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    Jerry Miller, Moby Grape Guitarist, Dies at 81

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    He drew praise for his blues-inflected fretwork as his critically acclaimed band rode high, if briefly, during San Francisco’s Summer of Love.Jerry Miller, an acclaimed guitarist who emerged from the Pacific Northwest club circuit to make his mark on San Francisco’s psychedelic rock scene in the 1960s as a founding member of the lauded, if star-crossed, band Moby Grape, died on Sunday at his home in Tacoma, Wash. He was 81.His grandson Cody Miller said that he died in his sleep but that the cause was not yet known.Mr. Miller, whose fans came to include Eric Clapton and Robert Plant, played lead in the potent three-guitar attack of Moby Grape, a San Francisco quintet that hit its zenith in 1967, the year of the so-called Summer of Love.During its brief but shimmering heyday, Moby Grape was considered one of the top bands of the flower-power era. But while its psychedelic contemporaries in the city’s flourishing rock scene tended toward through-the-looking-glass lyrics and cosmic free jams, the band set itself apart by cranking out an earthy mix of blues, country, folk and chugging rock ’n’ roll — an eclectic approach that fit Mr. Miller’s musical philosophy, which he described in a 2013 interview with the website Blues.Gr as “a jolly good mix-up.”Moby Grape’s debut album, released in 1967, packed 13 songs into a tight 31 minutes. Rolling Stone once ranked it No.124 on its list of the 500 greatest rock albums, calling it “genuine hippie power pop.”ColumbiaMoby Grape’s debut album, called simply “Moby Grape” and released in 1967, contained 13 songs packed into 31 minutes. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 124 on its original list of rock’s 500 greatest albums, describing it as “genuine hippie power pop.”Mr. Miller had a writing credit on six of those tracks, including “Hey Grandma” and “8:05,” which came to be hailed as classics of the era. The album was “one of the finest (perhaps the finest) to come out of the San Francisco psychedelic scene,” Mark Deming wrote on the site Allmusic.com.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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      Darryl ‘Joe Cool’ Daniel, Illustrator of Snoop Dogg’s First Album Cover, Dies at 56

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      The 1993 album “Doggystyle” went on to sell millions of copies around the world and solidified the career of Mr. Daniel, known as Joe Cool, as a hip-hop illustrator.Darryl Daniel, a hip-hop illustrator who designed the cover for his cousin Snoop Dogg’s genre-defining 1993 album “Doggystyle” and went on to lend his distinctive artistic flair to brands like Adidas and Supreme, has died. He was 56.His sister Diondra Daniel confirmed his death, and Snoop Dogg acknowledged it on Monday on social media, but neither provided additional information.Mr. Daniel, known in the hip-hop world as Joe Cool, became synonymous with the bright colors, block letters and bawdy canines featured on the cover of “Doggystyle,” which sold millions of copies around the world.His style from then on would always be linked to the album’s hits, including “Gin and Juice” and “Lodi Dodi,” which were heard on the streets and at house parties throughout Long Beach, Calif., greater Los Angeles and ultimately the country in the early 1990s, when “Doggystyle” helped usher in an era of G-funk music and became foundational for West Coast hip-hop.The artwork depicts two dogs in suggestive postures while several others peer over a brick wall above a dumbstruck dogcatcher. The risqué content drew negative reactions in the early ’90s, with some critics saying the depictions were demeaning to women, but Snoop Dogg fervently promoted Mr. Daniel’s work.On an episode of “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1994, Mr. Hall asked Snoop Dogg if he had anything to say about the artwork.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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      Billy Joel Brings Madison Square Garden Residency to an End

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      There’s a pause before Billy Joel steps onstage each night when he makes the subtle transition from low-key Everyman to world-renowned Piano Man. It’s just a few minutes of “not talking to anybody, not seeing anybody,” he said, mimicking waving off potential distractions. He makes sure he can hit his high notes. Then the roar of the crowd does the rest.“When you walk onstage and they go ‘ye-ahhhhhh,’ that psyches you out,” he added, bellowing into his computer during a video call from his Sag Harbor, Long Island home. “You can’t get yourself there without that happening.”On Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, that screech was supercharged, as a crowd of nearly 19,000 welcomed its hometown hero for the 104th and final concert of a historic monthly residency. For 10 years — minus a lengthy pause for Covid shutdowns — Joel has regularly sold out the Manhattan arena with a show featuring hits and deep cuts from his pop albums released from 1971 to 1993. In February, “Turn the Lights Back On,” his first new song in nearly 20 years, joined the set list.Joel, 75, promised to keep the show running as long as there was demand. “The demand never stopped,” Dennis Arfa, his agent, said in a phone interview. So an end was selected: his 150th gig at the venue overall. In total, the run grossed more than $260 million with attendance nearing two million, according to the trade publication Pollstar.“I never said I wasn’t going to perform anymore,” Joel made clear in the first of two interviews, this one at his Oyster Bay, Long Island estate in January. (He already has six stadium dates on the books through November.) While his fans went into overdrive as the finale approached — exhibits at the Garden and the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, a SiriusXM radio station devoted to his music, a major spike in ticket prices on StubHub, merch galore — Joel, in his typical manner, was more relaxed.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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      Scenes From Billy Joel’s Final Night of His Madison Square Garden Residency

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      Billy Joel performed the final show of his 10-year residency at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, his 150th performance at the venue overall and the most for any performer there. The Times was on hand to capture the moments leading up to the concert, which amounted to a victory lap.Joel and his band after soundcheck on Thursday afternoon, hours before the performance.At soundcheck, Joel went over a setlist that drew from his five-decade career.Joel’s daughters Della and Remy joined him onstage after soundcheck.One fan opted to play Billy Joel songs outside the arena.Fans posed for photos inside the arena …… and outside, too.Concertgoers were encouraged to write messages for Joel. A banner to celebrate Joel’s 150th performance at the Garden was raised during the concert. More

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      For Billy Joel Fans, a New York Night to Remember

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      Thousands of people piled into Madison Square Garden on Thursday to hear Billy Joel’s catalog of hits in the final show of his long residency at the arena.Lori Umbrino saw her first Billy Joel concert at Shea Stadium in Queens in 1990. More than three decades later, she stood with her two children outside Madison Square Garden on Thursday evening, each wearing a T-shirt from the singer’s concerts across the years.“We’ve been there with him along the journey,” said Ms. Umbrino, 51, whose shirt was from Mr. Joel’s 100th concert at Madison Square Garden on July 18, 2018, designated Billy Joel Day in New York State.That journey has led them back to Madison Square Garden, where Mr. Joel was performing the 150th and final show of his 10-year residency there.The milestone — and, for some, the devastating misunderstanding that Mr. Joel was retiring — drew veterans of his shows, first-timers, families and singles from around the city and the country. Thousands of people piled into the Garden to hear Mr. Joel glide from hit to hit.Stuart Stephenson sat outside the arena at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, blowing into his melodica, fingering the keys to play “New York State of Mind” and “Uptown Girl.” Fans and commuters streamed by, hawkers sold T-concert shirts, and drivers planted their hands on their horns.Mr. Stephenson saw a news segment on Thursday morning about Mr. Joel’s concert, and thinking the Piano Man was closing his Steinway for good, he rushed into Midtown.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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      Klaus Florian Vogt’s Strange, Essential Voice in Opera

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      Klaus Florian Vogt, a Wagner specialist with an ethereal yet mighty sound, is returning to the Bayreuth Festival to sing in the “Ring.”Klaus Florian Vogt’s voice is a phenomenon that even he has had trouble grasping. In the early days of his career, he would hear recordings of himself singing and be surprised by the timbre. He knew his tenor was bright, but outside his head it sounded even brighter.He wasn’t the only one unsure of what to make of his voice. Lithe, polished and powerful, it continues to divide listeners. Some critics find it youthful; others, immature. At 54, Vogt is one of the most essential performers in opera. But “there is no voice that divides fans so much,” the music critic Markus Thiel wrote in a review. “‘Ethereal,’ ‘otherworldly,’ some cheer. ‘Boyish,’ ‘Wagner wish-wash,’ others complain.”These days, Vogt isn’t so surprised by his sound. “It’s continually grown closer, what my imagination is of how I want to sing and what the actual result is,” he said in an interview.He has also accepted that his voice is not for everybody. “What I never wanted,” he said, “was to pretend to be something I’m not. That’s what’s dangerous for vocal technique and for a voice in general — when you don’t sing with your own voice.”Vogt is a Wagner specialist, with all of the composer’s major tenor roles in his repertoire as of last year, when he performed as Siegfried in the final two operas of the “Ring” cycle at the Zurich Opera House. On July 31, he will sing the role for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.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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      Suicideboys Don’t Care for the Music Biz. They Got Its Attention Anyway.

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      The rap duo’s raw songs and festival-like touring strategy has paid off: Its latest album opened at No. 5 without traditional industry strategies or support.The Louisiana rap duo Suicideboys have avoided nearly all the trappings of the contemporary music machine. They rarely grant interview requests and make the occasional public appearance with their faces partially covered. Still, Scott Arceneaux Jr. (known as Scrim) and Aristos Petrou (a.k.a. Ruby da Cherry) recently celebrated their biggest opening week on the Billboard chart yet: a No. 5 debut for their fourth album, “New World Depression,” last month.“It’s kind of hard, dude,” Arceneaux, 35, said of dealing with their ever-growing visibility as one of the biggest independent rap groups in the United States. “It’s taken on a life of its own.”Over the last decade, a passionate and adoring fan base has been drawn to Suicideboys’ blend of Southern rap rhythms and pop-punk melodies, all cloaked in the lush, depressive fog of internet-native hip-hop. They became underground heroes by making raw music about triggering subjects, which they relentlessly promoted on their own until their fan base snowballed into a force the music industry couldn’t ignore.In 2021, on the strength of an audience they’d bootstrapped since 2014, they signed an eight-figure distribution deal with the Orchard, a Sony Music subsidiary, that was re-upped last year. Their semiannual Grey Day Tour — a mini-festival that’s featured similarly ascendant peers like the hardcore band Turnstile and the Florida rap aesthete Denzel Curry — has catapulted them onto the list of rap’s highest-grossing touring acts, taking in over $42 million and selling 431,000 tickets in 2023.Video chatting on the day of their new album’s release, the pair were nestled in a room speckled with soundproofing materials at one of their properties deep in the Florida panhandle, their home outside of New Orleans. Petrou, with waves of dark hair cascading from under a backward baseball cap, spoke casually and with curiosity, positioned in the background, while Arceneaux often sat half-profile at the forefront, slightly bowing his bowl-cut mullet when he wasn’t speaking thoughtfully about their journey so far.As cousins who grew up separately in the greater Louisiana area before coming together in New Orleans, Arceneaux and Petrou described their upbringings as chaotic. “Childhood was rough,” Arceneaux admitted. “There was always drama,” Petrou agreed. “Our parents would get into it. We’ve always remained close and very rarely let the family dynamic infect our relationship.”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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      Toumani Diabaté, Malian Master of the Kora, Is Dead at 58

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      He believed that music could transcend national borders set by colonialism and restore ancient ties, even as it embraced the changes of a globalizing society.Toumani Diabaté, a virtuoso of the kora, a 21-stringed West African instrument, which he often put into dialogue with other musical traditions from around the globe, died on Friday in Bamako, Mali. He was 58.His death, in a hospital, was caused by kidney failure, said his manager, Saul Presa.Born in Mali to a line of griots, or traditional West African musician-historians, that he traced back more than 70 generations, Mr. Diabaté was devoted to celebrating the heritage of Mandé-speaking peoples throughout West Africa, and to sharing that history with the world.“If you think of West Africa as a body, then the griot is the blood,” he told The New York Times in 2006. “We are the guardians of West Africa’s society. We are communicators.”He believed that music could transcend national borders set by colonialism and restore ancient ties, even as it embraced the changes of a globalizing society. That mission inspired him to create his flagship ensemble, the Symmetric Orchestra.“I started building this band to rebuild Manden empire in a cultural way,” he said in a 2011 interview with Uncut magazine, referring to the Mali Empire that once covered the Upper Niger River basin from present-day Mali to Senegal. “The musicians are all from West African, Manden countries. I took the best from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mauretania, and I put them all together.”Mr. Diabaté recorded two duet albums with the Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré. They both won the Grammy Award for best traditional world music album.World CircuitWe 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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      Maestro Accused of Striking Singer Won’t Return to His Ensembles

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      John Eliot Gardiner is stepping down from three renowned period groups he founded, after he was accused of hitting a singer last year.John Eliot Gardiner, an eminent conductor who was accused of striking a singer in France last year, will not be returning to three renowned period ensembles he founded, the board overseeing them announced Wednesday.Gardiner, 81, who is one of the world’s most celebrated conductors, will no longer lead the three groups: the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.The board of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, the nonprofit that oversees all three ensembles, said Wednesday that it had decided that Gardiner, who had been on leave since the incident in France last summer, “will not be returning to the organization.”“The M.C.O. takes seriously its obligations to protect victims of abuse and assault and preventing any recurrence remains a priority for the organization,” the group said in a statement.Gardiner sought to frame the decision as his own, saying in a later statement on Wednesday that it came after “a great deal of soul-searching since the deeply regrettable incident” in France.He drew widespread criticism after he was accused of striking the singer, William Thomas, a rising bass from England, on the face last summer after a performance of the first two acts of Berlioz’s opera “Les Troyens” at the Festival Berlioz in La Côte-Saint-André. Gardiner was apparently upset that Thomas had headed the wrong way off the podium at the concert, people at the festival said at the time.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