NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2017

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Members of U2 perform during their world tour celebrating the 30-year anniversary of their ‘Joshua Tree’ album in Van-couver, British Columbia. (AP)

This cover image released by Woods Music/Thirty Tigers shows ‘Straw in the Wind,’ a release by The Steel Woods. (AP)

This image released by New West Records shows ‘Kids in the Street,’ a new release by Justin Townes Earl.

(AP)

LOS ANGELES: Beyonce and Jay Z have celebrated the impending birth of their twins with a star-studded baby shower

A picture posted on the singer’s Insta-gram account Sunday shows Beyonce and highlighting her pregnancy with an intricate design painted on her belly. A note on the photos show “The Carter Push Party” took place on Saturday. Jay Z’s real name is Shawn Carter.

Beyonce’s mother, Tina Lawson, shared photos and videos from the party on Insta-gram. (AP)

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NEW YORK: A teen Instagram dancing sensation has gone from online to on-air af-ter Katy Perry invited him to show off his moves during her “Saturday Night Live” performance this weekend.

Fifteen-year-old Russell Horning took the “SNL” stage during Perry’s perfor-mance of her new single “Swish Swish.” He wore his trademark backpack and did his signature move of quickly swaying his hands around his waist. (AP)

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LOS ANGELES: Elton John told an audience at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday that the MTV generation had pro-moted many musicians who didn’t deserve the attention, but he also paid tribute to the positive role that music videos have played in the music business.

John, who was on-stage with his long-term song-writing partner Bernie Taupin, said: “We were before the MTV generation and I’m glad we were because we were real artists. The MTV generation brought along a lot of people who were great but a lot of people who just made videos. So a lot of

Variety

the artistry went out of the music.” (RTRS)❑ ❑ ❑

LOS ANGELES: Litigation is piling up like bonfi re kindling against organizers of the Fyre Festival that fl amed out in a fi asco.

Angry participants had lashed out on social media with the hashtag #fyrefraud as the mu-sic festival fell apart on an island in the Baha-

mas in April and fraud is the fi rst claim in a $100 million class-action suit.

The suit amended earlier this month in federal court on behalf of a Los Angeles man said the events planned over two weekends were “nothing more than a get-rich-quick scam.” (AP)

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ALBUQUERQUE, NM: A private jet once owned by Elvis Presley and featured on the National Geographic Channel is set to be auctioned after sitting on a runway in New Mexico for 30 years.

The red 1962 Lockheed Jetstar, one of many owned by the King of rock ‘n’ roll, has no engines and needs a restora-tion of its cockpit. But Elvis designed the interior that has red velvet seats and red shag carpet. The plane had been a source of mystery in Roswell, New Mexico where it has sat largely untouched and tucked away at a small airport’s tarmac. (AP)

Styles album tops chart

Psy shelves Gangnamand returns to his rootsSEOUL, May 23, (Agencies): South Korean rap-per Psy has gone back to basics with his eighth full-length album, paying greater attention to his home fans while doing what he loves most — “go-ing crazy” on stage.

The “Gangnam Style” star said he had moved on from the success of the 2012 smash hit that sent him fl ying to the top of music charts around the world and shaped him into the internationally rec-ognised artist he is today.

“’Gangnam Style’ gave me fame while as a creator, some rough times, but I’m not one to lin-ger in the past and make two, three, four versions

of (Gangnam Style) because I’m hung up on its fame,” Psy told Reuters.

“It was probably the big-gest trophy the world could have given me. It’s now something on the shelf I can admire from time to time.”

His voice hoarse from per-forming for days on end at universities, Psy, 39, or Park Jai-sang, said he had forgot-ten his roots with the popu-larity of “Gangnam Style”,

which holds the world record for most watched video with 2.8 billion views on YouTube as of May 22.

He currently has more than 10 million subscrib-ers on his offi cial YouTube channel, a record for a non-group individual in Asia.

Excitement“It was like an addiction,” said Psy. “Like when

you throw a party, it takes some time for that ex-citement to die down after it’s over. I think it took a while for that exhilaration to subside. Now I’m back to my normal life.”

Then where are Psy’s roots? Performing on stage, he said. All his appearances are linked to the latest album, “4x2=8”, with singles “I LUV IT” and “New Face” carrying that message.

Psy, who made his debut in 2001, wants to stay on stage for as long as he can, but his biggest dream is to retire just before people start telling him he’s washed up.

“I think the pain from being called that would be far greater than not being able to be on stage,” Psy said.

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One Direction singer Harry Styles cemented his transition into a solo career with a chart-top-ping debut album on Monday, the second member of the band to top the chart.

Styles’ self-titled effort sold 193,000 albums, 100,000 songs and was streamed 39 million times in its fi rst week, totaling 230,000 album units ac-cording to fi gures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Styles, 23, is the second member of the British boy band to score a No. 1 solo album after Zayn Malik’s “Mind of Mine” debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart last year.

After Malik left One Direction in 2015, the band went on hiatus and three of its members released solo music.

Styles outpaced country group Zac Brown Band’s latest album “Welcome Home,” which de-buted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart this week with 146,000 album units.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one al-bum) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

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L.A. Reid is no longer with Sony’s Epic Re-cords, but DJ Khaled believes the former chair-man will bounce back in no time.

“L.A. Reid, he a legend. I’m sure he got some amazing things about to happen. You know noth-ing but love for L.A. Reid,” said DJ Khaled at Sunday’s Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas.

Sony Music Entertainment released a seven-word statement last weekend announcing the exit: “L.A. Reid will be leaving the company.” The la-bel had no additional comment.

“Good friend of mine,” added DJ Khaled. “He’s amazing. He’s the Berry Gordy of our time. L.A. Reid is amazing. That’s my thoughts. He’s an amazing person and he’s a great executive, a great music mogul and he’s a great friend.”

Khaled, who was nominated for top rap album for “Major Key,” said he will continue to “be great” in the wake of Reid’s departure. Reid was instrumental in DJ Khaled breakout musical success.

“I mean, at the end of the day it’s you know, L.A. expects me to be great, you know what I’m saying? And I’m going to continue being great and he going to be proud of me. And that is that.”

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As a preview of both his new album — “Is This the Life We Really Want?,” due June 2 on Co-lumbia Records — and an upcoming, large scale tour promoted by AEG Live’s Concerts West divi-sion — “Us + Them,” which launches May 26 in Kansas City — Roger Waters held an elaborate late-afternoon dress rehearsal at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey on Sunday.

The event, ostensibly for “friends and family” (and what Waters teased was “friends and fami-lies of those families, then some more friends and families of those friends and families, and so on”), saw the 73-year-old in good physical shape but a bit of a hoarse voice as he led a nine-piece back-ing group with backing singers — some so new he forgot their names, but including longtime Beck drummer Joey Waronker — through a power-ful 23-song set list. Included was the live debut of four songs from the new album — “Deja Vu,” “The Last Refugee,” “Picture That” and “Smell the Roses” — while the rest were from his classic Pink Floyd songbook.

The newer songs — the acoustic “Deja Vu,” reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, the harshly rocking “Picture That” — fi t into Waters’ larger Pink Floyd oeuvre with ease, as did the look of the show.

Psy

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Beyonce John

Woods honor southern rock tradition

‘Tree’ tour timely 30 yrs laterBy Sandy Cohen

U2 still has as much to say about America as when they made

“The Joshua Tree” 30 years ago.On “The Joshua Tree” tour, they’re

delivering the message sonically and visually, backed by a stadium-wide high-resolution video screen.

Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. wrapped the fi rst week of their North American and European tour Sunday with a two-hour show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. They played their Grammy-winning album in its entirety in front of a packed house that included Maria Shriver, Josh Brolin and Quincy Jones.

Bono sang a few bars from the “La La Land” song “City of Stars,” gave a shout-out to his wife and daughters, and dedicated a song to the late Chris Cornell.

U2 knows how to put on an arena spectacular, and “The Joshua Tree” de-livers — with a heavy dose of politics. “The Joshua Tree” was already politi-cal, inspired by the band’s fascination with American ideals and ironies. At Sunday’s show, they bookended the

album with socially conscious songs such as “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and 2012’s “Miss Syria (Sarajevo),” during which images of war-raved Syria fi lled the massive screen.

An animated, anti-Donald Trump video also played.

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The Steel Woods, “Straw in the Wind” (Woods Music/Thirty Tigers)

Fame Studios producer Rick Hall maintains that southern rock was born the day Duane Allman goaded Wilson Pickett into covering the Bea-tles’ “Hey Jude.” Allman proceeded to tear down Hall’s Muscle Shoals, Alabama studio with a series of gui-tar fi lls that spawned a half-century of imitators.

Over time that sound made its way from the Allman Brothers and other pioneers to Nashville’s country scene, where its sway remains obvi-ous today.

Into this landscape come the Steel Woods, a Nashville band that bills itself as a hybrid of styles, from Americana to bluegrass to rhythm and blues. (AP)

Music

Immortal diva

Soares vows tosing until ‘end’NEW YORK, May 23, (AFP): The emaciated teenager from a Rio favela, dressed in her mother’s clothes held tight by pins, showed up in 1953 at a radio studio. She wanted to sing in return for cash to buy medicine for her sick baby.

“And what planet do you come from?” the program’s host, fa-mous composer Ary Barroso, asked mockingly to the audience’s laughter.

“From Planet Hunger,” the teen-ager, Elza Soares, replied, bringing silence to the crowd.

Minutes lat-er, after hearing Soares sing, the astonished con-ductor declared the birth of a star.

“I haven’t forgotten that exchange. I can’t forget it,” Soares, now 79, told AFP.

“I felt sad. I was a poor girl who was poorly dressed. I just sang well,” said Soares, her voice hollow after a life full of pain as well as success.

Soares spoke by telephone be-fore singing Friday in New York at Town Hall as part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival.

The show was based on “A Mul-her do Fim Do Mondo” (“A Woman from the End of the World”), her Latin Grammy-winning 2015 album with previously unreleased tracks that offers a futuristic, even gothic, take on her samba with art-rock backdrops and electronic effects.

PerformedDressed in black with a blonde

afro that has made some call her the Brazilian Tina Turner, Soares performed sitting, as she has for some time.

But she still managed to rouse the audience out of its seats as she reached into her voice’s gutteral depths on classics such as “Ma-landro” (“Hustler”) and “A Carne” (“Meat”).

“Black! Black! Black!” she screamed at the end, to which an audience member shouted back, “Wonderful black!”

The show culminated in calls by audience members for the im-peachment of Brazil’s center-right President Michel Temer in his cor-ruption scandal.

After the curtains closed, Soares shouted: “Direct, already!” back-ing calls for direct elections in a country whose previous president Dilma Rousseff was impeached.

After New York, Soares will perform in Barcelona, Porto and Rotterdam as well as at Denmark’s Roskilde rock festival.

Tragedy has repeatedly hit Soares, but her resilience has only added to making her a cult heroine.

Her father forced her to marry at age 12 and a year later she gave birth to a son. She would go on to have seven children with her fi rst husband, although the fi rst two, premature and malnourished, died when they were young.

Soares, who has admitted to stealing food for her family, was already a widow at 21.

She found love with football legend Garrincha, the king of the dribble nicknamed the “bent-leg-ged angel.”

Their relationship was stormy and at times violent. But Soares de-scribed him as “my greatest love.”

Her favorite memory of him? “Watching him play football. For me, he was Brazil’s greatest play-er. The greatest.”

They were married for 17 years, but Garrincha — who showed such joy on the football fi eld and helped lead Brazil to its triumphs at the 1958 and 1962 World Cups — was an alcoholic who died at age 49 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Also:MIAMI: More than 20 years after the “Macarena” sensation, a Spanish-language song has again conquered the US singles chart — Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito.”

The song has soared to the top of the charts through an assist by pop celebrity Justin Bieber, who appears on a remix version with a breathy opening verse in English.

“Despacito,” which also features the Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee, is a pop track driven by a reggaeton beat. The lyrics to the song, whose title means “slowly,” are full of sexual innuendos.

“Despacito” on Monday came in at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart of top-selling US singles, the second straight week it has tak-en the highest spot.

The song cruised to number one on the back of dominance in streaming and digital downloads, although it fared less well in air-play on US radio stations.

Nearly three-quarters of sales or streams of the song were for the re-mix with Bieber, tracking service Nielsen Music said.

Soares

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