Aurelia Butler

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    Jack Russell, Great White Singer and Survivor of Nightclub Fire, Dies at 63

    At a show in 2003 with his “Jack Russell’s Great White,” a pyrotechnics display ignited a fire that killed 100 people, including the band’s guitarist.Jack Russell, the singer who led the popular 1980s hard rock band Great White, as well as a spinoff group that set off one of the deadliest nightclub fires ever, has died. He was 63.The cause of death was lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy, said K.L. Doty, the author of Mr. Russell’s autobiography. No other details were given.Mr. Russell’s death was announced in a post on his official Instagram profile on Thursday and confirmed by Ms. Doty. Great White also paid tribute to his death on its Instagram page.Mr. Russell co-founded Great White with guitarist Mark Kendall. The band, originally called Dante Fox, began playing in small clubs in Southern California in the early 1980s. It became Great White in 1984. The group’s first big hit, “Rock Me,” landed the No. 60 spot on the Billboard Top 100 Chart in 1987.Great White found success with its third album, which featured its biggest hit, “Once Bitten Twice Shy.” The song reached No. 5 in 1989 and earned the band a 1990 Grammy nomination.Mr. Russell briefly left Great White in 1996 to build a solo career but returned in 1999. By 2001, Great White had disbanded.In 2002, Mr. Russell and Mr. Kendall hired three new musicians and began touring as Jack Russell’s Great White, playing in small clubs. In February 2003, while performing at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., the band’s pyrotechnics ignited a deadly fire that killed 100 people, including Great White’s guitarist, and left 230 injured. It was one of the worst club fires in U.S. history.The two brothers who owned the club, and installed the highly flammable soundproofing foam around its stage, and the band’s tour manager, who lit the blaze, were charged in connection with the fire.Mr. Russell was not charged, but members of the band agreed to pay a $1 million settlement.By 2005, Jack Russell’s Great White parted ways after “the stress from lawsuits, inner band turmoil, and Russell’s substance abuse problems, had taken its toll,” according to the All Music Guide.Great White reunited in 2007, but it was short-lived. Mr. Russell continued making music with Jack Russell’s Great White. He announced in an Instagram post in July that he was retiring because of his health problems.“I am unable to perform at the level I desire and at the level you deserve,” Mr. Russell wrote. “Words cannot express my gratitude for the many years of memories, love, and support.”Jack Patrick Russell was born on Dec. 5, 1960 in Montebello, Calif. He grew up in Whittier, Calif., and dropped out of high school to pursue music.He is survived by his wife, Heather Ann Russell, and his son, Matthew Hucko. More

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    Greg Kihn, Who Scored Hits With ‘Jeopardy’ and ‘The Breakup Song,’ Dies at 75

    Mr. Kihn later became a popular morning disc jockey in the San Francisco Bay Area.Greg Kihn, the singer-songwriter whose band scored hits with “Jeopardy” and “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ’Em),” in the 1980s and who went on to become a popular radio disc jockey, died on Tuesday at health care facility in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was 75.The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a statement posted on his website on Thursday.Mr. Kihn rose to fame in the early 1980s as the frontman of the Greg Kihn Band, a California pop group. Mr. Kihn crafted songs that blended folk, classic rock, blues and pop. He’d achieved some success with several songs before his first big hit, “The Breakup Song,” written with Steve Wright, the band’s bass guitarist, reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1981.“I can tell you, life with a hit record is much better than life without a hit record,” Mr. Kihn said in a 2011 interview on the website LikeTotally80s.The band’s biggest hit, “Jeopardy,” which he also wrote with Mr. Wright, reached the No. 2 spot on the Hot 100 chart in 1983.The “Jeopardy” music video was practically on a loop on MTV that year. Weird Al Yankovic parodied the song with “I Lost on Jeopardy,” which featured Don Pardo, who for many years was an announcer on the “Jeopardy” television game show. Mr. Kihn, who said in interviews he was flattered to be parodied, also appeared at the end of Weird Al’s video for the song, driving a convertible with the license plate “LOSER.”In the mid-1990s, Mr. Kihn became a morning radio disc jockey for the classic rock radio station KFOX in the San Francisco Bay area, a job he held until 2012.In 2017 he released “ReKihndled,” his first studio album in more than 20 years.He also published six novels, including two that were music-themed: “Painted Black,” a fictional thriller about the death of Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones; and “Rubber Soul,” a fictional thriller about the Beatles. He also contributed to and edited “Carved In Rock,” an anthology of short stories by rock musicians including Pete Townsend of The Who, Ray Davies of The Kinks and Joan Jett. Gregory Stanley Kihn was born on July 10, 1949, in Baltimore. He moved to the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s, The San Francisco Examiner reported.Mr. Kihn is survived by his wife, Jay Arafiles-Kihn;a son, Ryan Kihn; a daughter, Alexis Harrington-Kihn; a sister, Laura Otremba; and two grandchildren.In an August 2018 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mr. Kihn said he had had great opportunities throughout his career.“I look back on my career and it’s been a stunning success, and I love that it was varied,” Mr. Kihn said. “I’ve been very blessed.”A complete obituary will follow. More

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    ‘The Union’ Review: Old Flames and Spy Games

    When a mission goes pear-shaped, a covert operative (Halle Berry) turns to a secret weapon: her high school boyfriend (Mark Wahlberg).The “Mission: Impossible” series went missing in action this summer, but that’s no reason to settle for Netflix’s “The Union,” a depressing illustration of the wisdom that sometimes you shouldn’t buy — or stream — generic. The movie combines a catalog of elements from the Tom Cruise franchise (supersecret agents, exotic locales, stunts) with a high-concept twist so silly it might as well have been selected by A.I.: What if — hear this out — the lead operatives happened to be former high school sweethearts?“The Union,” directed by Julian Farino, kicks off in Trieste, Italy, with a blatant retread of the first “M:I” installment: The agents are on a mission to retrieve a traitor with a stolen hard drive. Suddenly, violence breaks out, and almost the whole team is killed. A survivor from the group, Roxanne (Halle Berry), pitches her boss, Tom (J.K. Simmons), on who to turn to for help: “If he’s anything like that guy I remember,” she says, “he’s exactly who we need.”“He” is her onetime boyfriend, Mike (Mark Wahlberg), now a construction worker in New Jersey who is hooking up with their seventh-grade English teacher (Dana Delany). Roxanne hasn’t seen him in 25 years when she approaches him in a bar. His credentials are that he is, in Roxanne’s words, “a nobody”: Because of the nature of the pilfered intelligence on the drive, she and Tom need someone who has left virtually no civic footprint.Besides, their spy outfit, the Union — so covert that half the intelligence community doesn’t know it exists and the other half regrets finding out, Roxanne says, as if reciting a tagline — prefers blue-collar guys to Ivy League suits. They are, in theory, way more fun than the C.I.A. (Stephen Campbell Moore appears as a stiff from Langley.) Mike used to be a star athlete and is accustomed to spending all day on a sky-high beam. With that background, shouldn’t a three-and-half-minute training montage suffice?The other Union members are defined largely by their specialties — physical force (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), psychology (Alice Lee), computing (Jackie Earle Haley) — and the movie makes a few feeble feints at fish-out-of-water humor. (Mike may never have left the tristate area before, but does he really not know what side of the road the British drive on?)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Well Do You Know Disaster Movies? Revisit the Golden Years.

    In a world … where tornadoes launch livestock across the sky … … where faulty wiring turns a skyscraper into a death trap … … where a menace from above forces you to stop and look up … … one question remains … “What you are about to see could happen to any city, anywhere.” […] More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): A Word With Action Bronson

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the culture show hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes a rapid-fire questionnaire answered by the rapper Action Bronson, whose new album, “Johann Sebastian Bachlava The Doctor,” is out now. Topics covered include:The music of his childhoodParenting and his children’s tasteLearning to navigate successStress reliefHis lighthearted gourmand side and go-to ordersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Taylor Swift Returns to Stage for Eras Tour in London

    Fans at Wembley Stadium said they trusted British security officials to keep them safe and cheered loudly when the pop star came onstage.When Taylor Swift canceled three concerts in Vienna last week after officials there foiled a terrorist plot, Swifties soon expressed fears about the pop star’s next shows, in London.Would Swift go ahead with the concerts at Wembley Stadium? Given that the pop star once said her “biggest fear” was a terrorist attack at one of her shows, some fans had doubts. Was it even safe to attend?When Swift did not comment on the thwarted attack in Vienna or the upcoming London gigs, fan anxieties only grew.Yet when the singer took the stage on Thursday evening, worry gave way to excitement at the chance to see Swift perform during the European leg of her globe-spanning Eras Tour. As Swift walked onstage singing “It’s been a long time coming” — a refrain from her track “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” — the sold-out crowd cheered deliriously.She then launched into “Cruel Summer.”In the end, despite the interest in the Austrian plot, Swift did not refer to it even obliquely at the London show. Instead, she played an almost identical gig to the others on her Eras Tour, a joyous three-hour-plus spectacle featuring hits, costume changes and, at one point, a fake moss-covered wood cabin. For most of the concert, the 90,000 fans sang along to every word, including when she was joined by Ed Sheeran for an acoustic medley.In interviews before the show, more than a dozen fans, including many from the United States, all said they felt safe attending the event. Kyle Foster — wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey like Swift’s partner, Travis Kelce — said he had flown from North Carolina with his partner and two daughters for the show.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Gena Rowlands Shows Her True Power in ‘A Woman Under the Influence’

    In “A Woman Under the Influence,” her gloriously, terrifyingly imperfect Mabel was emblematic of the actress’s work, especially with John Cassavetes.Midway through “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974) — one of a number of astonishing films starring Gena Rowlands, who died Wednesday, and directed by her husband John Cassavetes — the distance between you and what’s onscreen abruptly vanishes. It’s the kind of moment that true movie believers know and yearn for, that transporting instance when your world seems to melt away and you’re one with the film. It can be revelatory; at times, as with Rowlands’s performance here, it can also be excruciatingly, viscerally painful.Rowlands is playing Mabel, an exuberantly alive woman of great sensitivities whose husband, Nicky (Peter Falk), loves her deeply but doesn’t understand her. They’re home and he has just yelled at her in front of some colleagues, who’ve fled. Now, as this husband and wife look at each other across their dining-room table, they struggle to push past the rancor and hurt. But Mabel is struggling harder because her purchase on everyday life has begun to badly slip, bewildering them both. Her love for Nicky and their children feels boundless, and it radiates off her like a fever, but Mabel is headed for a breakdown.Working with Cassavetes, Rowlands was helping find a new way to make American cinema.Faces InternationalAs the two begin working it out, Cassavetes cuts between them, framing each in isolating close-up. At first, Nicky looks at her with a faint, inscrutable smile that Mabel doesn’t return. Instead, she stares at him and holds up a thumb, as if she were getting ready to hitch a ride out, then she begins a strange pantomime. She screws her face into a scowl, waves her arms, mimes some words. Rowland had an incredibly expressive, near-elastic face and equally extraordinary control of it, and the quicksilver shifts she uses here are unexpected and destabilizing; you want to keep watching Mabel but aren’t sure you can.Within seconds, Nicky and Mabel are talking again and revisiting or, really, relitigating what just happened. “Wacko!” he yells. “I like your friends,” she answers, her voice rising. As Mabel keeps talking, Rowlands widens her eyes but she also shifts the character’s focus inward. Suddenly, Mabel isn’t looking at Nicky and she isn’t exactly talking to him, either. Instead, as Mabel animatedly continues, her gestures and expressions growing more exaggerated, she no longer seems present. She’s somewhere else and then just as abruptly she returns to the here and now, and everything shifts again. Mabel looks at Nicky, her face open and soft. “Tell me what you want me to — how you want me to be,” she says. “I can be that. I can be anything.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Burning Man Has Sold Out Since 2011. Why Not This Year?

    The desert arts festival returns this month after two consecutive years of challenging weather, including mud that stranded attendees, and a Covid-19 hiatus.Burning Man, the Nevada desert festival that routinely sells out tickets, is set to return this month, and ticket sales have slumped for the first time in years.It’s too soon to pin down what has caused the ticket sales shift, but factors most likely include two consecutive years of extreme weather, economic conditions and the organization of the Burning Man community. Here’s what to know.Tickets usually sell out for the desert festival.This year’s festival begins Aug. 25 and ends on Sept. 2, bringing tens of thousands of people to the Nevada desert to create a temporary community called Black Rock City, about 120 miles northeast of Reno.The festival began in 1986 on a San Francisco beach when people gathered to burn a wooden figure on the summer solstice. It moved to the desert in 1990 and sold out for the first time in 2011, and has continued to sell out, often quickly, every year since. Festival organizers had to cap attendance that year and stopped official ticket sales in early August, though last-minute tickets were usually still available on the resale market.The official ticket sale is done in segments, and this year, people can still buy a $575 ticket from the sale tier that opened on July 31. Tickets are also available for $225 for people with limited income. The Reno Gazette-Journal reported on this change earlier this month.Marian Goodell, the chief executive of the Burning Man Project, the nonprofit that organizes the festival, said in an interview on Wednesday that organizers expected this year’s Black Rock City population, which includes guests and staff, to be in the low 70,000s. Last year, the population was 74,126.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More