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      Mötley Crüe Guitarist’s Lawsuit Says He Was Kicked Out

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      Mick Mars accused his bandmates of gaslighting him and cutting him out of future profits after he said he was retiring from touring.Mick Mars, the guitarist for the veteran hair-metal band Mötley Crüe, filed a lawsuit this week accusing his bandmates of pushing him out of the group and cutting him out of its future profits.The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, details a falling out that the band had with Mars after he announced in October that he was retiring from touring, citing chronic pain from an inflammatory disease that affects the spine.The rest of the band responded, the suit says, by convening an emergency shareholders’ meeting of Mötley Crüe’s main corporate entity to throw Mars out of the band, fire him as a director of the corporation and take away his shares. The lawsuit says Mars has a 25 percent stake in each of the band’s affiliated business entities.“It is beyond sad that, after 41 years together, a band would try to throw out a member who is unable to tour anymore because he has a debilitating disease,” said Edwin F. McPherson, Mars’s lawyer. “Mick has been pushed around for far too long in this band, and we are not going to let that continue.”Mötley Crüe formed in Los Angeles in 1981 and became one of the most popular of the so-called hair-metal bands. Mixing glam-rock theatrics, heavy metal riffs and radio-friendly pop hooks, they were fixtures on MTV in the 1980s and, by that decade’s end, had topped the Billboard 200 chart with their 1989 album, “Dr. Feelgood.” The band’s tell-all memoir, “The Dirt,” which chronicled their rise to fame and rocky history, was adapted into a Netflix biopic in 2019.Mars, 71, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, joined Mötley Crüe shortly after it was founded and, according to the lawsuit, came up with the band’s name. He was diagnosed at 27 with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can cause the vertebrae to fuse over time. The disease has caused his spine “to seize up and freeze completely solid,” the suit says, adding that he is in chronic pain and is not able to move his head in any direction.Last fall, Mars told his bandmates that, because of his “debilitating” ankylosing spondylitis, he couldn’t physically “handle the rigors of the road” and would no longer tour with the band, the suit says. Mars, who last performed with Mötley Crüe in Las Vegas on Sept. 9, 2022, said he would still record and perform with the band in a “residency situation.”After Mars publicly announced the change on Oct. 26, the band issued a separate statement saying that he had “retired” and that a guitarist named John 5 was replacing him.The other band members — Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee — called the emergency shareholders’ meeting, where they sought to fire Mars from seven band-affiliated corporations and limited-liability corporations, the lawsuit says. Those entities — Mötley Crüe Inc.; Mötley Crüe Touring Inc.; Red, White and Crue Inc.; Masters 2000 Inc.; Cruefest LLC; Mötley Records LLC; and Masters 2008 LLC — are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, which demands that Mars be allowed to review the band’s business records. He is also seeking reimbursement for his legal fees.Mars claims in his lawsuit that the band also demanded that he sign an agreement that his share of future touring profits and sales of merchandise featuring the band’s name and logo be reduced to 5 percent from 25 percent, and that he receive no income from sales of merchandise that “named or depicted” his replacement in the band.Sasha Frid, a lawyer for the band, said the lawsuit was “unfortunate and completely off base.” He said that Mars and other band members signed an agreement in 2008 that nobody would receive money from performances if they resigned.“Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,” Frid said in an emailed statement. “Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”The lawsuit sheds light on the band’s tumultuous personal relationships, accusing Sixx, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, of making decisions on the band’s behalf without consulting his bandmates. Sixx also “gaslighted” Mars in recent years, the suit says, telling him that his guitar playing was subpar, that he often played the wrong chords onstage and that he had “some sort of cognitive dysfunction.”Frid provided The New York Times with signed declarations from seven members of the band’s crew, including the band’s production manager, who said Mars’s performance on Mötley Crüe’s 2022 stadium tour was “by far the worst I have ever seen in my years with the band.”“Mötley Crüe always performs its songs live, but during the last tour Mick struggled to remember chords, played the wrong songs and made constant mistakes which led to his departure from the band,” Frid said. “The band did everything to protect him, tried to keep these matters private to honor Mick’s legacy and take the high road.”In his lawsuit, Mars acknowledged occasionally playing the wrong chords on tour, but said it was because of a faulty in-ear monitor that made him unable to hear his guitar. Instead, he accused the other band members, including Sixx, of miming to recordings onstage. More

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      At 81, Ann-Margret Is Finally Living Her Rock ’n’ Roll Dream

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      Ann-Margret has always spoken in a voice that falls somewhere between a purr and a coo. But at her home on a recent rainy day in Los Angeles, she broke up her usual gauzy tones with deep and gutsy growls. “One, two, three o’clock rock!!!” she half-bellowed and half-yelled over a video chat, echoing the opening line from “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley’s raucous 1954 smash.A few minutes later, she snarled through the opening salvo of “Splish Splash,” the highly caffeinated 1958 hit by Bobby Darin, only to follow it with the outburst, “I love rock ’n’ roll!” Her tone was far more Joan Jett than Kim McAfee, the sprightly character she played in “Bye Bye Birdie,” the movie that simultaneously made her a household name and the hottest pinup of 1963.Ann-Margret — pronounced as one name, not two — has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and a singer of lounge classics. She co-starred with Elvis Presley in one of his most beloved films, “Viva Las Vegas,” provided a flirty foil to a character meant to affectionately send him up in “Birdie,” and had a personal relationship with him of varying description.Ann-Margret and Elvis Presley on the set of “Viva Las Vegas.” “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Silver Screen Collection, via Getty ImagesShe also commanded a lead singing role in Ken Russell’s gaudy movie version of the Who’s rock opera “Tommy,” and earned a Grammy nomination for best new artist in 1962 after scoring a Top 20 hit with “I Just Don’t Understand,” one of the first recordings to feature a fuzz-toned guitar. Her song inspired a Beatles cover on the BBC two years later and, in 2014, the band Spoon recorded a version of her take, not the Fab Four’s.Yet, it’s only now, at the improbable age of 81, that Ann-Margret is getting the chance to assert herself as a full-on rock ’n’ roll goddess — if a winking one. On Friday she will release “Born to Be Wild,” the first album in the star’s career of 60-plus years to focus squarely on rock standards, all of which she handpicked, including Steppenwolf’s biker anthem referenced in the title and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which Elvis famously gyrated through in his own version.A host of legit rockers leaped at the chance to support her in this lark of a project, including the “Tommy” creator Pete Townshend, who sang and played whiplash guitar on her version of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye-Bye Love”; Steve Cropper, who added Memphis cred to “Son of a Preacher Man”; and Joe Perry, who shot stinging solos into her take on “Rock Around the Clock.” The album also features cameos from peers like Cliff Richard (82) and Pat Boone (88).“What she has done is extraordinary,” Townshend said by phone from London, adding an expletive for emphasis. “She picked up the silver thread that links her to the very genesis of rock ’n’ roll history. There’s a mischievousness to that, a light touch that’s perhaps necessary but also real.”Townshend compared receiving the invitation to play on her album to the time, in 1993, when he “was summoned to play with the Ramones. You know you won’t say no,” he added.“I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays,” Ann-Margret said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesFrom the dining room of the Benedict Canyon home she has lived in since 1968, Ann-Margaret said she’d long harbored hopes of making a record like “Born to Be Wild.” “Deep inside I’ve wanted to do this kind of album forever,” she explained. She alluded to her outfit — a black sweater, tight leggings and leather boots that rose past the knee: “This is what I’ve been wearing since I first came to Los Angeles,” she said. “This is what I’m comfortable in.”She’s just as comfortable with language that dates from the ’50s, peppering her speech with words like “gadzooks” and “egad.” Looking youthful with her trademark auburn sweep of hair, Ann-Margret has also retained the coquettish character that first made her a star, giggling often when she speaks and never giving away more than she wants to. It was her original image, more than her music, that inspired Brian Perera, the head of Cleopatra Records, which specializes in projects of a historical nature, to propose the album to her.“When you look at vintage photos of her, she’s wearing a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, so the thought of her doing a rock ’n’ roll record really fit,” he said in an interview.The “Born to Be Wild” album cover drives that home. It reproduces a 1967 poster created for her first Vegas show that finds her in a form-fitting jumpsuit while straddling a Triumph Tiger motorcycle. “I don’t think I can get into that jumpsuit today,” she said, and laughed. “But I can sure try!”Ann-Margret has always been rock ’n’ roll adjacent, though that’s rarely talked about today given her long and varied career as an actress and as a singer of lounge classics. Bettmann, via Getty ImagesAnn-Margret has always been hot for motorcycles. Her father and uncle rode them when she was a child in Sweden, and when she saw Marlon Brando straddle one in “The Wild One,” “that was it. I had to have one,” she said. “I didn’t know many women who rode bikes back then.”She still rides a Harley specially designed for her in lavender. It makes a perfect complement to her Cadillac, finished in her favorite shade: “Hot pink!” she exclaimed.It could be a twin to Elvis’s famously pink Caddy. The relationship between Ann-Margret and E.P., as she calls him, has been the subject of gossip for decades, but she still won’t speak about the personal aspects of it — only their creative link. “We looked at one another and all of a sudden, I would do a pose and he’d be doing the same pose. We connected that way,” she said.Her record company tried to stress the connection by having her record “Heartbreak Hotel,” but she never had much of a career as a hitmaker. It was her acting in “Carnal Knowledge” — praised in a New York Times review from 1971 — that convinced Townshend that she could really deliver in “Tommy.” While he called the major male actors in the 1975 film — Jack Nicholson and Oliver Reed — “egomaniacal, whiskey drinking lunatics,” he said that Ann-Margret was a consummate professional. She even carried off the absurdity of playing Roger Daltrey’s mother though she was just two years his senior.“I’m just happy to be alive,” Ann-Margret said. “I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesOne of Ann-Margret’s most famous moments in “Tommy” involved geysers of baked beans being shot directly at her. “They came down a chute and then — pow! — it threw me about five feet back!” she said. “And it smelled!” She recalled that Russell said her character was meant to be experiencing a nervous breakdown during the scene, but to some viewers it looked more like she was having an orgasm. “That’s fine with me!” she added brightly.Townshend thinks the director, Russell, took a bit too much pleasure in having her do the scene repeatedly. “Ken loved to have a beautiful woman in his clutches covered in beans,” he said. “Let’s just do it again!”For the new album, he believes Ann-Margret made a perfect choice in having him perform with her on the Everly Brothers song. “My acoustic guitar style is loosely based on Don Everly’s,” he said.Pat Boone, who played Ann-Margret’s love interest in the 1963 musical “State Fair,” was at first taken aback by the song she chose for their duet, “Teach Me Tonight,” which he called “a love scene in a song.” “I thought, ‘What am I doing singing this?’” Boone said. “I’m 87 at that point and she’s got to be 80. I had to do it humorously.”So he ad-libbed the lines “I think we just wrote an octogenarian love song” and “I’ll have to turn up my hearing aid.” For the record, “I don’t wear hearing aids,” Boone added with a laugh.More saucy wit appears in a song Ann-Margret chose from her Vegas act, “Somebody’s in My Orchard,” which includes lines like “Somebody digs my fig trees/Somebody loves their juice.” “Oh, to see people’s faces when they finally realize what I’m singing about,” she said mischievously.Despite all the album’s humor, Paul Shaffer, who played piano on “The Great Pretender,” insists that her Vegas-style approach to music isn’t just camp. “She delivers the goods,” he said.When comparing her with young female entertainers like Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato, he added, “Aren’t they really doing Ann-Margret’s act?”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLike all of the album’s guests, Shaffer recorded his parts separately from the star. He noted that her voice on the recording is lower and huskier than when she last cut an album, a gospel work reflecting her faith that was released 10 years ago. But Perera of Cleopatra Records believes Ann-Margret’s chestier tone works for the grinding sound of early rock. He added that “there isn’t a lot of new music coming from artists whose careers started in the ’50s and early ’60s. That makes it special.”The musicians who appear beside Ann-Margret on the album marveled over her ability, at 81, to convey a come-hither sexuality in her singing. To her, it makes an important point — that eroticism doesn’t have a cutoff date. At the same time, she made sure to deliver her sensuality with humor, and kept the tone of the music light.The only time she turned sad in our talk was when mentioning her husband, the actor Roger Smith, who served as her manager for much of their 50-year relationship and who died in 2017. Last year, she also lost her old friend and “Bye Bye Birdie” co-star Bobby Rydell, who died before he could finish a track he started for the album. Small wonder, when asked about how she feels about her upcoming 82nd birthday, she said, “I’m just happy to be alive. I have the same friends I’ve had for 60 years, and I feel the way I felt when I first met them.”Singing has the same effect: “I feel the way I felt when I was 10 years old whenever the music plays.” More

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      Inside “Night of 1000 Kates,” a Kate Bush-Themed Variety Show

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      The “Night of 1,000 Kates,” an annual variety show in Philadelphia, taps into the singer Kate Bush’s lasting appeal.PHILADELPHIA — For the last nine years, a variety show inspired by the British art pop singer Kate Bush has promised a “Night of 1,000 Kates.”This year’s edition, held on April 1, delivered on the event’s numerical promise for the first time; some 1,100 people attended, according to the show’s organizers. Many of the celebrants wore crimson dresses, dark sequins and other fancy goth attire inspired by Ms. Bush, who, as in years past, was present only in spirit.Some 80 other performers, including professional and amateur musicians, dancers and video artists, participated in more than 20 acts inspired by the sexagenarian British singer. The crowd at Union Transfer, a concert hall just outside Philadelphia’s Chinatown, was almost twice as big as that of last year’s show.Danielle Redden, 45, a founder of “Night of 1,000 Kates,” said it started as a party for “our friends and community of queers and weirdos” to celebrate their appreciation for Ms. Bush. Cookie Factorial, 42, another founder, said: “I don’t think that any of us thought it would be an enduring, legacy-type event.”Some 80 performers — including a harpist, left, and other musicians, dancers and video artists — participated in more than 20 acts at the event.Aaron Richter for The New York TimesThe rising interest in “Night of 1,000 Kates” reflects the lasting appeal of Ms. Bush, whose 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (a Deal With God)” topped charts in 2022 — some 37 years after it was released — thanks largely to its prominently use in “Stranger Things” on Netflix.Aaron Mack, 23, a wardrobe supervisor for a theater group in Philadelphia, was born decades after Ms. Bush’s career started to take off in the 1970s. He nevertheless identified himself as “Kate Bush’s No. 1 fan.”Mr. Mack said he wants to get “a Kate Bush tramp stamp” tattooed on his lower back to express his admiration for the singer. “It’s going to be a portrait of her,” he added, surrounded by things that have come to symbolize Ms. Bush, like the red shoes on the cover of her 1993 album, “The Red Shoes.”Donna Petrecco, 48, a real estate agent in Fallsington, Pa., said she has been listening to Ms. Bush’s music for most of her life. Ms. Petrecco, a former cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles, came to the show for the first time with two friends — Lisa Coslanzo, 51, and Kita Delgado, 46 — both of whom also used to cheer for the Eagles.Ms. Delgado, who lives in Fairless Hills, Pa., wore shimmering silver pants for the occasion. She said she was most excited about seeing the dance performances. But she also came to dance herself, at the after-party.This year’s “Night of 1,000 Kates” delivered on the event’s numerical promise for the first time; some 1,100 people attended, according to the show’s organizers.Aaron Richter for The New York TimesCelebrants in crimson dresses cut a rug during the after-party, which raged until about 2 a.m.Aaron Richter for The New York Times“You’ll find these sparkly pants dancing in the corner in two hours,” said Ms. Delgado, who runs a dog-boarding business. She and her friends, she added, “can still throw down a little bit.”Many performers and attendees said part of the event’s appeal is its unbridled enthusiasm. “I would describe it as a bunch of fabulous weirdos decked out in their best ready to have a great time,” said Alex Melman, 33, a director of technology at an advocacy group in Philadelphia.Mr. Melman’s band, Roof of the World, was new to the performance lineup this year. The group performed Ms. Bush’s song “Wild Man,” about spotting Yetis in the Himalayan mountains. Its act was preceded by a harpist-keyboardist duo’s rendition of Ms. Bush’s song “And Dream of Sheep,” and was followed by a group of dancers wearing white-lace outfits and holding scepters filled with dry ice, which turned into vapor as they performed.“The tone of the show, like Kate’s work, is a mix of deeply earnest and really, really silly,” said Kelly Crodian, a 38-year-old artist in Philadelphia, whose video art set to Ms. Bush’s song “Suspended in Gaffa” was featured at the event.Brian O’Sullivan, 31, an occupational therapist in Philadelphia, described the show as having “avant-garde, weird, Enya and Bjork vibes” and the humor of “Cathy” comics.Mr. O’Sullivan, a three-time attendee, hopes the event can retain its eccentricity as it grows. “We’ve got to keep it a little bit underground,” he said. “My biggest fear is that this is going to become corny.”From left, one of the more avant-garde outfits at the show; a sign used Ms. Bush’s likeness to encourage mask-wearing; and a guest enjoying a performance. Aaron Richter for The New York TimesThough the “Night of 1,000 Kates” has evolved, certain elements have remained the same, including the final act of the show: a dance lesson, led by most of the night’s performers, to some of the choreography from the video for Ms. Bush’s 1978 hit single, “Wuthering Heights.” Another tradition is the after-party, which this year raged until about 2 a.m.Keira Wilson, a 37-year-old career counselor in Baltimore, has attended the show off and on since it started in 2014. She said it has managed to retain its unique spirit even as it has become bigger.“Over the last couple of years I have watched many of my friends take on many formations of Kate Bush,” Ms. Wilson said. “Each year this entire project gets bigger and bigger. And I’m really excited to see that happen.” More

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      Nora Forster, 80, Who Married (and Stayed Married to) a Sex Pistol, Dies

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      A German publishing heiress and music promoter, she settled in London in time for the 1970s punk-rock explosion and became the muse to its baddest boy.Nora Forster, a German-born publishing heiress and music promoter who gained fame as the wife of John Lydon — otherwise known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols — and the mother of Arianna Forster, or Ari Up, the lead singer of the influential all-female punk band the Slits, died on Thursday. She was 80.Her death was announced by Mr. Lydon on Twitter. “Nora had been living with Alzheimer’s for several years,” the announcement said. “In which time John had become her full time career.” He did not say where she died.For more than four decades, music fans knew Ms. Forster as the emotional rock for the ever-volatile Mr. Lydon, who in the late 1970s became Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of British polite society for spitting invective in every direction, including the Queen’s, as the frontman for the incendiary punk progenitors the Sex Pistols.When the band imploded after its brief, explosive career, he scarcely mellowed; he continued on as the creative force of the fiery post-punk band Public Image Ltd., or PiL.Because of her husband’s enduring notoriety, particularly in England, Ms. Forster’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease unfolded as a public drama after he went public about her diagnosis in 2018.“It’s vile to watch someone you love disappear,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times of London in February. “All the things I thought were the ultimate agony seem preposterous now.”Her illness, he said, had “shaped me into what I am.”“I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” he added. “I don’t see how I can live without her. I wouldn’t want to. There’s no point.”The previous month, he had teared up when taking a more wistful turn in an interview on the television show “Good Morning Britain” about “Hawaii,” a haunting PiL ballad that he had written as a tribute to her and that was the Irish entry in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. (Mr. Lydon was born in England to Irish parents.) “Remember me,” Mr. Lydon sang, “I remember you.”“I can see her personality in her eyes,” he said. “She lets me know that it’s the communication skills that are letting her down.”Nora Maier was born on Nov. 6, 1942, in Munich. After the war, her father, Franz Karl Maier, was a prosecutor who helped bring wartime Nazis to justice. He was later the editor and publisher of the newspaper Tagesspiegel.Ms. Forster went on to work as a model and to marry the singer Frank Forster, who was “kind of a swing pop star, always appearing on TV back in the ’60s,” Arianna Forster said in an interview with the music site Pitchfork in 2009, a year before she died.Nora Forster’s survivors include her husband and three grandchildren.As the 1960s unfolded, Ms. Forster promoted West German tours for acts like Jimi Hendrix and Yes, which gave her prominence on the German rock scene. “People were walking around in the living room back then, like the Bee Gees and all these big groups,” her daughter recalled in the Pitchfork interview.The bohemian lifestyle of her rock friends eventually ran afoul of the local authorities. “In Munich, the police were knocking at the door every night because of the loud acid parties,” her daughter once said. “She was fed up with it. You have to go to London to live that lifestyle.”Ms. Forster did just that in about 1970, and by the middle of the decade she had become enmeshed in the punk-rock scene that was starting to roil Britain and the music industry as a whole. She became “a den mother to all the young punks,” said Arianna, who in 1976, at age 14, would rename herself Ari Up and join with a drummer called Palmolive to found the Slits, which became a leading female punk band of the era.In 1975, Ms. Forster met Mr. Lydon, who was nearly 14 years her junior, at Sex, the boundary-pushing clothing boutique on London’s King’s Road run by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren.It was anything but love at first sight.“There was no physical attraction at first,” Ms. Forster said in a 2004 interview with The Sunday Mail of Britain. “I didn’t even think to be nice to him. I was at another gig and John passed by my table and said, ‘Drop dead.’”Despite the mutual hostility, Mr. Lydon was intrigued. “Her nose went 10 feet in the air in her ’40s film star outfit,” he said in the same Sunday Mail interview. “Long blond hair, padded shoulders — that entire femme fatale look, which I was a complete ham for.”Eventually she softened. “I fell in love with John because he surprised me,” she said. “He had a sweet attitude. He was more innocent and not like the rest of the group.”The couple married in 1979, to the horror of Ms. Forster’s father. And, to the likely amazement of those who considered Mr. Lydon a human mushroom cloud, the marriage endured.Even so, it might never have happened if Ms. Forster had listened to her friends’ advice in those early days. “One day he came up and asked why I had never invited him to my house,” she later said of Mr. Lydon. “I replied, ‘People told me you would destroy everything.’” More

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      James Bowman, Who Helped Resurrect the Countertenor, Dies at 81

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      He took up the repertory for the highest male voice at a time when few were performing it. He was particularly known for two roles in Britten operas.James Bowman, a British countertenor who championed repertory for that voice at a time when few singers were attempting it and inspired more composers, including Benjamin Britten, to write for it, died on March 27 at his home in Redhill, south of London. He was 81.Terry Winwood, his civil partner, confirmed the death but said the cause had not yet been determined.When Mr. Bowman started singing professionally in the 1960s, the countertenor — the highest of the male voices, working the same range as female contraltos and mezzo-sopranos — was something of a rarity on opera and concert stages. Alfred Deller, who died in 1979, was the go-to countertenor of the day, but his voice and his acting ability were said to have been limited.“Bowman was a revolutionary talent,” the critic Rupert Christiansen, revisiting one of Mr. Bowman’s 1970s recordings, wrote in The Daily Telegraph of Britain in 2019, adding that “his technique brought a new power to the countertenor repertory.”Mr. Bowman’s breakthrough came in 1967, when he was working as a teacher and was doing most of his singing in choirs. He described the moment to The Santa Fe Reporter in 1987.“A friend came up from London and told me that Benjamin Britten was holding auditions for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’” Mr. Bowman said, referring to Mr. Britten’s 1960 opera, whose Oberon role had originally been written for Mr. Deller. “This is sort of a fairy story — I’d never done anything onstage in my life, but I wrote to Britten and I said, ‘I think I am eminently suited to the role of Oberon.’”He was invited to audition.“I knew that you could barely hear the people who had sung the part before,” he said. “So I went to Covent Garden and I made a big noise and socked them between the eyeballs — and it worked! The next thing I knew I was on tour.”Oberon became one of his signature roles. Mr. Britten wrote other works for him as well, including the part of Apollo in “Death in Venice,” the 1973 Britten opera.“James Bowman’s ringing Apollo sounded authentically unterrestrial,” Martin Cooper wrote in The Daily Telegraph, reviewing the world premiere of the piece at Snape Maltings in Suffolk, England.Mr. Bowman was heard frequently in concert settings as well, and he had a knack for deploying his musical gifts to striking effect in famed performance spaces. Tim Page, writing in The New York Times about a two-hour concert of works by Handel recorded at Westminster Abbey in 1985, called his voice “unusually versatile and pleasing.” Twenty years later, also in The Times, Bernard Holland, after catching him in a “Messiah” at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan, said that Mr. Bowman “sang the countertenor parts with a voice and a dramatic personality able to command attention in a crowd.”His performances and his dozens of recordings encouraged other singers to explore the countertenor repertory, and Mr. Winwood said he was always generous with advice and support for younger singers.“He would think nothing of hiring a studio and arranging a meeting with young singers who he had never even met,” Mr. Winwood said by email, “and I’m pretty sure he would never charge for his time.”In a tribute on the website of the London-based choir Tenebrae, Nigel Short, the choir’s director, recalled the crucial support Mr. Bowman gave him early in his career. He also shared fond memories of Mr. Bowman’s impish sense of humor.“He was such a brilliant, instinctive singer and musician, a huge character and incredibly kind and generous,” Mr. Short wrote, “but my fondest memories will always be of him giggling and snorting loudly at something totally outrageous he’d just whispered in the ears of anyone standing close by.”Mr. Bowman made for a lively newspaper interview as well. He was always eager to dispel stereotypes about countertenors, especially unflattering ones that branded them as effeminate and made them the target of jokes.“We’re a down-to-earth bunch who just happen to like singing in a high register,” he told The Sunday Telegraph of Britain in 1996. “When I look around at my colleagues, I’m struck by how normal most of them are.”When Mr. Bowman performed Handel’s “Messiah” with the St. Thomas Choir at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan in 2005, one critic wrote that he “sang the countertenor parts with a voice and a dramatic personality able to command attention in a crowd.”Jennifer Taylor for The New York TimesJames Thomas Bowman was born on Nov. 6, 1941, in Oxford, England, to Benjamin and Cecilia (Coote) Bowman. He attended the centuries-old school King’s Ely, beginning in 1951; originally a boy chorister there, he soon became head chorister. According to an obituary published by the school, he gave his first concert as a countertenor in 1959 to a small school group in a chapel at Ely Cathedral. The school now hosts an annual James Bowman Lecture promoting the creative and liberal arts.Mr. Bowman attended New College, Oxford, as an organ scholar and was a member of the New College and Christ Church choirs. In 1965 he met David Munrow, who invited him to join his Early Music Consort of London. He continued performing with that group well into the 1970s, and he was also a member of the early music choral group Pro Cantione Antiqua.Mr. Bowman and Mr. Winwood were together for 48 years. He leaves no other immediate survivors.Producing the countertenor voice, Mr. Bowman told The Sunday Telegraph, involved “using the edge of your vocal cords, and neglecting the central part, which is the bass area.”“I can sing bass,” he added. “I use my bass voice to warm up with, before I sing countertenor. But I can’t keep up a bass voice for long — it feels odd.”Although he was a champion of the countertenor and urged composers to write for it, not all of them hit the mark, he told The Independent of Britain in 1990.“People say, ‘I’ve written you an opera,’ and either the range is too wide or they want you to be something bizarre like a singing corpse,” he said. “I’ve spent my life fighting the idea of being a piece of exquisitery on a table — trying just to be a singer, not a countertenor.” More

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      Record Shopping in New Jersey: A Playlist From a Fresh Haul

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      Thumbing through the crates at the Princeton Record Exchange, and rediscovering albums by Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Broadcast and Merle Haggard.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,I love the unpredictability of walking into a record store with a regularly replenished New Arrivals section. You never know what you’ll find: maybe that obscure rarity you’ve spent years hunting down, maybe a familiar classic discounted too low to resist, maybe a chance purchase that sends you down a rabbit hole of related artists. To honor this spirit of musical serendipity, here’s the first of a recurring Amplifier segment, My Record Haul, featuring playlists from my recent finds at brick-and-mortar record shops.I’m going to begin close to home, with a visit to one of my favorite record stores in the world (maybe one of my favorite places in the world, full stop) the Princeton Record Exchange: a vast 4,300-square-foot music lover’s paradise tucked down a side street near Princeton University’s campus. I try to swing by the PREX (as it’s known to regulars) as often as possible; inventory there turns over so quickly (by some estimates, they move 40,000 items a month), the New Arrivals shelves are always fresh.Some of my recent finds talk to each other in unexpected ways. Listen along here on Spotify as you read, and hear 12 new songs out this week in the Playlist.1. Linda Ronstadt: “You’re No Good”“Working at a store like this,” one of the managers told me at the register, “you really get a sense of who was selling massive quantities of records back in the day.” He was talking about Billy Joel (“so much Billy Joel”), but also Linda Ronstadt, whose 1976 collection “Greatest Hits” went seven-times platinum — which means there are now enough used copies floating around to make it a cheap investment. ($2.99, in this case.) I know that Ronstadt is currently enjoying an uptick in popularity with a younger generation thanks to her 1970 ballad “Long, Long Time” being featured on an episode of “The Last of Us,” but — being woefully behind on pretty much all TV shows — what inspired me to dig deeper into her catalog was the fantastic, heartbreaking 2019 documentary “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Stevie Wonder: “Superstition”My colleague Jon Pareles’s fantastic 50th-anniversary commemoration of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 album “Talking Book” made me realize it’s probably the classic Stevie release I’m least familiar with. How serendipitous, then, to find a mint-condition used copy in one of the first stacks of new releases I flipped through! I am, of course, not suggesting that you will be discovering “Superstition” through this playlist. I am merely suggesting that it has been far too long since you’ve really listened to “Superstition,” even if you listened to it five minutes ago. (Listen on YouTube)3. Broadcast: “Goodbye Girls”Last October, on a vacation in Nashville, I found myself fiddling around with a small vintage keyboard in the hands-on “novelties lounge” at the wonderfully curated Third Man Records store. Its sound was warm, staticky and viscerally reminiscent of a particular album I couldn’t place until the walk back to my hotel, when it hit me — it was the British electronic group Broadcast’s singular “Tender Buttons” from 2005, which for some reason I hadn’t listened to in ages. I’ve been correcting that error in the months since, and though I mostly buy used records, I couldn’t resist dropping $22 on a new pressing of this baby. If only that synthesizer had been priced as reasonably … (Listen on YouTube)4. Merle Haggard: “Where No One Stands Alone”I’ve been going through a Merle Haggard phase for the past few months, since reading the recently released second edition of David Cantwell’s excellent book on the Hag, “The Running Kind.” While I didn’t find the exact Haggard record on my wish list (his eclectic 1979 midlife crisis record “Serving 190 Proof”), I did find an LP that ranks high on Cantwell’s listening guide: “Songs for the Mama That Tried,” a 1981 collection of gospel standards dedicated to the long-suffering mama name-checked in one of Haggard’s most famous songs. I find his bare-bones arrangement of Mosie Lister’s gospel standard “Where No One Stands Alone” quite moving. (Listen on YouTube)5. Stevie Wonder: “Big Brother”This song has such a gorgeous lead vocal melody, the intricate layering of musical elements that makes “Talking Book” such a symphony of self, and lyrics that (“I live in the ghetto, you just come to visit me ’round election time”) are as unfortunately relevant as ever five decades later. (Listen on YouTube)6. Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”The Country section at PREX certainly doesn’t get pride of place — I actually had to sit on the floor to flip through it — but that also means you can find some gems for pretty cheap. In addition to “Songs for the Mama,” I picked up the rollicking 1970 live album “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center),” which of course has a fiery rendition of the title track, a Haggard live staple. I like how, in the sequencing of this playlist, Wonder and Haggard seem to be talking back to one another … (Listen on YouTube)7. Broadcast: “America’s Boy”… and how Trish Keenan, on this icy indictment of American military might, seems to be talking right back to Haggard. (Listen on YouTube)8. Linda Ronstadt: “When Will I Be Loved”A recent argument I had with a friend: Is Kelly Clarkson her generation’s Linda Ronstadt? (As in, “an expert interpreter of familiar material, and an effortlessly fluent liaison between the worlds of rock, pop and country,” as I put it in a piece last year about Clarkson the cover artist.) Discuss! (Listen on YouTube)9. Bonnie Owens with Merle Haggard & the Strangers: “Philadelphia Lawyer (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”I’ll leave you with this charming cameo from Haggard’s wife at the time, the country singer Bonnie Owens, topically tackling Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer.” I love how she admits to flubbing the lyrics — “Oh I forgot to say what the Philadelphia lawyer said to Bill’s Hollywood maid!” — and launches back into the song without missing a beat. (Listen on YouTube)Very superstitious,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Record Shopping at Princeton Record Exchange: Hear My Haul” track listTrack 1: Linda Ronstadt, “You’re No Good”Track 2: Stevie Wonder, “Superstition”Track 3: Broadcast, “Goodbye Girls”Track 4: Merle Haggard, “Where No One Stands Alone”Track 5: Stevie Wonder, “Big Brother”Track 6: Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “The Fightin’ Side of Me (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center”Track 7: Broadcast, “America’s Boy”Track 8: Linda Ronstadt, “When Will I Be Loved”Track 9: Bonnie Owens with Merle Haggard & the Strangers, “Philadelphia Lawyer (Live at the Philadelphia Civic Center)”Bonus tracks“The store has withstood the coming of CDs. Now it must face the internet.” Here’s a Times report from 2000 about the Princeton Record Exchange at a crossroads. (Spoiler: Almost 23 years later, they’re still in business.)Also, here’s my favorite passage from David Cantwell’s aforementioned Merle Haggard biography, discussing Haggard’s 1994 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame: “Merle’s acceptance speech was perfectly in character. Rather than thanking a Young Country music industry that applauded him tonight but wouldn’t play his records come morning, he made a point of recognizing first ‘my plumber out in Palo Cedro … for doing a wonderful job on my toilet.’” (It’s true! You can watch the video here.) More

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      Drake Surprises With a Kim Kardashian Sample, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Kaytraminé, Blondshell, Yaeji and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Drake, ‘Search & Rescue’“I didn’t come this far, just to come this far and not be happy” — so said Kim Kardashian on the 2021 series finale of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” discussing why it was time to split from her husband, Kanye West. Two years later, their divorce is finalized, but the narrative persists. That line appears at a pivotal moment in Drake’s new song, “Search & Rescue.” Hovering above a morbid, anxious piano figure, Drake raps about the hollowness of being lonely, and after the chorus, uses Kardashian’s words but reframes them, making them sound like a lament about the single life. Here are two contrasting forms of despair, played off each other. Drake is pleading for connection: “Take me out the club, take me out the trap/Take me off the market, take me off the map.” Kardashian is yearning to be free. But Drake is also a sometime high-profile antagonist of West’s, and his leveraging of Kardashian’s words — an official sample, certainly approved by her — is unlikely to be understood as anything but a broadside from two seemingly unattached people, who would cause a whole lot of trouble were they to attach to each other. JON CARAMANICAKaytraminé featuring Pharrell Williams, ‘4EVA’“4EVA” is the winningly bubbly debut single from Kaytraminé, the duo of the rapper Aminé and the dance music producer Kaytranada. It pairs the irreverence of Leaders of the New School with the sumptuous physicality of A Tribe Called Quest, all delivered at a tempo that triggers a sense of freedom and release. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Terms and Conditions’The English R&B singer Mahalia sets out her own EULA — the page everyone clicks through on the way to a website or app — in “Terms and Conditions.” She specifies “the man you’re required to be” over a briskly ticking beat, vocal harmonies and bursts of strings; she wants honesty, attention and fidelity, which don’t seem that much to ask. Can she treat a relationship as a matter of cold internet metrics? The penalties are spelled out: “I’ll cut you off and I won’t regret it,” she sings. JON PARELESIndigo De Souza, ‘You Can Be Mean’With a proudly discordant yelp in her voice, Indigo De Souza vents every bit of her annoyance at her latest hookup in “You Can Be Mean,” a grungy stomp topped by a mock synthesizer. “I can’t believe I let you touch my body,” she snarls. “It makes me sick to think about that night.” She briefly considers extenuating factors, like a bad parent, but not for long. “I don’t see you trying that hard to be better than he was,” she notes. PARELESBlondshell, ‘Salad’The brooding “Salad” is a rock-song revenge fantasy cut through with the Blondshell singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum’s wry humor: “Look what you did,” she sings, “you’ll make a killer of a Jewish girl.” Still, a genuine sense of menace lurks just out of frame, in a crime Teitelbaum alludes to but can’t name outright when she wails, “God, tell me why did he hurt my girl.” Here, as on the rest of her self-titled debut album as Blondshell, which is out on Friday, Teitelbaum offers candid dispatches from the darker, often unsung corners of a young woman’s experiences. LINDSAY ZOLADZLucinda Williams, ‘New York Comeback’A characteristic grit and defiance courses through “New York Comeback,” a new single from the country-rock legend Lucinda Williams, which features Bruce Springsteen and his wife and bandmate, Patti Scialfa, on backing vocals. The song comes from “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart,” Williams’s forthcoming album and her first release since suffering a stroke in 2020. That context adds a bit of weight to the song, but as ever, Williams is gimlet-eyed and unsentimental, singing in her signature growl, “No one’s brought the curtain down, maybe you should stick around.” ZOLADZYaeji, ‘Passed Me By’The D.J. and producer Yaeji, whose debut album “With a Hammer” comes out on Friday, pens a letter to her younger self on the booming but introspective “Passed Me By.” The song — on which Yaeji oscillates between English and Korean — begins as a kind of free-form incantation, but all at once a slow, echoing drum beat drops and gives it a loose pop structure. “Do you know that the person is still inside of you, waiting for you to notice?” she sings in the song’s final moments, a question that both lingers and haunts. ZOLADZUncle Waffles, ‘Asylum’Lungelihle Zwane, the D.J. and producer who calls herself Uncle Waffles, distills her new album, “Asylum,” into a five-minute megamix and dance extravaganza for her “Asylum” video. Uncle Waffle was born in Swaziland (now Eswatini) and is now based in South Africa. With a quick-changing array of singers and rappers — men, women, soloists, groups — she works countless variations on the midtempo beat, shaker percussion and gaping open spaces of South African amapiano. It’s still only a small sampling of what she concocts in the course of the album. PARELESArthur Moon, ‘7 O’Clock Clap’Lora-Faye Ashuvud, the songwriter, singer and producer behind Arthur Moon, finds joy in disorientation in “7 O’Clock Clap.” As speedy staccato blips and skittering percussion race above a languid bass line, the song has advice what to do when “you’re a foreigner in your own production/in your own bed, in your own body.” There’s a big grin in the vocal as Ashuvud sings, “Take your shoes off, get a move on/Pray to someone, break your cover!” PARELESLabrinth, ‘Never Felt So Alone’“Never Felt So Alone” first surfaced as part of Labrinth’s soundtrack for “Euphoria,” and snippets thrived on TikTok for years. The full-fledged version — a collaboration by Labrinth, Billie Eilish and Finneas — luxuriates in heartache. Labrinth intones the title as a falsetto plaint above hollow, puffing organ chords that hark back to Brian Wilson; the beat is slow, sporadic, almost stumbling. Midway through, the track stages a near-collapse, with fragmented lyrics and bits of dead air, then grandly reassembles itself. Eilish takes over to deliver her side of the story — “Who knew you were just out to get me?” — before each moves on, resigned to loneliness. PARELESPeter Gabriel, ‘I/O’The title of Peter Gabriel’s first new album in 21 years, “I/O,” stands for input/output, a metaphor he earnestly spells out in its title track, preaching the oneness of humanity and nature over solemn keyboards; “Stuff coming out, and stuff going in/I’m just a part of everything.” But the song takes off in the nonverbal moments of the chorus, when electric guitars surge and the Soweto Gospel Choir backs him in the exultant vowel sounds of “i, o, i, o.” PARELESThis Is the Kit, ‘Inside/Outside’Calm on the outside but bustling within, “Inside Outside” ponders fate, physics and free will. “All the molecules were focused on your next move,” Kate Stables sings, as complex counterpoint gathers around her. The sparse acoustic guitar at the beginning is deceptive; soon she’s in a polytonal tangle of horns, guitars and cross-rhythms, living up to her admonishment: “Bite off as much as you can chew.” PARELES More

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      5 Minutes to Make You Love Jazz

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sun Ra

      Questlove, Dawn Richard and a range of other musicians, writers and critics share their favorites from the experimental pianist, organist and bandleader’s wide-ranging catalog.
      Background Image: A colorful animated illustration of a musician with a loose resemblance to Sun Ra playing a keyboard with one hand raised and their eyes closed. Planets float in the background. More