Fallingwater is a house in rural southwestern Pennsylvania designed in 1935 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Although it is not easy to get to, Fallingwater is a must-see, and not just for architecture buffs. VOA’s Masha Morton takes us on a tour.
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Academy Award-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle reunites with his original Trainspotting cast twenty years later to make a sequel that deals with aging, accountability, friendship and, once again, betrayal. Trainspotting 2 becomes a worthy companion to the original, as VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports.
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Academy award-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle reunites with his original Trainspotting cast 20 years later to make a sequel that deals with aging, accountability, friendship and once again, betrayal.
Those who saw the original film remember four friends in their twenties. They are up to no good, living on the fringes, immersed in drug culture and pulling a heist. Their exuberant youth and reckless lifestyle captured the popular culture of the 90s.
Trainspotting became a cult movie and few could believe that a sequel could measure up. Yet, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting 2 becomes a worthy companion to the original.
As in all Danny Boyle films, Trainspotting 2 takes us on a wild ride from its first frame. The camera focuses on treadmills at a gym and on a seemingly fit Mark Renton, running on one full speed when suddenly he falls off with a bang. He’s just had a heart attack. With this jolting introduction, Boyle reunites the cast from the original Trainspotting, which became a cult film in the 90s.
In this sequel, 20 years have gone by since Renton betrayed his gang after their heist in London, running away with the money. Now Renton, a broken man with a broken marriage, returns from Amsterdam to Scotland and to his ‘frenemies,’ seeking redemption. “He’s had a heart attack and he’s come back. These are the only people that really know him that he knows. And I suppose it’s a midlife crisis of sorts or a life crisis of sorts,” says Ewan McGregor, who played Mark Renton in 1996 and rose to stardom when the original Trainspotting became such a hit. The movie was a landmark in the lives of each of the cast members, but also for the filmmaker who — despite his wide-ranging success — reserves a special spot in his heart for this film.
In a way, Trainspotting 2 is Danny Boyle’s return to a familial place dealing with his own existential crisis. The filmmaker tells VOA he didn’t want to make just another sequel. He wanted a companion piece reflecting on the life of these aging men, who failed to amount to much in life and stubbornly cling to a youth that is not there.
“I think we were all conscious returning to it. How much a huge part it played in our individual careers. It gave us a life into the world which was surprising! We set the film to resemble the first film, everybody was paid the same, there wasn’t huge amounts of money, we didn’t treat it as a cash cow, we were not cashing in on our successful original, and we also wanted to surprise people with what the film has to say,” says the Oscar-winning filmmaker.
The reunion is dramatic. Simon, played by Jonny Lee Miller, schemes revenge, and Begbie, the most feral of them all, played by Robert Carlyle, recently escaped from prison and has vowed to kill Mark Renton. But the most redeeming character is Spud, played by Ewen Bremner. The hopeless addict, stuck in an endless loop of addiction and rehab, attempts suicide but is saved by Mark Renton.
“There are scenes in it which we benefited from addicts who told us that ‘you can’t really eradicate addiction,’ what they do in modern treatment is replace it with another obsession, an alternative obsession which is often sports. But in Spud’s case, it’s actually this writing and it was certainly true in Irvine Welsh’s case, the original writer. So, the film becomes ironically full of hope by the end,” says Boyle.
Spud goes on to write the original story of Trainspotting. Boyle says he wants to create this loop between the two films, showing that despite our aging process, our outlook to life is not linear. Like any other Danny Boyle film, Trainspotting 2 offers exuberant music, electrifying visuals, brutal scenes and yet its success lies in the honesty and tenderness with which the filmmaker and screenwriter John Hodge treat the aging characters.
“If you’re gonna do a sequel, a 20 years later sequel, the actors are not going to be able to hide from that. You’re gonna feel it in every frame of the film. It’s gonna be the protein of the film. And so, it’s a more confessional film, although there is a lot of the film that enjoys some of the pleasures that you get from the first film,” says Boyle.
Whether it appeals to the nostalgia of the older fans or the fast sensibilities of younger ones, Trainspotting 2 is slated to be another Danny Boyle success.
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Think your home furnishings are a dust magnet? New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine just spent 16 years cleaning and conserving its rare, supersize wall hangings.
Now the historic house of worship is inviting the public to enjoy the fruits of its labor – “The Barberini Tapestries, Scenes from the Life of Christ,” which once graced the Vatican and European palaces. They were designed by baroque master Giovanni Francesco Romanelli; created by weavers for Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, from 1644 to 1656; and donated to the cathedral in 1891, a year before its cornerstone was laid.
Centuries ago, tapestries were appreciated not only for their beauty but also for being a warm buffer against chilly palace walls.
These days, they’re kept well-groomed by experts at the Gothic cathedral’s textile conservation laboratory – a labor-intensive process using dental probes, tweezers and a HEPA vacuum with microsuction attachments.
There’s also a special “bathtub” – measuring 20 by 16 feet (6 by 4.9 meters).
In addition to removing the standard dust and dirt, the massive undertaking included work on tapestries that suffered smoke and water damage during a 2001 fire.
Ten tapestries, their images woven with wool and silk yarn in rich earth tones, deep blue, green and russet, are displayed around the cathedral, with a focal point at the Chapels of the Seven Tongues, which honor immigrant populations. They’re accompanied by fragments from a severely fire-damaged tapestry of “The Last Supper,” as well as before-and-after photos from the blaze.
The works, hung with hand-sewn fabric fastener, are 15 feet (4.7 meters) high and up to 19 feet (5.8 meters) wide.
There’s plenty of room, though. The Episcopal cathedral in upper Manhattan is larger than France’s Chartres and Notre Dame cathedrals combined.
Rare books, period objects and computer kiosks provide context on the “cultural, dynastic, political and religious worlds of the Barberini family,” organizers say.
The exhibit, which also will offer educational activities, runs through June 25. The suggested admission contribution is $10.
The tapestries and artifacts will travel to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene, Oregon, in the fall.
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Bob Dylan’s new album “Triplicate” explores American standards from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, but the veteran singer-songwriter says that does not mean he is yearning for the past.
Dylan also is unconcerned whether his fans like the album — the third in as many years that features cover versions of classic songs like “Stormy Weather,” “As Time Goes By” and “Stardust.”
“These songs are some of the most heartbreaking stuff ever put on record and I wanted to do them justice. Now that I have lived them and lived through them, I understand them better,” Dylan, 75, told music writer Bill Flanagan in a rare interview.
“It’s not taking a trip down memory lane or longing or yearning for the good old days or fond memories of what’s no more,” he added in the lengthy Q&A, posted on the bobdylan.com website on Wednesday.
The three-disc album “Triplicate” will be released on March 31. It follows 2015’s “Shadows in the Night” album of Frank Sinatra covers and 2016’s similar “Fallen Angels” in marking a strong contrast from the early, socially conscious folk and rock compositions for which Dylan remains most famous.
Songs ‘for man on the street’
Asked what his fans might think of the cover albums, Dylan said: “These songs are meant for the man on the street, the common man, the everyday person. Maybe that is a Bob Dylan fan, maybe not, I don’t know.”
In the wide-ranging interview, Dylan also touched on his admiration for the late Amy Winehouse, calling her “the last real individualist around”; his and George Harrison’s abortive bid years ago to record with Elvis Presley (“he [Elvis] did show up; it was us that didn’t”); and the power of early rock ‘n’ roll music, (“Rock ‘n’ roll was a dangerous weapon, chrome-plated, it exploded like the speed of light, it reflected the times, and especially the presence of the atomic bomb, which had preceded it by several years.”)
Cohen, Russell, Haggard missed
Dylan also spoke of the loss of fellow musicians like Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell and Merle Haggard, all of whom died last year.
“We were like brothers, we lived on the same street and they all left empty spaces where they used to stand. It’s lonesome without them,” he said.
No mention was made of Dylan’s Nobel Prize for literature, and his nonattendance at the annual Nobel award ceremony in Sweden. Dylan is due to perform in Sweden next week as part of a European tour.
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A major World War II museum opened in northern Poland on Thursday amid plans by the conservative government to change its content to fit the government’s nationalist views.
The Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk is at the center of a standoff between the historians creating it and Poland’s populist government, which is seeking a court order to have it closed and then wants to reshape its current multi-national focus.
The museum was initiated in 2008 by then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk. But the current Law and Justice government, hostile to Tusk, wants to merge it with another museum and make it highlight Poland’s military effort in fighting the German Nazis and the nation’s own tragedy that, they believe, is not well enough known in the world.
Court to decide dispute
The dispute between the museum and the government is to be decided by a court in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the government has cut the museum’s annual subsidy from the requested 20 million zlotys ($5 million) to 11.5 million zlotys ($2.9 million), director Pawel Machcewicz said.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, he said the huge exhibition places Poland’s war experience at the center of Europe’s and the world’s war history. It says out of some 5.5 million Poles killed in the war, over 5 million were civilians.
War veterans get first look
He invited Culture Minister Piotr Glinski to visit the museum, saying “let’s hope he will see for himself that it shows Poland’s history in the right way, that it fully explains Poland’s history to foreigners.”
War veterans, relatives of the fighters and schoolchildren were the museum’s first visitors.
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We’re unlocking the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending March 25, 2017.
The hit list continues to be in a generous mood, bestowing upon us another new song. It happens in fifth place where Ri-Ri is a chart-buster all around.
Number 5: Rihanna “Love On The Brain”
Rihanna jumps a slot this week, as “Love On The Brain” becomes her 22nd Top Five hit. Beyond that, it’s her 30th Top 10 single, and her 40th Top 20 hit.
All these achievements put Rihanna among the highest-powered chart artists of all time. In fact, only four acts own more Top Five hits than Rihanna. The Beatles lead the way with 29; Madonna has 28; Mariah Carey has 26; and Janet Jackson has 24.
Number 4: Zayn & Taylor Swift “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”
Zayn and Taylor Swift step back a slot to number four with their Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack hit “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.”
Zayn just did an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine, in which he talks about developing an eating disorder and struggling with anxiety. Both stemmed from that he said was an overly-controlled atmosphere while he was a member of One Direction – and he says he overcame both conditions after leaving the group in 2015.
Number 3: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like ”
Bruno Mars rises a slot to third place with “That’s What I Like” – this is his eighth single to reach the Top Three.
Mars’ real name is Peter Hernandez – he says his father bestowed the nickname “Bruno” upon him because he was a chunky little boy who reminded his dad of the pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino. He says he picked the “Mars” name himself, to add a little pizzazz.
Number 2: Migos Featuring Lil Uzi Vert “Bad And Boujee”
Migos and Lil Uzi Vert stay strong in second place with their former champ “Bad And Boujee,” and these Georgia rappers have been making noise in Texas.
Migos went to Austin for the huge South By Southwest (SXSW) event and packed the house: fans began lining up more than three hours before the show, and the line eventually wrapped around three city blocks.
Number 1: Ed Sheeran “Shape Of You”
Fans also continue flocking to Ed Sheeran, who rules the Hot 100 for a seventh total week with “Shape Of You.” Sheeran’s hitting the road here in North America, and he just announced his support act.
He took to Twitter on March 20 to reveal that James Blunt will be the supporting act when he kicks off his North American tour on June 29.
In case your memory needs refreshing, Blunt topped charts the world over in 2005 with “You’re Beautiful” – including here in the United States.
What happens next week? Let’s meet in seven days and find out.
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Film legend Greta Garbo’s former longtime apartment in New York City is up for sale for nearly $6 million.
The New York Times reports that the Swedish-born star’s seven-room Manhattan co-op overlooking the East River is on the market for $5.95 million, with monthly maintenance of nearly $9,100.
The co-op is located on the fifth floor of the 14-story Campanile building, located on East 52nd Street. Garbo lived there from 1954 until her death in 1990 at age 84.
The apartment is being sold by the family of Gray Reisfield, Garbo’s niece and sole heir to the actress’s estate. Reisfield and her husband occupied the co-op from around 1992 to 2013 before relocating to San Francisco.
Garbo was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1920s and ’30s.
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Worldwide movie ticket sales increased by 1 percent to a record $38.6 billion in 2016 as theaters in the United States and Canada rung up higher sales and overseas returns were flat, according to industry statistics released on Wednesday.
Movie theaters have been competing with an explosion of digital entertainment options such Netflix’s streaming service, Alphabet’s YouTube, and mobile apps and video games.
In 2016, films including Walt Disney’s “Finding Dory” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” helped lift box office revenue at U.S. and Canadian theaters by 2 percent to $11.4 billion, the Motion Picture Association of America said.
In international markets, ticket sales finished the year nearly unchanged from 2015 at $27.2 billion. After years of booming growth in China, box office revenue in that country dropped 1 percent in U.S. dollars.
China is the world’s second-largest film market behind the United States and Canada. In the United States, the average movie ticket price increased by 3 percent in 2016 to $8.65.
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It was 50 years ago today — almost — that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.
The English city of Liverpool is getting set to celebrate the half-centenary of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” one of the most influential albums by local heroes The Beatles.
The city announced Wednesday that it has commissioned 13 artists to create works based on the album’s 13 tracks. They include choreographer Mark Morris’ dance tribute to the title song, cabaret artist Meow Meow’s “outlandish procession” based on “Lovely Rita” and a mural by U.S. artist Judy Chicago inspired by “Fixing a Hole.”
There will also be a singalong by 64 choirs of the jaunty “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
The works will have their world premieres at venues across Liverpool between May 25 and June 16. On June 1 — the anniversary of the album’s release — the city will host a fireworks extravaganza by French pyrotechnic artist Christophe Berthonneau.
Tired of touring
By the second half of the 1960s, The Beatles had tired of touring. They played their last live concert in August 1966 and devoted their energies and creativity to the studio. “Sgt. Pepper” was recorded at London’s Abbey Road studios over five month in late 1966 and early 1967, and released on June 1, 1967.
Incorporating technological innovation and diverse musical influences — including Indian classical, English music hall and trippy psychedelia — it topped the charts in Britain and the U.S. and was instantly hailed as a rock ’n’ roll landmark.
‘“Sgt. Pepper’ pushed creative boundaries and we want to do exactly the same,” said Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson. “This is a festival which brings high-end art into the mainstream and gives it a Liverpool twist which is thought-provoking, sometimes cheeky and always entertaining.”
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A travel company is offering a chance for well heeled travelers to dive the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
Beginning in May of next year, Blue Marble Private says it will offer a chance for nine travelers to dive some 4,000 meters below the surface of the ocean to see the famous wreck.
According to the company’s website, customers will dive “in a specially designed titanium and carbon fiber submersible, guided by a crew of experts.”
“You will glide over the ship’s deck and famous grand staircase capturing a view that very few have seen, or ever will,” the company added.
Tourists will also “explore Titanic’s massive debris field, home to numerous artifacts strewn across the ocean floor, nearly undisturbed for over a century,” according to Blue Marble Private founder Elizabeth Ellis.
According to CNN, the first trip is already sold out. The price for the eight-day adventure? $105,129 per person, which is about double the price charged by Deep Ocean Expeditions charged when it brought tourists to the wreck in 2012.
Time to visit the famous wreck may be running out.
CNN reported that a 2016 study said “extremophile bacteria” will likely dissolve what’s left of the ill-fated ship within 15 to 20 years.
In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while making its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. On board were 2,224 passengers, more than 1,500 of whom died as the ship quickly sunk.
The wreckage was first discovered 32 years ago.
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An Australian couple with roots in Alaska has bought more than two dozen radio stations in three states, marking the first time federal regulators have allowed full foreign ownership of U.S. radio stations.
The Federal Communications Commission recently approved a request by Richard and Sharon Burns through their company Frontier Media to increase their interest in 29 radio stations in Alaska, Texas and Arkansas from 20 percent to 100 percent.
The agency long took what some viewed as a hard line in limiting foreign ownership under a 1930s law that harkened to war-time propaganda fears. But in 2013, it acknowledged a willingness to ease up after broadcasters complained the rules were too restrictive of outside investment.
The Burnses are citizens of Australia but have lived and worked in the U.S. since 2006, on special visas offered for Australians.
A family who owned six of the Alaska stations provided the opportunity that brought the couple to the U.S. The family wanted someone with international experience to operate the stations and help move the company forward, Richard Burns said. The stations in the Lower 48 were purchased later.
The Burnses’ request to acquire full ownership was unopposed. The acquisition includes AM and FM stations and relay stations known as translators that help provide reception.
Richard Burns said he and his wife consider Alaska home and are pursuing U.S. citizenship.
“Our life is here in Juneau, Alaska, every single day,” said Burns, who serves on the board of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce and in 2010 was named its citizen of the year.
Sharon Burns co-hosts a morning show on a Juneau country station the couple owns, and does on-air work for two of their other stations in southeast Alaska and one in Texas, her husband said. Richard Burn is the stations’ CEO and a host on their Juneau classic hits station.
The federal law restricting foreign ownership dates to the 1930s and initially was seen as a way to thwart the airing of foreign propaganda during wartime, according to the FCC. It restricts to 25 percent foreign ownership or voting interests in a company that holds a broadcast license when the commission finds that limit is in the public interest.
In 2013, in response to broadcasters, interest groups and others who considered the commission’s application of the law too rigid, the FCC clarified it has the authority to review on a case-by-case basis requests exceeding that threshold, and it is open to doing so.
The commission last year adopted rules for publicly traded companies following a case involving Pandora Media and questions about its level of foreign ownership as it pursued acquisition of a South Dakota radio station. Then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the case underscored the need for more clarity for broadcasters and investors in the review process.
It’s unclear how many other foreign citizens have a stake in U.S. radio stations. The FCC said it does not keep a comprehensive accounting because stations generally don’t have to disclose smaller or nonvoting interest holders.
Lisa Scanlan, deputy chief of the FCC’s audio division, said that as part of its public interest analysis, the commission consults with executive branch agencies that do independent reviews on issues including trade and foreign policy, national security and law enforcement.
Jessica Gonzalez is deputy director and senior counsel for the group Free Press, which has concerns about media consolidation. She said she’s not opposed to the Burnses’ case. But she said the larger the company, the more skeptical she becomes.
“I’m not fond at all of the idea of giant foreign companies or giant domestic companies buying up a bunch of radio stations,” she said. “It’s problematic.”
She said an owner’s nationality doesn’t make a difference to her. “It’s just a matter of whether or not they are actually going to serve their community,” she said.
Richard Burns agreed. He said it’s critical for radio station owners to be invested in the communities they serve.
He cited his wife, who does her show from Texas when she’s there. Around Christmas last year, Sharon Burns delivered cookies to and spent time with first responders.
“If you’re a good radio operator, I don’t think it matters if you’re foreign or not, as long as you engage in the community and you understand it,” he said.
Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and that infamous factory of cheese, The Gong Show, died at 87.
Barris died of natural causes Tuesday afternoon at his home in Palisades, New York, according to publicist Paul Shefrin, who announced the death on behalf of Barris’ family.
Barris made game show history right off the bat, in 1966, with The Dating Game, hosted by Jim Lange. The gimmick: a young female questions three males, hidden from her view, to determine which would be the best date. Sometimes the process was switched, with a male questioning three females. But in all cases the questions were designed by the show’s writers to elicit sexy answers.
Future celebrities
Celebrities and future celebrities who appeared as contestants included Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Martin and a pre-Charlie’s Angels Farrah Fawcett, introduced as “an accomplished artist and sculptress” with a dream to open her own gallery.
After the show became a hit on both daytime and nighttime TV, the Barris machine accelerated. New products included The Newlywed Game, The Parent Game, The Family Game and even The Game Game.
At one point Barris was supplying the television networks with 27 hours of entertainment a week, mostly in five-days-a-week daytime game shows.
The grinning, curly-haired Barris became a familiar face as creator and host of The Gong Show, which aired from 1976 to 1980.
Patterned after the Major Bowes Amateur Hour show that was a radio hit in the 1930s, the program featured performers who had peculiar talents and, often, no talent at all. When the latter appeared on the show, Barris would strike an oversize gong, the show’s equivalent of vaudeville’s hook. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris, with a hat often yanked down over his eyes and ears, and a crew of second-tier celebrities.
Occasionally, someone would actually launch a successful career through the show. One example was the late country musician BoxCar Willie, who was a 1977 Gong Show winner.
Known as
He called himself “The King of Daytime Television,” but to critics he was “The King of Schlock” or “The Baron of Bad Taste.”
As The Gong Show and Barris’ other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and decided to go into films.
He directed and starred in The Gong Show, a thundering failure that stayed in theaters only a week.
Afterward, a distraught Barris checked into a New York hotel and wrote his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in two months. In it, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin.
The book (and the 2002 film based on it, directed by George Clooney) were widely dismissed by disbelievers who said the creator of some of television’s most lowbrow game shows had allowed his imagination to run wild when he claimed to have spent his spare time traveling the world, quietly rubbing out enemies of the United States.
“It sounds like he has been standing too close to the gong all those years,” quipped CIA spokesman Tom Crispell. “Chuck Barris has never been employed by the CIA and the allegation that he was a hired assassin is absurd,” Crispell added.
Barris, who offered no corroboration of his claims, was unmoved.
“Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledge someone was an assassin?” he once asked.
Wrote a book
Seeking escape from the Hollywood rat race, he moved to a villa in the south of France in the 1980s with his girlfriend and future second wife, Robin Altman, and made only infrequent returns to his old haunts over the next two decades.
Back in the news in 2002 to help publicize “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” Barris said his shows were a forerunner to today’s popular reality TV series.
Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Charles Barris was left destitute, along with his sister and their mother, when his dentist father died of a stroke.
After graduating from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1953, he took a series of jobs, including book salesman and fight promoter.
After being dropped from a low-level job at NBC, he found work at ABC, where he persuaded his bosses to let him open a Hollywood office, from which he launched his game-show empire. He also had success in the music world. He wrote the 1962 hit record Palisades Park, which was recorded by Freddy Cannon.
Barris’ first marriage, to Lynn Levy, ended in divorce. Their daughter, Della, died of a drug overdose in 1998. He married his third wife, Mary, in 2000.
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Paul McCartney’s “Flowers in the Dirt” box is as much an archeology project as a reissue, in which listeners can discover the bones of a landmark album that could have been made but wasn’t.
Two of the reissue’s three audio discs are devoted to McCartney’s songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello in 1987 and 1988, which produced some 15 songs. Listening to the work, some of it first made available this week, it’s hard not to wonder why they didn’t make a duet album like Costello later did with Burt Bacharach. Instead, they decided not to alter their original plan.
The mythical disc could have started with “My Brave Face” and “Veronica,” two of each man’s biggest hits of the 1980s. And that was only the beginning.
“Looking back, you could say that,” McCartney told The Associated Press. “If we’d just done a few more of these demos, we could have made a crazy album. But we didn’t. That was as far as we got.”
McCartney initiated the partnership at the suggestion of his manager. The former Beatle was looking for varied sounds, styles and producers as he began work on a new album. McCartney and Costello worked for a few weeks in a room above McCartney’s studio in Sussex, England, where they’d write a song a day and immediately go downstairs to record it, sitting with acoustic guitars and singing together.
“There were many echoes, working with Elvis and working with John [Lennon], because I know Elvis is a big Beatles fan,” McCartney said. “He was a John fan, he wears glasses, he plays guitar right-handed.”
They’re all from Liverpool, too. McCartney worked with Costello as he did with Lennon, two men with acoustic guitars sitting across from one another. With McCartney left-handed, it felt to him like looking into a mirror.
“I think the key was not to turn up in short trousers with my Fan Club card sticking out of my top pocket,” Costello said. “I’d been asked to write songs in 1987, knowing what I know, having done what I’d done for that whole 10 years, which seemed like a long time then. Paul knows what he’s done and he knows I love him.
“That said, you’re bound to look up sometimes and think, ‘Bloody hell, it’s him!’,” he said.
In this week’s reissue, one disc contains nine of those 15 songs, recorded the day they were written. Another disc features the same songs produced by the two men later with a band added, primarily sung by McCartney since it was his album, after all.
To a certain extent, something is lost in translation.
Take the song “Tommy’s Coming Home,” for instance. Inspired fun with McCartney and Costello singing together, the tempo slows and the song drags in the full band version.
“I didn’t realize until looking back later that these demos had a special groove and a freshness and, I think on a few of the recorded versions, we lost some of that freshness,” McCartney said. “It gives an idea of the spontaneity of the writing. There’s a time that you regret that we didn’t just say, ‘This is it, this is good enough.’ Often when you don’t think you’re making the final record, you’re a bit looser … I think some of those performances are better than the ones on the record.”
The two-man recordings “have a lot of charm and a good deal of cheek,” Costello said. “You can almost hear us laughing at loud at what I call, ‘the Mersey cadences.’ It’s in the blood. It’s in the water. It’s in him and it’s got to come out.”
Since both are strong-willed men used to being in charge of their music, you’d have to wonder whether the easy creativity of the songwriting sessions would have lasted through the grunt work of making polished recordings. The two dismiss the suggestion that there would have been trouble, or that they would have needed another producer to referee. Costello said it wouldn’t have been as much fun as producing it themselves.
The songs they wrote were dispersed between the two men, or left on the shelf. Four were included on “Flowers in the Dirt,” including the stately “That Day is Done” and the call-and-response “You Want Her Too.” Costello later recorded “So Like Candy” and “Pads, Paws & Claws.” Some demos creeped out through the years.
“My Brave Face” could have been as big as anything he and Lennon had written, McCartney said. His pride in some of the songs he had written without Costello is one reason “Flowers in the Dirt” took shape the way it did. But you can hear another reason between the lines listening to him talk. Perhaps he didn’t want to pull Costello into the weight of comparisons that he felt for all of his post-Beatles career.
“Because John and I had such a successful collaboration and all the work we did was when we were young, often your first output like that can be your best,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it worries me, or I wouldn’t continue to write. But I do get the feeling that it would have been very hard to come up to the standards of the ones I wrote with John, like ‘It’s Getting Better’ or ‘She’s Leaving Home.”’
Costello, for his part, doesn’t look back with regret at the album that never was. He points to McCartney’s reissue.
“You could say, ‘this is it,”’ he said. “There’s a whole disc of me and Paul singing together. What can you say about that?”
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A barber-turned-rapper has been crowned the winner of an Afghan talent show that offered its audience some relief from daily stories of insurgents and suicide bombs.
Sayed Jamal Mubarez, from Afghanistan’s long-marginalized Hazara ethnic minority, won viewers over with lyrics capturing both the hope and despair of young people living through a war against Taliban militants now in its sixteenth year.
Afghan Star, modeled on singing contests popular across the world, is in its 12th season on Afghanistan’s biggest private television network, Tolo.
This year’s edition stood out after a woman — 18-year old singer Zulala Hashimi from the deeply conservative east of the country — reached the final for the first time, defying widespread attitudes against female performers.
But Mubarez emerged the winner later on Tuesday, looking every bit the budding rapper with his tilted red baseball cap and razor-trimmed beard.
“I am so happy. … I would have been happy if Zulala had won it because in Afghanistan women are living in a restricted situation,” the 23-year old said after accepting his award at a television studio housed behind wire-topped blast walls in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave.
The sole breadwinner at his home in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Mubarez said he discovered rap in Iran and spits lyrics while cutting hair.
The contest has been held inside a fortified compound for the last two series after the Taliban last year killed seven Tolo employees in a suicide attack on a staff minibus.
Newer musicians can struggle to make it big in Afghanistan, where the Taliban once banned music and many disapprove of Western-style popular culture, and artists often seek the safety and freedom of a life abroad.
Mubarez told Reuters he intends to turn professional if he can find financial support, and would otherwise return to his barber shop while rapping on the side.
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The friendly Labrador retriever has retained its long-held title as the most popular dog breed in the United States, while the fearless Rottweiler has climbed to its highest ranking in 20 years.
The nation’s most sought after dogs of 2016 were unveiled in New York City on Tuesday by the American Kennel Club, a purebred dog registry that releases a list of top dog breeds each year.
Labs have held their slot as the most popular breed for each of the past 26 years, making them the longest-reigning leader of the pack.
“Labs, they’re just great with people. They’re great with everyone,” said Theresa Viesto, who breeds Labs in Newtown, Connecticut, and is registered with the club. “You never hear about a Lab getting into a dogfight.”
Viesto and her 4-year-old yellow Lab, Reggie, attended the news conference alongside a roomful of stretching, scratching and wrestling dogs and puppies representing the top 10 breeds.
Placing second, third and fourth were the German shepherd, golden retriever and bulldog, respectively. Beagles were fifth most popular, while French bulldogs placed sixth. The top six breeds remained the same as in 2015.
Poodles were seventh and Rottweilers eighth, each jumping one spot higher than the last lineup. Yorkshire terriers dropped two spots to place ninth and boxers held firm in the 10th spot.
While the most popular list is generally a reshuffling of longtime top breeds, Rottweilers have seen a resurgence in popularity recently after falling out of favor in the late 1990s, said Gina DiNardo, AKC vice president.
It was not clear why Rottweilers were making a comeback — the last time the breed placed at its current level was in 1997 — but a strong economy generally prompts people to seek bigger and costlier dogs, including Rottweilers, DiNardo said.
Rottweiler owner Alexandra Niles, from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, said it was the breed’s devoted nature that won her heart. “They’ll pretty much do anything for you,” said Niles, with her hefty 4-year-old Rottweiler, Talos, sprawled out on the floor next to her.
“He never leaves my side,” Niles said about her companion, adding that he enjoys swimming and “doesn’t mind” being dressed up in costumes.
The American Kennel Club maintains the country’s largest registry of purebred dogs. Once a breed is added to the list of some 200 breeds and varietals currently recognized by the club, it is eligible to compete in the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Westminster has never selected a Labrador retriever as winner in the show’s 141-year history. “Hopefully, someday they will be,” DiNardo said.
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Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department apologized on Tuesday for briefly detaining Grammy-winning hip hop artist Wyclef Jean in handcuffs during a robbery investigation, after Jean said he was “treated like a criminal” by law enforcement officers.
The sheriff’s department released a statement describing its investigation in the early hours of Monday morning into a violent robbery in West Hollywood, a trendy municipality neighboring Los Angeles, and apologized “for any inconvenience this process caused Mr. Jean.”
“It is unfortunate that Mr. Jean was detained for six minutes during this investigation, as he had no involvement whatsoever in this violent crime,” the sheriff’s department said.
Representatives for Jean did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The sheriff’s department said the suspects allegedly attacked and held up a man and a woman at gunpoint and robbed them of their possessions before driving away. Jean was pulled over shortly after the incident because the vehicle he was in matched the description of the suspects’ car.
The statement said Jean was placed in handcuffs because he displayed “furtive movements and demeanor,” such as walking towards the trunk of the car despite deputies asking him not to.
The suspects in the robbery were later arrested.
In tweets and video of the incident posted to his Instagram and Twitter feed, Jean, the Haitian-born former Fugees singer, said he appeared to have been the victim of “another case of mistaken identity” and threatened to sue.
“I was treated like a criminal until other police showed up and pointed out they had wrong person,” Jean, 47, wrote on Twitter.
“I am sure no father wants his sons or daughters to see him in Handcuffs especially if he is innocent,” he added.
Jean emigrated to the United States from Haiti at the age of 9 but has maintained his Haitian citizenship.
Tuesday’s incident comes amid heightened sensitivity about racial issues and the U.S. justice system following a spate of shootings by police of unarmed black people.
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The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam welcomed home two paintings by the Dutch master Tuesday, more than 14 years after they were ripped off the museum’s wall in a nighttime heist.
“They’re back,” said museum director Axel Rueger. He called their return one of the “most special days in the history of our museum.”
The paintings, the 1882 “View of the Sea at Scheveningen,” and 1884-85 work “Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” were discovered last year by Italian police investigating suspected Italian mobsters for cocaine trafficking.
It wasn’t an easy find. The two paintings were wrapped in cotton sheets, stuffed in a box and hidden behind a wall in a toilet, said Gen. Gianluigi D’Alfonso of the Italian financial police, who was on hand at the museum to watch the ceremonial unveiling.
They were found in a farmhouse near Naples as Italian police seized some 20 million euros worth of assets, including villas, apartments and even a small airplane. Investigators contend the assets are linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale.
“After years shrouded in darkness, they can now shine again,” Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker said as an orange screen slid away to reveal the two paintings behind a glass wall.
Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said last year the paintings were “considered among the artworks most searched for in the world, on the FBI’s list of the Top 10 art crimes.”
They are now back on display at the museum before being taken to its conservation studio for repair, although they suffered remarkably little damage as thieves who had clambered up a ladder and smashed a window to get into the museum in 2002 ripped them out of their frames and fled.
“It is not only a miracle that the works have been recovered but it’s even more miraculous almost that they are in relatively unharmed condition,” Rueger said.
The museum director was on vacation when the call came last year from Italian authorities who believed they had recovered the paintings. He didn’t celebrate right away; he’d had calls like this before.
“I was hopeful but also a little hesitant because over the course of the years we had multiple occasions when people phoned us, contacted us, claiming that they knew something about the whereabouts of the works and each time it was false, the trace went cold,” he said. “So … the way has been peppered with disappointment.”
But museum experts dispatched to Italy to check the authenticity of the works quickly turned Rueger’s doubts into delight.
“It was something we had secretly been hoping for for all those years,” he said.
The two small works are not typical of Van Gogh’s later and better-known works, but are still vital pieces for the museum’s collection, Rueger said.
The Scheveningen seascape, with a fishing boat and rough sea under a typically gray, cloudy Dutch sky, is one of Van Gogh’s earliest works and the only painting in the museum’s collection painted during his time in The Hague. It suffered a missing rectangular chip from the bottom left-hand corner.
The painting of the church in Nuenen portrayed the village where his parents lived.
“He had painted as a gift to his mother, so it’s a very personal and emotional connection,” Rueger said.
Rueger said the paintings are now back for good at a museum which is home to dozens of works by Van Gogh, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars on the rare occasions they come up for auction.
“The security, I can assure you, is of Triple-A quality now so I’m very confident that everything is safe in the museum,” he said.
Japan’s cherry blossom season kicked off on Tuesday, when the Japanese Meteorological Agency confirmed the flowers were in bloom in Tokyo.
Despite the drizzling rain, agency officials counted more than five flowers blooming on a sample tree at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, and confirmed that the cherry blossom could therefore be considered in bloom.
Visitors were busy taking photos of the cherry blossom flowers, but trees were still looking rather bare.
The beginning of the cherry blossom season in Tokyo came before anywhere else in Japan, and about five days before the average date.
The flower tends to first bloom in southern Japan, where the climate is warmer.
The flowers are expected to reach full bloom in about a week.
Actor George Clooney has startled an 87-year-old fan in Britain by showing up at her assisted living facility with flowers and a card to wish her a happy birthday.
The 55-year-old popped in for a chat and a picture with admirer Pat Adams on Sunday at the Sunrise of Sonning Retirement and Assisted Living Facility in Reading. Linda Jones, a worker there, posted a picture of herself and the beaming pair on Facebook.
Jones wrote: “The lady in the picture, loves George Clooney and mentions everyday how she would love him to meet him, especially as he lives so near to where I work.”
A letter was sent to Clooney asking if he could make a “dream to come true.”
Clooney owns a home near the facility in Berkshire.