boundaries of this music even further, reconfiguring Plant's old classics as psych-rock odysseys.

Photo: Nicole Fara Silver

When the lion-maned 66-year-old ascended the stage at 11 minutes past midnight (Questlove had opened with a DJ set), he did so with all the aplomb of a golden god half his age. He twirled his microphone stand over his head and snuck up behind guitarist Liam "Skin" Tyson, clapping along as the group worked through its spacey, Middle Eastern-influenced interpretation of Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful." That charisma proved to be the catalyst for many of the set's most memorable moments – as when he led the band's all-drum intro for new song "Rainbow" and led the audience in syncopated clapping for another new song, "Little Maggie."

Plant also allowed his bandmates to shine, spotlighting Gambian riti player Juldeh Camara as he played the single-stringed, violin-like instrument before the group's soaring take on "Black Dog" and encouraging multi-instrumentalist Justin Adams to take center stage for a flashy, rockabilly-inspired dance for the group's cover of Bukka White's "Fixin' to Die." "I wonder what Bukka would think of that," Plant wondered.

Throughout the set, which included only four Lullaby tracks and one from the 2005 Strange Sensation album Mighty ReArranger, the singer made a running gag of referring to the songs he had played with Led Zeppelin as "folk songs," after explaining how a Leadbelly tune had inspired Lullaby's "Poor Howard." "If you don't call [that] a folk song, this surely must be headed towards being a folk song," he said before playing a mesmerizing, stripped-down version of "Going to California," accompanied only by acoustic guitar and mandolin. Similarly his daring takes on a simplified "Thank You" – which was almost drowned out by the sounds of women cheering – an electronics-infused "Black Dog," a banjo-infused "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (dedicated to Mavis Staples) and a mega-medley of "Whole Lotta Love" – sandwiched between covers of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" and Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" – sounded altogether rejuvenated.

Photo: Nicole Fara Silver

In a sense, Plant has subverted his back catalog – much as he did with Jimmy Page when they reunited for No Quarter in 1994 – in a way that, as folk numbers often do, proves how songs can be totally malleable. These reinterpretations are a declaration of independence from his past – even when they're played to people that paid $125 a head to let out hoots and cheers whenever he approached a Zeppelin cut close to how it was recorded.

Early in the set, Plant asserted that the concert was the final show of his 26th U.S. tour. "I guess I'm a man now," he quipped. But it's that experience that has allowed him the freedom to experiment with his back catalog, move ahead through contemporary folk and ramble on just how he sees fit.

Set List:

"Spoonful"
"Rainbow"
"Tin Pan Valley"
"Thank You"
"Poor Howard"
"Going to California"
"Black Dog"
"Fixin' to Die"
"Rock & Roll"

Encore:
"Nobody's Fault But Mine"
"Little Maggie"
"Hoochie Coochie Man"/"Whole Lotta Love"/"Who Do You Love"

.

By Nick Murray | October 10, 2014

Today, the 1983 Motown 25 concert, broadcast in prime time on NBC, is best remembered for Michael Jackson's moonwalk. The show, however, involved much more: Host Richard Pryor introduced label legends like Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Four Tops at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and the Jackson 5 and the Supremes both reunited.

Of course, there was even more going on behind the scenes, and the new Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever DVD set (available with one, three or six discs) is looking to excavate some of that history, adding rehearsals, roundtables and documentaries to the original footage. Above, watch a clip from one of the docs, in which Robinson, the Temptations' Otis Williams and author Nelson George discuss the symbiotic relationship between Motown and the Beatles.

"They were the first huge white act to admit, 'Hey we grew up with some black music. We love this," says Robinson.

Adds Williams: "We knocked down those barriers, and I must give credit to the Beatles. . .It seemed like at that point in time white America said, 'OK if the Beatles are checking them out, let us check them out.'"

The concert film and the three DVD Motown 25 set are already available, and the six-disc set can be ordered now.

.

Jessie J on Digging Deep for Her New Album: ‘I’m Not Afraid of the Pain’

By Andrew Hampp | October 10, 2014 10:58 AM EDT

Jessie J photographed on September 27, 2014 in London.

Rebecca Miller

Jessie J is trying something new: not oversharing.

On the phone from Hong Kong, where she recently wrapped a series of shows, the singer is expressing regrets about comments she made earlier this year to The Mirror about her bisexuality. ("It was a phase," she said then.) "I'm a talker; I wear my heart on my sleeve. But sometimes I just have to know when to shut up," she says now, declining to talk further about her sexuality.

The sentiment is in line with two songs on the 26-year-old Brit's new album, Sweet Talker (due Oct. 13 on Republic), "Said Too Much" and "Personal," which criticize her past tendencies toward TMI. She says the LP helped her cope with a recent, unspecified breakup; she had been linked to rapper Tinie Tempah in the press. But the singer, born Jessie Ellen Cornish, hopes the album can help her in other ways as well.

Jessie J is a star at home, but in the United States, most of her successes have come with disclaimers. Her current hit, "Bang Bang" (No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated Oct. 18 after a No. 3 peak), achieved her highest chart position as a recording artist, thanks in part to Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj, who share equal billing on the song. Her biggest hit overall was a co-writing credit on Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA," which reached No. 2. Jessie J solo hits "Domino" and "Price Tag" climbed to Nos. 6 and 23, respectively, but parent LP Who You Are failed to finish among 2011's top 200 sellers (after an April release). And the biggest disclaimer of all? Sweet Talker is actually Jessie J's third album. Her second, Alive -- which featured midtempo, muted R&B instead of the high-octane pop she arrived with -- was restricted to a U.K. release, delaying her hopes of blowing up stateside. "I think I censored myself," she says of the low-key music on the LP.

But the singer returns to her roots on Sweet Talker, a vocally raw pop album with big beats from Diplo, Max Martin, The Dream and Tricky Stewart. "I allowed other people to come in and push my control and make me uncomfortable," she says. "After my second album, I'm not afraid of the pain."

And Jessie J is familiar with pain. Raised as the youngest of three sisters to parents Rose and Stephen Cornish in London, she was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome as a child, which causes heart problems, and led to her having a minor stroke at the age of 18. But she persevered in the world of theater, appearing in a West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind at age 11 and later graduating from the famed BRIT Performing Arts School, where Adele and Leona Lewis were classmates. "I loved that world. It's very disciplined," says Jessie J. "There's hundreds of people auditioning for the same part as you, so that mentality is always in my mind."

Between that discipline and her health, you won't catch Jessie J partying with her pop peers, even if Sweet Talker finally makes her a stand-alone star in the States. "Do you see David Beckham pounding shots before a game?" she asks. "My voice is two thin pieces of muscle that hit together and influence everything in my life. It enables me to care for my parents and sisters. I've got a job to do."

.

.

.

[Edited 10/10/14 20:26pm]

By Daniel Kreps | October 13, 2014

Mark Bell of the influential electronic music group LFO passed away earlier this month, his label Warp Records announced Monday. "It's with great sadness that we announce the untimely passing of Mark Bell of LFO who died last week from complications after an operation. Mark's family & friends request privacy at this difficult time," Warp wrote in a statement. No other details were revealed. Bell was also a well known producer who worked with artists like Björk and Depeche Mode.

Bell founded LFO with Gez Varley in 1988, and the duo soon became one of the seminal acts on the rave scene. LFO were also among the first batch of artists to flock to the electronic music powerhouse Warp Records along with the likes of Autechre and Richard D. James. LFO's self-titled track "LFO" also marked Warp's first Top 20 hit. Pulp's Jarvis Cocker directed the "LFO" music video.

Varley left LFO in 1996, and while Bell continued to perform under the moniker, he soon shifted his focus to production. Starting with Björk's 1995 Post bonus track "I Go Humble," Bell would work on each of the Icelandic singer's albums from her 1997 classic Homogenic up through 2011's Biophilia. Bell also collaborated on Deltron 3030's 2000 self-titled album and produced Depeche Mode's Exciter.

Following the news of Bell's death, many in the dance music community turned to Twitter to pay tribute to the LFO great. "RIP Mark Bell. His work has always been an inspiration, total amazing balance of intensity and lush melodic atmospheres. So tragic ," Machinedrum wrote. Fellow Warp labelmate Mark Pritchard tweeted, "Mark Bell - Thanks for all the Bass and wicked music," linking to a video of LFO's "Freeze." Nathan Fake wrote, "horrified to learn about Mark Bell. one of my musical heroes. devastated. RIP." Artists like Django Django, Luke Abbott, and Drums of Death have also passed along their condolences.

Hours before Bell's death was announced, Björk's social media accounts posted Bell's 1995 remix of her "Possibly Maybe." After Bell's passing was confirmed, Björk shared LFO's "Love Is the Message" with her nearly four million combined followers.

.

Monday, October 13, 2014 | 6:24 PM

Aretha Franklin Makes Billboard Chart History

By Jolie A. Doggett

Aretha Franklin can add one more accolade to her mantle of accomplishments. The Queen of Soul is now the first female artist to have 100 titles on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

With her version of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” debuting at No. 47 on the chart, Franklin joins only three other artist to reach this milestone. Since the Billboard chart became multi-metric ranking in 1958, only Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, and James Brown have had 100 titles make the list. Franklin scored her first hit on the chart with the song “Today I Sing the Blues,” which peaked at No. 4 in 1960.

“Rolling in the Deep” will be featured on the forthcoming album, Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics (out Oct. 21).

.

NYFF: Kristen Stewart, Olivier Assayas & Juliette Binoche On The Dynamics Of ‘Clouds Of Sils Maria’

By Alex Suskind | The Playlist October 8, 2014 at 5:21PM

When Kristen Stewart was first approached to be in Olivier Assayas’ new film, “Clouds of Sils Maria,” she thought it was for the role of Jo-Anne Ellis, a Hollywood starlet known for her brushes with paparazzi.

“It was something that I knew so well, so I wasn’t as interested in living it [on screen]," said the “Twilight” star about the character, during a post-screening Q&A of the movie at the New York Film Festival.

Instead, Stewart got to play Val, the assistant to legendary actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche). The film’s primary focus is on their relationship as Enders contemplates taking on a role in a new production of “Maloja Snake,” the same play that made her famous two decades earlier. However, instead of portraying her original role, she’s been asked to play the one once held by her since-deceased mentor: an older businesswoman driven to suicide by a young female assistant. The thought of taking on the part terrifies Enders, so she looks to Val for guidance, friendship and perhaps something more.

“I had an idea of going into the feminine,” said Binoche, before approaching Assayas about working together again. The two previously collaborated on the 1985 erotic drama “Rendez-vous” and 2008’s “Summer Hours.” “I said ‘I have an idea about a character,’ and Olivier was very open to it. He said, ‘Give me two weeks and I will write something.’ And two weeks later he said, ‘Yeah I think I have something’… In the beginning I provoked him but at the end of the day I think he provoked me more than I did.”

Provocation is one of the many themes present in 'Sils Maria.' Both Enders and Val play off each other in a loving, playful, though often intense, relationship. As they rehearse dialogue from the play, the lines between fiction and their own reality become blurred. Val is Enders' assistant and she’s also reading the lines of an assistant. Enders is an accomplished middle-aged woman, and she’s also reading the lines of an accomplished middle-aged woman. It’s this doubling of storylines that gives the film its intrigue.

“Instantly I thought of this play by [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder, ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,’” said Assayas, when he first began writing the story. “My first approach was why not put bits and pieces of Fassbinder’s play into the film? Why not do my own condensed, simplified, brutalized version of ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’?”

The film ultimately broaches the difficulties that come with aging and desire, as well as the idea of celebrity. The latter category is explored through the two main characters and Chloe Grace Moretz’s Jo-Anne Ellis. Ellis, who ends up getting cast in the younger assistant role for the new “Majola Snake,” is a big star, known for her both work in a recent superhero movie her wild-child lifestyle off screen. One notable scene features Stewart’s Val showing Enders a "TMZ" clip of Ellis acting out. It’s an ironic moment for Stewart, who knows a thing or two about being chased by cameras.

10

“I had to rein in the grin on my face,” Stewart said about shooting that scene. “I had to make sure my cheeks weren’t turning red when I said some of the lines in the movie because my position and the way that I’m living gave it this irony. It made it a bit more relevant and interesting I think.”

Meta moments aside, the most important job for Stewart and Binoche was developing the rhythm between their characters. The two have an intense relationship, one bubbling with sexual energy that neither seems sure they want to act on. Both actresses initially went about accomplishing that relationship in different ways.

“In the beginning we started rehearsing together and we realized it was not helpful, because Kristen’s way of working is different than mine,” Binoche said. “Kristen takes the text in the morning, she reads it two times and she knows it. And I ask for a month in advance…Kristen is very quick, she has this kind of seeded genius.”

Binoche adds that the ability to feel through the scene together was ultimately freeing––not knowing how the other actress was going to react, being able to jump into the unknown and truly discover a scene and what their characters want to accomplish.

“She says that I read lines quickly, and that’s solely because I don’t want to know them, I want to reach for them,” Stewart added. “It was very revealing…I didn’t feel expectation, I didn’t feel pressure, I felt truly like we were these characters and I was interested in the script because I thought it was a unique relationship and a commentary on the world that I live in. It was really heady and thoughtful and intellectual.”

That, ultimately, was what Assayas was going for––the dynamic between Binoche, Stewart and Moretz, and how it represents a real-world energy you don’t often see on screen.

“I realized while we were making the film was how much [Kristen], Juliette, and Chloe, gave themselves in the film––not in a sense of your work, but of your own identity,” said the director. “It’s a movie where you ultimately never forget who you are watching those actresses.”

Here are a few more highlights from the NYFF press conference:

Olivier Assayas on the impetus of making the film:
“I started with the idea that I wanted to use Juliette in the film as Juliette. So what does Juliette do? She works. So one thing led to another, and that’s how the narrative took shape…It’s not that I like the idea of Juliette playing an actress. I realized when I was writing that the work of an actress is not so much about the superficiality or the technique of acting, it’s the part of absorbing humanity, it’s about understanding other people’s pain and trying to find within yourself those emotions that are universal emotions. This is not a comment on theater, it’s not a comment on art, and it’s just a way of showing how the day to day work of an actress is beautiful. In a sense that it’s really about understanding fellow humans.”

Juliette Binoche on the film’s challenges:
“For me it’s being present from the beginning to the end, because I didn’t have a day off. So how do I be present every day in different ways? Because really I had to play three characters in the movie. The actress in the beginning, then the working actor, then the one in the end with the character she’s playing. The challenge is somehow allowing yourself to be naked and also showing the difficulty when it comes to the abdication of yourself, and putting yourself into two layers of emotions that you don’t always want to go through because they’re tough on you. I Think the way of working with Kristen allows us to find light moments as well as deeper moments. It needed to be seamless, so we go from one world to the next one, so it just feeds itself naturally.

Kristen Stewart on working with Juliette Binoche:
“… When we started to traverse this journey, I was really surprised every day about… because the movie is about so many things. It’s two very contrasting perspectives and stages of life that come together and offer each other something, offer these eye opening cathartic experiences. It’s exciting and also extremely painful. I am happy being uncomfortable. I had so much fun. [Juliette] perplexes me in every way and gets me going. I never stop thinking around her. Everything you see in the movie was just happening. So it wasn’t hard.”

.

By Sarah Grant | October 13, 2014

In 1960, Loretta Lynn was 28 years old, a mother of four, and about to debut her first song "I'm A Honky Tonk Girl" on the famous Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast, staged at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Lynn and her husband were so poor they slept outside the building in their rundown Pontiac the night before, and split a celebratory doughnut for breakfast.

"I was so nervous, all I can remember was tapping my foot," Lynn, now 82, told her sold-out audience at the Ryman Friday night. Fans young and old sat elbow-to-elbow in the wooden pews of the Mother Church of Country Music to see the icon performing a headlining show there for the first time in 54 years.

A standing ovation greeted Lynn, the picture of elegance in a shimmering turquoise gown. Encircled by her seven-piece band, the Coal Miners — one member being her son, Ernest Ray — Lynn kicked the show off with her 1974 hit, "The Don't Make 'Em Like Daddy Anymore." There was plenty of mother-son mockery throughout the evening, with Mom always getting the last word: "Why don't you tell a joke people actually understand?" she deadpanned. It felt like a long running joke after Ray's lighthearted rendition of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," which he sang earlier with the band.

Lynn played several of her 16 Number One hits, including "She's Got You," "Fist City" and "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)," along with other classics "The Pill" ("I wasn't on the pill and I've got the kids to prove it!" she said), "Blue Kentucky Girl" and the evocative "When a Tingle Becomes a Chill." During almost every pause, there was an "I love you, Loretta!" shouted from the pews, to which she would respond, "I love you, too."

The show was a chance to see one of country's true legends in her musical backyard. But Lynn's wry sensibility and candor are so vivid that it's hard to keep her historic stature in mind when she sounds just like your mother or your best friend. She took a seat after admitting her back "hurt a little" from a recent surgery. ("I saw y'all sitting down, so I thought I'd join you," she said.) The chair became a prop for one of the Coal Miners to serenade Lynn with "Lead Me On," a lilting duet from her prolific partnership with Conway Twitty. Even more poignant was "Dear Uncle Sam," a song she wrote after her late husband encouraged her to write about her distress over the Vietnam War.

Lynn performed a pair of original gospel songs, "Everybody Wants to Get to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die" and "Where No One Stands Alone," and predictably ended the night with her landmark hit, "Coal Miner's Daughter," a song about carrying her humble beginnings through life. However, on this unique occasion, as the country treasure took in the Ryman's vast congregation, there was no doubt what place she was referring to when she sang, "It's so good to be back home again."

Lynn's artistic descendent, Brandy Clark, was the opening act and captured the mood with the first line of the night: "Who'd-a guessed that Aquanette/Could start a fire with a single cigarette," she sang in "Crazy Women." The bold singer-songwriter has writing credits on some of country's fiercest songs of late: Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart" and the Band Perry's "Better Dig Two," both of which she played along with songs from her acclaimed debut album, 12 Stories. Clark's set felt like a living tribute to Lynn's style of working class realism.

With a rich, honeyed voice and unapologetic lyrics, Clark's set was both confessional and confident. She showcased her range on heartfelt songs like "Big Day in a Small Town" and "Hold My Hand," and she drew laughs — and earned herself a few extra Hail Marys — with "Get High," her song about a weed-loving housewife. If Lynn flung open the doors of possibility for country songwriting in the 20th century, Clark is continuing to push those horizons today.

Latino Community Lends National Support To ABC’s “Cristela”

Posted by admin on October 13th, 2014 03:04 PM

Cristela #1 Show in Its Time Slot

Overwhelming Support For The ABC Highly Entertaining Family Comedy Cristela

ABC’s Cristela debuted last Friday, October 10th as the number one TV show in its time slot and the #2 comedy debut of the fall season. Over six million viewers tuned into see the show.

The buzz on Cristela has been building since it became the “little show that could”. Originally not picked up for a pilot the producers decided to shoot the pilot anyway and it proved to be the best decision for them. The pilot tested through the roof and the results did not disappoint.

The support for Cristela, which is co-created (with Kevin Hench), co-executive produced, written by and stars Mexican American comedian Cristela Alonzo, crosses cultural lines, but of significance, and in an historic event, many Latino organizations came together to encourage everyone to tune in.

Members of NHLA, the umbrella organization for the 39 leading Latino organizations unanimously consented their support for the new family comedy Cristela for it’s positive portrayal of a Latino Family. The Latino Premiere Club (latinopremiereclub.com) whose goal is to give Latinos a voice on upcoming film and television projects that tell Latino stories and/or employ Latinos in front and behind the camera, also held screenings for its membership and created a social media campaign to help promote the show.

The show Cristela is about a young woman’s dream of becoming a lawyer, something her traditional Mexican-American family doesn’t quite understand. She’s entering her sixth year of law school after juggling home obligations and working multiple jobs to pay her way.

Cristela Alonzo is a well known comedienne whose life’s story reads like a Cinderella story. Growing up poor in an abandoned diner for the first 6 years of her life, Cristela [Alonzo] is living the American dream. The family comedy is based on her life and stand up routine and shows an American Latino Family that consists of a law school student, a small business owner, their multi-generational family – all working hard chasing their American dream.

Latino Leaders from across the country express their support for Cristela for what they believe will be a positive impact for the community:

“By supporting a show poised to change the paradigm of how Latinas are portrayed on television, we can make a difference as we advocate for laws and policies to advance the Latino community,” said Hector Sanchez, chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda and Executive Director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

“It makes my heart swell with pride to see a fellow South Texan, and former constituent, representing our rich and vibrant culture in television media,” said Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, Chair, Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC). “Cristela’s [Alonzo] efforts to rise from a poor upbringing, to become a successful stand-up comedian, and now to have her own television show, are equivalent to the hard work that all Latinos in America put forth to achieve the American dream. I will be watching and look forward to many successful seasons.”

“I am thrilled to finally see the life of an amazing and talented Latina like Cristela manifest itself in a network television show,” said Esther Aguilera, CHCI President & CEO. “We have a unique opportunity as a Latino community to support this show and ensure it is successful. The impact of having positive Latino role models on television for our young Latinos to look up to is immeasurable.”

Cristela at the Latino Premiere Club Screening

“At a time when Washington and the rest of the nation are polarized on almost every issue, here comes a television show – a comedy no less – poised to break down barriers and spark some needed water cooler dialogue,” stated Jose Calderon, President, Hispanic Federation. “With it’s witty script and very relevant subject matter, ABC’s Cristela is a beautiful and hilarious portrait of the American Latino family that has the promise to be our generation’s Cosby Show.”

“As the head of an organization that promotes leadership, Cristela [Alonso] serves as a role model on and off the screen through her new program on ABC, especially to Latinas. Her personal story is inspiring and to have her being the only Latina to write, produce and star in a sitcom makes anything seem possible for creative young Latinos with “ganas”. On the screen, I’m thrilled to have her profession be in law and not the stereotypical professions Latinos normally get. I also like the dynamic of an old-school Latino family mixed with younger generation perspectives which makes for a compelling and entertaining show.” Antonio Tijerino, President & CEO, Hispanic Heritage Foundation

“The Cristela show on ABC featuring the electrifying Cristela Alonzo is one of the best new comedies on network TV in decades,” stated LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “The production showcases positive portrayals of Latino characters while remaining incredibly entertaining for all audiences at the same time. It’s a home run for ABC.”

“Cristela is a welcome addition to the television schedule,” stated Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel. “By eschewing stereotype in favor of depicting an American Latino family that works hard, has ambition, and experiences the typical family mixture of love and conflict, the show can make a real contribution to improving intergroup understanding in our nation.”

“Cristela Alonzo is smart, funny, engaging, and fiercely proud of who she is. With one of the most diverse casts and staff on her new TV show Cristela, we couldn’t ask for a better representation of our community in primetime. Tell everyone you know to watch this show!” Janet Murguia, (NCLR) National Council of La Raza, President and CEO

“It’s never been more important for kids to see themselves in television, movies and literature. Cristela, a law student; a confident woman; a woman with a family full of love and laughter and conflict, will be a story that connects to Latino and non-Latino families. Bien hecho” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, President, (NEA) National Education Association

“How media depicts Latinos matters because the way we are perceived is the way we will be treated in our society,” stated Alex Nogales, president and CEO of the (NHMC) National Hispanic Media Coalition. “As Latinos, we have an opportunity to make a national impact by tuning in to Cristela. It’s time for television to reflect the reality that Latinos are an integral part of the American social fabric.”

“The research is irrefutable – the media influences how people of color are perceived. And Latinos, especially Latinas, have long been absent or stereotyped in mainstream media, stymieing the cultural shift necessary to improve the lives of American Latinos and reflect our integral position in the social fabric of the U.S. Cristela is more than just a hilarious story of a modern American Latino family, it is groundbreaking and exciting because, for once, a Latina is telling her own story in mainstream English-language media, paving the way for a greater understanding of the community on a whole,” Jessica J. Gonzalez, (NHMC) National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel

Cristela is going to change your world! Through humor and raw honesty, this new breath-of-fresh-air show invites us to experience her story of Latina women, and their families, untold on national television. This moment is larger than Cristela, larger than any individual character or story, because although she never supposes to speak for all Latinos, her work is allowing people to peek behind the curtains and into our lives. The stories Cristela [Alonzo] shares through her television show, and in person, are inspirational and moving. She dares to dream big, and is unapologetic about her lived truth. I am an instant fan of hers. This show will be transformative for Latinos in popular culture. NYC Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (First Mexican American to be elected in the state of NY)

.

Meiko Returns With Dark, Electro-Tinged Third Album, 'Dear You,' [EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW]

By Caitlin Carter
Oct 13, 2014 06:04 PM EDT

Meiko (Photo : Photo by Leigha Hodnet)

Alt-pop singer-songwriter Meiko returns with her highly anticipated third album, Dear You, tomorrow (Oct. 14) via Fantasy/Concord Records. You may recognize her voice from a variety of TV and film projects including Grey's Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars. Dear You is the follow-up to 2012's The Bright Side, but trades in Meiko's cheerful pop for something darker and electro-tinged. Ahead of its release, we chatted with Meiko about the inspiration behind the album, what she has planned for her tour, defining moments in her career, and which TV show she'd love to feature her music.

Music Times: I read that this new album was inspired by unsent letters turned into songs. Can you tell me a bit about that? How many years have you been collecting these unsent letters?

Meiko: Yeah, this was a collection from years past. I just keep a lot of stuff from pent-up issues I had in past relationships. When I started writing for this record, I realized that I do have a lot of stuff from back in the day. Some of them are old songs, and some are just going back and thinking how I would react now to these situations. What would I say?

MT: Did all the songs on the record originate from unsent letters or were some inspired by memories?

M: Some of them are actually unsent letters. But most them are just me being passive aggressive and me writing what I want to say in a song.

MT: The music on this album is darker than some of the bubblier, uplifting songs you've written in the past. You've described it as a confessional. Had you planned to do a darker album going into it, or did it sort of just develop that way?

M: No, I wanted a darker record. I enjoy the clappy, happy stuff, but that's not really the stuff I listen to as a music listener. I just wanted to make something that I would listen to. Not that I don't like what I've done in the past, I do, but I like the electronic-y stuff and the more sad songs. So, I did want to make more of a cooler, darker, more professional record.

MT: You've incorporated more electronic elements on this album. What made you go that route?

M: Yeah, I did the record with just one other person, who was the producer. He plays the guitar...well he plays everything, really. I grew up listening to a lot of electronic music -- Portishead, Squarepusher, and Aphex Twin, lots of random, very electronic stuff. I also listen a lot of early '90s R&B. I like the synth-y stuff. I was working with the producer and wanted to do a simple record, and not throw too many things into the recordings. But he helped me come up with beats to keep it minimal but also have that electronic element.

MT: What artists were you listening to when recording Dear You? Did anything in particular influence your sound?

M: No. It's kind of a blessing and curse when people ask me, what are you listening to? I mean, I try to listen to new music, but I kind of just listen to whatever is playing. I'm kind of stuck in old-school stuff. I listen to a lot of Jazz and '90s music. It's awesome, but I'm trying branch out, man. I'm trying to listen to Pandora. I have been introduced to a couple of new artists that I like. But as far as my album, I am not trying to incorporate their sounds.

MT: You released the single "Be Mine" not too long ago. Can you tell me more about the story behind that? Is there a specific person that some of the other heartbreak and betrayal songs are aimed at?

M: Well I was in a long distance relationship. I feel like when you're in a relationship, you're dedicated to that person, and when they're not there, it's kind of lonely. It's not like you want to go and hang out with anybody else because that's like your best friend. I found that when he left town, it was f**king lonely. I was just by myself a lot. I was like, if I'm by myself I should be sitting here writing, I shouldn't be moping. So, I got a bottle of wine and sat in my living room and was trying to write a happier song that would make me feel better. I ended up drinking the bottle and just writing this kind of dark song.

MT: I was going to ask what type of alcohol the "bottle" in the song was referring to.

M: It was wine, I like red wine. I'm a wino (laughs).

MT: You are singing to a "you" in many of the songs on the album. Were you referring to one person in particular or many people throughout your life?

M: Yeah, all different people from my past. There's never one particular person.

MT: You played a sold-out show in NYC not too long ago. What did that feel like?

M: Yeah! It was pretty cool. I'm from a small town in Georgia. New York City was like "Oh, New York City!" I always dreamed of going there to play shows. My wish was to play a show in New York. But that show was the moment -- without being ultra-cheesy -- that the dream clicked and came true. I was playing for a sold out room in New York. Yeah, it just kind of blew my mind. I was really excited to be there, it was like an underground Jazz venue. It was actually underneath a diner where the waiters and waitresses jump on tables and sing show tunes (laughs). I went up there after like whoa!

MT: You sort of answered my next question. I was going to ask if there have been any "I've made it" moments, but that seems like it might have been the one.

M: Yeah, that was an epic moment for me, personally. I am kind of still reeling from that feeling.

MT: Do you have anything special you're doing for the tour? Any backing band?

M: No. I'm gonna be solo. It's really good for this record to not have a band right now because these are a lot of new songs. I think it's gonna be like a storytellers kind of situation where I do my thing on stage and tell the stories behind the songs.

MT: With your new record having so many electronic elements, will you include that in the live adaption or will it be more acoustic?

M: Just me and the guitar. Then when it's full band, I will have a drummer with a drum-pad and stuff.

MT: Some of your early popularity came from placement on TV. Have there been any placements that you've particularly liked? If you could have a song on any show what would it be?

M: Yeah, the first placement I ever got was Grey's Anatomy. My song "Reasons to Love You" was on the fourth season of Grey's Anatomy, and that is when things started changing for me. I was a waitress at the time at a music venue in L.A. called the Hotel Cafe. I was playing shows from time to time, and a woman came up to me and asked if I minded if she submitted some songs to Grey's Anatomy. And I was like, 'Hell no! Go ahead!' She did it, and they picked up the song.

I got a lot of response from that placement, and pretty soon after I was going on tour. I put my job on hold, and I never went back. That was a nice feeling, a pretty big moment. Also, my other song, "Stuck On You" was on a Crate and Barrel commercial that played all the time on TV and especially on airplanes. I feel like that created a lot of awareness.

MT: If you could have a song on any show what would it be?

M: I love Girls, that and Orange is the New Black. I think I watch too much TV (laughs). I still need to watch Sopranos. I didn't think Breaking Bad was going to be such a dedication, but I was like in my bed all day long, cracked out, eating ice-cream, watching episode after episode.

MT: It's just you on your new album, but if you could collaborate with any artist working right now, who would it be?

M: I like The xx, I'd be into that. Yeah, I would probably just keep that as the answer.

MT: Three albums into your career, what are some lessons you've learned? Do you have any advice for aspiring singer-songwriters?

M: Go with your gut, because if you listen to other people's opinions and try to work your music or art around that and it doesn't work out, then you will always regret not doing what you actually wanted to do in the first place.

Pink Isn’t Worried About Alienating Her Fans With New Country-Folk Project You + Me

By Andrew Hampp | October 13, 2014 1:28 PM EDT

Alecia Moore began 2014 at an all-time high. As Pink, her 2012 album The Truth About Love had just been certified double-platinum, its accompanying tour grossing more than $150 million. But rather than go even bigger for her next act, Moore, 35, took a left turn by tapping her friend, 34-year-old singer-guitarist Dallas Green (aka City and Colour, formerly of hardcore band Alexisonfire), for a country-tinged folk side project. After holing up in a Venice, Calif., studio for a week, the duo produced nine originals (and one memorable cover of Sade’s “No Ordinary Love”) as You+Me, whose debut Rose Ave. is due Oct. 14 on RCA. The pair spoke about their unique dynamic and the joys of putting Pink on pause.

This project is very unexpected from your respective fan bases. How did it come together?

Pink: I’ve always tried to do different kinds of things within an album; I’ve always been easily labeled as pop-whatever. This really was an opportunity to do something that I wanted to do instead of something I was obligated to do. No one was asking us to do this except each other. There was no record company saying, “We’re waiting for a record” or “You should really do something like this.” It was just us being friends and loving each other and loving to sing.

Green: Having not only just known [Pink] on a personal level, you can always see it in her music, just how at the forefront her voice has been, whether it be in a pop song or a ballad. I always appreciated her voice, so when we became friends one day, she sort of mentioned to me she might like to quiet down for a little bit.

Hear Pink Go Folk in New ...llas Green

Pink, you’re singing in tones that fans aren’t accustomed to hearing from you. Were you worried about alienating them?

Pink: I don’t think about that stuff ever, ever. My fans are people that would follow me wherever I go. If I told them I was doing a f—ing jewelry line or a perfume, they’d go, “Come on!” But this feels like something I’d do anyway. Whether it’s Germany or Australia or Canada or South Africa or the U.S., they just want to feel something along with me.

So how have your fans been responding to the music?

Pink: My favorite quote so far — I can’t remember where it came from -- was someone who wrote, “So this is what Alexisonfire sounds like swinging from that rope.” (Laughs.)

Green: People are going to have opinions; we live in a very critical society. But I’m just excited to share these songs with the world.

Have you thought about how this music might work on tour?

Pink: Yes, and we’re figuring that out. My fans know that I can fly around like Tinkerbell and then two minutes later I’ll be sitting down in jeans and barefoot singing [Led] Zeppelin. I just want to sing these songs for people.

Green: The running joke was that we were going to have to call this band The Self-Deprecation Society because neither of us could critique the other.

This story originally appeared in the Oct. 18 issue of Billboard.

.

Andrea Navedo on “Jane the Virgin” and the Importance of Showing up

Posted by admin on October 7th, 2014 03:35 PM

Reprint courtesy of HOLA

By A.B. Lugo

Andrea Navedo is the definition of a “working actor”. Soap opera fans know her as Linda Soto in One Life to Live and Theresa Sandoval in Guiding Light. Nighttime TV viewers know her face from the recurring roles she has played on Law & Order (Det. Ana Córdova), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Cynthia Mancheno), Golden Boy (Lorraine Arroyo) and How To Make It In America (Debbie Domínguez). Film credits include Spike Lee’s Girl 6, Double Take,Washington Heights, El Cantante, Stereotypically Me, and the upcoming Superfast.

The Bronx-born beauty has been acting professionally since 1995 and has not stopped working ever since. Find out a little bit about Andrea Navedo.

Congratulations on the series Jane The Virgin. When did you first realize you wanted to be a performer? Where did you study?

I first realized I wanted to be a performer in the 5th grade when I did a play. I played [the popular character from the television series Happy Days] Fonzie’s girlfriend. I had no lines. I just had to act smitten and flirty with Fonzie, plus wear a poodle skirt (which I loved!). Afterwords, the desire to act was always there but I never knew anyone in the business and there was barely enough money to buy a container of milk so [there was] no opportunity to take classes. It just didn’t seem like a realistic option for me. It wasn’t until my first semester as a freshman in college that I entertained the thought of acting again. I saw an audition sign in the halls and was instantly intrigued. I wanted to attend but then fear kicked in and I started to talk myself out of going, feeling that I couldn’t compete with college actors since I had no experience. Eventually attending the audition was the lesser of two evils. I didn’t want to have any regrets if I didn’t attend so in spite of my fear I went and to my amazement I landed a role. I did the play and was hooked. I declared theatre as my major the following semester. I finished with a four-year degree in Theatre from SUNY Old Westbury College.

My first major TV role and it was a stereotype!

You first made a splash on television of daytime drama. Describe the experience of working in “soap operas”.

My experience working on daytime TV was an interesting one. Starting with the audition for One Life to Live. After several callbacks, the casting directors offered me a recurring role right in the audition room. It was amazing and felt like a dream. I was on cloud nine. They immediately sent me in for a fitting because it would start shooting the next day. I loved the part because based on the audition sides she was just the girl next door and this was exactly how I saw myself. When I got to the fitting they had me trying on miniskirts, combat boots and “ghetto fab” hoop earrings. I was confused. When I finally got my script I learned that the role that I was playing was the girlfriend of a gang leader! The material that I auditioned with was just used to hear me read and was from an old script of another character. I was so disappointed. My first major TV role and it was a stereotype! Nonetheless I decided that I was going to play my “Linda” away from the way it was scripted. I was going to give her heart, substance and a conscience. Plus, it was going to earn me enough to qualify for health insurance. It paid the bills, gave me lots of experience. The job lasted for 2 and 1/2 years and I think it lasted that long because of how I played her. Eventually my storylines got better and were written in a more positive light.

How was it like working on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and How To Make It In America?

(l-r) Navedo with Paulina Singer &Luis Guzmán in “How To Make It In America”

Law & Order turned out to be another long term recurring job for three seasons. The show had a great cast and crew and it was wonderful to work with Jerry Orbach,Jesse L. Martin and S. Epatha Merkerson. The same can be said of my recurring role on Law & Order: SVU.Mariska Hargitay and Danny Pino went out of there way to make me feel good about my work and a welcomed part of the cast.

How to Make it in America was another major recurring role and was great because I got to do comedy, something a lot of people don’t know I can do because I have done so much drama. Plus the opportunity to work with Luis Guzmán was pretty awesome.

You have done several films as well. How do you like doing films versus television?

I love doing TV for the longevity of the work but film is wonderful because there is the luxury of time to let a scene breathe and create the opportunity for spontaneity.

Tell me about Xiomara, your character in Jane The Virgin.

Andrea Navedo (R) plays Jane’s (Gina Rodriguez) mom.

Playing Xiomara on Jane the Virgin is a dream. I get to do comedy, drama, sing and dance. I love portraying her. She is not your typical hot sex-craved Latina stereotype. She has so many colors. She is a fiercely loving and protective mother to her daughter Jane. She is also smart, crazy, funny, sexy, insecure, tough, loyal, vulnerable and so much more. With each episode I discover more of who she is and it is just so much fun. She is a dream character and I get to play her with a dream cast, crew, talented writers and super supportive producers and network. From top to bottom we have an amazing team.

How was it like playing a parody of Michelle Rodríguez in the upcoming Fast & The Furious spoof Superfast?

I loved playing Michelle [the character based on Fast & The Furious' Letty, played by Michelle Rodríguez]. Superfast is written and produced by the same team from theScary Movie films [Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer]. I love comedy and over the top silliness which is what I got to do in the film. It was a nice departure from my normal [roles]. I attribute my comedy skills to the late Rich Ramírez and the Salsoul comedy troupe. I was a cast member for a couple of years and ironically met Rich on the set of One Life to Live. The practice that I got doing our sketches were skills that I got to use on Superfast!

How do you feel about the images of Latinos (especially Latinas) in the media?

The images of Latinos in media are slowly but surely changing. Many stereotypes are still in play but I feel that I am part of the trend that is going in the direction of more positive or, at least, balanced images. I keep showing up to auditions, the set, interviews, etc. to be an example and hopefully an inspiration to Latinos and the world. I act for the love of it but I also know that every time I show up I am representing. And every time I show up to an audition or job, I am picking [to be] me. I know that I have something to offer just for being me (a Latina) and who I am and what I represent. I think it is super important to just keep showing up. If anything, that has been the secret to my success.

One of the most eagerly awaited shows of the fall season, Jane The Virgin, will premiere on the CW network on Monday, October 13, 2014. For more information, click here. The film Superfast will hit theaters in 2015.

.

Tinashe Wows With Her Debut Album 'Aquarius' After New York Times Critic Calls Her The Next Beyoncé [ROUND-UP REVIEW]

By Erika Benton-Martin
Oct 12, 2014 10:52 AM EDT

Tinashe recently released her debut album 'Aquarius.' (Photo : Courtesy of Facebook)

After non-stop radio spins from her summer hit "2 On," Tinashe released her highly anticipated debut Aquarius to critical acclaim. After being dubbed the next Beyoncé by a critic from the New York Times, the Los Angeles-based songstress received a slew of praises from various other outlets. Check out a round-up of what critics are saying below.

Complex rated the album 3.5 stars out of 5 and gave kudos to the 21-year-old for honing her ability to sing, dance, and entertain.

If only going by "2 On," the infectious yet unimaginative track produced by DJ Mustard, hitmaker of the moment, we might easily dismiss Tinashe as a one-hit wonder; at the very least, another so-so singer adept at the eight-count but not quite sustaining your attention. She is, however, far more interesting vocally, sonically, and subjectively than her Top 40 hit single might suggest, and her debut album, Aquarius, makes that apparent.

Idolator gave the album the same rating.

Tinashe's solid and slinky debut album Aquarius largely works for the same reasons: It's smart, it's confident and it feels very now. The moments Tinashe spells out her growing ambitions is when she's most convincing.

Billboard offered up a track-by-track review giving the album an overall rating of 4 out of 5 stars. The entertainment outlet calls "How Many Times" featuring Future the album's "true centerpiece."

Yet even within the ranks of emerging women singers showing just how quirky and eccentric they can be (Jhené Aiko,Kelela, BANKS), Tinashe may be the songbird best primed for superstardom. Aquarius is mostly an emotional tug-of-war of thigh-shaking highs or starting-all-over lows. While there are definite follow-up hits ("How Many Times" is an essential), the project is a moody affair, a sum that's greater than its parts. With interludes that are sometimes complementary ("Indigo Child") and other times unnecessary ("Nightfall"), the project often nods to the past with direct influences from Janet Jackson and Aaliyah. Yet still, Tinashe is brightly blazing a trail for music's future.

Tinashe's debut album Aquarius is available on iTunes now.

We Remember: Augie Johnson – Founder of Side Effect Dies

Oct 12, 14 by EurPublisher

Augie Johnson

*Wow, this is one of those “How can it be, I just saw him” moments.

That’s surely what it’s like for hundreds of record and radio industry associates who were at the annual “Legends and Icons” picnic at Woodley Park in LA’s San Fernando Valley last Sunday.

Augie Johnson and his Side Effect crew was there like everyone else having a great time as folks reminisced about the good ol’ days, family and all kinds of stuff like that.

Augie and Side Effect even regaled the picnic-ers with some of their acapella styling. In fact the song they sang features their female vocalist who wasn’t present, so Kathy Sledge (of the legendary Sister Sledge) , who was also there, helped the guys out as you can see from the picture below.

We don’t have specific details, but EUR was told that Johnson apparently died in his sleep Friday night and his girlfriend discovered him Saturday morning. She says he told her he wasn’t feeling well and was going to bed. She reportedly called him several times Saturday morning, but since he didn’t answer, she went to his place and found him dead.

EUR will have more details as they develop.

Augie, Kathy Sledge, and Side Effect members

.

Jane The Virgin is respectful, complicated, and utterly charming

Winning cast gives series warmth and humanity

From its opening moments, Jane The Virgin knows exactly the show it wants to be. The series, an adaptation of Venezuelan telenovela Juana La Virgen, tells the story of Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), a kind and dedicated young woman whose life takes a turn for the dramatic after a fateful visit to the gynecologist. With on-screen text, a chapter book structure, and a warm, third-person omniscient narrator (Anthony Mendez), Jane The Virgin welcomes viewers to its world and invites them to sit down and hear Jane’s extraordinary tale. Voice-over narration is almost never a positive addition to a television series, but here it works, countering the show’s more heightened elements with calm reassurance, and effectively streamlining its complicated narrative.

In the pilot, Jane’s life is turned upside down, but rather than jump in with this, the show takes its time introducing her and her family. Jane lives with her mother, Xiomara (Andrea Navedo), and grandmother, Alba (Ivonne Coll), has a long-term boyfriend, Michael (Brett Dier), and works at a hotel to pay for her schooling—she’s studying to be a teacher. Rodriguez is fantastic in the lead role, making Jane funny and relatable. It’s refreshing to see an unabashedly good person at the center of an hour-long series. Jane is considerate, thoughtful, intelligent, and hard-working. She puts others before herself without a second thought, and yet it never feels like she’s a doormat. This should be a star-making turn for Rodriguez, who handles Jane’s broadly comedic moments as confidently as she does her quietly dramatic ones, and her performance in the role is enough of a reason to tune in by itself.

Hers isn’t the only strong performance. Navedo and Coll play off each other well and have an easy rapport with Rodriguez, giving the Villanueva family instant chemistry and a comfortable, lived-in quality that makes it easy to imagine their years together before the pilot’s instigating event. Adding to this is the series’ wise decision to have Alba speak in Spanish, with subtitles translating her speech for the audience. This gives the show a touch of realism and demonstrates respect for the audience. Like Rodriguez, Navedo and Coll are great at both their comedic and dramatic beats. While their characters could have easily become stereotypes, the writers add unexpected layers to both of them, making them more interesting than they initially seem. Xiomara and Alba balance each other, with Alba’s strict demeanor counterpointed by Xiomara’s vivacity, and Jane feels very much like the product of her two parental figures.

The final main presence in Jane’s life is her boyfriend, Michael. The two are downright adorable together, and Rodriguez and Dier do a good job of keeping a few potentially painful, overly cutesy moments on the right side of sincere. Complicating things, though not immediately, is Rafael (Justin Baldoni), whom Jane had a crush on years prior. When his company buys the hotel Jane works at, the two meet again and they become inextricably linked, through a series of circumstances explored in the pilot. Rafael’s wife, Petra (Yael Grobglas), is the villain of the piece and works in that capacity, but her character remains rather unexplored at this point. A few other characters have hints of darkness, but the pilot is unwilling to commit to them, focusing instead on the plot mechanics necessary for the series’ instigating factor.

Part of the fun of the pilot is discovering its twists and turns on one’s own, and while the biggest of these is, on paper, utterly ridiculous, the series does a surprisingly good job making it seem less so in context. Jane is presented with a dilemma and even those who struggle with its believability will appreciate the nuanced and honest reactions of everyone around her. There is no easy answer for Jane and the biggest strength of the pilot is the respect it pays not only to its heroine, but its many protagonists. Each perspective is given equal weight, with Jane eventually making her choice. Beneath its soapy exterior, this is a series about decent people trying to do their best in a difficult situation, one that will likely lead to future complications and lots of drama.

There’s also bound to be plenty of comedy, and the playful tone lent the series by its score, editing, and stylized elements goes a long way towards keeping the family drama from becoming self-serious. By itself, the show’s style and comedy would make for an enjoyable but lightweight viewing experience. Without them, it could quickly become overwrought. Instead, the series finds just the right balance, creating a unique place for itself among the current network fare. With its down-to-earth lead character and self-aware, but not self-parodying approach, Jane The Virgin is a breath of fresh air that will hopefully find a strong and loyal fan base.

Developed by: Jennie Snyder Urman, based on Venezuelan telenovela Juana La Virgen
Starring: Gina Rodriguez, Andrea Navedo, Ivonne Coll, Justin Baldoni, Brett Dier, Yael Grobglas, Anthony Mendez
Debuts: Monday, October 13, at 9 p.m. Eastern on The CW
Format: Hour-long dramedy
Pilot watched for review

.

I was doing some research yesterday and happened upon something wonderful: a 19-minute mini concert, the final segment from the eponymous 1978 Olivia Newton-John ABC special posted on YouTube by its original sound engineer (who goes by the name ArgoWho —check out his amazing videos). Here’s the best part: he remixed the entire segment in stereo. So here’s a chance to hear lovely Livvy (in exceptional voice, I may add) and her compadres, ABBA and Andy Gibb, singing some of their biggest hits live. It’s a veritable time capsule of pop music, circa 1978 as all three artists were at the apex of their popularity.

Andy Gibb sings “(Love is) Thicker Than Water,” “I Just Want to Be Your Everything,” and a blistering “Shadow Dancing.” ABBA definitely had the songs (“Fernando,” “Dancing Queen” and, best of all, “Take a Chance on Me”) but, in my opinion, Frida and Agnetha really lacked charisma; the camera is ambivalent about them and it’s hard to stay focused on the Swedish songbirds. I kept wondering where Olivia was during their songs.

Olivia, on the other hand, is every inch the winsome chanteuse in all of her luminous Grease-era glory. Among others songs, she sings “Have You Never Been Mellow,” “If You Love Me (Let Me Know),” and just about the best-sung version of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” that you will ever hear. She is a generous hostess, ceding the spotlight to her co-stars. As usual, her perfectly feathered hair alone is enough to engage Stargayzing readers (I was particularly fascinated by the slight asymmetry of the prominent curl near her right ear.)

Here is what the sound engineer who posted the video had to say in his YouTube introduction to the video. I am very grateful to him for the audio insight and for sharing the piece. Oh! And definitely take his advice and watch the clip with headphones. It makes a big difference.

ONE OF A KIND – FIRST GENERATION AUDIO. This is the concert segment IN TRUE STEREO from the 1978 special “Olivia!” Just prior to shooting this segment with a live orchestra, the audio guy asked if I would like a stereo feed of the sound. Of course I said yes and fed two three-quarter inch VCRs with the special feed. Stereo TV was not available widely until the mid-1980s. After completion of the special, I manually synced the 2″ master of the show to my ¾” master and, voila, a stereo version of the concert with Andy Gibb, ABBA, and Olivia! Shot just days before it aired, the ABC-TV special “Olivia!” was the marathon of all television specials I edited while in Hollywood. For 36 nonstop hours, director Steve Binder (my all time favorite) and the post-production crew dashed toward an unbelievable deadline and beat it. This is the entire concert segment. The air version begins at 3:01 and ends prior to “Thank you for the Music” (which was used for closing credits). Please select 480p and full screen (and don’t forget headphones!); the quality is matchless!

The Legacy of Rául Júlia, “The Penitent” Honored at Ibero American Film Fest

Posted by Elia Esparza on October 12th, 2014 11:09 AM

Participating Are Actors Julie Carmen, Armand Assante and Merel Júlia

New Mexico Attorneys Luis B. Juarez & Frank G. Gallegos
The Penitent Film & Discussion

October 22, 2014, 6PM
Yale University

Raul Julia

The New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema announced the special screening the 1988 film The Penitent, as homage to

the legacy of one of America’s most beloved actors, Rául Júlia. The screening is timed perfectly to recognize the 20^th anniversary of the passing of Julia. The Penitent is said to be Julia’s personal favorite of his illustrious career.

The Penitent (written and directed by Cliff Osmond) screening and panel discussion will take place on October 22^nd, 6PM at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, CT on the Yale campus.

The film’s co-stars, Julie Carmen and Armand Assante along with New Mexico lawyers, Frank Gallegos and Luis Juarez will participate in a panel discussion moderated by Puerto Rican Journalist and Filmmaker, Caridad Sorondo. Merel Júlia, the actor’s widow will also be present. The panel will delve into the theme of the role of women in film and the vulnerability of religious minorities.

Rául Júlia was one of the most respected actors of his generation and well known for his humanitarian work. His diverse acting career included stage, film and television. He won numerous awards, including four Golden Globes and awards for human rights work. His unforgettable films include Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Burning Season, Romero, The Penitent, and The Adams Family.

Although his life was cut short at the age of 54, Júlia leaves a legacy most do not equal. In The Penitent, a fictional story set in New Mexico and South Colorado, Júlia delivers one of his most dramatic performances as Penitente Ramon Guerola. Attorney Frank Gallegos is credited to placing the film in the NEFIAC Film Festival at Yale University for educational and historical purposes.

“The Penitent is particularly poignant today as we watch minority populations be killed, forced to flee to defend their homelands at great costs,” said Julie Carmen. “The film shed light on a community that relocated to the U.S. and Mexico after being expelled from Spain during the diaspora caused by the Inquisition. Their practices remained intact throughout the centuries and are presented in director Osmond’s narrative film with great sensitivity.”

Merel Julia and Armand Assante

Carmen further explained that both female characters in The Penitent push against the double standard towards women in a very religious town. “A young virgin is married off to a much older man but chooses to lose her virginity to the man of her choice while my character lives autonomously just outside town,” explained Carmen. “She loves freely and speaks with uncensored anger about religious hypocrisy. She’s an iconoclast, the type of woman who’d be burned or stoned through the ages by the very men who called her a friend.”

For more information on the screening and panel discussion, contact Jane Mills, info@NEFIAC.com

Follow the festival and panelist on social media:
www.Facebook.com/nefiac
@NEFIAC on Twitter

www.Facebook.com/JulieCarmenActress

Twitter: @JulieCarmen3

Free and Open to the Public
2014 New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema
October 21-26

About Julie Carmen
Aside from being an award-winning actress with a career spanning over thirty years, Julie Carmen is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Yoga Media Producer. She is currently starring in Dawn Patrol, directed by Daniel Petrie Jr. opposite Scott Eastman and Rita Wilson. Dawn Patrol’s world premiere will be at the Austin Film Festival, October 25, 2014. Julie is perhaps best known for her starring role in Robert Redford’s Milagro Beanfield War, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, The Penitent, King of the Jungle, Friday Night Part II, and NBC’s Drug Wars II. Nowadays, Julie has a private practice in Los Angeles, and finds the dynamics of balancing three professions enriching. Julie is Suzanne Somers’ private yoga teacher. A frequent contributor in LA Yoga Magazine, she is registered at the ERYT-500 level and is certified as a Yoga Therapist. She is Associate Director of Mental Health at Loyola Marymount University Yoga Therapy Rx. She is Founder and CEO of Yoga Talks, an indie yoga media production company. http://www.juliecarmenactress.com

About Armand Assante
One of the driving forces behind the production of The Penitent and the efforts now to revive the film, Armand Assante is a renown, award-winning actor with a long list of film and TV credits: American Gangster, The Mambo Kings, Gotti, among many others. He has also been a champion of independent filmmaking throughout his career and has given up cushy commercial roles to work with talented indie filmmakers or to support films who represent causes he believes in. He fell in love with the simplicity and poetry of The Penitente’s script and soon found himself raising the initial capital for the film and asked Rául Júlia to read the script. The rest is history. http://www.armandassante.net

About Caridad Sorondo
An award-winning journalist, film critic and filmmaker best known for her television work. Caridad is the producer and director of the popular Puerto Rican television show, En la punta de la lengua. Her film, Dona Inez Maria de Mendoza, will premiere at the NEFIAC on October 23^rd.

About The Legal Eagles
Luis B. Juarez : A lawyer and former New Mexico prosecutor who studied for over two years to become a Penitente under Joe Baca, a leader of the Catholic lay fraternity in Montezuma, New Mexico.

Frank J. Gallegos: He practiced civil law for 25 years in New Mexico before spending the last four years as a criminal trial lawyer. As an attorney, Gallegos represented Penitentes in Taos, in their struggle to win approval from the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe to repair the Penitente chapel, known as a “morada.” The Catholic church bought the chapel years ago and locked the Penitentes out reflecting the church’s historical disapproval of Penitente ways. Gallegos, whose ancestors were Penitentes, found a 35mm copy of the film in the Library of Congress. He and Armand Assante have been trying to raise the money to buy the rights from the current owners overseas.

.

Marc Hauser

It was sometime around 1988, John Mellencamp recalls, when he found himself having little use for pop music. "I decided that having hit pop records was not a very pleasant road to travel down," says the singer-songwriter, who for each of the preceding six years had notched a Billboard Hot 100 top-10 song and, to that end, etched himself into the American Songbook with radio-friendly heartland rockers like "Jack & Diane," "Pink Houses," and "Small Town."

Talking on the phone from his longtime home in sleepy Bloomington, Indiana, Mellencamp looks back on a two-decade run since then spent riding a freewheeling collision course with his own shortcomings. "I prefer the more bumpy road," he offers, with blunt assessment, of a decision to turn his pen inward. As demonstrated with poignant precision on his recent work — principally 2008's unflinching self-evaluation, Life, Death, Love, and Freedom, and now his latest LP, the fierce, poetic Plain Spoken, out next week — the 62-year-old, however, has never been more dialed in to his craft. "I just can't even imagine that I'm still doing this," he says with a laugh. "I started making records when I was 21. That was 1974, 75. And the idea back then that it was a lifelong occupation was just... It just never did register with a young guy."

JOHN MELLENCAMP: So where am I talking to you from, Dan?

ESQUIRE.COM: I'm in Chicago. How about yourself?

JM: Bloomington, Indiana.

ESQ: Ah, I love Bloomington. I've gone there several times in the past to visit friends at college.

JM: Probably got drunk and fell down, didn't yah?

ESQ: I don't remember the falling down part. But that's probably because I was drunk.

JM: [laughs]

ESQ: So I really enjoyed Plain Spoken.

JM: Wait, and you're how old?

ESQ: I'm 29.

JM: And you liked the record?

ESQ: I did. Ever since Life, Death, Love, and Freedom, I've loved your more introspective, hard-hitting music.

JM: A lot of the new songs have been around for a long time. But I wasn't mature enough to release them. Like "Troubled Man" off the new record: I think I started writing that song in the early nineties, but I just couldn't get it to sound somehow like I thought it should. So you know, I don't ever throw anything away. So I would go back and I would go, "What was I trying to do here?"

ESQ: Some of the album's most intriguing moments are when you look at your life in the harshest light. "Troubled Man" and "The Isolation of Mister" come to mind.

JM: That's why I asked you how old you were. Because I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically. From being 22, 23 years old, my inspiration was the Rolling Stones. Now my inspiration is John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, Shakespeare. It has nothing to do with what I started out to do. If you read Shakespeare — and I don't mean to sound like a dick [laughs] — he talks about all of these things, you know? He says so much in one line. What I'm drawing from now and what I was drawing from as a kid are totally two different things. Because what kind of person's interests stay the same their entire life?

ESQ: Of course. What's ironic is that even though you haven't pursued pop hits for almost two decades, in recent years, as a result of dating Meg Ryan, you had to deal with the paparazzi.

JM: Well, you're right. And there's been such a paradigm change in our culture. Music actually meant something when I started doing it. Too bad I wasn't mature enough to write anything that meant anything [laughs]. I wrote some songs that connected with some people and, as a friend of mine said, "John was very fortunate to be a big pop star and that's also a very unfortunate thing." As early as '88 I wrote a song called "Pop Singer," and man, did I catch shit for that. But I was still a kid. I don't mean to call you a kid, but you'll find out that you get to be a certain age and it's like "This stuff just doesn't interest me anymore." I mean, I can't even imagine writing a song like "Hurts So Good." I don't even know who that guy was who wrote that song.

ESQ: Your younger self, I imagine, would not have looked at the world with as critical an eye as you do in "Lawless Times," on which you sing, "You can't trust a neighbor/husband or wife/you can't trust the police with the guns or their knives... You can't trust the banks the way that you used to do/Hope that Wall Street has been good to you."

JM: There's a paradigm change happening in our culture where people just don't seem to care. I mean, they don't vote in their own interests. "Don't take away our guns! You can't amend that!" Wait a minute, it's an amendment already! That's why they call it the Second Amendment! It's those types of things that were thought about in "Lawless Times." And the line that I like best is "If you want to steal this song it can be easily loaded down." Because actually I said a few years ago, and caught all kind of crap about it, "The Internet is the most dangerous thing since the atomic bomb." And I think that we're finding out that it is. I don't think that people really realize what can be done on that thing and what's going to happen. It's just not good.

ESQ: Look at ISIS being able to upload their horrific videos as propaganda.

JM: Exactly. And when you think about it, Dan, that is just one little teeny thing that's happening on the Internet. They could close down our banking. They could close down our electrical grid. We could do a lot of stupid things with that. It's just not people doing stuff to us. Who knows what we're doing to other people? I'm a firm believer that the government, it needs to revamped. This shit's not working.

ESQ: But obviously you must know how beneficial the Internet has been to our cultural evolution?

JM: Listen, like anything else there are positive things about the Internet. I mean the fact that we can get on and research a topic el pronto mundo... It's not all bad. It's not all black and white. But the recklessness with which it can be used is terrible. The recklessness of our privacy is terrible. When radio first came out it was a new delivery system. And smarter people said: "Wait a minute. You guys have this radio thing and you're playing our music. We need to get paid for that." But with the Internet nobody did that. It just became lawless. And you did whatever you wanted and people threw up their hands and said, "We don't know what to do with this." But in reality it was quite simple: It was a new delivery system of information and entertainment. Treat it exactly the same way you treated radio. Treat it exactly the same way you treat television. The arts wouldn't be suffering the way it is. Because the arts as you've known it, as I've known it, is gone. It's gone and it's not be retrieved at this point.

ESQ: From your tone of voice you don't seem any less impassioned about rallying against social ills than in your past.

JM: I'm looking for trouble. A lot of people get to be a certain age and they just kind of lose interest or they give up. But I'm looking for trouble. I have a bunch of information in my head that I'm not afraid to put in song or onto a canvas. Into any conversation. A friend of mine goes "I thought life was supposed to get easier as you got older." And it is if you don't have so many things that you feel you need to do. I've got a million things I feel like I need to do. Not for anybody other than myself.

ESQ: You mentioned the canvas. I know you're an avid painter. What does painting give you that songwriting does not?

JM: I am pretty much a... What do you call a guy that keeps to himself?

ESQ: A hermit?

JM: Well that's one word [laughs]. Let me put it this way: I enjoy the pleasure of my own company. I've been around so many people my entire life: bands and road crews and record companies and photographers. I enjoy the solitude of my own company. That makes it rough on anybody around me. When you live life for yourself it's hard on everyone. And that hasn't changed. For me, if anything, it's gotten worse.

ESQ: Though sometimes people care so much about others they wind up neglecting their own interests.

JM: I don't often say this, but really, I don't give a shit. I could care less. I mean, I'll listen to what people say and if they make a good point I respect it and I'll filter it through my brain and see if it makes sense to me. But generally, I don't care. To me, it's like "Well dad, everybody else is jumping off the top of the building! Why can't I?" And that's what most opinions sound like to me. I have two teenage sons, and one goes to Duke and one goes to RISD, and my youngest one, he's always throwing that one at me: "Well everybody..." I said, "I don't give a fuck what everybody else is doing! I don't care. What do we care? I spent my entire life trying not to be like everybody else."

ESQ: Funny you should mention your sons. I'm curious, what's something every father should teach his son?

JM: All I can do is repeat what I think is the best information that anybody ever gave me.

ESQ: And who was that from?

JM: My grandfather. He migrated here from Germany. Or he was the first generation to be born from German descent. And here was his big advice to me. Now don't forget this guy was pretty rough around the edges. He was a farmer. His advice to me was, "John, if you're going to hit a cocksucker, kill him." What he was saying is that if you're gonna just sit around talking about things — what you're going to do, what you're not going to do, how you're going to be successful or how you're going to fail or how you're going to live your life or what your beliefs are going to be — just shut up. But if you're actually gonna do it, do it. Listen, I think [Bob] Dylan said, without failure there's no success. He's right. You've gotta fail. Look at all the records I've made. I've made like 27 albums. I had about 10 good albums. C'mon, the rest of them... I mean, I made some songs that weren't exactly that great. Either I didn't have my heart in it or I didn't care. So when a person has their heart in it and they really believe it, fuck it, you can't quit. You can't ever quit. There's no quitting. This is life. Life will quit on you soon enough.

Interesting Interview On Howard Stern:

Gloria Estefan, Jerry Garcia, Linda Perry among nominees for Songwriter Hall of Fame

Published October 15, 2014

Fox News Latino

Cuban-American singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan, along with Jerry Garcia and Linda Perry are among the outstanding talents being considered for the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

.

The organization announced its 2015 nominees Wednesday. Among the performing songwriters up for the honor are also Tom Petty, Vince Gill, Cyndi Lauper, Elvis Costello, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Cat Stevens, Toby Keith, Steve Miller, Steve Winwood, Ann and Nancy Wilson and Harry Wayne “K.C.” Casey.

.

Perry is being considered as a nonperforming songwriter. Other nonperforming songwriters up for the honor are Allee Willis, Rob Temperton, Motown songwriter William “Mickey” Stevenson, Bobby Braddock, Bob McDill, Rudy Clark and Randy Edelman.

.

Garcia and his songwriting partner Robert Hunter along with Mike Chapman and Kicky Chinn, Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, and P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri are among the songwriting duos that will also compete.

.

The winners will be inducted next June at a New York gala.

.

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

Grammy-winning Chilean rock band, La Ley, reunited after a decade apart, mounts U.S. tour

By Lucia Suarez

Published October 15, 2014 | Fox News Latino

It's been more than 10 years since the members of the Grammy-winning Chilean rock band, La Ley, lost their passion to make music together. It had become a chore, so they broke up.

.

But last year, after a decade of doing individual projects, the trio of Beto Cuevas, Pedro Furgone and Mauricio Claveria reunited once again, and they sound better than ever.

.

“It feels great – getting back together with your buddies,” lead singer Cuevas told Fox News Latino. “It’s a good feeling. This gathering finds us with a more mature sound.”

.

Cuevas, who released two solo albums since La Ley broke up, said it was weird getting back together – partly because Furgone stopped playing for some time to focus on his family. But once they started up again, he said, it was like the years melted away.

.

“I really appreciate playing with these guys,” he said. “There is a good feeling. We feel young in the kind of music we are doing.”

.

La Ley recently kicked off a “Re-Tour” with shows in California. It’s their first time playing in the U.S. together for more than a decade.

.

“We have a great sound together,” Cuevas said. “(Fans) can expect to see La Ley as they left us. We sound better. We are tighter… It’s the best of La Ley.”

.

The trio is also working on a new album to be released next year. Cuevas said the sound will be what fans might expect from La Ley, but with an updated outlook. “We want to make relevant music. This is our musical history,” he said.

.

As to future potential break ups, Cuevas said they are feeling confident and happy with where they are, that if anyone wants to pursue any side projects they can, without having to split up the band.

.

The band plays Wednesday night in San Francisco before heading to Los Angeles and San Diego. La Ley will also play several concerts in Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida before heading south to Mexico and Chile.

Alex Meixner mixes pop and rock into polka

By John Benson

entertainment@vindy.com

.

Alex Meixner can’t wait to bring his oom-pah-pah sounds back to Northeast Ohio. The polka musician is scheduled to perform Saturday at Oktoberfest Youngstown, which takes place in Colonial Plaza on Belmont Avenue, Liberty.

.

“When I look at playing Youngstown, an area that historically has had so many great polka musicians, I greatly honor that tradition to do whatever I can to uphold it,” said Meixner, calling from Florida. “Many years ago I played with my dad’s band at Kuzman’s Lounge in Girard and throughout the region, like in Sharon, and of course up to Cleveland. So I’m looking forward to returning. We have a lot of friends in the area.”

.

Meixner, who started performing at age 6 with his sisters and father, is currently touring his latest CD, “Happiness is a Choice.” He said the new album finds a lot more original repertoire than previous efforts, including collaborations with reggae singer and composer Carlton Pride (son of country legend Charley Pride), as well as with Texas rock icon Hector Saldana of the Krayolas.

Even though Alex Meixner is most often considered a polka artist, the multi-instrumentalist can’t be pigeonholed. Sure, he plays his fair share of ethnic tunes, but underneath the melody can be found a cornucopia of influences and sounds.

.

“I’m the fourth generation in my family that are Austrian polka musicians in the United States,” Meixner said. “So I’ve built upon the tradition that my family has cultivated, and at the same time, I’m schooled in jazz, pop and classical music. Plus, the musicians who work with me are extremely versatile. We aim to make it a party that is built on the roots of the culture and, at the same time, is relevant to people of all walks of life.”

.

For those unfamiliar with Meixner, he’s considered a veritable iPod playlist artist that can change genres on a dime. Specifically, the Palm City, Fla., resident is known for his rock’n’polka mashups, which include Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” evolving (or devolving) into the Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville,” Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The entire song is performed with a polka sheen.

.

Another mashup begins as Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” before becoming The Liechtensteiner Polka and ’50s classic “Mr. Sandman” before returning to “Enter Sandman.”

.

Interestingly, the mashups act as a two-way street not only for those metal fans unfamiliar with polkas but to those diehard ethnic music fans with a serious disdain for hard rock. Meixner said he can’t wait to watch Oktoberfest Youngstown concertgoers become converts right before his eyes.

“That is one of the things that’s amazing about what I get to do, seeing how people start accepting music that they didn’t think they liked,” Meixner said. “Last night we were playing for metal heads and one guy said, ‘I really don’t like polka music but I like what you do to polka music.’

.

“So you’ll find certain old people who learn they like Ozzy Osbourne now and sometimes you’re going to find some young people who find out they really like old school polkas, they just didn’t realize it.”

Actress Elizabeth Peña dead at 55. Understated, intelligent sensuality.

By Soraya Nadia McDonald October 16 at 4:22 AM

Elizabeth Peña, left, and Esai Morales in a scene from Showtime’s “Resurrection Blvd.” Peña, who won an ALMA for her work on the show, died Tuesday at age 55. (Photo by Randy Tepper / Showtime)

Elizabeth Peña, the actress known for her roles in “La Bamba,” “Rush Hour,” “The Incredibles,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and “Lone Star,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness. She was 55.

The news was first reported by Peña’s nephew, Mario-Francisco Robles, in a post for Latino Review. Peña’s manager, Gina Rugolo, confirmed the actress’s death in a statement. Neither elaborated further on the cause of death. Robles followed Peña’s professional accomplishments with a personal appreciation for his aunt:

She did it all, and she made it look fun. She made it look easy. But I know it wasn’t. I know she had a drive like no other, and that she was a force to be reckoned with when she decided it was time to make it big or … well, nothing. She never considered an alternative. Her singular focus was breathtaking, and awe-inspiring.

Tonight, my family is heartbroken. There’s now a void that will never be filled. All we can do now is remember your sharp sense of humor, your endless hunger for life, and your never ending pursuit of happiness.

You were a great mother, wife, daughter, sister, and cousin. But you’ll always be my Ñaña, #1 in a category all your own.

In a 35-year career, Peña developed a penchant for oozing an understated, intelligent sensuality with ease. Though rarely a leading lady, she brought a certain magnetism to all of her roles. She was a patient, unflappable therapist in “Transamerica,” and a sultry but well-intentioned seductress in “The Incredibles,” in which she played Mirage.

“News of Elizabeth Pena’s death hits particularly hard, for some reason, maybe because she was consistently outstanding in everything,” tweeted Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com.

In a Twitter conversation Wednesday night, actress and producer Eva Longoria said Peña wasn’t just a Cuban-American actress — for many years, she was the Latina Actress. When Peña joined the Director’s Guild of America, she was only the fourth to do so. In 1987, Peña starred in the television show “I Married Dora” as a Salvadoran housekeeper who entered a green-card marriage with her employer to remain in the country.

Peña went on to play a wide range of roles that were far from typical; her characters felt vibrant and bubbled with humanity. In the charming and funny “How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer,” she played a mother in her forties experiencing a sexual reawakening opposite America Ferrera and Lucy Gallardo. Peña won ALMA awards for her work in “Tortilla Soup,” “Resurrection Blvd.,” “Rush Hour” and “Contagious.”

“Rest in Peace Elizabeth Pena … you paved the way for so many of us!!” Longoria tweeted.

Peña was aware of her role as a Latina groundbreaker and role model, and she also realized she was called upon to occupy this blurry, amorphous space as a Latina actress. She played Gloria’s Colombian mother on “Modern Family.” In “Lone Star,” she was a teacher on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“In the United States, all Spanish-speaking people are lumped into one category,” Peña told the Dallas Morning News in 1996 (via the Los Angeles Times). “But we’re all so different. Argentinians are completely different from Mexicans. Mexicans are completely different from Cubans. Cubans are completely different from people from Paraguay and Uruguay.”

On Wednesday night, Peña’s friends and colleagues expressed shock and grief and paid tribute to her on social media.

“My heart breaks,” tweeted Wilson Cruz. “She was FANTASTIC!”

“Q triste lo de #ElizabethPena era una dama con mucha alma!” John Leguizamo tweeted. In English: “It’s sad about Elizabeth Peña, a lady with a lot of soul.”

“I guess I finally found out why I felt so inexplicably heavy-hearted yesterday. I thought it was an unusually gloomy day in LA. I could feel a deep sadness in my bones,” Peña’s “Resurrection Blvd.” co-star, Esai Morales, said in a Facebook post.

He continued: “I just can’t believe she’s gone … I remember crushing on Liz back in our High School days and being inspired by her work and success in this ever so fickle and peculiar business. So you can imagine how happy and privileged I felt to be able to work on screen together (and steal her away from Ritchie…!!)

“Trying to write something deserving of her memory and her larger than life personality isn’t easy through bouts of laughter and tears; but what can I say … ? She was our first — and only, Elizabeth Peña … an artist with a truly gifted soul and a wicked sense of humor. A straight shooter who was uniquely fun, funny and always a pleasure to work with and just be around. A great gal who is gone too soon.”

Recently, Pena just finished work playing Maritza Sandoval on the first season of the El Rey network show “Matador.”

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague, Elizabeth Peña,” the network said in a statement. “She was a role model, a truly extraordinary performer and an inspiration in every sense of the word. Our thoughts are with Elizabeth’s family and friends during this difficult time. She ‎will be deeply missed.”

Peña is survived by her husband, Hans Rolla; her daughter, Fiona; and her son, Kaelan; as well as her mother and a sister.

Cool Info. Mickey Thanks.

By Daniel Kreps | October 16, 2014

Record exec Clive Davis, rapper Kurtis Blow, songwriter Gerry Goffin, concert promoter Ron Delsener and Billy Joel's famed backing band are among those who will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. Patti Lupone (who will not be in attendance), Debbie Gibson and producer Steve Thompson are also part of the LIMHoF's fifth induction class, with Roger Waters inducting Delsener and Dionne Warwick presenting the award to Davis.

Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels – whose Run-D.M.C. was previously inducted into the LIMHoF – will be the recipient of the 2014 Harry Chapin Award. The all-star ceremony will go down at Huntington, New York's the Paramount on October 23rd. Tickets for the ceremony are on sale now at the Paramount's site.

While Joel was previously honored for his contribution to Long Island's music history with the Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 2006, the "Billy Joel Band" – drummer Liberty DeVitto, bassist Doug Stegmeyer, multi-instrumentalist Richie Cannata and guitarist Russell Javors – will be inducted this time around. The foursome backed Joel from 1976's Turnstiles to 1981's Glass Houses, at which point Cannata left the band. (Stegmeyer, who died in 1995, will be honored posthumously.)

The induction ceremony, which takes place every two years, will also feature a tribute performance featuring songs penned by Goffin, the New York-born songwriter who was previously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and passed away in June.

Previous Long Island Music Hall of Fame inductees include Ramones, Tony Bennett, Public Enemy, Steely Dan's Walter Becker, Blue Oyster Cult, Lou Reed, Mariah Carey and John Coltrane. Inductees are chosen by the LIMHoF's Board of Directors, who choose eligible candidates based on whether the artist or music industry contributor spent a significant portion of their careers in geographic Long Island (Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties).

Birdman

• Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone
• Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

A beginner’s guide to the sweet, stinging nostalgia of The Beach Boys

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginner’s guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This installment: The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys 101

The craft of pop music is all about exploiting trends; the art of pop music is about exploiting popularity. This is the story of The Beach Boys. In the band’s early days, Brian Wilson and his brothers Dennis and Carl—joined by their cousin Mike Love, and pushed by their father Murry—capitalized on the surfing craze in Southern California, selling a lifestyle of big waves, boss cars, and pretty girls, first to the rest of the United States and then to the world. Once they were established as a novelty act, The Beach Boys matured, as Brian Wilson took advantage of the band’s huge fan base to experiment with more complicated arrangements and emotions, mixing some clouds in with the sun.

There are Beach Boys fans who only like the simpler, shallower early songs; and there are Beach Boys fans who hardly ever listen to anything the band recorded prior to 1966. That split is mirrored within the group itself; Brian Wilson and Mike Love have differed over the decades on what The Beach Boys should be. Over the years, Love has been largely responsible for keeping The Beach Boys alive, touring the nostalgia circuit and putting new albums out during the years a mentally struggling Wilson either couldn’t perform at all or could only produce strange, half-realized songs. Yet for many hardcore Beach Boys devotees Wilson is the band, because even at their oddest, his songs are graced with genius.

The one project that unites the two Beach Boys camps—and even some people who haven’t listened to much else the band has done—is 1966’s Pet Sounds, which routinely lands near the top of any list of the all-time greatest rock ’n’ roll albums. Considered an expensive flop at the time, Pet Sounds’ reputation turned around fairly quickly once it became clear the record wasn’t an aberration, either in pop music (with its lush, baroque orchestrations becoming the model for hundreds of ambitious late-’60s 45s and LPs) or in the career of The Beach Boys (who’d spend much of the next half-decade trying to match it).

Brian Wilson never meant Pet Sounds to be “difficult.” He saw himself as competing with The Beatles—whose Rubber Soul had set a new standard for how to construct a pop album—by treating each song as a potential mini-masterpiece. Pet Sounds’ conceptual coup is the way Wilson appropriates the style of his parents’ generation—the lavish, gliding sound of “dinner music”—and uses it to score songs about lovesick, moony-eyed young people. Some of the earliest Beach Boys songs gave an impression of Brian Wilson as a man who was old before his time, already pining for a vanished past. With the Pet Sounds songs “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” and “Let’s Go Away For Awhile,” Wilson made those feelings of displacement plainer, lending a deep melancholy to the album that echoed across lilting ballads like “God Only Knows” and “Caroline, No.” Pet Sounds was a Top 10 album, with two Top 10 singles—“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and a cover of the folk standard “Sloop John B”—but the un-hip orchestrations and pervasive sadness baffled some longtime fans, who didn’t immediately get what Wilson was trying to do.

One big reason why the perception of Pet Sounds turned around is that The Beach Boys followed it up with their most popular song ever, “Good Vibrations,” a dizzying collage of musical fragments and allusive lyrics that works like a summary (and summery) statement of The Beach Boys’ discography up to that point. Heavier rock musicians in the late ’60s and early ’70s tried to class up the genre by fusing rock with classical music, but Brian Wilson and Mike Love made that leap more intuitively and inventively, creating what their publicists dubbed “a pocket symphony.” There’s simply no precedent for “Good Vibrations,” which sounds like Wilson stripping the backing tracks from two dozen old Beach Boys songs and then treating those parts like instruments in an orchestra, to be conducted on the fly. “Good Vibrations” is also the most purely exultant song The Beach Boys ever recorded—a dose of concentrated joy that satisfied both Wilson’s and Love’s visions for the band. The song has the tight, high harmonies and California fantasy imagery they were known for, but it’s also experimental and expressionistic, externalizing the riot of colors and emotions in Brian Wilson’s head.

More confident than ever that he was on the right track, Wilson got together with his new friend Van Dyke Parks, aiming to make a whole album as inspired as “Good Vibrations.” That project, called Smile, was going to tell the story of America, and encompass the full range of popular music, all while trying to recapture the innocence and playfulness of childhood. But Wilson’s reach exceeded his grasp, and his worsening mental state—combined with pressure from his bandmates to capitalize more quickly on the success of “Good Vibrations” before the fickle record-buying public moved on—led Wilson to scrap Smile before he could finish it. This would be the start of a rough patch for Wilson, as the stigma of an unfinished masterpiece and an overall hardening of rock music fed his anxiety.

Songs from Smile would trickle out onto other Beach Boys albums over the next several years, and in the ’70s some fans took those songs, along with some rescued Smile outtakes, and reconstructed fantasy versions of the album on bootlegs. Finally, in 2004, a healthier Wilson started performing Smile in concert, and recorded a new version called Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Then in 2011, The Beach Boys put out The Smile Sessions, featuring new mixes of the old recordings, sequenced to match what Wilson had been performing.

People inside The Beach Boys camp are quick to note that neither Wilson’s solo album nor The Smile Sessions are “the real Smile.” That album has never existed, because right up to the moment that he abandoned the project, Wilson was still debating how he wanted to present the songs; he was considering a more groundbreaking approach that would split some of them into fragments and weave them together, more like a proper suite. (Beach Boys connoisseurs looking for glimmers of the more freeform Smile cherish some of the raw tracking sessions, collected on various box sets and reissues, which show Wilson working in the moment with studio-trained musicians to try out different variations on the same passages.) But even the approximate Smile is brilliant, with a wider variety of moods and approaches than Pet Sounds, and with lyrics that weave together a set of loosely connected ideas about health, happiness, and history. Wilson and Parks aimed to reach listeners on a subconscious level, with lyrics like “the child is the father of the man” that seem opaque at first, but profound when paired with the eruptive, chiming music.

Of the albums produced in the wake of Smile (or at least the ones that draw the most on the work Wilson did on that record), the two most essential are 1967’s Smiley Smile and 1971’s Surf’s Up. The former was an attempt to salvage something from the Smile sessions, by taking two of its anchor songs—“Heroes And Villains” and “Good Vibrations”—throwing in a few more Wilson oddities like “Vegetables” and “She’s Goin’ Bald,” and stitching the whole thing together with Smile esoterica. The album is too short, and only hints at what Smile was supposed to be, but the music on Smiley Smile is still some of the most sublime The Beach Boys ever recorded, even when packaged more as a psychedelic snack than as the rich brain-food Wilson intended.

As for Surf’s Up, it’s the transitional album between the Pet Sounds/Smile era and the more mainstream rock that The Beach Boys attempted in the early ’70s. The record’s big selling point is the title track, which is one of Smile’s key songs, and as perfect an example of Brian Wilson’s genius as “Good Vibrations.” At once elegiac and hopeful, “Surf’s Up” bids farewell to the past with a sense of yearning and purpose. And even though the morbid (yet strangely calming) “’Til I Die” is the only other major Brian Wilson song on the album—and even though Surf’s Up is marred by the awful Mike Love song “Student Demonstration Time”—the record as a whole matches the mood of its title track, highlighted by off-and-on Beach Boy Bruce Johnston’s sweetly swaying “Disney Girls (1957),” and two of Carl Wilson’s best songs, “Long Promised Road” and “Feel Flows.”

Between those two albums, The Beach Boys made 1968’s lovely Friends, which splits the difference between the two records, mixing the lazy-day lyrics of Smile with the tighter arrangements and focus of Surf’s Up. Even though the songs are so short that the whole album is over and done in the time it would take to self-medicate properly, Friends’ paeans to transcendentalism, having kids, and “doin’ nothin’” make it one of The Beach Boys’ warmest and most spiritual records. (Plus, without the lush instrumentals “Passing By” and “Diamond Head,” The High Llamas probably wouldn’t exist.)

Two years after Surf’s Up, the band put out an album just as good: 1973’s Holland, recorded in Amsterdam with major contributions from guitarist Blondie Chaplin and drummer Ricky Fataar, two South African musicians who’d joined the band in 1972—in part to help cover for absent members, and in part to help update The Beach Boys’ sound to something more relevant to the country-rock jams and prog-rock experiments of the early ’70s. Holland sounds refreshingly contemporary, from the steel guitars and harmonicas to the spoken-word interlude in the environmentalist trilogy “California Saga.” It also sounds like a Beach Boys album. It’s not just the rollicking Brian Wilson song “Sail On, Sailor” that shines like The Beach Boys of old. Fataar and Chaplin’s poignant ballad “Leavin’ This Town” sounds like a Jackson Browne interpretation of a Pet Sounds track, while Carl Wilson’s two-part “The Trader” applies brother Brian’s Smile lessons about sonic fragmentation to the kind of literate character sketch that confessional singer-songwriters up and down the West Coast were attempting at the time. Major rock and pop stars of the early ’70s like Browne, Neil Young, and Chicago all claimed The Beach Boys as a major influence. Holland took back what those acts had borrowed.

Holland marked the beginning of a commercial turnaround for The Beach Boys—one at first mild, then phenomenal. The record drew good reviews and sold decently, and was outpaced later that same year by a live double-LP. And then in 1974, Capitol Records repackaged the band’s biggest pre-Pet Sounds hits onto a double-album called Endless Summer, with a colorful, modern-looking cover. Arriving just as America was getting nostalgia-happy—around the time of Sha Na Na, American Graffiti, and Happy Days—Endless Summer became a massive hit, spawning a 1975 sequel Spirit Of America that also did well. Given the spottiness of a lot of the records The Beach Boys released in the early ’60s, Endless Summer makes the best case for what the band was up to before Brian Wilson went arty.

The Beach Boys got a similar commercial boost in the wake of the initially modest reaction to Pet Sounds by releasing a trio of The Best Of The Beach Boys albums between 1966 and 1968. Later, more comprehensive anthologies (like Endless Summer and Spirit Of America) have rendered these records irrelevant, but in and of themselves, they’re well-sequenced collections full of classic songs, and worth buying if they turn up in the used-vinyl racks. Another one to seek out is one of the odder of the Beach Boys compilations from the late ’60s: 1968’s Stack-O-Tracks, which collects the instrumental backing tracks from Beach Boys hits for fans to sing along to. The songs don’t sound quite right without the harmonies, but at least Stack-O-Tracks allows them to be heard in an entirely new way, calling attention to the band’s oft-underrated musicianship.

For those who can’t abide greatest-hits collections but still want to give the early Beach Boys their due, some of the earlier albums are better than others. The band’s third album, 1963’s Surfer Girl, was their first wholly produced by Brian Wilson, and already Wilson was trying to make his songs less one-note, as evidenced by the dreamy title track, the layered “Catch A Wave,” and the gorgeous “In My Room” (a surprisingly early peek into Wilson’s future insularity). In 1964, when The Beach Boys were trying to add a gearhead element to their repertoire, they released Shut Down Volume 2, which supplements catchy car tunes like “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “Shut Down” with two more of Wilson’s best early “all grown up” songs, “Don’t Worry Baby” and “The Warmth Of The Sun.” And 1964’s All Summer Long serves as a poignant farewell to frivolity, taking its cues from the title track’s litany of what was, and running that same vibe through songs like romantic lament “Wendy” and the defiant “Little Honda.”

Intermediate Work

The Beach Boys’ transition from teenage kicks to the adult ache of Pet Sounds began in 1965, and especially with the album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), which puts more emphasis on the latter than the former. Like the previous year’s All Summer Long, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) is predominately an after-sunset, past-tense kind of record, with songs like “Girl Don’t Tell Me,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Let Him Run Wild” all sporting strong overtones of despair. The album’s biggest hit, “California Girls,” applies the complex, curveball-filled arrangement that would later distinguish songs like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Good Vibrations” to what seems like a return to The Beach Boys’ novelty days, but is actually an example of Wilson creating an idealized reality to escape the stresses of his own life.

Post Pet Sounds/Smile, The Beach Boys scrambled to work around Brian Wilson’s eccentricities and to keep up with a rapidly evolving rock scene by releasing albums that fit Wilson’s sometimes-bizarre, sometimes-magnificent songs between hippie rhapsodies and throwback pop. Smiley Smile and Surf’s Up are the solid bookends of this era, with Friends as the whimsical centerpiece, but the three other late-’60s Beach Boys albums—1967’s Wild Honey, 1969’s 20/20, and 1970’s Sunflower—all hit some astonishing highs, and are all fairly cohesive, with not too many outright clunkers. Wild Honey is a back-to-basics record, leaving Smile’s freakiness behind and getting back into a groove, with stripped-down retro rock songs like “Darlin’” and “Here Comes The Night” alternating with pretty, Bacharach-inspired tracks like “Aren’t You Glad” and “Let The Wind Blow.” As with the same year’s Smiley Smile, it’s too slight, but it’s also enjoyably high-spirited and hokey. (If The Beach Boys could’ve waited and combined those two albums, which together are only 50 minutes long, they might’ve quieted the dismissive rock critics of that era.)

20/20 is more scattershot, due mainly to Brian Wilson being institutionalized during much of its recording. But the album does salvage one of the best Smile songs, “Cabinessence,” adds a new Beach Boys classic in “Do It Again,” and spotlights the work of Carl and Dennis Wilson, laying the groundwork for where The Beach Boys would go in the early ’70s. Sunflower, on the other hand, is the closest thing to a real, full album the band had recorded since Pet Sounds. Recording for a new label, Reprise Records, The Beach Boys put out a record that ran a relatively generous 36 minutes, and one that sounded unified—even though, like its predecessor, Sunflower contains contributions from everyone in the band, with a good number of songs by Dennis. Anchored by the single “Add Some Music To Your Day,” Sunflower is like the band’s answer to the wave of “sunshine pop” and “bubblegum” acts that had emerged over the previous couple of years, showing that no one could write and record slick, melodic, harmony-drenched songs quite like The Beach Boys, who knew how to add a layer of reflectiveness to chipper songs like “Deirdre” and “This Whole World.” (Plus, with Sunflower’s closing song, “Cool, Cool Water,” Brian Wilson and Mike Love turned a Smile-era throwaway into something textured and casually profound.)

None of the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys albums were hits, but the success of Endless Summer made the band wildly popular again, and Brian Wilson’s controversial new therapist Eugene Landy (whom Brian would later sue for exerting too much control over his life) convinced him that it’d be good for his mental health to start reengaging with the band again by touring and recording. The other Beach Boys had mixed feelings about the new arrangement. Mike Love saw the publicity upside in having Brian back in the fold, working a new album, striking while The Beach Boys were a hot commodity. Carl and Dennis weren’t as keen on ceding so much of the creative control they’d had in the early ’70s back to Brian—especially given Brian didn’t seem all that interested in making a proper Beach Boys album, preferring instead to record a set of corny, off-the-cuff rock and pop covers. As it happened, everyone was a little bit right about the 1976 album 15 Big Ones (which was named both for its number of songs and for the band being 15 years old). Carl and Dennis were right that 15 Big Ones wasn’t daring enough for the band’s first album of new material in three years. Yet the record’s mix of Brian’s favorite oldies and a handful of nutty new ones—including the delightful “Had To Phone Ya” and “That Same Song”—is fun, in a low-stakes way. And Love’s instincts were spot-on: 15 Big Ones sold better than any new Beach Boys album had all decade. (It may have helped that the generic title and cover art made 15 Big Ones look like another hits collection.)

By the mid-1970s, there were effectively two bands calling themselves “The Beach Boys”: one led by Mike Love, who was more than willing to sing “I Get Around” for complacent baby-boomers for the rest of his life, and the other led by Brian Wilson, who was trying to process beach culture as deeply personal abstract art. Very early on, Wilson gave up touring to focus on songwriting and recording, which allowed Love to create this alternate version of The Beach Boys. But to Love’s credit, he helped hone the live act into an impressive and popular concert attraction. And there are a few worthy documents of this “good times, great oldies” Beach Boys, including 1964’s Beach Boys Concert (recorded when Wilson was still playing live, and featuring covers of the goofy hits “Monster Mash,” “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow,” and “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena”), 1970’s Live In London (featuring rocked-up takes on the post-Pet Sounds songs), and 1973’s excellent double-album The Beach Boys In Concert (which sets the outstanding new early-’70s songs side by side with the classics, making them all sound more of a piece).

Advanced Studies

Because The Beach Boys were perceived in their early years as a here-and-gone proposition—like pretty much every other pop, rock, and R&B group—their label, Capitol Records, tried to generate as much product as it could, as quickly as it could. The first few years of The Beach Boys discography are littered with filler-heavy albums and repackagings of the same songs. Records like the 1962 debut album Surfin’ Safari, 1963’s Surfin’ U.S.A., and 1963’s Little Deuce Coupe are primarily only of historical interest now, because their best songs are available in much better anthology packages—and because anyone who wants to hear the kind of tame covers and oddball spoken-word pieces that padded out the early Beach Boys LPs is better off buying Surfer Girl and Shut Down Volume 2.

That said, some of the cash-in albums released during the band’s 1960s heyday have become fan favorites. While 1964’s The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album isn’t a masterpiece on the order of Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You, like Spector’s record it does successfully put youthful rock ’n’ roll in the context of old-fashioned holiday pop music and carols. (Plus, it contains “Little Saint Nick,” a spin on “Little Deuce Coupe” that’s even catchier.) Even more delightful is 1965’s Beach Boys’ Party!, a set of left-field retreads and covers—including three Beatles songs and one from Bob Dylan—played on acoustic instruments and arranged to sound like they’re being played live in a living room while the band’s friends chat and drink in the background. Though faked, the “impromptu” sound of the Party! album feels of a piece with the early Beach Boys’ albums’ evocations of laid-back California fun.

Party! capped a busy (and exclamation-point-filled!) 1965 for The Beach Boys, coming right after Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and The Beach Boys Today! For those devoted to the early sun-sand-surf Beach Boys, Today! is a neglected gem, full of great songs like “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)” that are often left off the hits collections. It’s more uniformly upbeat in contrast to what came immediately after—with fairly simple rock arrangements and a minimum of melancholy—but as with the Christmas album, Today! is both an enjoyable record and a valuable look at The Beach Boys at the height of their commercial powers, competing aggressively with both the British Invasion and Spector’s signature sound: teen-friendly, operatic R&B.

Similarly, 1972’s funkily titled Carl And The Passions – “So Tough” is an outstanding document of the Beach Boys era when Carl and Dennis were steering the boat. The first album to feature Fataar and Chaplin as full-time band members, Carl And The Passions is like a running start at Holland; it’s a solid ’70s West Coast rock album in and of itself, even if at times—as on the Fataar/Chaplin composition “Here She Comes”—it barely sounds like The Beach Boys. The title implies some sort of ’50s tribute, but Carl And The Passions is more in the mode of laid-back country-rock, with a few progressive elements, like something Poco or Stephen Stills would’ve made at the time. This is Carl and Dennis reimagining what The Beach Boys could be—and quite well, as the superior Holland would prove one year later. (For those primarily interested in what Brian was up to at the time, the most relevant parts of Carl And The Passions are the dense, gospel-tinged “He Come Down” and the exuberant, quirky “Marcella.”)

There are some Beach Boys fans who prefer the Carl/Dennis age, and think The Cult Of Brian Wilson permanently damaged what could’ve remained a fine mainstream rock band. For them, 1977’s Love You is Exhibit A in what happened when the band let Brian dominate. For Brian-ologists, though, Love You is one of the great crack-up albums of the ’70s, in the same vein as Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night, Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, and Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Love You started out as a true Brian Wilson solo album, with Wilson using a synthesizer to replicate his grand orchestras of the ’60s. He eventually allowed his Beach Boys bandmates to contribute vocals and ideas, but Love You would remain the purest expression of what had been swimming around in Wilson’s brain since Smile. Crippling self-doubt, drilled into Brian by a reportedly abusive father and the fickle fluctuations of public approval, left him trying to use music as a balm. So there’s something almost desperately optimistic about Love You, as Wilson sings frayed songs about roller-skating, road-tripping, and Johnny Carson—like a frazzled man sitting in a corner chanting “calm blue ocean” over and over. It’s a beautiful, noisy, funny, heartbreaking work of art—one not for everybody, yet vital for anyone who wants to understand Wilson’s overall worldview.

Brian Wilson wanted to build off of the creative breakthrough of Love You, but the record industry was less enthusiastic. So The Beach Boys albums that followed over the next decade featured only token input from Brian as a songwriter and a vocalist—and as a result are mostly abysmal. (It didn’t help that Dennis and Carl largely checked out, too, or that the band as a whole was devastated by Dennis’ death by drowning in 1983.) There’s absolutely no reason to bother with anything bearing The Beach Boys name that came out between 1980 and 1992—at a time when outside producers, drum machines, self-parody, and the ever-present threat of “Kokomo” made listening even to Brian Wilson-penned songs a depressing experience. That said, the last two 1970s Beach Boys records actually aren’t that bad. M.I.U. Album, released in 1978, and 1979’s L.A. (Light Album) both go down smooth, putting the band’s classic harmonies in the context of the late-’70’s radio featuring the Grease soundtrack and Captain & Tennille. M.I.U. is the more seamless of the two—for better and worse—while L.A. has a few memorable wrinkles, including one truly great Dennis Wilson song, “Love Surrounds Me,” and a passable 11-minute disco version of “Here Comes The Night,” engineered by Brian Wilson’s best sunshine-pop disciple, Curt Boettcher.

After the revival of Smile in the 2000s, Wilson reunited with Love, Johnston, Al Jardine, and long-ago Beach Boy David Marks for a 50th anniversary tour, and paired it with a new album, That’s Why God Made The Radio, consisting partly of songs Wilson had written over the years and set aside for the band, just in case a reunion ever occurred. Far from an afterthought, That’s Why God Made The Radio is a fully realized Beach Boys record, produced by Wilson with nearly the same level of orchestration he brought to the late-’60s albums. And while the material is hit-and-miss, songs like the title track and the album-closing “Summer’s Gone” have all the yearning and rich harmonics of The Beach Boys of yore.

Miscellany

With Brian Wilson either absent or uncooperative in the latter half of the ’70s (and much of the decade beyond), the main Beach Boys tried their hands at solo albums, with decent results. Even Mike Love’s hilariously titled 1981 solo debut Looking Back With Love is unexpectedly charming, thanks in large part to producer Curt Boettcher’s clean integration of synthesizers into a set of lively, heartfelt pop songs. Carl Wilson’s own 1981 solo debut, Carl Wilson, and his 1983 follow-up Youngblood aren’t as much of a treat, because Carl’s songwriting is more somber and less catchy, which doesn’t mesh as well with the more club-footed ’80s production styles. Still, both albums offer a little closure for fans who enjoyed the sophisticated country-rock direction that Carl was pushing The Beach Boys toward in the early ’70s.

But the two best Beach Boys solo albums came from Brian and Dennis. Brian Wilson’s 1988 LP Brian Wilson is as synth-heavy and booming as The Beach Boys’ albums at the time, but the songs are terrific—especially the opening track, “Love And Mercy”—and Wilson seems to be having a ball, hearkening back to his classic Pet Sounds sound. (Later Wilson solo albums, like Imagination, Gettin’ In Over My Head, and That Lucky Old Sun, come across as tame and a little sterile, though each has flashes of greatness.) And Dennis Wilson’s 1977 record Pacific Ocean Blue is a wonder: a thoughtful and surprising refashioning of various kinds of American roots music to suit Dennis’ dark, sweet rasp. The songs are dramatic, and creatively presented, with as much of Dennis’ personality as his older brother’s freewheeling explorations of self.

Though it’s not a proper Brian Wilson solo album, 1995’s I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times is a strong collection of demos and new recordings of older songs, in support of Don Was’ moving documentary about Wilson’s life and personal troubles. (For fervent Beach Boys fans, these kinds of behind-the-scenes stories are important to understanding where the music came from.) And while it’s a marginal entry into The Beach Boys’ discography, the 1996 project Stars And Stripes, Vol. 1—which saw country stars singing Beach Boys classics, documented in the film Beach Boys: Nashville Sounds—did feature Brian Wilson’s first serious involvement with the band since the ’70s, as he stepped back behind the board as a co-producer. There are some really nice performances on Stars And Stripes, too, including Willie Nelson singing “The Warmth Of The Sun” and Timothy B. Schmit doing “Caroline, No.” The Beach Boys have a singular sound, but covers like these reveal how the songs can stand up to different interpretations, because they were always meant to be part of a larger pop music tradition.

The Essentials

1. The Smile Sessions
2. Pet Sounds
3. Holland
4. Friends
5. Love You

‘Hideaway’ Singer Kiesza: Dyslexia 'Makes You More Creative’

By Steven J. Horowitz | October 16, 2014 6:16 PM EDT

Kiesza photographed by Joel Barhamand in New York on October 2, 2014.

Joel Barhamand

Put Kiesza on a rooftop with a rifle and she could probably shoot you down from a block away -- not that she's planning to. Prior to her amazing one-take video for her debut single, "Hideaway," going viral (to the tune of 132 million-plus views since February), the dance-pop singer-songwriter from Canada chased her teen obsession with boats all the way to the Royal Canadian Navy, where she excelled on the shooting range. "They put you in a war scenario, and you have to test your accuracy," says Kiesza, forking a grilled salmon fillet in Manhattan restaurant HK Hell's Kitchen. The thought, however, of training a weapon on a human being torpedoed her naval dreams. "It's fun when you're a kid to try to shoot a target, but then reality sets in and it's not a pretty business."

Now, the 25-year-old (born Kiesa Rae Ellestad) has her sights set on dancefloors, using the joy and subsequent demise of her first (and only) relationship to fuel her debut full-length, Sound of a Woman (Oct. 21, Island/Lokal Legend). Kiesza's timing couldn't be better: "Hideaway" surfs the house-music nostalgia wave that's dominating the British charts and beginning to make an impact here, mining '90s musical touchstones that recall the streaking synths and club-sized power hooks of Crystal Waters and CeCe Peniston. After topping the U.K. Official Singles chart in April, the song followed in the retro-flavored footsteps of British dance acts Clean Bandit and Disclosure and cracked the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 51 on the chart dated Sept. 20.

It has sold 394,000 downloads through Oct. 5, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and peaked at No. 7 on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart. Sound of a Woman expands on its single's vintage house sound while dipping a few promising toes in soul, pop and even hip-hop, with guest appearances from rappers Joey Badass and Mick Jenkins. "I could do the cheesiest pop music you've ever heard, then it's an Irish drinking tune, and then it's hip-hop," says Kiesza. "I don't think I'm going to be stuck to one thing."

Her talents are as multi-pronged as her sound. Kiesza's adolescent stint as a ballerina, which ended at age 15 thanks to knee injuries, laid the groundwork for the invigorated choreography she hits during star-making live shows. Piano lessons as a kid gave way to the guitar, which she taught herself while sailing on tall ships prior to the Navy. And a few years at the prestigious Berklee College of Music informed her songwriting skills: She recently penned two cuts for Rihanna's upcoming album, has written for Kylie Minogue and also wrote and sang on "Take U There," the debut single from Skrillex and Diplo's Jack U collaboration. Berklee also led her to classmate Rami Samir Afuni, the 27-year-old Kuwait-born producer with whom she conceptualizes her music and videos. "We have similar sounds and styles, but we have polar-opposite personalities," says Kiesza.

"We're never on the same page, which is why it ends up sounding as it does. We don't even necessarily get along per se, but when we get in the studio, it creates this tension [that] brings out things in each other."

Afuni, the calm, laid-back inverse to Kiesza's intense focus, developed the singer through his Lokal Legend imprint under Island Records, where he also is an A&R rep. They used the free rein that Island gave them to create "Hideaway," its video (personally funded by Afuni for around $4,000) and July's Hideaway EP, which featured a melancholy piano-ballad take on Haddaway's 1993 house anthem "What Is Love."

"There was this tiny revival of house music happening in the U.K.," says Afuni. "We were like, ‘Why don't we put a face behind it?'"

Island president David Massey witnessed the same potential: "I already see her as the first artist to emerge from the area that touches on dance, a bit like back in the day in Madonna. She's emerging as a fully formed artist. I think the world was ready for her."

Kiesza Stuns With Perform...an': Watch

And she's making it look effortless. When Kiesza filmed the highly choreographed video for "Hideaway," she danced through the pain of an undiagnosed hairline fracture in her rib, a determination she traces back to her childhood. Raised in Calgary, Alberta, she managed to get A's and B's in spite of a lifelong struggle with dyslexia. Even today, she keeps saying "Charlie Blossom" when trying to recall The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, with whom she recently collaborated. "This is how my dyslexic brain works," she explains. "But it actually makes you more creative, apparently. I found out Einstein and da Vinci were dyslexic and was like, ‘Awesome!' There's just so much going on in my mind that I have to get out. If I don't, I won't sleep."

That relentless drive to create led her to end the relationship that inspired Sound of a Woman. Though she's mum about the details of who and when, she does admit that music got in the way. "I'd be selfish to be with a person when I'm so focused on something else; I didn't want to torture them. The person I'm with has to be as important as everything else I do, or else it's not fair to them. When I meet that person, I'll know, because I'll have that same passion for them."

After finishing her salmon and signing some posters for fan giveaways, Kiesza, who now lives in New York, walks over to a nearby dance studio, where she'll spend the next six hours tirelessly practicing moves for the video for her U.K. single, "No Escapesz." In addition to upcoming gigs on Good Morning America and Conan, she's already thinking about her sophomore album, writing songs for it during a recent tour stop in Italy. All she needs now is a second relationship to inspire her, just like on Woman. "I got a whole album out of it!" she says. "I'll get into another crazy situation and rant again: 'I have to end this because my album is done.' "

Jimmy Page Talks New Music, Led Zeppelin's Future & Why He Has No Interest Being in a 'Tribute Band'

By Richard Smirke | October 17, 2014 1:25 PM EDT

Ross Halfin/© Genesis Publications 2014

In his 70 years, it's fair to say that Jimmy Page has seen and experienced more than most. A hell of a lot more. Nevertheless, even he fails to hide the look of astonishment and boyish wonder that lights up his face upon exploring the Gothic splendor of "The Tudor Room" at London's The Gore hotel, located mere yards from The Royal Albert Hall.

"Oh, wow! You have to come and see this," exclaims the soft-spoken guitarist from behind the wood paneled door of a hidden annex room, which turns out to be a luxuriously opulent bathroom. "Now I've been in there I don't mind it being cold. That has warmed me up," he continues as he take in seat in the (admittedly) chilly main room, adorned with a Portland stone fireplace, oak four-poster bed and 15th Century Minstrels' Gallery.

Led Zeppelin Shares Rare, Alternate Version of 'Rock and Roll'

It's a suitably stately and atmospheric setting to interview a member of British rock royalty about his self-titled autobiography, the first ever book by a member of Led Zeppelin. "It's a very honest book," says Page of the personally curated 500-page photographic account of his life, published this month by Genesis Publications.

This is an impressive location for an interview. Didn't you once own a bookshop around the corner from here?

I did. In Holland Street, just off Kensington High Street. It was in the 1970s. I had it for a few years and I published a few books as well, although not [ones] written by me. The idea was to set it up as a bookshop and then in the old tradition of book shops to be a publisher as well. It was one of these things that was a great idea, but people didn't necessarily have a lot of money in those days for books on yoga and Eastern mysticism. [Laughs]

Led Zeppelin Shares Rare Alternate Version of 'The Rain Song'

A limited edition, deluxe version of your autobiography was first released in 2010. What made you want to revisit and re-release the book now?

The other book is astonishing. It's an incredible work of art, but pre-publication, it had already sold out. The amount of work that I had put into it, I had always hoped that we could do an edition that was more user friendly, more available and more affordable. We've also added in some extra material, one being Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Awards and meeting President Obama. And also me receiving a Berklee College Honorary Doctorate, which was earlier this year, so that brings it right up to date.

Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Pa...e of Music

What about a photographic journey through your life appealed to you, as opposed to a written autobiography?

I thought it was really the right thing to do. I knew nobody else had done it, so that was really appealing. It's a whole career in front of you in photographic images. It's a snapshot of the time and of the situations and the characters involved, [as well as] the attitude that you have when you are photographed -- the melancholy that's there, or the joy, or the positive assault that you are doing through the lenses. It's all totally upfront. It's a very honest book. Where I thought it might need a little footnote to make sense of it all, I added one, because not many [people] really know all the history of all of this.

The book opens with the great story of how you got your first guitar, when your family moved to Epsom, Surrey, and you discovered that one had been left in the house by the previous occupants.

It's a weird story, but I love the romantic imagery of it -- that's there is a guitar there and that's the sculptural object in the house. Then bit-by-bit you get to have a connection with it and actually tune it and start to play it. I don't know what happened to it. The first guitar that's shown in the book is a guitar that my mum and dad bought me. That was the only one because my dad said, 'You're on your own after this.' But it made me really want to work for what I did.

Do you ever think about how your life might have been different if that abandoned guitar had not have been left in your house?

I don't know what might have become of me. It's more of a question of would I have been a guitarist or not? It's that intervention. Because the guitar had all the strings on it, and that's the really weird part. You sometimes see guitars [abandoned] if they are broken. Anyway, it's something that I can ponder and wonder about, but be very grateful for.

Led Zeppelin Reissuing 2 More Albums This Fall

What are some of your favorite photos in the book?

The opening one of me as a choirboy one is pretty good. And then there is the last picture [a present day shot of Page holding a guitar]. I put the choirboy picture in there with my tongue in my cheek. You know how all those black soul singers say, 'Well, you know it all started in church, man.' I thought, 'Okay, well here we are: A white Anglo Saxon protestant in church.'

How did you feel when compiling the book and looking back over your life?

It is a privilege to be able to do because it's the sort of thing that somebody would probably do after you were dead. I would rather do it while I was still alive because at least I know what the proper journey of it all was. One of the things that became quite apparent doing all of this was just how some of the Led Zeppelin stories and the history had distorted over the years and just absolutely wasn't accurate.

Such as?

The reality of [Led Zeppelin] is that it came out of the ashes of the Yardbirds disbanding [in 1968]. I knew I wanted to form my own band at that point and what material I wanted to do. And from the point of having no band at all -- no Yardbirds, no nothing -- to actually going [forward] with determination and getting in touch with Robert [Plant] and going through the whole game plan with him. Because if he hadn't got it, I would have been looking for somebody else. But it came together relatively quickly. The Yardbirds break up in July. I'm probably doing this in August. John Bonham and John Paul Jones come in at the last minute, so the group suddenly solidifies pretty quickly. From that point we go to my house to rehearse. All of this sort of stuff people don't really know. Not just the fact that we rehearsed in my house, but that we played some dates in September in Scandinavia [as the New Yardbirds] to really get used to all this material. We then go in and do the album in October, and by the end of the following January, we have broken America. It's a handful of months and that's what is so astonishing out of all of it.

Led Zeppelin Aims to Send 'Stairway to Heaven' Lawsuit to Hell

You mention going through the game plan for Led Zeppelin with Robert Plant soon after meeting him. You obviously had a concrete idea of what you wanted to achieve with the band before the individual parts were in place.

Yes. If you look at the whole blueprint for it -- you make sure you get right the decisions on who is going to be in it. You don't try them out and then see if somebody doesn't look right and get rid of them. No. You get a firm commitment from everybody and then you do some concerts beforehand so you are limbered up enough to be able to do the album. And it was an independent album, too. It wasn't funded by a record company. It's the same blueprint for now. But now it takes so damn long. In those days you could be really speedy and efficient.

How important was it to Led Zeppelin's long term career that the first album was independently funded, rather than by a record label?

The thing about giving it [ready-made] to the record company was that you could make certain stipulations and say, 'We don't want to get to caught up in the singles market.' And the [response] would be, 'Why not?' 'Well, we're not going to. That's why.' Because that way we didn't have to keep referring back. We could just keep the music going on and on and on without having a point of reference, which would be a single for the next album.

Robert Plant on What Insp...d Zeppelin

Looking through your autobiography, you were astonishingly productive from the early 1960s, when you were an in-demand session musician, right through to the end of Led Zeppelin in 1980. With the benefit of hindsight, do you feel that your prodigious work rate throughout this period impacted on your creativity in the years that followed?

After we lost John Bonham, it wasn't a question of being burned out. I was just absolutely gutted. I had lost a great friend and a musician the likes of which don't come along all the time. He had established his identity on the very first track of Led Zeppelin I. He did that roll on the bass drum with one foot and it just changed drumming overnight. Me and him really understood what we were doing with Led Zeppelin and we just worked so well together. [His death] was a tragic loss all around -- obviously for his family, but for the world of music in general because he was just phenomenal. So, yeah, I wasn't feeling that good when we lost John. But then things started to come along. It's not in the book, but I did some work with two guys from Yes [Chris Squire and Alan White] and that was really interesting. It was a good workout for me.

In recent years, you have devoted your energies to overseeing the remastering and reissue of Led Zeppelin's nine studio albums, the first five of which were released this year. How important are those releases in maintaining and building on the band's legacy?

Very important. Absolutely. Because there had been a certain amount of live material out, including The O2 concert album Celebration Day, we felt it was important to have the re-address the balance of the studio material and give [the fans] all this extra information. I never under-estimate the fan base and how many are out there, and I know what they want. The only conflict was when to put them out. So the [remastered albums] are coming out in measured periods over the next year or so. And then there is still other stuff to come from me.

Led Zeppelin Drops Unreleased 'Black Dog' Take From 'IV' Reissue

What can you reveal about your own solo material or live plans?

Only so much because I'm not working with other musicians yet, but I am currently playing the guitar at home. If you spoke to me a year ago, I just wouldn't have had time. I would have been listening to hundreds of hours of Led Zeppelin material [for the deluxe reissue campaign], but now that I have stockpiled all this material for scheduled releases, it gives me a chance to focus on my own music and then get the musicians in. My master plan is to be playing live next year. I haven't got another 20-30 years left in me, so I really need to get out there and present myself the way that I like to present myself and to be seen and be heard.

Can you elaborate on what form this music might take?

Clearly, I will do music that's reflective of this book and that covers all of the Led Zeppelin releases. But I have new music and I want to present new music. It wouldn't really be me if I didn't have music that was in various genres and moods, but there will be some surprises to go along with that. That's the idea. I can't say what that is because I haven't had the chance to really work on it. But given the momentum of working and knowing that I'm going to be doing concerts, I'm getting ready to start putting all the pieces into play.

Led Zeppelin Makes Fashion Statement With Paul Smith Scarf Range

Presumably you going back on the road negates the already slim prospect of there ever being any more Led Zeppelin live shows?

Out of all the years from 1980, let's say there was one serious concert [the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at The O2, London], as opposed to doing just a few guest numbers, and that's seven years ago now. Certainly, from the point of view of Jason [Bonham], myself and John Paul Jones, there was a real will to actually work at it, but there was only one concert. I thought there was going to be more. It was intimated that there was going to be more. And quite clearly, seven years later, there is not going to be any more because obviously you need the will of all people involved. However, I guarantee that I will play Led Zeppelin music because I'm really proud of the music that I did and the instrumental side of it -- things like "Black Mountain Side," "White Summer" and "Dazed and Confused," which only has two verses when you play as an instrumental -- you can take into another sort of feel. So I would do all that stuff, but I would do it well. I wouldn't go out and make it look like a tribute band.

Images courtesy of Genesis Publications 2014.

An edited version of this story originally appeared in the Oct. 25 issue of Billboard.

Interview: Tinashe On Blowing Up And Being Compared To Beyoncé

By Matthew Trammell

photographer John Francis Peters

Tinashe's runaway success seems like a no-brainer. A pretty face and a cute voice that bounces around a beat from the summer's hottest producer—girls scream, guys sweat, wash, rinse, repeat. It's the oldest trick in pop's playbook, and it's worked: starting with her breakout hit, "2 On," the 21-year-old has emerged as a critical darling and prominent force on pop radio. But in conversation, Tinashe comes off as complex as the deeper cuts on her debut album Aquarius—she's polished without question, but also unafraid to offer an idea that may strike a bit left of center. She spoke to The FADER about blowing up, taking control, and the pressures of putting on a show.

It's kind of sexy right now to bash major labels and say, "Oh, I do everything myself." You've released music on your own, but you benefitted tremendously from a major label breaking your record. Yeah, I have the inside scoop on both sides. Record labels—it can go one of two ways: It can be a really positive thing for you, or it can be a really negative thing, because you are contractually obligated to them and there's a lot of people with their own opinions. If they aren't aligned with your opinions, then there’s a lot of tension. So I can understand why they can have a very bad reputation. The key for me was just to get a record label that already believed in what I was doing and respected me enough, as an artist, that they wanted to know my perspective, as opposed to telling me what to do. Record labels are definitely a huge asset, You just have to make the right decision when you do sign that record label, not just sign with the first person who gives you a check.

You'd turned deals down? Yeah, I wasn't thirsty for a deal because I had already been signed to a major when I was in a girl group. I was doing the solo thing, and I did love the independence of just being able to drop stuff whenever I wanted. Like you said, it's kind of sexy to be independent. So I wasn't keen to get rid of that. But when I connected with RCA and they showed a really, really, really genuine understanding and belief in me, I was like, OK this could be something.

What was starting Aquarius like? I still remember the first session was with T-Minus. It was the end of 2012. I knew I was working on it because they were putting me into the big studios and with big producers, right off the bat. That was a big shift from what I was used to, because I was creating all of my music on my own, in my room. It took me a good eight months to get comfortable with working with other creative people. Also, it took a little bit for other producers to get to know who I was and where I was coming from. They didn't know I had a perspective—especially when you're a new artist, and young, and they have hits, it's like, “Why should I listen to you? I know what to do, you don't know what to do.”

Did you still do some of this album on your own, in your room? Yeah. "Aquarius," "Bet," and "Cold Sweat" were completely recorded at my home studio, and a lot of parts of tracks were recorded there, too. I just wanted to stay true to what I had created.

The New York Times ran a glowing review of your album that said you and Beyoncé are pretty much the only female voices in a male-dominated era of R&B. That's really bugged because R&B has traditionally been the main outlet for female voices in urban music. Why do you think it’s different now? I think more recently, they honed in on this idea that there can only be, like, one, or two female artists. Which really doesn't make sense to me because there's a million male artists that look the same, sound the same, make the same music, and nobody cares about that. But you can't be a fan of Tinashe and Beyoncé, you can't be a fan of Rihanna and Tinashe, you have to pick one or the other. Like, why can't you just be a fan of both?

The navy, the hives… Yeah, exactly. It's very segregated and I don't know what that's about, but hopefully that will change.

In your episode of At Home With, you talked about living with your family. You still live at home with them? That keeps me so grounded. Even though I can tell my life has really changed, I don't feel like it's really changed. I feel like it's just all the same stuff but it's a lot more going on. It's always nice because when you travel so much and then to come back and feel like you're at home and have people around you that you love. It's nice. So I'm not in a rush to leave. Especially because I'm so busy, why pay for an apartment I'm not even at?

Your dad is an immigrant from Zimbabwe, and I know the children of immigrants often feel torn between two worlds. No, I think it helped me. The fact that he started from nothing and then was able to make something of his life, it gave my parents the attitude that life is short, let's just go. Let's support her, let's see what can happen. Let's move to LA. Let's drop everything and leave all our family behind because if you don't try, who knows? If you don't take that leap of faith, then you never know [what] your life could become. I highly doubt when he was a kid that he thought that his life would turn out the way that it has.

Do your younger siblings know what's going on? Oh yeah. My brother wore a Tinashe T-shirt to school today. He gets to play songs during the lunch hour and he said he's going to play my whole album. They are so supportive.

If you're Tinashe's little brother and you DJ at lunch, you've got to be the man in the hallways. Yeah, he's on homecoming court this year and everything. He's living this year, it's his senior year. I like being able to be in their lives. And that's an awesome thing that I've been able to do, to be around for so much of their teenage years. I could have moved out of the house at 18, but I'm really close with them.

Did you feel any pressure, like your family was banking on your career? The only time I ever felt pressure was when like when my family was really struggling financially, like really struggling financially because we lived in LA, and they were there because of me. I was just like, I want to help, but I'm not bringing any money to the table right now, because I'm in grind mode, you know? But I never felt pressure from them to be successful. They never put that on me, or never made me feel any type of way about it at all.

That comes across on your album. You sing about feeling weighed down. Yeah, "Cold Sweat" touches on pressures in the industry. Now I feel more pressure than ever before—well, not now because the albums out, but when I was making the album. It's just to be successful, and you don't know what that is, so that's a really hard goal to chase because there is no defining moment where it's like, "Oh, you did this. You're a success." You know?

And the reward for that success is more work. Higher goals, higher stakes. It just continues and it continues. I don't really know what success will necessarily mean for me, but I still just want to be successful.

Photo by Scott Perry

What I like a lot about you is that you're still regular. [Laughs] Not jaded by the industry.

In your lane, everything is extra glam, extra performance. That's the job of a pop star, to present this show and be that glam girl. How is it balancing that? There's always elements of putting on a performance and putting on a show. You have to step up to that. But people have connected with me because I haven’t tried to seem too clean cut and polished. There's something to be said for being like a real person. I've always connected to artists whose music is coming from a legitimate place.

Who are some of those artists that you've felt that about? It's why I connect so much to indie/alternative music. I can feel that the writing was coming from a real place, like Bon Iver and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs as opposed to like the super label-made contrived stuff. That's why I want to be able to have a balance.

Have you written or produced anything for other artists, or is that something that you’d like to do? Not consciously for other artists. I've got so many songs now that I don't want that I would not be opposed to giving to other artists. I'd like to do that in the future, but I've just been so focused on this album and this music, that all 200 songs that I wrote over the course of the last few years were initially intended for me.

I'd heard a story about a song that you had done with Detail that ended up on J.Lo's album. How’d that play out? Yeah, “I Luh Ya Papi.” That was interesting because we had the song, we recorded it, and Detail played it for J. Lo. It wasn’t “Papi” at first, it was “I Luh You Nigga.” [laughs] Like, I luh ya luh ya luh ya nigga. They switched the swag up a little bit. I had the whole song, it was intended for the album and everything. And then Detail was in a session with J. Lo and he played her the track because you know these producers sometimes, they’re like, “Yo, lemme play you my hot shit!” I guess she obviously really liked it, and she cut her version, and one day Detail calls me and is like “B-T-dubs, J. Lo is singing that song.” I didn’t believe it at first, I thought he was just not trying to give it to me for some reason. I was like, “J. Lo does not want that song, she’s not gonna sing that.” And then it came out. I guess she wanted it. I wasn’t tripping on it too much. I really roll with the punches. A lot of things happen for a reason. Timing always is perfect, even when you don’t think it is. I clearly wasn’t meant to have that song. Who knows, “2 On” might not have existed if I did the other song.