21-year-old Team Picnic PostNL rider Mara Holdan holds off the chasers to take her maiden win on the World Tour in stage two of the Women’s Tour of Britain finishing in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, with Riejanne Markus of Lidl-Trek in second and FDJ-SUEZ’s Ally Wollaston in third.
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Visma-Lease a Bike rider Yates was visibly frustrated after finishing 24 seconds behind Del Toro in seventh.
“The plan was completely different from what we did today, so I will talk about that with the team,” he told Eurosport.
“I will not say anything more about that.”
However, team director Marc Reef said the day went “exactly as we agreed”, and added Carapaz and Del Toro were “just a bit stronger”.
Although Yates, 32, could still overhaul Carapaz and Del Toro, it looks most likely this year will again add to the heartbreak he has experienced in bids to win the Giro.
He led for 13 days in 2018 but cracked in the final week when Chris Froome launched an astonishing comeback to win the race.
After an underwhelming eighth-placed finish in 2019, Yates had to withdraw from the 2020 edition with Covid-19 and then had to recover from a difficult first two weeks to claim third in 2021.
Yates’ twin brother Adam sat up and dropped out of the top 10 overall in order to save himself to help team-mate Del Toro on Saturday.
Ecuador’s Carapaz, the 2019 Giro champion, tried to drop Del Toro on the final climb, but could not shake the 21-year-old, who is bidding to become the youngest winner of the Giro since 1940.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider Del Toro, who won stage 17, showed impressive nous to grab the six bonus seconds for second place, with EF Education-EasyPost’s Carapaz, 32, having to settle for four bonus seconds in third.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to “chart a unified and collective path towards a peaceful, prosperous, and just future”, following their meeting in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
In a world roiled by United States President Donald Trump’s threats of crippling tariffs and rising economic uncertainties, alternative centres of global power were on full display, with the GCC and China attending the ASEAN summit for the group’s inaugural trilateral meeting on Tuesday.
In their joint statement released on Wednesday, the GCC – comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – China, and ASEAN members Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar said they were committed to enhancing economic cooperation.
Chief among that cooperation will be the promotion of free trade, the signatories said, adding they looked “forward to the early completion of the GCC-China Free Trade Agreement negotiations” and the upgrading of the ASEAN-China free trade area.
“We reaffirm our collective resolve to work hand in hand to unleash the full potential of our partnership, and ensure that our cooperation translates into tangible benefits for our peoples and societies,” they said.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim – whose country is currently chair of ASEAN and hosted the summits – told a news conference that the US remains an important market while also noting that ASEAN, the GCC, and China collectively represent a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $24.87 trillion with a total population of about 2.15 billion.
“This collective scale offers vast opportunities to synergise our markets, deepen innovation, and promote cross-regional investment,” Anwar said.
The prime minister went on to dismiss suggestions that the ASEAN bloc of nations was leaning excessively towards China, stressing that the regional grouping remained committed to maintaining balanced engagement with all major powers, including the US.
James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia, told Al Jazeera that the tripartite meeting was particularly important for China, which is being “given a platform where the US is not around”.
ASEAN and the GCC “already view China as a global power”, Chin said.
China’s Premier Li Qiang, who attended the summit, said Beijing was ready to work with the GCC and ASEAN “on the basis of mutual respect and equality”.
China will work with “ASEAN and the GCC to strengthen the alignment of development strategies, increase macro policy coordination, and deepen collaboration on industrial specialisation,” he said.
Former Malaysian ambassador to the US Mohamed Nazri bin Abdul Aziz said China was “quickly filling up the vacuum” in global leadership felt in many countries in the aftermath of Trump’s tariff threats.
The economic future looks bright, Nazri said, for ASEAN, China and the Gulf countries, where economies are experiencing high growth rates while the US and European Union face stagnation.
“The Gulf is very rich, ASEAN is a tiger, China… I cannot even imagine where the future lies,” Nazri said.
Jaideep Singh, an analyst with the Institute of Strategic & International Studies in Malaysia, said ASEAN’s trade with GCC countries has been experiencing rapid growth.
Total trade between ASEAN and the Gulf countries stood at some $63bn as of 2024, making GCC the fifth-largest external trading partner of the regional bloc, while Malaysia’s trade with the GCC grew by 60 percent from 2019 to 2024.
In terms of foreign direct investment, FDI from GCC countries in ASEAN totalled some $5bn as of 2023, of which $1.5bn went to Malaysia alone, Singh said.
However, the US, China, Singapore and the EU still make up the lion’s share of FDI in Malaysian manufacturing and services.
Even as China’s trade with ASEAN grows, economist say, the US still remains a huge market for regional countries.
In early 2024, the US took over China as ASEAN’s largest export market, with 15 percent of the bloc’s exports destined for its markets, up nearly 4 percent since 2018, said Carmelo Ferlito, CEO of the Center for Market Education (CME), a think tank based in Malaysia and Indonesia.
“The US is also the largest source of cumulative foreign direct investment in ASEAN, with total stock reaching nearly $480bn in 2023 – almost double the combined US investments in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan,” Ferlito said.
Israel’s war on Gaza was also highlighted at the ASEAN-GCC-China meeting on Tuesday.
Delegates condemned attacks against civilians and called for a durable ceasefire and unhindered delivery of fuel, food, essential services, and medicine throughout the Palestinian territory.
Supporting a two-state solution to the conflict, the joint communique also called for the release of captives and arbitrarily-detained people, and an end to the “illegal presence of the State of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory as soon as possible”.
The civil war in Myanmar was also a focus of the talks among ASEAN members at their summit on Tuesday, who called for an extension and expansion of a ceasefire among the warring sides, which was declared following the earthquake that struck the country in March. The ceasefire is due to run out by the end of May. However, human rights groups have documented repeated air attacks by the military regime on the country’s civilian population despite the purported temporary cessation of fighting.
Zachary Abuza, professor of Southeast Asia politics and security issues at the Washington-based National War College, said that while Prime Minister Anwar may be “more proactive” – in his role as ASEAN chair – in wanting to resolve the conflict, Myanmar’s military rulers were “not a good faith actor” in peace talks.
“The military has absolutely no interest in anything resembling a power-sharing agreement,” he said.
As the “Mothers of the Movement” came on stage to talk about the deaths of their children and endorse Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, chants emerged from the crowd: “Black lives matter!”
Geneva Reed-Veal, standing in a half circle with eight other black mothers, attempted to quiet the audience.
“Give me two moments to tell you how good God is. Give me a moment to say thank you,” said Reed-Veal, whose 28-year-old daughter, Sandra Bland, died in jail after being pulled over for a traffic stop in 2015. “We are not standing here because he’s not good. We are standing here because he’s great.”
What followed was one of the most powerful moments of Tuesday’s convention, as the mothers held back tears to speak about the deaths that ignited a national debate about police reform and race relations.
“So many of our children gone but not forgotten,” Reed-Veal said. “I’m here with Hillary Clinton because she is a leader and a mother who will say our children’s names. Hillary knows that when a young black life is cut short, it’s not just a personal loss. It is a national loss. It is a loss that diminishes all of us.”
The short speeches, which followed a video of Hillary Clinton meeting and praying with the mothers, who have joined her at campaign events across the country, gave the Black Lives Matter movement one of its highest-profile moments. Officially, Black Lives Matter has not endorsed a presidential candidate, but the women are among the movement’s best-known names.
The deaths have spurred hundreds of demonstrations across the U.S. over the last four years and raised the pressure on both major political parties to deal with the issue of gun violence and racial disparities.
Mothers of African Americans killed by gun violence speak at the Democratic National Convention. More coverage at latimes.com/trailguide
“You don’t stop being a parent when your child dies,” said Lucia McBath, whose 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2012. “I am still Jordan Davis’ mother. His life ended the day he was shot and killed for playing loud music. But my job as his mother didn’t.”
“Hillary Clinton isn’t afraid to say black lives matter,” she said. “She isn’t afraid to sit at a table with grieving mothers and bear the full force of our anguish. She doesn’t build walls around her heart. Not only did she listen to our problems, she invited us to become part of the solution.”
The segment provided a window into how the Clinton campaign is responding to pressure to address race relations and police reform while acknowledging the dangers police officers face after a series of deadly shootings around the country.
Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay, who has been praised for his handling of protests in his city, introduced the mothers after saying Americans should “respect and support our police officers while at the same time pushing for these important criminal justice reforms.”
Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, said that while she “didn’t want this spotlight” she would do everything she could “to focus some of that light on a path out of this darkness.”
Fulton praised Clinton for having “courage to lead the fight for common-sense gun legislation” and a “plan to repair the divide that so often exists between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
Day Two of the Democratic National Convention in less than 3 minutes. Full coverage at latimes.com/trailguide
The speakers included:
Fulton, the mother of 17-year-old Martin, who died after being shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Fla. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of all charges related to Martin’s death on July 13, 2013.
Lezley McSpadden, the mother of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Mo., police officer on Aug. 9, 2014. The shooting caused days of unrest in the St. Louis suburb, raising questions about police use of military equipment and bringing scrutiny to the issue of racial disparities between police and the communities where they work. On November 21, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson in Brown’s death.
See the most-read stories in National News this hour >>
Gwen Carr, the mother of 43-year-old Eric Garner, who died after a police officer put him a chokehold in Staten Island, N.Y., on July 17, 2014. In a bystander video that went viral, Garner can be heard repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe,” while being restrained by police. The phrase became a protest mantra, especially after a jury decided to not indict the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, on Dec. 13, 2014. The Department of Justice is currently investigating the case.
Reed-Veal, the mother of 28-year-old Bland, who was found hanged with a trash bag in a Waller County, Texas, jail on July 13, 2015. Three days before, Bland was stopped for a traffic violation and got into an argument with the state trooper who stopped her, resulting in her arrest. After a dash-cam video was released, a Bland family lawyer argued that the officer did not have probable cause for the stop. Family members disputed a medical examiner’s ruling that her death was a suicide. In December 2015, a grand jury decided not to indict her jailers in connection with Bland’s death. The trooper is facing a misdemeanor charge.
Lucia McBath, mother of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who was shot by Michael Dunn in Jacksonville, Fla., on Nov. 12, 2012. The shooting occurred after Dunn, who is white, complained that the music Davis and his friends were playing in their car was too loud, and an argument ensued. After a first trial ended in a mistrial, Dunn, a software developer, was found guilty of first-degree murder.
Maria Hamilton, the mother of Dontré Hamilton, who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Milwaukee on April 30, 2014. Protests ensued after charges were not brought against the officer, Christopher Manney.
Cleopatra Pendleton-Cowley, the mother of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot by two gang members in a Chicago park on Jan. 29, 2013. The shooters were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, and First Lady Michelle Obama attended Pendleton’s funeral.
Annette Nance-Holt, the mother of 16-year-old Blair Holt, who died on a Chicago Transit Authority bus in May 2007 after trying to shield a friend from a gang member’s shots.
Wanda Johnson, the mother of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who died after being shot by a white Bay Area Rapid Transit officer on New Year’s Day in 2009. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison in 2010. Mehserle received credit for time already served and was released on June 13, 2011.
Notably absent was Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who died in November 2014 after being shot by police in Cleveland while he played in a park with a replica pellet gun. Rice has declined to endorse Clinton or Trump.
No candidate is “speaking my language about police reform,” Samaria Rice recently told Fusion, saying she wants “a lot on the table, not a little bit of talk, a lot of talk about police brutality, police accountability, making new policies, taking some away, and just reforming the whole system.”
She has also been critical of President Obama.
“He may mention something about it, but he’s not really going to go into details about it and hold the government responsible for killing innocent people,” she said in the same interview, echoing similar criticisms from some activists.
Even before their speeches, the appearance of the Mothers of the Movement had caused controversy. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police said its members were “shocked and saddened” that widows of fallen police officers were not included in the lineup.
“It is sad that to win an election, Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country,” the police group said in a statement.
The mothers aren’t strangers to the campaign trail. Several have been featured in a Clinton TV ad that aired in Chicago and St. Louis and the campaign has also covered their airfares to Democratic debates.
Not all the family members of black Americans who have died in high-profile police-involved incidents have been Clinton supporters. Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, has been a strong supporter of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Still, Tuesday’s group represented one of the strongest lineups of black activists involved in any recent presidential campaign campaign.
“We must bring awareness.… Don’t wait until tragedy knocks on your door,” Carr said in a recent ABC News segment on her support of Clinton, which also addressed violence against police.
“This is a bad time to be a good cop in this country,” Reed-Veal said in the same segment. “OK? We need to remember they have lives too.”
Jaweed Kaleem is The Times’ national race and justice correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
ALSO
Watch the mothers’ full remarks at the Democratic National Convention
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UPDATES:
7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with more details about the speeches.
6:20 p.m.: This article was updated after the women spoke.
This article was originally published at 4:40 p.m.
Who knows if Kendrick Lamar will sit for a formal deposition in Drake’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group, after Lamar flambéed him on “Not Like Us.” But at SoFi Stadium on Wednesday, Lamar and his co-headliner SZA had a great recurring bit imagining what might happen.
In a fake video montage played between set changeovers, Lamar responded to mock-questioning like, “When you said you want the party to die, was that a metaphor or are you serious?” and “Don’t you think disappearing is a form of attention-seeking?” by blowing him off and phoning in a big order of takeout. SZA then lighted up an enormous joint in the lawyer’s office.
The pair’s Grand National Tour is a triumph of the unbothered. Wednesday’s set — the first of a three-night SoFi stand — was a bountiful, meticulous three-hour show that centered on the camaraderie between two of the most important acts in contemporary music. They had a wicked sense of humor about the performance too. At one point, SZA seduced a giant, slicked-up praying mantis dancer. If only we all had the same leeway when deposed.
Lamar, coming off a pair of Grammy wins for “Not Like Us” and a gleefully petty Super Bowl halftime show, is at perhaps the peak of his career. So it’s worth noting how inspiringly egalitarian this hometown show was — a hierarchy-free split with former TDE labelmate SZA, often fully meshing their sets together for their on-record collaborations. The format brought new energy and understanding into their catalogs, all while the pair gassed each other up as virtuoso live performers.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA at the 2016 Grammys.
(Lester Cohen / WireImage)
On Wednesday, SZA arguably made the most of the stadium-sized opportunity. SZA is a powerhouse vocalist and musical omnivore with a stoner’s comic timing (most recently seen in the charming comedy film “One of Them Days”). But she’s now honed her stagecraft to be on par with any pop royalty. Between “Snooze” and “Crybaby,” she was lifted on wires, revealing a gauze train in the shape of a chrysalis, to spellbinding effect. It took some real mettle to then perform her ballad “Nobody Gets Me” midair.
A surprise cameo from Lizzo paid alms to their long friendship, and a bawdy slice of her verse from Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy” proved she can own even a nemesis’ material with her charisma. When she spun “Garden (Say It Like Dat)” into “Kitchen,” the dancers’ delightfully goopy, insectoid costumes and monolithic ant sculpture felt like H.R. Giger taking mushrooms on a warm afternoon in Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.
When she and Lamar shared the stage, as on the Oscar-nominated “All the Stars,” “30 for 30” and their respective solo cuts “Doves in the Wind” and “LOVE.,” there was an alchemy between two superfans, their physical presence across the diamond-shaped catwalks reinvigorating this long-beloved music.
At this point, Lamar’s case for being the best rapper alive is fully closed. Of course he is. Even if you thought the title was a little wobbly after the knotty, skeptical “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” the acid-bath of “Not Like Us” and the L.A-embodying surprise release “GNX” slammed the debate shut as it spun off hit after hit. Who else could make a pitch-perfect indictment of the current American political climate onstage at the Super Bowl halftime show, while needling his most loathed enemy and spinning off memes with just a quick grin in bootcut jeans?
At SoFi, a few miles from his old Compton backyard, he drew from that monumental catalog and recontextualized it for this club-ready, venom-streaked era. The show’s format covered more than 50 songs between the two artists, so even when he only got to a verse or two, there was always something new or bracing. Here, “m.A.A.d. city,” one of his hardest and cruelest street cuts, became a meta-R&B number that made the song even more eerie. On “Humble.,” he was flanked by female dancers posing in vicious geometric forms, physically embodying the ego-check of the song’s chorus.
The Drake flame-war material was delicious fun, from the shots-fired kickoff verse on “Like That” to the relentless, merciless taunts on “Euphoria.” But the “GNX” segments, like the Tupac-conjuring “reincarnated” and the ice-cold “peekaboo” (and, obviously, the great Mustard-y howl of “tv off”) made the case for how this album will continue to reveal new textures and resonate in L.A. lore. There wasn’t room for a five-times-reprised “Not Like Us” like at his history-making 2024 “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends” set. But when he did play it, it was less about his archenemy than about L.A., a city with a new song in the canon, a definitive “Us” who were all alike in screaming it.
It felt poignant that Lamar and SZA reunited again for the set’s closers, the unexpectedly relentless Hot 100 fixture “luther” (now at 13 weeks at No. 1) and “gloria,” Lamar’s bait-and-switch about his complicated relationship to his own writing process. With SZA as his Greek chorus, he ended the night on a note about how all this relentless work was worth it to arrive at real self-understanding. An ally that will never fail, no matter who out there is deposing you.
Olav Kooij won a close-fought sprint on stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia as Isaac del Toro retained the pink jersey in Viadana.
Dutchman Kooij benefited from Visma-Lease A Bike team-mate Wout van Aert’s superb lead-out in the final kilometre.
Casper van Uden finished second with Britain’s Ben Turner of Ineos Grenadiers third.
“Only he [Wout] can do it, so to have him as support here is extraordinary,” said Kooij.
“I really need to thank him and also the rest of the team, they did a fantastic job.
“You don’t want to be too far [back] in that last corner, that’s maybe why we had to go a bit earlier than we wanted but I could jump on the wheel of Casper and pass him.”
Del Toro of UAE Team Emirates-XRG stayed out of the hectic fight for position in the closing stages to finish safely in the bunch and maintain his hold on the pink jersey.
A sprint for two bonus seconds at the Red Bull kilometre in Brescello means the 21-year-old heads into stage 13 with a 33-second lead over team-mate Juan Ayuso in the race overall.
Kooij’s British team-mate Simon Yates is in fourth, one minute and 11 seconds off the overall lead.
For British drummer Zak Starkey, the last few months with rock band the Who have been quite the whirlwind.
Starkey, who the band fired in April and reinstated days later after “some communication issues,” announced Sunday the “Baba O’Riley” group had fired him again. The veteran drummer, son of Ringo Starr, shared his side of the split on Instagram and disputed the band’s separate announcement about his departure.
The Who, in a joint Instagram post with guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, said Sunday, “after many years of great work on drums from Zak the time has come for a change.”
“Zak has lots of new projects in hand and I wish him the best,” the post said, before adding that drummer Scott Devours would fill his seat for the band’s remaining farewell shows.
Starkey, 59, added his own text atop the band’s statement for his post. In his caption, he claimed he “was asked” to share his own announcement that he would leave the Who to pursue other projects. “This would be a lie,” he wrote. “I love The Who and would never had quit.”
He added: “So I didn’t make the statement…quitting The Who would also have let down the countless amazing people who stood up for me…thru the weeks of mayhem.”
Starkey, who has played with Oasis and the Icicle Works, among other acts, began performing with the Who in the mid-1990s and said he rarely faced conflict juggling his duties with the band and other endeavors. He also noted that the group has, for the most part, “been sporadic or minimalist in touring.”
“None of this has ever interfered with The Who and was never a problem for them,” he continued in his caption, which offered a timeline of his various musical commitments. “The lie is or would have been that I quit The Who — I didn’t. I love The Who and everyone in it.”
A representative for the Who did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
In a second Instagram post Sunday, the band noted that it is “heading for retirement” and their now-ex-drummer is younger and must “devote all his energy into making” new endeavors a success.
When the Who announced Starkey’s reinstatement, Townshend said in a blog post to the band’s website the drummer needed “to tighten up his latest evolved drumming style to accommodate our non-orchestral line up and he has readily agreed” and shared more details about the sound issues that seemingly led up to Starkey’s initial firing.
“Maybe we didn’t put enough time into sound checks, giving us problems on stage. The sound in the centre of the stage is always the most difficult to work with,” Townshend wrote. “[The Who co-founder] Roger [Daltrey] did nothing wrong but fiddle with his in-ear monitors. Zak made a few mistakes and he has apologised . Albeit with a rubber duck drummer.”
He added: “We are a family, this blew up very quickly and got too much oxygen. It’s over. We move forward now with optimism and fire in our bellies.”
The Who embarks on its Song Is Over North America Farewell tour in August. The group will make two stops at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 17 and 19.
If you’re wondering why so many goths we’re wandering around Pasadena this weekend, look no further than Cruel World. The Goldenvoice celebration of all things postpunk, new wave and alternative landed at Brookside at the Rose Bowl on Saturday for its fourth installment, this time led by New Order and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
It ran smoothly, even when the overcast turned into a hard drizzle, creating a vibe reminiscent of England’s famed Glastonbury Festival. Gen Xers and fans of the era flocked to the converted golf course to hear their favorite artists take the stage once again, with many only appearing occasionally over the course of decades.
But, as is the case with all festivals, some acts had it together, bringing their best to fans and entrancing them in a nostalgia-ridden high. And some just showed up. Here’s a list of the performances we saw at the fest, from best to not-so-great.
1. New Order
In a recent chat with The Times, Bernard Sumner spoke lovingly about New Order’s revival and attributed it partially to the band’s newfound cohesion.
“In the early days, we used to get f— up quite a lot and that f— up the shows,” Sumner said. “We used to play a really good one, celebrate how great it was, and then the next one would be terrible because we celebrated too much.”
He was spot-on with this point, as the band’s performance at Cruel World illustrated. Across entire set, it seemed everything was in the right place for the new-wave icons, who delivered perfection to fans. From the get-go, “Age of Consent” had the entire crowd bouncing around — an impressive accomplishment considering that the band was the last to perform on a wet and muddy day.
But the sky seemingly opened for New Order, who looked all too cool and casual while shouting out, “This is a protest song, and it’s time for a protest song” before treating the audience to “State of the Nation.”
The set would have been incredible enough on its own, gracefully fitting “Sub-Culture,” “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “True Faith” and “Blue Monday” into a one-hour window, but the group brought more than that to the table. After Sumner bowed out to “Temptation,” a minute went by before the band was back out onstage to play Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
Emotions ran high in a celebratory and touching performance, as images of the late Ian Curtis and the words “Forever Joy Division” flashed on screens behind the band. Headliners are headliners for a reason, and there was no better group than New Order to lead festivalgoers on a victory lap during its stroll through the past.
Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo performs at Cruel World
(Dick Slaughter)
2. Devo
Devo was incredibly close to topping this list, as the band brought its signature wacky and whimsical show to Pasadena. After being pelted by rain, fans gathered around the festival’s Sad Girls stage to welcome the new-wave quintet.
A tape rolled on the screens, featuring returning character “Rod Rooter,” played by Michael W. Schwartz. In the footage, Rooter meets with the group, pitching the idea of Devo dolls: “We even got your jumpsuits!”
This was followed by another video, once again featuring Schwartz as Rooter, only years later.
“That was me 40 years ago, dispensing invaluable advice to the band that couldn’t shoot straight,” he said, sitting on an indoor bike and wearing a boldly colored tracksuit. “Now here they are, my biggest career regret, Devo.”
All four then danced out onto the stage, wearing all-black suits for “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man).” It wasn’t long until the musicians donned their signature “devolution” caps, which were later thrown to the crowd as the band launched into “Whip It.” This was followed by a quick outfit change into those yellow jumpsuits, which frontman Mark Mothersbaugh tore off during “Uncontrollable Urge.”
Devo brought everything to the table and gave fans the show they deserved. It’s no wonder Goldenvoice invited the band back after it lighted up the Pasadena stage in 2022, and it likely won’t be the group’s last appearance on a Cruel World lineup.
3. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
It was always going to be a great performance from Nick Cave and his ensemble — it’s just their business. Over the entire course of the festival, no one was able to entice a crowd like they were. Throughout the entire set, it felt like gospel was ringing out across the Rose Bowl lawn, and Cave would extend a hand to his adoring worshippers at the stage’s front.
“You’re f— incredible,” he said. “Full of drugs and still able to clap.”
Throughout its one-hour set, the band played everything from lively, invigorating tracks like “Wild God” to mellow, meditative numbers like “Joy.” Of course, the group made sure to fit in “Red Right Hand,” which received an eruption of cheers. Cave would often make a mad dash between his piano and downstage, making a show of it as he danced his fingers across the keys.
But the perfomance’s peak likely came with a live debut of “Hollywood,” a 14-minute song (played in full) off 2019’s “Ghosteen.”
“We’re gonna try this song, we’ve never played it before,” Cave said. “It’s extremely long and it’s written for … Hollywood.”
The song, explained in a post to Cave’s 2018 project “The Red Hand Files,” is a tale referencing a series of images that came to him while sitting in the back seat of a car driving through Oslo, Texas. In it, a narrator finds himself on a beach, looking out at the sun.
Poetically and almost prophetically, the post said, “Malibu is on fire and the animals have been driven down from the hills to the shore.”
Shirley Manson of Garbage performing at Cruel World
(Dick Slaughter)
4. Garbage
Overlapping Garbage and Devo during Cruel World’s sets was a decision that left many attendees divided. It was no surprise that many larger groups split up around 7 p.m. and set off to either the Outsiders or Lost Boys stages.
Even lead singer Shirley Manson felt bummed about missing out on Devo and said she expected a much smaller crowd.
“I’m gonna be very honest with you … in rehearsal yesterday we were really freaking out because, of course, the great Devo!” Manson said. “We are so gutted that we’re playing at the same time as one of our hero bands.”
“We’re amazed that you’re here,” she continued, laughing. “Thank you so much.”
But Garbage put on an excellent performance — it was all smiles among those who had chosen the alt-rock group. A bonus was Manson’s outfit, which was undoubtedly the best of the day.
5. OMD
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was an unexpected favorite among the lineup. The group came out with high energy and maintained it throughout its entire set. This kept fans on the edge of their seats, as did just the right amount of commentary from the bandto engage them.
“Everybody put two hands up,” lead singer Andy McCluskey said before performing “Talking Loud and Clear.”
“You have to do it with two hands, otherwise you’ll look like Elon Musk!”
It was an expected yet hilarious quip from the band, which has never shied away from making a political statement. Years later, it still felt awkward dancing away to “Enola Gay,” and even more so after the group flashed images of the notorious aircraft and a mushroom cloud on screens.
During “If You Leave,” the screens showed images of Molly Ringwald as Andie Walsh in “Pretty in Pink,” which was a nice nod to the song’s inclusion in the film’s soundtrack.
6. Alison Moyet
A great performance from an incredible artist — it’s no wonder she received an MBE for music service in 2021. During the set, she floated back and forth between songs from her solo career and those she made with Yazoo alongside Vince Clarke, who had previously served as keyboardist for Depeche Mode.
Perhaps the most impressive part of her set was her vocals. It’s no secret that some of these singers’ voices have declined after 40 or so years. But Moyet, though not as crisp, still delivered on the main stage. In fact, the touch of grit to her voice only added to the songs, which she commanded with gravitas.
7. She Past Away
The Turkish postpunk duo took the stage around 2 p.m. and granted festivalgoers a pleasant peek of what was ahead of them. For a group that formed in 2006, it fit in comfortably in the lineup, entrancing listeners with sounds reminiscent of what its new-wave peers were creating in the ’80s. To put a cherry on top, bandmates Volkan Caner and İdris Akbulut adorned their classic black eye shadow and lipstick combo.
She Wants Revenge performing at Cruel World
(Dick Slaughter)
8. She Wants Revenge
Another postpunk outfit from the aughts, She Wants Revenge attracted quite the crowd. Lead singer Justin Warfield strutted around the stage in an all-black, all-leather outfit that featured a belt with golden ankhs hanging below it. As far as presence, the group had it down.
Its performance was solid, and fans applauded when the band whipped out a cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ “Sister Europe” mid-set. Hunter Burgan of AFI was brought out and introduced as not only “one of the raddest bass players ever ripping” but also “a mean sax player.” In a sentimental touch, the song was dedicated to the Furs’ late saxophonist Mars Williams.
9. Death Cult
This one was an odd one. As a preface, the Southern Death Cult was a Bradford, England-born band and a leader of the postpunk movement in the early ’80s. The group garnered a bit of attention, played about 20 shows, split after two years and released one album, titled “The Southern Death Cult.”
After the breakup, frontman Ian Astbury joined forces with guitarist Billy Duffy to form Death Cult in 1983. The band released one EP under this name, simply titled “Death Cult,” before becoming the Cult less than one year later. In 2023, Astbury and Duffy would revive Death Cult for a series of shows across the U.K. and a one-off performance at what was then the Theatre at Ace Hotel. For Cruel World, the pair followed suit and performed under the name Death Cult, while also celebrating the music of the Cult and the Southern Death Cult.
Going into the show, fans were confused about what they would possibly be hearing from the band, who walked out onstage to the theme from “A Clockwork Orange.” Needless to say, most attendees were fans of the Cult, the most well known of the three band iterations, and Astbury was seemingly frustrated that the crowd wasn’t more reactive to tunes from Death Cult and the Southern Death Cult.
It’s no surprise, then, that attendees rejoiced when they heard the Cult’s most popular song, “She Sells Sanctuary,” as well as others from the band.
It didn’t help that the sun had just gone down, leaving the small Lost Boys stage dimly lighted, and there were no visualizers to back the group. This meant fans could hardly make out the band unless they were close to the stage.
It’s not that Death Cult’s musicians were bad showmen. On the contrary, Astbury’s vocals were great, and everyone seemed to be on the same wave, except the crowd. Given all the factors at play, the set was just odd altogether.
10. The Go-Go’s
Fans arrived in droves, eager to hear their favorites from one of the biggest undercards on the lineup. I mean, it’s the Go-Go’s; you don’t want to miss “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Vacation,” even if you’ve just spent hours in the rain, shelled out $20 on a cocktail and your soles are starting to scream at you.
It’s difficult to put a finger on what exactly went wrong for this performance; the hits were there and the crowd was packed. But every song felt uncoordinated, like the band could have spent a few more hours in rehearsal. The group was not only out of sync from the jump but the entire set was also plagued by feedback and sound mix issues.
“All right, I’m sitting back here motherf— … come on now, I’m working my f— a— off,” drummer Gina Schock said before diving into “Head Over Heels.” “I wanna see some movement out there, OK?”
But the crowd stood still. Even when the band finished off with “We Got The Beat,” the musicians’ attempt to lead a H-O-T-T-O-G-O chant — as they had done just weeks before at Coachella — fell flat on its face.
“You know that one,” Jane Wiedlin pleaded, to no avail.
For the second time in less than a year, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan played the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night, bringing together two legends of American song on one stage. The concert — actually Nelson’s third recent visit to the Bowl after his 90th-birthday bash in 2023 — was part of the annual traveling Outlaw Music Festival, which will keep Nelson, now 92, and Dylan, who’ll turn 84 next week, on the road through mid-September. Here are nine highlights from the show:
1. Last year’s Outlaw tour stopped at the Bowl in late July, which at that time meant Nelson didn’t have to ward off the chilly May gray that inevitably settles after dark over the Cahuenga Pass. Here, a day after reportedly suffering from a cold in Chula Vista, Nelson kept warm in a stylish black puffer jacket to go with his signature red bandanna.
2. John Stamos played percussion in Nelson’s six-man band Friday — a somewhat lower-key role than the prominent guitar-and-vocals spot he often holds down these days in Mike Love’s touring Beach Boys. Yet the TV star looked pleased as punch to be back there, shaking a shaker as Nelson opened his set, as always, with “Whiskey River.” Also on hand, filling in for Nelson’s son Lukas was singer-guitarist Waylon Payne, who sang lead in a moving version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” — the folk-soul masterpiece made a hit in 1970 by Payne’s mother, the late Sammi Smith.
3. My favorite of Nelson’s styles to hear him do at this point in his career, with a voice and a soloing hand as free as they’ve ever been, is the spectral country-jazz mode of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “Always on My Mind,” which gave him a pair of No. 1 country hits between March 1981 and May 1982. On Friday, he nailed high notes you might not have expected him to in the former and used the latter to show off the rhythmic daring of his line readings. Both were achingly beautiful.
4. Nelson didn’t perform anything from his latest album, “Oh What a Beautiful World,” which came out last month and collects his interpretations of a dozen Rodney Crowell tunes. (By some counts, it’s Nelson’s 77th solo studio LP — and the 15th he’s dropped since 2015.) He did, however, do a cut from his second-most-recent effort: a stately rendition of Tom Waits’ “Last Leaf,” in which he rhymes “They say I got staying power” with “I’ve been here since Eisenhower.” In fact, Nelson’s been here since FDR.
5. The big event in Dylanology between last year’s Outlaw tour and this year’s was, of course, James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” which inspired a widespread resurgence of interest in Dylan’s music — particularly the early stuff Timothée Chalamet performs in the movie. Perhaps that’s why Dylan is singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” on the road again for the first time in six years, including at the Bowl, where he gave the song a jaunty rockabilly vibe. (Anyone wondering why Chalamet wasn’t at Friday’s gig clearly hasn’t seen the TikToks of him wilding out after his beloved Knicks defeated the Celtics at New York’s Madison Square Garden.)
6. A rare-ish bit of stage banter from His Bobness, directed toward an audience member near the front row: “What are you eating down there? What is it?”
7. The whole point of going to see Dylan play is to be delighted — or to be outraged, or baffled — by his determination to reinvent songs so deeply etched into the history of rock music. Yet I was still thrilled by how radically he made over some of his classics here: “Desolation Row” was bright and frisky, while a sultry “All Along the Watchtower” sounded like Dire Straits doing ’80s R&B.
8. In addition to Nelson and Dylan, Outlaw’s West Coast leg also features two younger roots-music acts in Billy Strings and Sierra Hull. (Later in the summer, the tour will pick up the likes of Nathaniel Rateliff, Sheryl Crow, Waxahatchee and Wilco, depending on the city.) Strings, who’s been bringing bluegrass to arenas lately — and whose tattooed arms meshed seamlessly with the sleeves of his tie-dyed T-shirt — sang “California Sober,” which he recorded in 2023 as a duet with Nelson, and offered a haunting take on “Summertime” from “Porgy and Bess.”
9. A former child prodigy on the mandolin, Hull opened the evening flexing her Berklee-trained chops in a series of lickety-split bluegrass numbers that got early arrivers whistling with approval. But she also showed off a winsome pop sensibility in originals like “Muddy Water” and “Spitfire” — about “my spitfire granny back in Tennessee,” she said — and in a yearning cover of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears.
Juan Ayuso won the seventh stage of the Giro d’Italia on Friday as Primoz Roglic moved top of the overall standings.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider Ayuso powered away from the group of general classification contenders over the top of the final climb to win his first Grand Tour stage by four seconds.
The 22-year-old Spaniard’s team-mate Isaac del Toro of Mexico was four seconds behind him in second, with Colombian Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) denying Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s Roglic the final place on the podium.
However, 2023 Giro champion Roglic took over the overall leader’s pink jersey from Mads Pedersen, with the Danish classics rider losing touch as expected on the final climb.
Great Britain’s Max Poole of Picnic PostNL was ninth on Friday, with the 22-year-old moving up to fifth overall.
The 168km stage from Castel di Sangro to Tagliacozzo was the first mountain stage of the 2025 edition and saw the contenders for the general classification come to the fore.
The TV industry and buyers of commercial time were able to breathe a little easier going to their annual week of presentations known as the upfronts.
Not long before the curtain went up Monday at Radio City Music Hall for NBCUniversal’s event, President Trump announced he would hold off on tariffs on China, easing some of the economic uncertainty going into the selling season for television networks.
But the messaging from media executives throughout the week acknowledged that advertisers will be under pressure to get more from their marketing dollars. Between performances by Lizzo, Lady Gaga and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, ad buyers heard about the new artificial intelligence-powered tools for targeting specific audiences.
While traditional TV still commands the bulk of U.S. advertising spending, advertisers’ increasing comfort with streaming was apparent.
Seven years ago, YouTube executives had to reassure sponsors that the company would work harder to keep their ads from running in user-created videos that pushed conspiracy theories or hate speech.
But at the Google-owned platform‘s gathering at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, the audience saw a glowing testimonial video from Marc Pritchard, chief branding officer for Procter & Gamble, a company known for being meticulous about its marketing and media decisions.
Netflix and Amazon marched into the week buoyed by the growing number of streaming subscribers who see ads. Netflix said its service carrying commercials now reaches 90 million subscribers worldwide while Amazon’s Prime Video is now at 130 million in the U.S.
The week of parties and parade of celebrities offered a glimpse into the current state of the TV business. Here’s what stood out:
Walt Disney Co.’s TV lineup is packed with big-name talent. But the company kicked off its upfront with an opening number by an unlikely singing duo — former NFL quarterbacks Eli and Peyton Manning.
The audience at North Javits in Manhattan saw two more NFL stars, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, before a single actor appeared on stage. It was a sign of the NFL’s vital importance to the company and the TV business writ large.
Disney — where not too long ago Chief Executive Bob Iger mused about spinning off ESPN — wasn’t alone in touting its commitment to the league.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did a walk-on at the YouTube presentation to announce the platform’s first exclusive livestream of a league game, the Los Angeles Chargers season opener against the Chiefs in Brazil on Sept. 5.
Roger Goodell speaks onstage during Netflix’s Upfront 2025 on Wednesday in New York.
(Roy Rochlin / Getty Images for Netflix)
On the Netflix stage, Goodell was joined by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to plug a documentary series on the franchise and announce this year’s two Christmas games that will be carried on the platform.
Jason and Travis Kelce promoted their Wondery podcast at Amazon’s show. Former tight end Rob Gronkowski showed up at two upfront presentations, one for Fox where he is part of the network’s NFL coverage and later at YouTube because, well, why not?
NFL games accounted for 95 out of the top 100 most-watched TV programs last year and is now setting records on streaming. Netflix had its most watched Christmas Day in history when 65 million U.S. viewers streamed some portion of its NFL double header. (Goodell wore a Santa Claus suit for his announcement of this year’s Netflix games).
For TV industry veterans, the emphasis on live sports was surprising. “Traditionally entertainment was the driver of the upfront,” Ben Silverman, co-CEO of production company Propagate, told CNBC.
Or as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel put it during his annual Disney upfront roast: “This is all sports. What happened? We used to be so gay.”
But as the audience continues to be atomized by the growing number of streaming options, sports are more valuable than ever for advertisers who want to reach a mass audience.
Executives at Netflix, long on the leading edge of providing niche offerings to fit every consumer’s taste, now extol the virtues of the mass audience viewing experience now that it carries NFL games.
Live sports have become a lifeline to traditional TV, as most young viewers have turned to streaming for scripted series and movies. The trend was reflected in NBCUniversal’s presentation, which emphasized the arrival of the NBA on the network that will cost $2.5 billion a year.
“Tonight” host Jimmy Fallon may have summed it up best when he said, “Good morning, I’m glad to be at the NBA upfront — I mean NBC upfront.”
Warner Bros. Discovery stunned the crowd at the Theater at Madison Square Garden with the announcement that its streaming service Max will once again be called HBO Max. The company stripped HBO from the name in 2023, believing the HBO brand name was too exclusive for the service’s ambitions to broaden its audience.
Dropping the prestigious HBO logo from the name of the service was a dubious decision from the start. But restoring it was a recognition of an undeniable fact: the future belongs to streaming, so why relegate a familiar and respected brand name to the waning cable box?
CNN and ESPN announced that their direct-to-consumer streaming services rolling out later this year will use the network names that have been familiar to cable viewers for more than four decades. The monikers will not carry a plus sign or any other designation that suggest the product differs from what’s on TV, and that’s by design.
Younger viewers may be forgoing cable subscriptions, but they know the CNN and ESPN brand names through their digital content. For those viewers, streaming isn’t an add-on, it is the way they watch TV
Not so long ago, seeing a movie star on stage at a network upfront presentation was a big deal.
But streaming has blurred the line by offering both series and original movies, and media companies are using that to their advantage when pitching to advertisers. The trend has given the platforms a bit more sizzle in their pitches.
Charlize Theron speaks onstage during Netflix’s upfront presentation Wednesday in New York.
(Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images for Netflix)
Arnold Schwarzenegger riffed at length about his upcoming Christmas film for Amazon, “The Man With the Bag.” The moment got added mileage when the former California governor’s “True Lies” co-star Jamie Lee Curtis joined him on stage.
Charlize Theron took the stage at the Perelman Performing Arts Center to plug her upcoming Netflix feature “Apex.”
NBCUniversal teased the sequel to “Wicked,” which will eventually run on its Peacock streaming service.
Warner Bros. Discovery touted its sponsor partnerships for the theatrical blockbuster “A Minecraft Movie” and brought out James Gunn and Peter Safran, keepers of DC Studios, to say there will be opportunities for the upcoming Superman movie and other projects.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke will build a movie studio next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood that will serve as the international broadcast center for the 2028 Olympic Games.
Construction will start by summer on the studio and production facility that will house hundreds of broadcasters from around the world that have acquired rights to cover the Summer Games in Los Angeles, Kroenke’s company said Tuesday.
After the Games, the facility known as Hollywood Park Studios will be used to make movies, television shows and other productions and perhaps host live broadcasts.
The development is part of Hollywood Park, a multibillion-dollar complex built on the site of a former horse racing track also known as Hollywood Park that includes the stadium, apartments, theaters, offices, shops and restaurants.
A luxury hotel is under construction there, and more development including a grocery store and medical offices is being considered.
Kroenke’s organization hopes that attention from the Olympics will boost Hollywood Park Studios’ appeal as a future entertainment production center.
“We want it to be recognized around the world,” said Alan Bornstein, who is overseeing development of the studio for Kroenke.
The studio is part of Hollywood Park’s master development plan focusing on media, entertainment and technology, Bornstein said, anchored by SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater and the NFL Media office building.
“There has been an increasing convergence of media and technology and sports, all under the notion of entertainment that is now distributed in in multiple channels,” Bornstein said, “whether it’s through streaming or whether through broadcast television or movies in theaters,”
The first phase of Hollywood Park Studios will occupy 12 acres and will consist of five soundstages, each 18,000 square feet, two of which may be opened to a single 36,000-square-foot stage.
The complex will have a three-story, 80,000-square-foot office building to support stage, production and postproduction activities. The studios will have a dedicated open base camp where trucks, equipment and actors’ trailers could be placed, along with a parking structure for 1,100 cars. Future development could include as many as 20 stages and 200,000 square feet of related office space.
The additional stages would be built to suit for future tenants as demand emerges, Bornstein said, who declined to estimate how much the studio complex will cost.
Although demand for soundstages outstripped supply a few years ago, production has recently slowed and dampened the current need for them.
A rendering of the Hollywood Park Studios broadcast center and movie production facility.
(Gensler)
Last year, the average annual occupancy rate dropped to 63%, a further indication of Hollywood’s sustained production slowdown, according to a recent report by FilmLA, a nonprofit organization that tracks on-location shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles area.
That was a decline from 2023, which saw an average regional occupancy rate of 69%. That was the year when dual strikes by writers and actors crippled the local production economy for months.
The foray into Hollywood-level production facilities is part of Kroenke’s goal to combine sports, entertainment and media from around the world, Bornstein said.
In addition to the Rams, Kroenke is owner of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Colorado Avalanche hockey team, the Colorado Rapids soccer team, the Colorado Mammoth lacrosse team and Arsenal Football Club, the Premier League soccer team based in London.
SoFi Stadium, where the Chargers also play football, will be converted into the largest Olympic swimming venue in history during the Games in 2028. It will host the Olympic opening ceremony with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, as well as the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games.
Kroenke is also a major real estate developer and landlord. The 300-acre Hollywood Park project is one of the largest mixed-use developments under construction in the western United States. SoFi Stadium alone cost $5 billion to build.
Last month, he also unveiled plans for a new Rams headquarters on a 100-acre site at Warner Center in Woodland Hills that would include a residential and retail community intended to be the centerpiece of the San Fernando Valley. It could cost more than the total price of Hollywood Park, which has been valued by outside observers at more than $10 billion.
Creating a second epicenter in Woodland Hills allows the Rams to significantly increase the size of their footprint in the Southern California market.
“When you’re looking to do a practice facility, you don’t need to be right in the middle of everything, and typically that real estate is very expensive,” Kroenke told The Times. “We built an identity in the Valley, with Cal Lutheran, and a lot of our players and families are up there. Our experience was really good.”
Architecture firm Gensler spearheaded the design for the Warner Center headquarters and Hollywood Park Studios. Clayco will be the general contractor for the studio, with Pacific Edge acting as project manager. Financing was arranged by Guggenheim Investments.
Times staff writer Sam Farmer contributed to this report.
Near the end of an evening ruled by queens, a king was keeping Chaka Khan waiting.
“Stevie Wonder’s in the house tonight,” Khan said late Sunday as she stood in the spotlight at Inglewood’s Kia Forum. “I don’t know where he is.” The veteran soul-music star wandered over to the edge of the stage, the black fringe of her bedazzled cape swaying with every step, and peered out into the crowd. “Steve, you over there?”
Khan was in the middle of her set to close Sunday’s installment of a traveling R&B revue called “The Queens” that launched last week in Las Vegas and has her on the road through the fall with three fellow lifers in Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and Stephanie Mills. (One longs to have been in the room when they decided who plays last.) She’d come out singing “I Feel for You” — saucy, casual, effortlessly funky — then glided through “Do You Love What You Feel” and “What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me.” Now her would-be special guest was nowhere to be found.
Chaka Khan performs with Stevie Wonder.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
“Stevie Wonder!” she said again, attempting to summon him to the stage. “We go back a long, long way. I remember once we did a tour, he and I — must have been back in the ’80s, the ’70s or something. It was that long ago. We were on tour for dang near two years. Two friggin’ frack years.” Khan went on for a minute about a vexing old record deal then seemed wisely to think better of that. “Call him,” she instructed the crowd, which started up a “Stevie” chant.
“What?” boomed a voice at last over the sound system. It was Wonder, shuffling out from the wings wearing his signature shades and beret to join his old friend for — well, for what? Khan had set up Wonder’s cameo by saying they should do “I Feel for You” again since Wonder played harmonica on the original record in 1984. But Wonder didn’t appear to have gotten that note: After clasping hands with Khan, he started telling the story of writing “Tell Me Something Good” a decade earlier for her group Rufus, which led Khan to cue her backing band on that number instead.
And what a number it was — that slinky up-and-down riff still a marvel of rhythmic ingenuity that inspired Khan and Wonder to go off in a volley of ad libs like the seasoned pros they are.
Patti Labelle performs.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Signs of life such as that one are precisely the reason to go to a concert like “The Queens,” in which the vast experience of the performers — Mills was the youngest at 68, LaBelle the oldest at 80 — serves not as a safeguard against the unexpected but as a guarantee that whatever might happen is fully roll-with-able.
Mills got up there Sunday and discovered an unwelcome climate situation — “I wish they would cut that air off,” she said, “it’s blowing so cold on me” — but went ahead and sang the bejesus out of “Home,” from “The Wiz.” LaBelle put out a call for willing men from the audience — “Black, white, straight, gay,” she made clear — then presided over an impromptu talent show as each guy did a bit of “Lady Marmalade” for her. And then there was Knight’s handler, who seemed to show up a few beats early to guide her offstage after “Midnight Train to Georgia.” No biggie: He could just stand there holding her arm gently for a minute while she traded “I’ve got to go’s” with her background singers.
Gladys Knight performs.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Another reason to go to “The Queens,” especially on Mother’s Day, was to behold the finery displayed onstage (and in the crowd). Knight wore a crisp red pantsuit with glittering figure-eight earrings, Mills an off-the-shoulder mermaid gown. LaBelle showed off two outfits, emerging in a silky blue suit before changing into a long tunic-style dress. During “On My Own,” she kicked off her heels, sending them hurtling across the stage; later, she spritzed herself from a bottle of fragrance then spritzed the front row for good measure.
As a three-hour program — Knight opened at 7 p.m. on the dot — Sunday’s show moved quickly, with a rotating stage that whirred to life after each woman’s set. And of course nobody stuck around long enough to offer up anything but hits. The musical pleasures were the ripples of detail in all those familiar tunes: a little ha-ha-ha Knight used to punctuate “That’s What Friends Are For”; LaBelle’s frisky vocal runs in “When You Talk About Love,” which she sang as a stagehand came out to help put her in-ear monitor back in; the way Khan toyed with her phrasing in “Through the Fire,” slowing down when you thought she’d speed up and vice versa. (Nobody wants to start a fight here, but Khan was undoubtedly the night’s best singer.)
Stephanie Mills performs.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
After bringing the Mother’s Day audience to its feet with “I’m Every Woman” — somewhere out there was Khan’s own 91-year-old mom, she said — she started to make for the exit when her band revved up the throbbing synth lick from “Ain’t Nobody.”
“Oh, one more?” she said to no one in particular. “S—. One more!”
Brad Arnold, the lead singer of 3 Doors Down, announced that the American rock band’s summer tour would be canceled for a heartbreaking reason — he has been diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer that has spread to his lungs.
Arnold broke the news in a video to his fans Wednesday, telling them that the diagnosis was “not real good,” but thanks to his faith in God he has “no fear. I really, sincerely am not scared of it at all.”
The 46-year-old singer said he was sick a few weeks ago and was hospitalized. Doctors learned he had clear cell renal cell carcinoma that had metastasized to his lungs.
Clear cell renal cell carcinoma is the most common form of kidney cancer and may be treated through immunotherapy and surgery to remove tumors, according to the National Cancer Institute. The five-year survival rate for patients is 50% to 69%. When tumors are large or have spread to other parts of the body, treatment is more challenging, and the five-year survival rate falls to about 10%.
Arnold said the band is sorry they were forced to cancel their summer tour, which was set to kick off on May 15 at Daytona Beach and travel across America, co-headlining with Creed for select shows. Tour information on the 3 Doors Down website has been removed and replaced with Arnold’s video.
Creed singer Scott Stapp shared his support for the singer in the Instagram comments section of the video.
“If anyone has the FAITH and STRENGTH to face this fight, it’s YOU brother,” he wrote. “I think I can speak for all of us, we are lifting you up in prayer right now believing without doubt for your total healing!”
The post garnered thousands of comments in the first few hours, with fans and other musicians sharing their love and prayers for Arnold.
“May God bless you brother. Showing us how to conquer the darkness with light,” wrote American singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw.
In the caption, Arnold wrote that the band’s 2008 hit “It’s Not My Time” has become a personal anthem and asked for the support of his “prayer warriors,” saying he has the best fans in the world.
“I’d love for you to lift me up in prayer every chance you get,” he said in the video.
3 Doors Down began in 1996 as a three-piece band out of Escatawpa, Miss., with Arnold, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Matt Roberts and bassist Todd Harrell. Two years later, Chris Henderson joined on rhythm guitar and backing vocals.
The group rose to fame in 2000 with their debut album, “The Better Life,” featuring hit single “Kryptonite,” which became a defining rock song of the early 2000s and has more than a billion streams on Spotify. They continued to grow their fan base with subsequent album releases “Away From the Sun” in 2002 and “Seventeen Days” in 2005.
The band’s lineup has undergone several changes over the years. Current members are Arnold, Henderson, guitarist Chet Roberts, drummer Greg Upchurch and bassist Justin Biltonen.
Roberts, the band’s founding guitarist, left the band in 2012 and died from an overdose of prescription pills in 2016.
San Francisco — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie had declared it Michael Tilson Thomas Day. City Hall glowed MTT’s trademark blue. Davies Symphony Hall, where Tilson Thomas presided over the San Francisco Symphony for an influential quarter century, was festooned with giant blue balloons.
For Tilson Thomas, it all was the culmination of what he declared in February: “We all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap.’”
Despite starting treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer in summer 2021, Tilson Thomas astonishingly continued to conduct throughout the U.S. and even in Europe for the next three and a half years. But in February he learned that the tumor had returned, and the conductor declared last Saturday night’s San Francisco Symphony gala, billed as an 80th tribute to this native Angeleno, would be his last public appearance.
He was led to the podium by his husband, Joshua Robison, who remained seated on stage, keeping a watchful eye. Tilson Thomas started with Benjamin Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell, better known as “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” After various tributes and performances in his honor, MTT, ever the great showman, went out with a bang, leading a triumphant and mystical and stunningly glorious performance of Respighi’s splashy “Roman Festivals.”
A song from Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Town” — including the line “Where has the time all gone to?” — followed as an encore, sung by guest singers and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, just before balloons joyfully fell from above.
For six decades, beginning with his undergraduate years at USC — where he attracted the attention of Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky and the odd rock ‘n’ roll musician about town — Tilson Thomas has been a joy-making key figure in American music.
To pin MTT down is an unreasonable task. He saw a bigger picture than any great American conductor before him — his mentor and champion, Bernstein, included. With a pioneering sense of eclecticism, he connected the dots between John Cage and James Brown, between Mahler and MTT’s famous grandfather, Boris Thomashefsky, a star of the New York Yiddish theater.
Tilson Thomas has nurtured generations of young musicians and given voice to outsiders greatly responsible for American music becoming what it is. He treated mavericks as icons — Meredith Monk and Lou Harrison among them.
The San Francisco concert could touch on little of this, but it did reveal something of what makes MTT tick. In “Young Person’s Guide,” for instance, Tilson Thomas demonstrated an undying love of every aspect of the orchestra as well as his lifelong devotion to education. As a 25-year-old Boston Symphony assistant conductor, he was speaking to audiences, sharing enthusiasm that not all uptight Bostonians were quite ready for.
Not long after, he succeeded Bernstein in the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts. He made television and radio documentaries. In 1987, he founded the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, training orchestra musicians. Alumni are now busy reinventing American orchestral life. In L.A., former New World violinist Shalini Vijayan curates the imaginative Koreatown new music series Tuesdays @ Monk Space.
With the young conductor Teddy Abrams at his side turning pages, Tilson Thomas treated “Young Person’s Guide” more as a seasoned player’s guide to the orchestra. A hallmark of Tilson Thomas’ tenure in San Francisco had been to encourage a degree of free expression typically stifled in ensemble playing. Britten’s score is a riot of solos, and this time around they all seemed to be saying, in so many notes: “This is for you Michael.”
Michael Tilson Thomas conduct’s Britten’s ‘Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell’ to open his gala concert with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall.
(Stefan Cohen / San Francisco Symphony)
This is for you, Michael, as was all else that followed. While Tilson Thomas sat in a chair at the front of the stage looking at the orchestra, Abrams — music director of the Louisville Orchestra and a Berkeley native who began studying at age 9 with Tilson Thomas — led the rousing overture to Joseph Rumshinsky’s Yiddish theater comedy, “Khantshe in Amerike.” Bessie Thomashefsky, Tilson Thomas’ grandmother, was the original Khantshe in 1915.
Throughout his career Tilson Thomas has been an active composer, but only in recent years had he finally began more actively releasing his pensive and wistful songs that served as informal entrees in a private journal. Mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke led off with “Immer Wieder” to a poem by Rilke. Frederica von Stade, still vibrant-sounding at 79, joined her for “Not Everyone Thinks I’m Beautiful.”
The two songs tenor Ben Jones turned to, “Drift Off to Sleep” and “Answered Prayers,” were moving odes to melancholy. The Broadway singer Jessica Vosk — whose career in show business was launched when Tilson Thomas picked her out of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus to be a soloist in “West Side Story” — lifted spirits with “Take Back Your Mink” from “Guys and Dolls,” but then reminded us why we were all there with Tilson Thomas’ “Sentimental Again.”
Cooke sang “Grace,” which Tilson Thomas wrote for Bernstein’s 70th birthday but which here took on a brave new meaning in its final stanza: “Make us grateful whatever comes next / In this life on earth we’re sharing / For the truth is / Life is good.”
Edwin Outwater, who got his start as an assistant conductor to Tilson Thomas in San Francisco, led the inspirational finale of Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” before Tilson Thomas returned to raise the roof with “Roman Festivals.”
Respighi’s evocations of gladiators at the Circus Maximus, of early Christian pilgrims and other scenes of ancient Roman life, seem a surprisingly odd epilogue to an all-American conductor’s storied career. But Tilson Thomas has always been an arresting programmer, even in his 20s when he served as music director of the Ojai festival. “Roman Festivals” has long been a Tilson Thomas favorite. He recorded it with the L.A. Phil in 1978, relishing the details of ancient Rome in all its intricate and realistic complexity.
This last time, Tilson Thomas offered an epic, yet longing, look back. Trumpets blared with startlingly loud majesty. Pilgrims were lost in stunning meditative refinement. In the last of the four festivals, “The Epiphany,” grace and grandeur merged as one, with final, firm orchestral punctuation massively powerful. It was as if Tilson Thomas was saying to the audience, “This one is for you. And I’m still here saying it.”
Tilson Thomas has made a practice of musing about what happens when the music stops. What is left? How long does the music stay with us, somewhere inside? Can it change us? Does it matter?
From the instant Tilson Thomas became music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, he treated the orchestra as an essential component of San Francisco life. His successor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, has taken that to heart with the kind of innovatory spirit that he had brought to the L.A. Phil. The orchestra’s management has not, however, provided needed support, and Salonen is leaving in June. Musicians stood outside Davies handing out fliers to the audience demanding that the orchestra pursue Tilson Thomas’ mission.
The San Francisco Symphony has reached a turning point. Respighi wrote of “The Epiphany” that he wanted frantic clamor and intoxicating noise, expressing the popular feeling “We are Romans, let us pass!” Tilson Thomas beat out those three emphatic staccato orchestral chords — Let! Us! Pass! — as though meant to ring and ring and ring, as lasting as centuries-old Roman monuments.
Riot police have been deployed in large numbers to separate the groups in Tunis.
Opponents of Tunisian President Kais Saied have protested on the streets of the capital Tunis, accusing him of using the judiciary and police to suppress critics, while his supporters have held a counter-rally, highlighting a deepening political divide wracking the nation.
The anti-Saied demonstration – the second opposition protest in a week – reflects growing concern among human rights groups that the birthplace of the Arab Spring is sliding towards an autocracy.
Demonstrators on the capital’s main thoroughfare chanted slogans such as “Saied go away, you are a dictator” and “The people want the fall of the regime,” a slogan that evoked the 2011 uprising – the first in the region in a year of tumult, and which toppled former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
On the same street, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, Saied’s supporters rallied in his defence, chanting, “No to foreign interference” and “The people want Saied again.”
Riot police have been deployed in large numbers to separate the groups. No clashes have been reported as of yet.
The demonstrations follow a months-long government crackdown on Saied’s critics, including the detention last week of prominent lawyer Ahmed Souab, a fierce critic of the president.
On Thursday, the anti-Saeid protesters marched from the headquarters of the Administrative Court, where Souab had served as a judge before retiring and becoming a lawyer widely respected by all political parties.
They then joined other protesters in a square that is home to the headquarters of the powerful UGTT union, before heading towards Habib Bourguiba Avenue.
Souab’s arrest followed prison sentences handed down last week to opposition leaders on conspiracy charges, drawing criticism from France, Germany, and the United Nations.
Saied rejected the criticism, calling it a blatant interference in Tunisia’s sovereignty.
The opposition accuses Saied of undermining the democracy won in the 2011 revolution, since he seized extra powers in 2021 when he shut down the elected parliament and moved to rule by decree before assuming authority over the judiciary.
They described his move as a coup, while Saied says it was legal and necessary to end chaos and rampant corruption.
The leaders of most political parties in Tunisia are in prison.
The government says there is democracy in Tunisia. Saied says he will not be a dictator but insists that what he calls a corrupt elite must be held accountable.
Less than a week after Coachella concluded, the Stagecoach country music festival has drawn another crowd in the tens of thousands to the now mostly grassless Empire Polo Club in Indio. The three-day event kicked off Friday and will run through Sunday night with headliners Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll and Luke Combs. I’ll be here all weekend to bring you the highs and the lows as they happen. Here’s what went down on Day 2:
“This is officially the biggest show I’ve ever headlined in my career,” Jelly Roll said not long into his main-stage performance, and for him that presented an opportunity to do more than entertain: “I never would have dreamed that God would’ve brought a boy from Tennessee to the desert of Southern California,” he added, his voice steadily rising like a pastor’s, “to lead us in church service on a Saturday night to heal the broken through the power of music.”
True to that framing, the face-tattooed rapper-turned-singer did plaintive versions of his songs “Son of a Sinner” and “I Am Not Okay” — both of which draw on his history with drugs and jail to tell stories of redemption — and brought out an actual worship leader, Brandon Lake, to sing his growly Christian-music crossover hit, “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” The stage set resembled a gas station with a neon sign assuring us that Jesus saves — an oasis in the desert, in other words.
Jelly Roll made time for some more earthly pleasures: cameos from BigXthaPlug and Wiz Khalifa that reminded you of his hip-hop roots, and an appearance by MGK, who did his appealingly bratty pop-punk “My Ex’s Best Friend.” He also brought out Alex Warren to sing his gloopy ballad “Ordinary” and to premiere a new duet between the two of them called “Oh My Brother.” (Unfortunately, it sounded like Imagine Dragons.)
Jelly Roll finished his set with another faith-minded moment, welcoming Lana Del Rey to the stage to join him for “Save Me” as simulated rain fell on the two of them. Del Rey’s feathery croon was totally wrong for the song, which calls for an unembarrassed quality that’s not part of her whole deal. But Jelly Roll looked so amped to have her out there that you were inclined — hey, what do you know — to forgive.
Scott Stapp performs with Creed at Stagecoach on Saturday night.
(Scott Dudelson / Getty Images for Stagecoach)
Saturday’s big megachurch energy continued with Creed’s late-night set in the Palomino tent, where singer Scott Stapp struck an assortment of messianic poses as his bandmates ground out the gospel-grunge riffs of “One Last Breath” and “Higher.” For the latter, Creed brought out the pop-soul star Tori Kelly — just one of the many millennials and zoomers who’ve kept Creed in business a quarter-century after the band’s hit-making era.
Koe Wetzel performs Saturday night at Stagecoach.
(Scott Dudelson / Getty Images for Stagecoach)
Did you know that Lana Del Rey had made out with your pal Morgan Wallen, as she claimed in a song at Stagecoach on Friday night?
Did she say so? Good for her.
Your girlfriend recently announced she’s pregnant. If you could choose, what would be the first song your child hears?
“Island in the Sun” by Weezer? I don’t know. It’s a good vibe.
You posted a photo the other day of you and Bailey Zimmerman hanging out at Billy Bob’s in Texas. Bailey’s drinking a Twisted Tea. Did you let him know that Twisted Tea is a disgusting drink?
I honestly don’t know what happened that night. We went to a bar, and I think his manager was like, “Please don’t go out with Koe.” Once we got offstage, it was sort of chaos — kind of black-out city. Twisted Tea, I’m not a big fan of it. But Bailey’s young. I remember being that young and drinking it too — I can’t hold it against him.
What’s an adult beverage you’ve sworn off?
I will never drink Rumple Minze ever again.
Last year, Jessie Murph said on TikTok that she’d been called a rat by some of your fans for appearing on your song “High Road.” Then she directed them to the solo version you released and told them to go get their DUIs. What’s your response?
She’s a bad bitch. Shout out to her. Everybody that was talking s—, go f— yourself.
You wrote songs for your album “9 Lives” with the songwriter Amy Allen, who also had a hand in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet.” Are you into Sabrina’s album?
I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t in there jamming it. I’m a Sabrina fan.
Are you involved in a beef with another musician at the moment?
I’m currently beefless. I think I’m pretty cool with everybody. If you hear different from somebody else, though, let me know — we’ll fire it up for sure.
Last week you posted a photo from the studio. The best new song you’ve got so far — what’s it about?
We wrote a song about a serial killer the other day.
What’s a tattoo you regret?
“F— 2020” on my leg. I was super-drunk when I got it. I woke up the next morning, wiped the blood away and said, “Well, that’s there forever.”
Tiera Kennedy, dressed in an Aaliyah T-shirt for her second Stagecoach performance of the day, moving nimbly through SWV’s always-welcome “Weak.”
Ashley McBryde, on the main stage at sunset, nailing the haunted yet blissed-out vibe of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.”
Playing Stagecoach as part of a tour behind last year’s “Passage du Desir” (which he released under the alter ego Johnny Blue Skies), Sturgill Simpson and his tight four-piece band offered up an hour of soulful boogie-rock jams that evoked the Allman Brothers backed by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Speaking of covers: In addition to William Bell’s early-’60s soul staple “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” Simpson played a longing rendition of, uh, “Party All the Time” by Eddie Murphy.
Shaboozey performs Saturday at Stagecoach.
(Timothy Norris / Getty Images for Stagecoach)
Like T-Pain on Friday, Shaboozey completed a rare Indio trifecta on Saturday, performing on Stagecoach’s main stage after doing both weekends of Coachella. (Perhaps that’s why he wore three bedazzled belts as part of his sharp denim suit.) The rap-fluent country star sang a moving rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which he called one of his favorite songs of all time; brought out Sierra Ferrell to do “Hail Mary”; and closed of course with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” his 2024 smash that spent 19 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 last year. Around the time of February’s Grammy Awards, Shaboozey appeared to have tired — reasonably! — of “Tipsy’s” rootsy jollity. Here, though, he seemed reenergized by the thousands singing along.
One vivid demonstration of Stagecoach’s evolution from the festival’s early days: Scott Storch’s appearance inside Diplo’s HonkyTonk, where the producer and songwriter was introduced by his Don Julio-guzzling hype man as the guy who dated both Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. Eyes hidden behind his signature aviators, Storch took up a spot behind a Korg Kronos synthesizer and played along with a handful of the slinky pop and R&B hits he helped create in the early 2000s — not least Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” before which he very dramatically ripped a cig.
Dasha performs Saturday at Stagecoach.
(Timothy Norris / Getty Images for Stagecoach)
Help me parse the timeline in your viral hit “Austin.” The narrator used to live in L.A., then moved to Austin and now is talking about moving back to L.A.?
“Austin” is actually about Nashville, but Nashville had some s— rhymes, so we changed it to Austin. In the song, I had been in Nashville — Austin — was living in L.A., and I was moving back to Nashville. That was the whole storyline there. And the guy that I was talking to was in Nashville. Well, Austin.
Hmm. Is it true that things don’t rhyme with Nashville?
Cashville? Hashville?
Would you rather be 10% smarter or 10% funnier?
Funnier. I feel pretty smart. But also: You have to be intelligent to be funny.
What’s the last thing you used ChatGPT for?
In the set today, I whip out a harmonica and play it, so we built a harmonica holster into my outfit — my ass-less chaps that are hanging over there. They were asking what the dimensions were, and I was like, “How would I know?” But ChatGPT will know.
Throwback to your L.A. days: Ralphs or Vons?
I’m more of a Trader Joe’s girl.
Most hated freeway?
The 10 is f—ing terrible.
Do you consider yourself a theater kid?
Yes — a thespian, all the way.
Is “theater kid” derogatory?
People use it as an insult, but I think it’s the biggest compliment. Before I go onstage, to everyone in my band and my dancers, I’m like, “Broadway, guys — Broadway.” I channel my musical-theater self onstage, as if I’m playing myself in a musical-theater production.
What’s a musical you’d like to be in but you haven’t yet?
I’m dying to play Sandy in “Grease.”
How many unread text messages do you have?
823.
Does anyone besides you know the passcode to your phone?
I think my whole team does. I don’t have anything to hide on there.
BOSTON — As a Black teenager growing up in Boston, Wayne Lucas vividly remembers joining some 20,000 people to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the city’s segregated school system and the entrenched poverty in poor communities.
Lucas was back on the Boston Common this weekend to celebrate the anniversary of what became known as the 1965 Freedom Rally. Sixty years on, he joined others Saturday in calling for continued activism against many of the same injustices and inequities that King fought against, and in blaming President Trump and his administration for current divisions and fears about race and immigration across the country.
“The message was … that we still have work to do,” said Lucas, 75. “It was a lot of inspiration by every speaker out there.”
The gathering drew several hundred people on a rainy and windy day, conditions similar to those during the 1965 event. It was preceded by a march by a smaller group, mostly along the route taken to the Boston Common 60 years earlier. As many as 125 organizations took part, organizers say.
King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, gave a keynote speech, saying he never thought racism would be on the rise again as he sees it today.
“We must quadruple our efforts to create a more just and humane society,” he told the crowd. “We used to exhibit humanity and civility, but we have chosen temporarily to allow civility to be moved aside. And that is not sustainable, my friends.”
He added, “Today, we’ve got to find a way to move forward. When everything appears to be being dismantled, it seems to be attempting to break things up. Now, you do have to retreat sometimes. But Dad showed us how to stay on the battlefield, and Mom, throughout their lives. They showed us how to build community.”
The gathering was near the site of a 20-foot-high memorial to racial equity, which shows younger King’s parents embracing.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the work of 1960s civil rights leaders remains unfinished, with too many people still experiencing racism, poverty and injustice.
“We are living through perilous times,” she said. “Across the country, we are witnessing … a dangerous resurgence of white supremacy, of state-sanctioned violence, of economic exploitation, of authoritarian rhetoric.”
The original protest march in 1965 brought the civil rights movement to the Northeast, a place Martin Luther King Jr. knew well from his time earning a doctorate in theology from Boston University and serving as assistant minister at the city’s Twelfth Baptist Church. It was also the place he met his wife, Coretta Scott King, who earned a degree in music education from the New England Conservatory.
In his speech that day, King told the crowd that he returned to Boston not to condemn the city but to encourage its leaders to do better at a time when Black leaders were fighting to desegregate the schools and housing and working to improve economic opportunities for Black residents. He also implored Boston to become a leader that New York, Chicago and other cities could follow in conducting “the creative experiments in the abolition of ghettos.”
“It would be demagogic and dishonest for me to say that Boston is a Birmingham, or to equate Massachusetts with Mississippi,” he told the crowd. “But it would be morally irresponsible were I to remain blind to the threat to liberty, the denial of opportunity, and the crippling poverty that we face in some sections of this community.”
The Boston rally happened after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and months before the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in August.
King and other civil rights leaders had just come off the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama, which culminated in Bloody Sunday on March 7, weeks before the Boston rally. King had also recently led the 1963 Birmingham campaign prompting the end of legalized racial segregation in the Alabama city, and eventually throughout the nation.
Saturday’s rally came as the Trump administration is waging war on some bedrock civil rights themes — diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in government, schools and businesses around the country, including in Massachusetts.
Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has banned diversity initiatives across the federal government. The administration has launched investigations of colleges — public and private — that it accuses of discriminating against white and Asian students with race-focused admissions programs intended to address historical inequities in access for Black students.
The Defense Department at one point temporarily removed training videos recognizing the Tuskegee Airmen and an online biography of Jackie Robinson. In February, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., a champion of racial diversity in the military, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020, had spoken publicly about his experiences as a Black man, and was only the second Black general to serve as chairman.
The administration has fired diversity officers across government, curtailed some agencies’ celebrations of Black History Month and terminated grants and contracts for projects ranging from planting trees in disadvantaged communities to studying achievement gaps in American schools.
Martin Luther King III told the Associated Press that the attacks on diversity make little sense, noting, “We cannot move forward without understanding what happened in the past.”
“It doesn’t mean that it’s about blaming people. It’s not about collective guilt. It’s about collective responsibility,” he continued. “How do we become better? Well, we appreciate everything that helped us to get to where we are. Diversity hasn’t hurt the country.”
He said opponents of diversity have floated an uninformed narrative that unqualified people of color are taking jobs from qualified white people, when the reality is Black Americans have long been denied the opportunities they deserve.
“I don’t know if white people understand this, but Black people are tolerant,” he said. “From knee-high to a grasshopper, you have to be five times better than your white colleague. And that’s how we prepare ourselves. So it’s never a matter of unqualified. It’s a matter of being excluded.”
Imari Paris Jeffries, the president and CEO of Embrace Boston, which along with the city put on the rally, said the event was a chance to remind people that elements of the “promissory note” the elder King referred to in his “I Have A Dream” speech remain “out of reach” for many people.
“We’re having a conversation about democracy. This is the promissory note — public education, public housing, public health, access to public art,” Paris Jeffries said. “All of these things are a part of democracy. Those are the things that are actually being threatened right now.”
Casey writes for the Associated Press.
Chris Eubank Jr opened up about the fractured relationship with his father and the death of his brother before Saturday’s much-hyped fight with rival Conor Benn.
The all-British grudge match will take place at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, more than 30 years after their fathers began their own an iconic rivalry.
Speaking at Thursday’s news conference, Benn, 28, vowed to inflict “pain” on the 35-year-old Eubank Jr in their middleweight contest
“What is pain, though?”, retorted Eubank Jr, whose brother Sebastian died in 2021 aged 29. “I have a brother who is buried in the desert in Dubai, that is pain.
“I have his son, three years old, he asks, ‘why can’t I see my daddy? why can’t he take me to school?’. That is pain.”
It is becoming increasingly unlikely Chris Eubank Sr, who beat Nigel Benn in 1990 before a contentious draw three years later, will be at Saturday’s bout.
Eubank Sr has fallen out with his son and not been involved in any of the fight build-up.
“My own father, a man I idolised for my entire life, and he doesn’t speak to me,” added Eubank Jr.
“We haven’t spoken for years and he thinks I’m a disgrace. These things are what pain is to me.”
Eubank Jr and Benn were scheduled to fight in October 2022, before Benn failed a voluntary drugs test.
A long and intense stare down ensued at the face-off, although there was no repeat of February’s infamous news conference when Eubank Jr slapped Benn with an egg.