Names and faces
Kanye West, who apparently was paying too much attention to his phone Monday during the opening night of Broadway’s
The Cher
Show, was called out on Twitter by one of the musical’s performers about an hour into the production. Jarrod Spector, who plays Sonny Bono in the production, tweeted: “If you look up from your cell phone you’ll see we’re doing a show up here. It’s opening night. Kind of a big deal for us.” West later apologized for his lack of phone etiquette while he and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, were at the show. On Twitter, West wrote that “the dynamics of Cher and Sonny’s relationship made Kim and I grab each other’s hand and sing ‘I got you babe.’” Kardashian West is a huge Cher fan. The rapper certainly isn’t the first audience member to be called out for having his cellphone out during a show. In 2015, Madonna earned the ire of Lin-Manuel Miranda and several
Hamilton performers after she was spotted with her phone in the audience. Later that year, Patti LuPone famously confiscated a woman’s phone while performing in the off-Broadway play Shows for Days. As Spector’s tweet made the rounds on Twitter Monday night, many social media users brought up LuPone. The Cher Show depicts the pop diva at three different stages of her life and career. Cher has yet to weigh in on West’s faux pas.
A pilot’s error after engine-maintenance problems caused the 2017 helicopter crash that killed singer Troy Gentry and the pilot at a small airport where Gentry was to perform that night, federal investigators said. The pilot cut the engine too soon as he tried an emergency landing, leading to an uncontrolled descent, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a final report. Instead of reaching the runway at the Flying W Airport in Medford, N.J., the helicopter crashed in the woods nearby. Gentry, 50, who was half of the award-winning country music duo Montgomery Gentry, was taking a pleasure and orientation flight before the concert at the airport’s resort. The other half of the duo, Eddie Montgomery, and other band members were at the airport at the time. Several minutes after takeoff, pilot James Evan Robinson told experts on the ground that he couldn’t control the engine. The safety board said the maintenance crew’s failure to rig the throttle-control assembly before the flight contributed to the crash. Montgomery Gentry had success on the country charts and country radio in the 2000s, scoring No. 1 hits that included “Roll With Me” and “Back When I Knew It All.” Inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2009, the band released its debut album, Tattoos & Scars, in 1999.