UK’s Radiohead take aim at May

London tower block charity single tops charts

GLASTONBURY, England, June 24, (RTRS): Britain’s Radiohead returned to Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage on Friday, 20 years after a legendary performance at the festival, with a set that mocked Prime Minister Theresa May’s election campaign and pulled songs from nearly all of their albums.

The band from Oxfordshire, England, first headlined in 1997, one of the wettest years in the festival’s history, when they lifted a sodden crowd with music from their album “OK Computer”.

Featuring songs about alienation, capitalism and modern technology, the band’s third album sounds oddly prescient in a politically divided and anxious Britain in 2017.

Fans expected “OK Computer” to feature heavily in the set on Friday, the same day a version of the album was re-released, including tracks that did not make the cut 20 years ago, called “OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017”.

The band opened with “Daydreaming” from last year’s “A Moon Shaped Pool”, followed by “Lucky”, the first of a host of “OK Computer” tracks that included “Exit Music (For a Film)”, “Let Down”, “Paranoid Android” and “Karma Police”.

Singer Thom Yorke changed the lyric at the end of the song “Myxomatosis” to “strong and stable”, apparently mocking a slogan that May repeated many times in her campaign.

“See you later Theresa; Shut the door on the way out,” Yorke said, in one of his few addresses to the crowd.

May has yet to form a stable government in Britain, more than two weeks after an inconclusive national election.

Radiohead’s two-hour show went down well with fans, but left some newcomers underwhelmed, evidenced by a steady stream of people heading off to other stages.

Tom Martin, a 30-year old from Cork, Ireland, was not disappointed by a band he had long followed. “It was the best gig I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Earlier in the day, English duo Royal Blood drew a huge Pyramid Stage crowd for a masterclass in straight, hard rock as their second album “How Did We Get So Dark?” went straight to the top of the charts.

Lead singer and guitarist Mike Kerr, who formed the band with drummer

been this way since I was 12,” and declares he has the “magic of OCD.” Brian May also adds a classic solo. (RTRS) Ben Thatcher in 2013, said playing the main stage at the world’s biggest greenfield festival was “life-changing, terrifying and ridiculous”.

The festival started with a minute of silence on Friday morning in memory of recent terror attacks and the devastating Grenfell Tower fire before Hacienda Classical eased revellers into the first day of music.

Peter Hook, the bass player from Manchester bands Joy Division and New Order, led the crowd in reflecting on “our hopes and our prayers for life, love and freedom, the things we are here to celebrate”.

Other performers on the main stage at Worthy Farm in south-west England, included 81-year-old Kris Kristofferson and English indie band the xx.

A charity single released to raise money for survivors of the Grenfell Tower block fire reached the top spot in the British charts on Friday after selling more than 170,000 copies.

The track is a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by 50 artists including Stormzy, Emeli Sande, Robbie Williams and Paloma Faith.

It was released one week after the fire in west London on Wednesday and had the biggest sales of any single this decade on its first day, selling 120,000 copies, the Official Charts Company said in a statement.

Second-fastest

The single was the second-fastest selling one of the year, after Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”.

Seventy-nine people are presumed to have died in the blaze at Grenfell Tower, a council-owned apartment complex built in 1974 and refurbished last year.

The video for the single featured the aftermath of the blaze, including firefighters in tears as they left the building and horrified bystanders.

The song starts with an emotional rap by Stormzy.

“I don’t know where to begin so I’ll start by saying I refuse to forget you/I refuse to be silenced/I refuse to neglect you,” the grime star sings.

Proceeds from sales of the song and extra donations will go to Artists for Grenfell, which was set up to support survivors and victims’ families.

LOS ANGELES:

The Grammy Museum will honor 16-time Grammy winner David Foster at its third annual Gala, taking place Sept. 19 at The Novo in Los

The song was organised by music mogul Simon Cowell.

Also on Friday the English Football Association said that around £1.25 million (1.4 million euros, $1.6 million) in proceeds expected from the Community Shield game in August between Chelsea and Arsenal would go to survivors of the fire.

“Two great London clubs will come together to play at the city’s most famous stadium just a few miles from Kensington,” FA chairman Greg Clarke said in a statement.

“They will be united in their passion for football, grief at this tragic loss and support for their community,” he said.

LOS ANGELES:

Also:

The tip sheet was relatively short for the premiere of HBO’s “The Defiant Ones” at Los Angeles’ Paramount Studios on Thursday night (June 22), but befitting a fete honoring Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine — and the four-part documentary about their lives directed by Allen Hughes — it had power. Among the rap and rock royalty in attendance: Kendrick Lamar, Trent Reznor, Puff Daddy, Pharrell Williams, Jared Leto, and, in a rare appearance, Eminem, who avoided the red carpet, and, wearing a cap and sporting ginger-brown hair and beard, took a seat in the Paramount Theatre behind his longtime collaborator Dr Dre.

Also making the scene was Interscope Geffen A&M chairman John Janick and Apple’s Robert Kondrck, the latter curiously wearing a Capitol Records T-shirt. (DJ Khaled appeared to have missed the festivities because social media duties beckoned — fair enough since his new album, Grateful, was officially released at midnight.)

The story of the Dre, trailblazing rapper, and Iovine, the music manturned-executive, both moguls in their own right today, is told primarily through those artists (Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Bono, and Snoop Dogg are just a few of those featured in the series) and colleagues with whom they worked — Iovine, starting as an engineer in New York City, which segued into studio sessions and production credits with Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen; and Dre as a fledgling DJ and rapper, who made history with L.A.’s own N.W.A.

Angeles. Foster will receive the Architects of Sound Award in recognition of his contributions to music, which include Grammys for his work with Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, Earth, Wind & Fire, Michael Buble and more. The benefit will support the Museum’s newly expanded music education programs, which were integrated with those of its sister organization, the Grammy Foundation, earlier this year.

“We are thrilled to be celebrating such an influential talent and powerhouse music figure as David Foster for our first major fundraising event since integrating the Grammy Museum and Grammy Foundation,” said Scott Goldman, who was recently named the museum’s executive director. (RTRS)

PARIS:

“Harry Potter” star Emma Watson spent Thursday hiding copies of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” across Paris to promote feminism.

“I’m hiding copies all over Paris!” the actor best known for playing Hermione Granger said on Twitter.

Atwood’s 1985 novel — which has now been turned into a hit television series starring Elisabeth Moss of “Mad Men” fame — is about a dystopian world where women are reduced to being the child-bearing slaves of male masters. (AFP)