NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2016

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Performance row

Tensions festeras five join HallNEW YORK, April 8, (AFP): Five acts ranging from gangsta rap pio-neers N.W.A. to hard rockers Deep Purple will enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but not everyone wants to celebrate together.

The shrine to rock history will also induct radio-friendly rockers Cheap Trick and Chicago and ex-perimental bluesman Steve Miller at a gala evening concert at the Bar-

clays Center in Brooklyn.

While many artists see the induction as career affirma-tion, the 2016 crop will fea-ture notable absences — Deep Purple’s defining gui-tarist Ritchie Blackmore and

former Chicago frontman Peter Ce-tera, who have both moved on from their original bands.

Fans will be watching closely to see whether N.W.A. returns with Dr Dre, who went on to become a multimillionaire executive at Apple and did not show up for a one-off reunion show last year in Los An-geles.

Ice Cube, another of N.W.A’s original members, said on the eve of the ceremony that “everybody’s going to be there” — but that the rappers would not perform.

He voiced appreciation for the recognition but criticized organiz-ers over the logistics for the event, which will be taped for later broad-cast on HBO.

“I guess we really didn’t feel like we were supported enough to do the best show we could put on,” he told The New York Times.

N.W.A. is only the sixth rap act to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is based in Cleveland. Music experts vote on candidates — eligible 25 years after their first release — for induction.

HarassmentThe group, raised in the rough

Los Angeles area of Compton, shocked much of white America with their in-your-face accounts of street life and police harassment.

N.W.A. won the nod on its fourth nomination shortly after the release of a hit Hollywood biopic on the group, “Straight Outta Compton.”

Deep Purple — the last in a trio of British hard-rock forebearers, alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, to enter the Hall of Fame — is responsible for one of rock’s most famous song openings with Blackmore’s heavy but bluesy riff on “Smoke on the Water.”

Fans’ hopes for a reunion with Blackmore, who left the band in 1993 to pursue folk and other mu-sical projects, were short-lived. Blackmore said he was told by the current Deep Purple that he was un-welcome.

Deep Purple’s singer Ian Gillan gave a more detailed explanation, saying that the Hall of Fame cita-tion did not include two relatively new band members and that it would be unfair to exclude them from the performance, although all members were welcome to attend the ceremony.

Chicago, who adapted the jazz heritage of the band’s namesake city to become soft rock chart-top-pers, had earlier indicated that the group would perform for the first time since 1985 with Cetera, who went on to a successful solo career.

But Cetera later said that he had failed to reach an agreement with Hall of Fame organizers on a re-union song.

“Personally, I’m frustrated and tired of dealing with this and it’s time to move on,” he said in an open letter, asking that his award be sent to him.

RockersIn sharp contrast to Deep Purple

and Chicago, US heartland rock-ers Cheap Trick will appear with estranged veteran drummer Bun E Carlos.

“We are so excited. It’s an hon-or and we’re not bitching about it one bit like everybody else does,” Cheap Trick frontman Robin Zan-der said of the Hall of Fame induc-tion in an interview with radio host Howard Stern.

Cheap Trick, hailing from the blue-collar city of Rockford, Illi-nois, rose to fame through constant touring around the Midwest and eventually packed arenas — nota-bly developing a strong fan base in Japan — with guitar-driven an-thems such as “Surrender.”

Carlos filed a lawsuit after the group removed him from touring in 2010. While the case was resolved, he does not appear on the band’s 17th studio album released earlier this month.

Steve Miller entered the cultural mix of San Francisco in the 1960s and brought together blues, jazz and American roots music, winning commercial success with the 1973 song “The Joker.”

Dr Dre

American Idol Season 15 winner Trent Harmon (also inset), performs coronation song onstage during FOX’s ‘American Idol’ Finale For The Farewell Season at Dolby Theatre on April 7, in Hollywood, California. (AFP)

Fans pose in front of Hogwarts castle at the Grand Opening of the ‘Wizard-ing World of Harry Potter’ to the pub-lic at Universal Studios Hollywood, in Universal City, California on April 7. Fifteen years after Harry Potter’s first big screen adventure, Universal is en-chanting a new generation of Muggles with its most spectacular conjuring trick yet — a theme park in the heart of Hol-

lywood. (AFP)

Music

Music

tion committee. He praises Morrison as “our nation’s conscience” and calls “Be-loved” and other Morrison novels works of “astonishing power and beauty.”

The MacDowell Colony’s mission is to nurture the arts by offering talented artists an inspiring environment in which they can produce enduring works of the imagi-nation. The colony will present Morrison her award on Aug 14.

Previous winners include Robert Frost,

Aaron Copeland and Georgia O’Keeffe. (AP)

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NEW YORK: Will Alexander, one of the country’s most imaginative and unpre-dictable poets, has won the 10th annual $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Poets & Writers, a nonprofit literary resource that presents the Jackson award, told The Associated Press on Thursday

that Alexander is being honored for “his peerless inventiveness over the last three decades.” His nearly 30 books include “Compression and Purity” and “Towards the Primeval Lightning Field.” His works also include plays, novels and essays.

According to Poets & Writers, the Jack-son prize is given “to an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recog-nition.” Previous winners include Claudia Rankine and X.J. Kennedy. (AP)Simon Morrison

NEW YORK: Paul Simon, the folk star turned world music champion, plans a range of further experimentation including a collaboration with a flamenco band on his new album.

“Stranger to Stranger” is the 74-year-old’s first album since 2011’s “So Beautiful Or So What” which had partially returned to the acoustic guitar style that made him famous as part of Simon and Garfunkel.

Simon on Thursday announced the latest album, which will come out on June 3, and released a first track, “Wristband” an upbeat, ironic tale about an overzealous bouncer.

The song starts with a jazzy string bass before bringing in a flamenco rhythm sec-tion and a subtle electronic backdrop.

Simon said “Wristband” was one of four songs which he recorded with a flamenco band.

He also worked with Clap! Clap!, an underground Italian DJ also known as Digi G’alessio who infuses club tracks with tra-ditional dance music from southern Africa.

“It’s about getting you to actually hear something in a new way. It’s about making music that sounds old and new at the same time; music with a sense of mystery,” Simon said in a statement on the new album.

On “Stranger to Stranger” Simon also looked to the 20th century music theorist Harry Partch who designed his own instruments with microtonal scales — meaning with smaller intervals than those usually used in Western music.

Working with longtime producer Roy Halee, Simon went to the late Partch’s laboratory at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Simon recorded sounds from some of Partch’s instruments such as cloud cham-ber bowls, which consist of suspended large glass containers, and the chromelo-deon, a uniquely tuned keyboard.

Simon and Garfunkel were one of the signature acts of the 1960s, starting off with clean-cut folk songs before delving into fusion. The duo produced hits such as “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Mrs. Robinson.”

As a solo artist, Simon put out hits such as “Me and Julio Down by the School-yard” and “You Can Call Me Al.” (AFP)

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NEW YORK: Nobel laureate Toni Morri-son has won a lifetime achievement honor presented by the MacDowell artist colony.

The Peterborough, New Hampshire-based MacDowell Colony announced Thursday the 85-year-old Morrison is the 57th recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal.

Author Dave Eggers chaired the selec-

Variety

Harmon shines as show ends remarkable run

‘Idol’ crowns 15th and final winnerLOS ANGELES, April 8, (AP): The first “American Idol” finale in 2002 was a battle of the sexes, with Kelly Clarkson the victor over Justin Gua-rini. The last contest settled the score as Trent Harmon defeated La’Porsha Renae for the crown.

Harmon tumbled to the stage in surprise as host Ryan Seacrest an-nounced him as the 15th and final winner of “American Idol,” which ended its remarkable run Thursday.

“I know that I have a God-given ability, but I didn’t want to take it for granted. I wanted to work so hard, and she pushed me to do it,” a tearful Harmon said of Renae, who stood poised and smiling by his side.

Harmon, 24, who described him-self as just a “dude from Missis-sippi,” waited tables at his family’s restaurant in Amory before trying out for “American Idol.”

He won viewers over with his supple vocals and increasingly as-sured stage presence, and they voted him into history as the show’s last champion. Harmon earned a record contract along with the honor.

Renae, 22, also from Mississippi, the town of McComb, is a single mom who inspired viewers with her triumph over domestic abuse as well as a richly powerful voice.

“American Idol,” once a ratings powerhouse that influenced TV and music, had suffered steady audience erosion before Fox decided it would end this season.

Series executive producer Nigel Lythgoe promised the finale would celebrate its large ranks of con-testants, not big-name guests as in previous years, and he stuck to that pledge.

The show opened with a harmo-nizing chorus of white-clad winners and contenders including Scotty McCreery, Taylor Hicks and Diana DeGarmo.

FacesOther familiar faces from years

past popped up in solos and group numbers, including Carrie Un-derwood, Jennifer Hudson, David Cook, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard, Jordin Sparks and Kimberley Locke.

Judges got in on the act as well. Keith Urban and Underwood du-eted, while Harry Connick Jr saluted a music center in New Orleans’ Ka-trina battered-Ninth Ward by invit-ing a young student, Marley Fletch-er, to join him on “It’s a Wonderful World.” Jennifer Lopez performed her new single.

Clarkson, who’s expecting her second child soon, appeared in a pre-taped performance.

There was a brief nod to nostal-gia, with clips from past auditions

‘I wanted to say it loud’

Harper back with band, takes on police killingsPARIS, April 8, (AFP): As he worked on his new album, the blues rocker Ben Harper looked on with horror at the killings of young African Ameri-cans and knew he had to put their plight into song.

“I have to write about what moves me the deepest or what’s knocking the loudest. I wanted to say it loud,” said Harper, whose 13th studio al-bum, “Call It What It Is,” comes out Friday.

“There was Trayvon Martin, Ezell Ford, Michael Brown,” he said, re-ferring to unarmed African Ameri-cans who have been shot dead, with Brown’s 2014 killing by police in Fer-guson, Missouri setting off mass pro-tests.

“By the time it got to Michael Brown, it was my tipping point. My back was against the wall,” Harper told AFP on a recent visit to Paris.

Harper on the album’s bluesy title track concludes with the line, “Call it what it is — murder.”

Activism is not new for Harper, whose early successes included the 1994 song “Like a King” about Rod-ney King, the African American mo-torist whose filmed beating by white Los Angeles police set off riots after the officers were acquitted.

Harper noted that the latest killings took place under Barack Obama, the first US president who is African American, and said that race was in-adequately discussed in the United

States.“I do think possibly having a black

president, it made it a lot better. He’s such a symbol around the world, a cultural symbol,” he said.

“But I also think that it stirred things up from the bottom. There’s been too many situations now to not look at race, culture and politics holistically and question, why now?

“People are so used to pressing the delete button and making things go away quickly that they think that culturally the same thing will happen, but there is no cultural delete button, right?”

Besides his return to activism, “Call It What It Is” marks Harper’s reunion with his old band, the Inno-cent Criminals, for the first time in eight years.

“You have to know in your life when it’s time to make the right moves, you hope. It had been too long. All roads led back to my original band,” he said.

Harper has stepped up collabo-rations in recent years, forming the rock group Relentless7 and the more folksy Fistful of Mercy. He has also recorded with the blues harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and his own mother Ellen, who runs the Folk Music Center in Claremont, Califor-nia.

“The way our voices sound togeth-er is like I could never sound like that with anyone else ‘cause it’s my mom.

“Same with the Innocent Criminals,

I’ve been with them in the 90s, 2000s and 2010s. We’ve known each other so long that there is a sort of genetic encoding,” he said.

On the new album, the band re-vives its blues rock with Harper tak-ing the lead on slide guitar. Harper and the Innocent Criminals go to a more rugged sound on “When Was Dirty” and bring in reggae elements on “Finding Our Way” while also pro-ducing powerful ballads “Deeper and Deeper,” “All That Has Grown” and “Goodbye to You.”

But not all of the album is stern, with the chorus of “Pink Balloon” in-spired by his daughters.

The reunited band plans an ex-tensive tour for “Call It Like It Is,” with dates until the end of the year throughout North America and Eu-rope as well as dates in Australia and New Zealand and Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival.

At 46, Harper said he no longer felt obliged to write one song each day as was long his habit. But he said he cannot imagine spending a day with-out creating music.

He wrote “Call It Like It Is” quickly but said that he is content simply to jot down a few lines before the end of a day.

“When I wake up in the morning, I pick up a slide guitar. That’s the first thing: coffee and slide guitar,” he said.

“I don’t force a song a day, I let it come.”

presided over by original judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson. Abdul and Jackson showed up to salute Seacrest for his longevity, with Cowell stroll-ing on stage belatedly to steal the spotlight.

“I’m feeling quite emotional now,” said the usually acerbic Cowell.

President Barack Obama was the unexpected opening act. In appar-ently pre-taped remarks, Obama con-gratulated the show on its long run and noted that it motivated millions of young people to vote for contes-tants.

Then he made a pitch for Ameri-cans to demonstrate that same eager-ness at the polls, calling voting the most fundamental and sacred rite of democracy. “I believe it should be al-most as easy as voting on ‘American Idol.’ And we’re working on that,” Obama said.

“American Idol” debuted in June 2002, during the summer broad-cast doldrums, an indication that Fox didn’t have high hopes for the imported singing contest based on

producer Simon Fuller’s hit British series, “Pop Idol.”

But the show proved a revelation. Viewers ate up the contestants’ per-formances and personalities, good, bad or downright ridiculous. They relished the bickering of Cowell and Abdul and, from Jackson, the reassuring familiarity of the trade-mark “Dawg” that prefaced his cri-tiques.

With Fox carefully protecting “American Idol” as a once-a-year event, the show’s ratings zoomed and its influence did as well.

While America has long em-braced the idea that everyone is a potential star — that means you — “American Idol” coined an up-dated version of the dream. Its na-tionwide tryouts opened the door to people in big cities and small towns and made the shot at fame and success democratic by letting fans weigh in.

Fox’s competitors responded. The networks that were increasingly fa-voring reality shows over scripted dramas began searching for their

own talent show hits, spawning ev-erything from skating to dance con-tests.

Some remain, such as ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and NBC’s “The Voice,” which over-took the aging “American Idol” in the ratings.

No other TV talent show has achieved the same track record of fame for contestants, although the power of an “Idol” win ebbed in re-cent years. But dreamers didn’t let go, with about 75,000 people swarm-ing to auditions in five cities this sea-son.

The show’s ratings slumped, the fate of even durable TV performers. “Idol,” which averaged more than 30 million weekly viewers at its 2006 peak and ranked No. 1 for nine con-secutive years, averaged about 11 million last season (still enough by today’s standards to land it in the top 20, but with fewer advertiser-favored younger viewers).

It’s pulled about the same viewer-ship this year, despite its well-publi-cized farewell season.