The comeback tour of US funk star Sly Stone has made an inauspicious start in Europe following several short, disjointed performances by the reclusive 1970s icon.
After spending only 20 minutes on stage at the Montreux Jazz festival in Switzerland last week, the 64-year-old musician performed only four-and-a-half songs during his latest gig in the southern French city of Nice.
True to his reputation as an unpredictable, combustible character, he walked off stage after 10 minutes leaving his backing band, known as the Family Stone, to keep the audience entertained.
PHOTO: AP
Half and hour later, the brooding singer, hidden behind big sunglasses and baseball cap, reappeared to sing for another 10 minutes before disappearing for the final time.
Sly and the Family Stone began in 1967 and rose to stardom with their mix of memorable live performances and powerful music, a fusion of funk, gospel, psychedelic rock and acid jazz.
Hits included Stand!, Everyday People, and Family Affair, which still get regular radio playtime 30 years after their emergence.
PHOTO: AP
Starting in the mid-1970s however, Sly Stone, real name Sylvester Stewart, became known as much for his erratic behavior as for his groundbreaking albums.
After suffering from drug addiction, Sly vanished in the mid-1980s and spent almost two decades out of the public eye when no one, even his former bandmates, knew where he was.
He reappeared to great surprise - sporting a blonde mohican - for a performance at the Grammys in 2006 before announcing his mini European tour.
But the recent concerts, where Sly has looked weakened by his years of drug abuse and psychological problems, have been a far cry from his explosive displays at Woodstock or the times he shared stages with Jimi Hendrix.
By contrast, the Family Stone backing band has got younger, with only one of the original line up, trumpet player Cynthia Robinson, remaining.
A fan at the Nice Jazz festival, where Sly performed on Thursday, summed up the impression left by the ageing entertainer, who had nonetheless started brightly with a rendition of hit If You Want Me to Stay. "You can tell he's been through a lot," said the fan.
The tour, which began at the beginning of the month, has included dates in Italy, Switzerland and France and will travel to Spain and the UK.
Much younger party animal Lindsay Lohan has turned herself in to police to face charges of drunken driving in connection with a May car crash, a week after leaving a 45-day rehab program.
Lohan, 21, went to the Beverly Hills Police Department late Thursday to be fingerprinted, photographed and booked on suspicion of driving under the influence and hit and run, Beverly Hills police officer Ryan Balleweg said.
Authorities will decide later whether to charge her.
The allegations stem from a May 26 incident in which she lost control of her Mercedes-Benz sports car and drove into a hedge. She then left the scene. Police said at the time they also found a small amount of what they believed to be cocaine in the car.
The incident followed months of hard partying by the Freaky Friday and Mean Girls star, who had been a regular at Hollywood nightspots and attending Alcoholics Anonymous programs for a year despite having turned 21 - the legal age for drinking in the US - only this month.
Lohan, who shot to fame as a child actress in The Parent Trap, is the latest in a string of young Los Angeles celebrities, including hotel heiress Paris Hilton, to run into trouble for drunken driving.
Hip-hop star 50 Cent has been shot and doesn't think it's funny. On Friday he sued Internet advertising company Traffix Inc for using his image without permission in the graphic "Shoot the Rapper" ad, which he says promotes violence and threatens his safety. The lawsuit seeks a minimum of US$1 million in damages.
The Internet ad features a cartoon representation of 50 Cent and the message "shoot the Rapper and you will WIN $5,000 or 5 RINGTONES GUARANTEED."
The ad invites the user to use his or her computer mouse to aim and fire at the rapper, a well-known victim of gun violence. If the user fires successfully, the screen becomes bathed in red and the user is redirected to the Traffix Web site, the lawsuit says.
The bullet-scarred, tattooed rapper, whose given name is Curtis Jackson, was shot nine times in 2000 in a drive-by near his grandmother's house in Queens, New York, where he was raised.
In 2005, he starred in a movie based on his life, Get Rich or Die Tryin'.
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series. Jurassic World Rebirth captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. Jurassic World Rebirth lets in the daylight. Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park, and director Gareth Edwards, who knows
Last Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) detected 41 sorties of Chinese aircraft and nine navy vessels around Taiwan over a 24-hour period. “Thirty out of 41 sorties crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ (air defense identification zones),” it reported. Local media noted that the exercises coincided with the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Taiwan. During the visit of then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, the largest number of sorties was on Aug. 5, “involving a total of 47 fighter aircraft and two supporting reconnaissance/patrol aircraft.
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
RSS