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    Horace Tapscott, a Force in L.A. Jazz, Is Celebrated in a New Set

    “60 Years,” a compilation marking the 60th anniversary of his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, spotlights the pianist and community organizer, who died in 1999.There’s a name engraved in the sidewalk along Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood: Horace Tapscott, the local pianist and organizer whose ensemble, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, gave many musicians their first gigs and helped heal a community impacted by racism.“He saved Los Angeles when it comes to progressive music,” said the vocalist Dwight Trible, a performer with the Arkestra since 1987, in a telephone interview. “Because if you were going to get involved in that, you had to come through Horace Tapscott.”Tapscott started the group in 1961 and maintained it until his death in 1999, at 64. Yet his name has never rung as loudly outside of L.A. He didn’t tour much and his albums of vigorous Afrocentric jazz weren’t released on mainstream record labels. A new compilation titled “60 Years,” out Friday, may change that.The double LP set collects unreleased songs from every decade of the Arkestra’s existence, up to its present-day iteration with the drummer Mekala Session at the helm. Through a mix of home and live recordings, along with written track-by-track breakdowns from past and present members in the album’s liner notes, “60 Years” offers perspective on a group that’s largely flown under the radar.Featuring Bill Madison on drums; David Bryant on bass; Lester Robertson on trombone; and Arthur Blythe, Jimmy Woods and Guido Sinclair on saxophone; the Arkestra started in Tapscott’s garage and grew dramatically over the following 17 years.Tapscott founded the band and the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension, an artists’ collective, to provide more gigs for progressive jazz musicians living in L.A., and to get local children involved in the arts. His own journey in music began when he was young; his mother, Mary Lou Malone, was a stride pianist and tuba player and as a teen he played trombone locally before entering the Air Force.After a tour of the South with the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band, he wasn’t enamored with life on the road. During a stop in L.A., where Tapscott had lived since he was 9, he hopped off Hampton’s tour bus for good. “No one discovered I was gone until they got to Arizona,” he said in a 1982 interview.“He was way more interested in feeling and sounding like himself with his friends, who were also really unique,” Session said on a video call from Los Angeles. Still, Tapscott’s mission stretched beyond music. During the Watts riots in 1965, he had the band play in the middle of the road on a flatbed truck. (Police responded, with guns drawn.) They group would often perform in churches, community centers, prisons and hospitals for little to no money, and at benefits for Black Panther leaders, drawing attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Though Tapscott released his first album, “The Giant Is Awakened,” with a separate quintet in 1969, his debut LP with the Arkestra didn’t arrive until “The Call,” a mix of bluesy ballads and orchestral arrangements with grand flourishes, in 1978. Along the way, noted musicians and vocalists like Nate Morgan, Kamau Daaood, Adele Sebastian and Phil Ranelin played in the band.Trible came across Tapscott in the late 1980s as a singer in another group who wanted to work with the Arkestra. Two weeks after they performed separately at a festival, Tapscott offered an invitation. “He said, ‘I want you to come to my house tomorrow at 3 o’clock,’ and he hung up the phone,” Trible remembered with a laugh. “And just about every concert that Horace played from that time on, I sang with him in some capacity.”Trible performed a fiery rendition of “Little Africa,” a rapturous gospel song, with the current version of the Arkestra at National Sawdust in Brooklyn earlier this month. The festive night of shouts and praise featured older and younger Arkestra members, and served as a showcase for Session, the band’s leader since 2018; Mekala is the son of the saxophonist Michael Session, who led the band before him.In an interview before the gig, Session recalled joining the band as a teen. “I’m 13 and my first gig with the Ark is with Azar Lawrence,” he exclaimed, referring to the noted saxophonist and sideman to Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard. “It’s actually a very humbling thing to be a medium, a conduit for the ancestors trying to spread this vibration as far and as hard as possible.”The idea for the compilation arose shortly after the band’s 50th anniversary, which came and went without much fanfare. The collective vowed to not let that happen for its 60th. “We were like, ‘We’re going to make a product that will introduce a bunch of people to this band in a way that’s comprehensive and concise,” Session said. “This is for us, by us. We wanted to present something to the people from the band that can directly pay the band and support the band, and then be turned into other projects. It’s the first time the Ark has been able to do that, really.”Renewed interest in Tapscott and the Arkestra dates back at least seven years, when a new crop of L.A. jazz musicians — including the bassist Thundercat, the saxophonist Kamasi Washington and the producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin — helped the superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar create his avant jazz-rap opus “To Pimp a Butterfly,” shedding light on the city’s still-fertile jazz scene. Since then, various labels have reissued Tapscott’s work. But the music on “60 Years,” remastered from old cassettes and CDs, hasn’t been heard beyond the Arkestra.Six decades since Tapscott formed the band, Session said the group’s mission hasn’t changed, and he vowed to continue pushing forward. “I want to get weirder. I want to get back to how Horace did shows at prisons and high schools and colleges for free,” he said. “We could sell out Carnegie Hall and then come home and do the same set for 50, 60 cats. I want that balance. It sounds impossible, but we can do it.” More

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    Live Nation and Other Ticket Giants Promise Transparency on Fees

    Live Nation and SeatGeek said they would show customers the full cost of concerts, after the White House’s complaints that “junk fees” for tickets and hotel stays can mislead consumers.Under pressure from the Biden administration, some of the biggest companies that handle ticketing for concerts and other live events announced on Thursday that they will make it easier for consumers to see the full price of tickets they want to buy, including the fees that can often add more than 30 percent to the total cost of an order.Live Nation, the world’s largest concert company, said it would begin introducing “all-in pricing” — showing consumers the full price up front — at the venues it controls, which include more than 200 amphitheaters, clubs and other spaces in the United States. Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation, said it would make this tool available to other venues and promoters as well. Those changes are expected beginning in September.SeatGeek, a major vendor for reselling tickets that also works for major venues and sports teams like the Dallas Cowboys, said it too would begin introducing a feature that would reveal to consumers the full price of a ticket.Those changes come as the Biden administration has stepped up its pressure on the entertainment and travel industries to rein in what it calls “junk fees.” Before beginning a round table at the White House with executives from Live Nation, SeatGeek, Airbnb and other companies on Thursday, President Biden framed the crackdown on surcharges as a way to appeal to the working class — a major theme of his re-election campaign.“These hidden charges that companies sneak into your bill make you pay more without you really knowing it initially,” Mr. Biden said. “Junk fees are not a matter for the wealthy very much but they’re a matter for working folks like the homes I grew up in.”As Mr. Biden spoke, a screen showed an example of a “service charge” of $12.99. But for the most in-demand concerts, those fees can be many times higher. For one Drake concert, for example, a screenshot ricocheted around social media in March showing that for two tickets costing $544, three surcharges — service fee, facility charge and order fee — added another $541, nearly doubling the total cost.Ticketing, and questions of competition and consumer fairness in the entertainment industry, became hot-button issues in Washington after a botched presale in November for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Ticketmaster’s system was overrun with bots, and many fans reported that tickets they had selected disappeared from their online shopping charts.At a Senate Judiciary hearing in January, Live Nation came under harsh, bipartisan attack, with senators openly calling the company a monopoly. The Justice Department has separately been investigating Live Nation for potential violations of the consent decree that was a condition of the company’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010; among the terms in that agreement were that Live Nation cannot threaten venues with retaliation for not using Ticketmaster as their official ticket vendor.But the extent to which the most recent promises by Live Nation and SeatGeek would substantially change the ticket market are unclear. The concert industry is complex, with pricing and fees controlled by various parties that have little incentive to reduce their take — especially with live music rebounding after its near-disappearance during the Covid-19 pandemic, and ticket sales now reaching record highs.The changes by Live Nation and SeatGeek do not lower prices or include any commitment to reduce surcharges, which are often set by venues; those companies are simply promising to disclose fees as part of a ticket’s total cost.After Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address in February — at which he said, “We can stop service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all the fees upfront” — Live Nation proposed federal legislation that, among other things, would mandate all-in pricing.Without all competitors held to the same standard, many executives in the ticketing world say, those that comply voluntarily would be put at a competitive disadvantage, since other venues and ticketing services could lure customers by advertising lower prices, only to reveal surcharges once a customer completes a transaction.Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut who is a sponsor of a bill called the Junk Fee Prevention Act, offered a mixed review of Live Nation’s pledge of transparency.“Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s announcement is a step in the right direction,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement, “but no substitute for legislation to provide consumers with transparency and prevent companies from imposing ridiculous junk fees.”Still, Mr. Biden said that all the companies he had gathered for the round table were “voluntarily committed to ‘all-in’ upfront pricing,” and he called it a victory.“This is a win for consumers in my view,” Mr. Biden said, “and proof that our crackdown on junk fees has real momentum.” More

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    German Police Investigate Rammstein Singer Over Sexual Assault Accusations

    Accusations against the band’s frontman had been swirling on social media and in reports by German news outlets for nearly two weeks.Berlin’s state prosecutor said Wednesday that it had launched an investigation into accusations that Till Lindemann, the frontman of the German rock band Rammstein, had drugged and sexually assaulted women.Accusations against Mr. Lindemann — including that he oversaw a system to recruit female fans for sex before, during and after Rammstein shows — had been swirling on social media and in reports by German news outlets, citing anonymous sources, for nearly two weeks. But there had been no legal response until Wednesday.Mr. Lindemann’s lawyers did not reply to a request for comment on Thursday, but last week, they issued a statement denying that Mr. Lindemann had drugged women and warning that they would take legal action against individuals making such claims and news outlets reporting them.After news of the investigation broke, the band’s record company, Universal Music, announced that it would suspend promotional and marketing activities for the band. “The accusations against Till Lindemann have shocked us,” a record label spokeswoman said in a statement on Thursday.Rammstein, a metal band that is arguably Germany’s most famous musical act, is currently in the midst of a 35-date European stadium tour. After one of the tour’s first concerts, in Vilnius, Lithuania, in May, Shelby Lynn, a 24-year old woman from Northern Ireland who was at the gig, posted an extended Twitter thread in which she said she had been invited into “row zero,” a special zone in front of the stage, inaccessible to regular concertgoers.In her telling, she and other women were led from there to a preshow party where they were offered alcohol. Later, after the show began, Ms. Lynn said she was singled out and taken to a small room below the stage, where she was told to wait for Mr. Lindemann. The singer appeared during an instrumental number expecting sex, she said, adding that when she declined, he behaved angrily.Protesters outside a Rammstein concert in Munich this month.Sven Hoppe/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesMs. Lynn said she believes that she had been drugged, possibly when Mr. Lindemann served tequila shots to women attending the preshow party. After drinking one of those, Ms. Lynn wrote on Twitter, she felt like “a human zombie, singing, dancing, but also stumbling.” She said she was violently ill the next day and discovered bruises on her body.Ms. Lynn filed a police report in Vilnius, but the Lithuanian authorities said they would not investigate because they saw no evidence of a crime.The Twitter thread by Ms. Lynn was quickly picked up, and as many as 50 other women got in touch over social media to share similar stories, she said in a direct message exchange with The New York Times over Instagram. She posted some of the messages on her own feed, with the women’s names deleted.Many major German news outlets investigated and published evidence of a system to recruit young women to backstage parties. Women who spoke anonymously to the newspaper Die Welt said that, after attending the gatherings, they experienced symptoms that could indicate they had been drugged. But no one, besides Ms. Lynn, agreed to put their name to the charges.Then a German social media influencer, Kaya Loska, 21, who posts as Kayla Shyx, posted her own story on YouTube, where she has nearly 800,000 subscribers. In the 37-minute video, she says she was recruited to attend a backstage party at a Rammstein concert in Berlin, in June 2022. She had to give her cellphone to security, she says, and was led into a room where young women were offered alcohol and sandwiches, and told to wait.“We were simply brought in there so that Rammstein could choose some for himself,” Ms. Loska texted a friend hours after the concert, according to screenshots she shared in her video. She left the party after having that realization, she says in the video.It was well-known on Rammstein fan sites and in Reddit threads devoted to the band that women who wanted to attend the band’s backstage parties could get in touch via Instagram with Alena Makeeva, a Russian woman who called herself Rammstein’s “casting director.” Ms. Lynn and Ms. Loska both said that Ms. Makeeva had invited them to attend the parties.Ms. Lynn, whose social media posts ultimately led the Berlin investigation, said she was encouraged by how many women had spoken out already. “Already there has been so many girls,” Ms. Lynn said in an Instagram direct message, adding that she believed the state prosecutor’s investigation would encourage more to come forward.“I can’t imagine how many more there will be,” she said. “I can only hope the girls too afraid know that they can have faith in me, and have faith we will get justice.” More

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    ‘Nobody’s Hero’ Review: Little Desires Everywhere

    In this slippery farce, a schlubby coder falls in love with a prostitute and takes in a teenager he suspects is a terrorist.In the first few minutes of Alain Guiraudie’s meandering farce, “Nobody’s Hero,” Médéric (Jean-Charles Clichet) spots a middle-aged woman across the street and immediately declares his love. Contrary to cliché, the gesture is not romantic but droll and startlingly arbitrary — it’s early in the morning, and the two are at an empty suburban intersection. When the lucky lady, Isadora (Noémie Lvovsky), reveals she’s a prostitute, Médéric is unfazed, even after it turns out she’s also married to her pimp, Gérard (Renaud Rutten), an oddly jealous brute who resembles Dennis Hopper in “Blue Velvet.”Guiraudie, best known for his Hitchcockian gay-cruising thriller “Stranger by the Lake,” is a gifted conjurer of paranoia with an erotic edge. Things aren’t typically “solved” at the end of his woozy mysteries, which are often set in rural dream worlds where the boundaries of gay and straight don’t seem to matter.In “Nobody’s Hero,” this paranoid mood is played for snickers when a jihadist terrorist attack hits the town, Clermont-Ferrand, in central France, and Médéric is suddenly approached by a shifty, panhandling teen, Selim (Iliès Kadri), who looks just like a composite sketch of the perpetrator shown on TV. But Médéric, a schlubby coder, spends most of his time trying to have sex with Isadora, which proves a remarkably difficult feat given her occupation. Gérard keeps his menacing cop buddy on the lookout, and Médéric’s new employer, Florence (Doria Tillier), tends to call at the worst moment. Then there are his neighbors, who knock at his door incessantly and eventually coax Médéric into taking Selim in — it’s best he not loiter in the stairwell.As a straight dark comedy about French Islamophobia, “Nobody’s Hero” doesn’t make a lot of sense. Guiraudie is after something much different here: creating a palpable sense of the connection between fear and desire, which, sure, aren’t the most rational of our human impulses — but neither are love, marriage or jihadist crusading.Nobody’s HeroNot Rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Amid Barcelona’s Big Music Festivals, Small Venues Struggle

    On a recent Friday night, a few dozen 20-somethings piled into Sidecar, a well-known concert venue in downtown Barcelona.The small space, with a low vaulted ceiling, was only half-full, but onstage, the singer Íñigo Merino and his band were determined to show their audience a good time. The crowd sang along to Merino’s catchy pop songs, which he interspersed with anecdotes, jokes and personal stories.“Music used to be just a hobby, but when I wrote this song I started thinking ‘Why not give it a chance? It could be something beautiful,’” he told the crowd, to cheers of “Bravo!” Then he launched into “El Último Portazo” (“The Last Door Slam”).Barcelona is known around the world for its nightlife, and huge festivals like Primavera Sound and Sónar — which begins Thursday and runs through Saturday — draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city each year. Yet small and medium-sized concert venues are struggling.Capturing the performance at Sidecar in Barcelona on a recent Friday night.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York Times.The singer Íñigo Merino performing at Sidecar.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York TimesThe Association of Concert Venues of Catalonia, a trade body, estimates that in the past 20 years, 220 nightlife venues have closed in Barcelona and the surrounding metropolitan area. In a city of 1.6 million people, the total estimated capacity of its 198 music venues is less than 50,000, the venues association says.And local musicians say they are running out of places to play.The number of visitors to Barcelona soared in the past two decades, resulting in complaints about noise and overcrowding from residents. Under the left-wing mayor Ada Colau, the city has prioritized locals’ quality of life, limiting the number of tourist-related businesses, including nightlife venues, that can open in many parts of town.“The city doesn’t issue licenses to set up new concert venues, and the existing ones are under threat and disappearing,” said Carmen Zapata, the manager of the venue association. “Barcelona has four music schools, and lots of musicians graduate every year, so we need small and medium-sized venues to absorb this whole scene.”Thanks to its weather and beaches, the city has become a popular location for music festivals. Last summer, five big festivals took place in the city. Those events, which were attended by more than 800,000 people, received funding from City Hall and the regional government of Catalonia. Festivals like that are able to pay artists much bigger fees and demand exclusivity in the region, sometimes even for Spanish artists.“Spain never had a very established culture of concert venues like in other countries, and now it has become a country of festivals and mega-festivals,” said Coque Sánchez, who runs Freedonia, a nonprofit music venue in the Raval neighborhood. “We also know that there are now artists who go straight from Spotify to performing in festivals, without passing through concert venues.”“We are passionate about live music, but nobody does this because they make a lot of money,” said Sidecar’s programming manager.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York TimesSidecar, the concert venue, celebrated its 40th birthday this year and is beloved by locals for its programming of mostly Spanish and Catalan indie-rock bands. But like many other live venues in Barcelona, it also puts on club nights, with D.J.s rather than bands, in order to survive. Fátima Mellado, who is in charge of production and programming at Sidecar, said hosting concerts was not a sustainable business model.“We are passionate about live music, but nobody does this because they make a lot of money,” Mellado said.In the neighborhood of Gràcia, the venue Heliogàbal has been booking emerging bands since 1995. The acts that have performed in a tiny corner of the bar include Rosalía, the Barcelona singer who went on to become a global pop sensation. She played at Heliogàbal in 2015, two years before she released her debut album.“We have never wanted to grow because we prefer this small format,” said the owner, Albert Pijuan. “It’s a completely different experience. You get goose bumps because you’re so close.”Despite its popularity over two decades, the venue almost closed down in 2016 when it received hefty fines for staging concerts without a license. It survived thanks to a City Hall initiative called Espais Cultura Viva (Live Culture Spaces), a new venue classification that makes it legal for existing bars, restaurants, bookshops and other small venues to host live music performances — but only until midnight, and only if they meet a series of requirements, including soundproofing.“The aim is to legalize these venues that are providing a cultural service,” said Daniel Granados, a cultural official in City Hall. He said around 25 establishments had signed up since the program was introduced in 2019.Heliogàbal, in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona, has been booking emerging bands since 1995.Enric Sans/HeliogàbalPijuan said he had invested hundreds of thousands of euros in soundproofing and other upgrades to Heliogàbal, around half of which was funded with subsidies from the city and regional governments. The venue also has commercial sponsors, which help it stay afloat, and has even started hosting daytime concerts during “vermut,” the traditional pre-lunch apéritif hour. But he said these measures were not enough to guarantee the venue’s future. “We can’t understand why we are still struggling after 28 years of having shown that our project is attractive,” he said.Pijuan said he felt that having supported so many local musicians in their careers, venues like his should receive more recognition and government support. “When posidonia disappears, there is no life left, the sea is dead,” he said, referring to a protected Mediterranean sea grass that flourishes off Catalonia’s coast. “Small venues play this role in the musical ecosystem.” More

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    ‘Menace II Society’ at 30: A Bleak Nightmare Then, a Milestone Now

    With a tragic hero at its heart, the Hughes brothers’ debut drama painted nuanced portraits of characters rarely fleshed out in other films.When it was released 30 years ago, “Menace II Society” was a shock to the system.Maybe because the trailer conveyed a sense of optimism amid scenes of Black urban life, many moviegoers were expecting another “Boyz N the Hood,” which had met with universal acclaim two years earlier. Both were coming-of-age dramas set in tough Los Angeles neighborhoods. And both involved a hero who is put to the test and a key character who dies.In “Boyz,” that hero, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Tre, survives. Hell, he thrives: the movie ends with him leaving to attend Morehouse College. In that hopeful narrative, the main character escapes. Not so in “Menace.” It is about those who cannot escape, the thousands of boys who grow into men trapped by circumstances. If “Boyz N the Hood” was a dream that few got to experience, “Menace II Society” was the reality of those who were left behind.The debut of the directors Albert and Allen Hughes with a script by Tyger Williams — all in their 20s at the time — “Menace” tells the story of Caine (Tyrin Turner), who moves in with his grandparents after his mother dies of a drug overdose and his father is killed in a drug deal gone wrong. But he’s really raised by Pernell, played by Glenn Plummer, and other denizens of the streets. Caine himself is dealing drugs and stealing cars to get by. He’s best friends with the unapologetic killer O-Dog, played magnificently by Larenz Tate, and has feelings for Ronnie (Jada Pinkett), who has a baby with the now-imprisoned Pernell. But Caine makes decisions that prove to be his undoing. In true tragic-hero fashion, he brings about his own demise. He fathers a baby, then refuses to claim it, setting out on a path that ultimately leads to his death at the hands of a cousin of the baby’s mother.Partly what makes “Menace” (available on most major platforms) such a rich film is the surprising number of characters who are fully fleshed out — not just Caine but also O-Dog, a murderer who is also supportive of friends and gentle with children. Even the man who kills Caine is given layers: he is tender with his cousin, and his love for her sets him on a collision course with Caine. The cousin goes unnamed but he isn’t depicted like the antagonists in “Boyz N the Hood,” who are treated with as much care as gangsters in Grand Theft Auto.John Singleton, second from right, working with Ice Cube, in the car, and Cuba Gooding Jr. on “Boyz N the Hood.”Columbia PicturesThe film makes a point of exploring how Caine’s circumstances plays a major role in shaping him — whether it’s his upbringing by an addicted mother and dealer father, or his boyhood interactions with Pernell, who allows him to drink beer and hold his first gun. He then witnesses his father murder a man over a card game. It’s clear that Caine did not choose this life; this is the world as he found it. And though his determination not to care for his child is unquestionably the wrong decision, he is using the logic he inherited. We hear his inner monologue. He is trying to do the right thing, he just does not know how. Compared with the others around him, Caine is relatively moral.“Menace” was part of a ’90s wave of gritty urban films centered on Black leads that included “South Central” (1992) as well as “Boyz.” The $3 million “Menace” was a success with audiences (making $30 million at the box office) and critics alike. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called it “brilliant, and unsparing,” and both Siskel and Ebert put the film on their lists of the best films of 1993.Thanks to their initial hit, the Hughes brothers were able to make “Dead Presidents” two years later, about a Black Vietnam veteran who resorts to robbing banks to feed his poverty-stricken family. Both films show filmmakers interested in exploring the systemic conditions in America that give rise to the tragedy at the core of the Black experience.Albert Hughes has said that “Menace” was made for white people, and it was lampooned as part of an overall goof on the genre in “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” (1996). Still, Gucci Mane, A$AP Rocky and Lil Wayne have all referenced “Menace” in their music, and a younger Kanye West noted that it was one of his “most watched” films.Kiese Laymon, the novelist and author of “Heavy: An American Memoir,” told me, “It was the first film that my friends and I memorized every word.” He added, “O-Dog was mesmerizing. Some of us liked talking like him. A few of us liked acting like him. That had deadly consequences for one or two of us.”Indeed “Menace II Society” has become a cornerstone in Black households, required watching alongside “The Color Purple,” “Malcolm X” and, yes, “Boyz N the Hood.”“Menace” isn’t perfect, of course. The women are hardly three-dimensional. Caine’s mother is no more than a crackhead who fails to raise him, while Ronnie has little to do other than be a dutiful mother and romantic interest. But the legacy of this film cannot be overstated. As the critic Caryn James wrote in The New York Times when the film was released, “The movie’s very bleakness — not the moviemakers’ youth — is what makes ‘Menace II Society’ so radical, so rare and so important.” More

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    Is Beyoncé Linked to Sweden’s Inflation? An Economist Says So.

    As fans from around the world spent money to witness the kick off of the star’s tour in Sweden, they may have caused the country’s inflation rate to stay higher than expected.In Europe’s relentless battle against inflation, another culprit has apparently emerged: Beyoncé.Last month, as the star kicked off her world tour in Stockholm, fans flocked from around the world to witness the shows, pushing up prices for hotel rooms. This could explain some of the reason Sweden’s inflation rate was higher than expected in May.Consumer prices in Sweden rose 9.7 percent last month from a year earlier, the country’s statistics agency, Statistics Sweden, said on Wednesday. The rate fell from the previous month’s 10.5 percent, but was slightly higher than economists had forecast.Michael Grahn, an economist at Danske Bank, said that the start of Beyoncé’s tour might have “colored” the inflation data. “How much is uncertain,” he wrote on Twitter, but it could be responsible for most of the 0.3 percentage point that restaurant and hotel prices added to the monthly increase in inflation.Restaurant and hotel prices rose 3.3 percent in May from the previous month, while prices for recreation and cultural activities and clothing also increased.Fans came from around the world to attend Beyoncé‘s sold-out shows. Their spending could explain some of the reason Sweden’s inflation rate was higher than expected in May.Felix Odell for The New York TimesBeyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, her first solo tour since 2016, started on May 10 in Stockholm, with two nights at a 50,000-capacity arena. Fans from around the world took advantage of favorable exchange rates and flew in to buy tickets that were cheaper than in the United States or Britain, for example.Mr. Grahn said in an email that he wouldn’t blame Beyoncé for the high inflation number but “her performance and global demand to see her perform in Sweden apparently added a little to it.”He added that the weakness of Sweden’s currency, the krona, would have added to demand as well as cheaper ticket prices. “The main impact on inflation, however, came from the fact that all fans needed somewhere to stay,” he said, adding that fans took up rooms as far as 40 miles away. But the impact will only be short-lived, as prices revert this month.While this is a “very rare” effect, he said that Sweden had seen this kind of inflationary effect on hotel prices before from a 2017 soccer cup final, when foreign teams played in the country.“So it is not unheard-of, albeit unusual,” Mr. Grahn said.Carl Martensson, a statistician at Statistics Sweden, said that “Beyoncé probably had an effect on hotel prices in Stockholm the week she performed here.” But he added, “it should not have had any significant impact of Sweden’s inflation in May.” More

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    ‘Extraction 2’ Review: No Escape

    Chris Hemsworth returns as an Australian mercenary in this bloated, banal action sequel.“Extraction 2,” a drab, brawny sequel starring Chris Hemsworth as an Australian mercenary, offers a turgid shadow of the type of crowd-pleasing escapism that action blockbusters used to provide.The shaky foundation of the director Sam Hargrave’s movie is a trite script by Joe Russo: Recovering from near-fatal wounds he incurred on his previous mission, Tyler Rake (Hemsworth) wakes from a coma. He retires to a quaint cabin in the woods, a gift from his comrades Nik (Golshifteh Farahani) and Yaz (Adam Bessa). It’s a quiet life, surrounded by a dog and chickens, until a mysterious man (Idris Elba) offers him a job: Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) — Rake’s ex-wife’s sister — and her two children are being held captive in a Georgian prison by their abusive mobster father (Tornike Gogrichiani). Regrouping with Yaz and Nik, Rake devises a plan to save them.Foregoing any semblance of a story after its initial setup, “Extraction 2” can be separated into three distinct, noxious action sequences. The most elaborate, lasting an interminable 24 minutes, sees Rake infiltrating the facility housing the family, then fleeing with them past claustrophobic cells, through a crowd of prisoners determined to murder them all, and, finally, onto a runaway train.Edited less-than-seamlessly to look like a single shot, the scene attempts to one-up a similarly elaborate chase from the previous film. But such long sequences require a director and their cinematographer, in this case Greg Baldi, to be cognizant of the story bodies can tell through motion (think Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” and John Woo’s “Hard Boiled”). Hargrave lacks such feeling and grace; he merely plants explosions in view of a spinning, swirling, ducking and diving camera in the misplaced hope of building tension.This movie sacrifices character development — what’s Nik or Yaz’s back story? — in favor of bloated, banal combat scenes. Hargrave tamps down the hints of attraction between Nik and Rake before the two can strike an ember, and leans on narrative shortcuts — including incoherent flashbacks showing Rake’s deceased son — to reach for an unearned pathos. Hemsworth and Farahani do their best to rise above the saccharine material, grasping for human moments amid the vacuous melees. But burdened by its bluster, “Extraction 2” is merely a loud, blithering mess masquerading as fulfilling escapism.Extraction 2Rated R for strong, bloody violence throughout. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More