They brought the new wine but not the vintage: In a set mostly culled from music between 2007’s In Rainbows and this year’s The King of Limbs, the enigmatic band from Oxford brought its signature sound to a rainy, muddy festival on Friday. The Guardian was neither shaken nor stirred.
In its first Glasto appearance, U2 turned in a “a lean, combative, frontloaded set calibrated to win the unconverted,” reports The Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey.
Clarence Clemons, the saxophone player whose burly, distinctive sound became the indelibly soulful anchor of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, died on Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla., of complications from a stroke. Clemons, whom Springsteen introduced to one and all as “the Big Man,” was a friend of the Boss for 40 years; their tandem was one of the most enduring and recognizable unions in modern music. He was 69. He will be irreplaceable.
”"Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band."
For a 12-day period in June, Los Angeles will be the site of an unlikely perfect theatrical storm, one that will bring new and vastly different theater festivals with outsize aspirations to the city in what Reed Johnson of the Los Angeles Times says is “one of the largest, most varied concentrations of live performances in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival.” See Stage
Photo: Michael Premo via redcat.org; from "The Word Begins."
For The Stranger’s Brendan Kiley, the demise of the Intiman Theatre is a cautionary tale of how feckless, inexperienced arts boards; a shortage of funding for the arts; and a climate of mistrust can have the worst of results despite the best of intentions.
In something of a coming-back party, Weezy turned in a fierce, combustible set this morning, re-establishing his bona fides as a king of the game and gaining serious cred with the Bonnaroo crowd. James Montgomery of MTV News reports. See Music
The soundtrack of the deadly, pivotal protests in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia is often a hip-hop thing. From the beginning of the uprisings in the Arab spring, the work of hip-hop artists and a global presence via YouTube have been catalysts for change. Ann Powers of NPR surveys five of the best videos from the region. Here’s one of them:
Aroused by the chaos and change of the Egyptian revolution, Bassem Youssef made mock Arabic newscasts of the event for YouTube, a tribute to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. The result? A production deal with Egypt's ONTV, 88,000 Facebook likes and 4 million YouTube uploads. Not bad for a civic-minded surgeon. Watch Television
After a yearlong wait, rock’s Irish kings brought the mammoth 360 Degree Tour to Qwest Field on Saturday night. Bono, his swagger intact after recovering from a bout with a bad back, paced the band through old favorites and even arranged a surprise from outer space. Lenny Kravitz opened with a blistering set of originals and covers. Gene Stout of seattlepi was a witness.
UK: Music with a British accent: It’s shaken and stirred us for generations, and this summer we’ll hear the sound of the future, again, at festivals from Hop Farm to Glastonbury, from Download to the Isle of Wight. The Guardian breaks it down Seattle: Bumbershoot 2011 lineup announced: The Kills, Das Racist and Broken Social Scene will vie with Leon Russell, Mavis Staples and ... Hall & Oates (?!?) at the newly reconfigured festival, whose full cast of characters this year points to a WTF factor that’s becoming a Bumbershoot tradition. The Root surveys African American arts and music festivals across the United States
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