Pop and Rock Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Alicia Keys Steps Into a New Spotlight

      by

      “Hell’s Kitchen,” a musical inspired by the singer-songwriter’s teenage years in New York, is set to open Off Broadway.One night this summer, Alicia Keys fell asleep listening to show tunes.She was on vacation following a five-week concert tour, but her mind was still at work: For 12 years, she has been developing “Hell’s Kitchen,” a musical based on her adolescence in a then-gritty New York neighborhood, and at the top of her to-do list was writing a new song for the actress playing the main character’s mother.So she took a nap with her headphones on, listening to a playlist of theatrical mom songs (think “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy” and “Little Girls” from “Annie”). When she woke up, she could feel the rhythm. She could hear the chords. She could see the title.She ducked into a closet and began to sing into her phone. She hopped online, doing a little research to strengthen her lyrics. And then, when she returned to New York, she began to write, in the wee hours after the meetings and the calls and the rehearsals, noodling at an upright piano in her Chelsea recording studio.“This is occupying a lot of space in my mind,” Keys said about the musical, considered but candid as she was driven to a downtown rehearsal hall, tuning out the traffic and focusing on getting where she wants to go.Maleah Joi Moon is making her professional stage debut as the show’s protagonist, the 17-year-old Ali.Elias Williams for The New York TimesThat day, where she wanted to go was the Public Theater, the celebrated but pandemic-weakened nonprofit where “Hell’s Kitchen” is to begin an Off Broadway run on Oct. 24. Even though Keys is not in it, demand is high: Each time more tickets go on sale, they are snatched up.“I am thinking a lot about ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and obviously the goal for it to be tremendously beloved and really something that comes into the world in a way that is just like a storm, an incredible storm,” Keys said. “And the goal, obviously, is to transfer to Broadway. So that’s heavy on my mind.”With 15 Grammys, five No. 1 albums and about 5 billion song streams, Keys is an unusual figure in the music world — a classically trained pianist turned R&B singer-songwriter who signed a recording contract as a teenager and remains, at 42, determined, driven and resolutely in control of her creative and commercial life.Her musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is unusual too, in ways that seem promising. Unlike many biographical jukebox shows chronicling childhood to celebrity, this one is both focused and fictionalized, depicting a few months in the life of a 17-year-old named Ali.“This is not Tina Turner, this is not the Temptations, this is not MJ, this is not Carole King — although all of those are phenomenal,” Keys said, referring to shows about pop stars. “It’s really so much more about relationships and identity and trying to find who you are, which I think is a continuous theme in all of our lives: Who are we? Who do we want to be? Who are we becoming?”In “Hell’s Kitchen,” Ali, like Keys, is the daughter of a white mother and a Black father and is growing up in Manhattan Plaza, a subsidized housing development just outside Times Square where 70 percent of the units are for performing artists. The supporting characters — a hyper-protective single mother, a life-changing piano teacher, an older boyfriend and an unreliable father — are based on figures in Keys’s own upbringing.At its heart, “Hell’s Kitchen” is a mother-daughter love story, featuring the stage veteran Shoshana Bean, left, during a rehearsal with Moon.Elias Williams for The New York Times“We’ve highly fictionalized the specifics,” said Kristoffer Diaz, a playwright and librettist who has been working with Keys on the show for more than a decade. Along the way, Keys and Diaz have been joined by the Broadway veteran Michael Greif, who directed “Dear Evan Hansen,” and by the choreographer Camille A. Brown, an in-demand dance-maker.In some ways, the show’s narrative structure resembles that of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans”: It is a coming-of-age story about a gifted teenager with a fractured family; it ends with the protagonist’s trajectory unclear, but audiences can fill in the blanks based on what they already know about the author’s accomplishments.Keys resisted suggestions that the musical give audiences a road map to Ali’s future — a future in which she might, like Keys, become a big star. “Sometimes they would push: ‘And how about we…?’ And I was like, ‘No.’ ‘No,’” she said. “You just need to know that she is going to find something. Everything else is irrelevant.”“Hell’s Kitchen” is, in the eyes of its creative team, a mother-daughter love story. And, in an era when many musicals market themselves as love letters either to Broadway or to New York, this one falls squarely into the latter camp: Keys’s identity, as a person and as a songwriter, was shaped by the city in the 1990s, and that informs the show’s sounds (like bucket drumming) and movement (with echoes of social dances like the Running Man).The score, played by a band that will include a pianist visible to the audience even when actors pretend to be tickling the ivories, features Keys’s best-known hits: “Fallin’,” “No One,” “Girl on Fire,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” and, of course, “Empire State of Mind,” her 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z that has become an inescapable New York City anthem. Keys said she has written four new songs for the show, but that even existing songs have a new sound because they have been rearranged.“I almost felt obligated to create that piece that would be something that people who absolutely can’t stand musical theater would love,” Keys said, reflecting on her initial aspirations for “Hell’s Kitchen.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“The songs that you think you know,” she said, “you never heard like this.”Making a musical might seem like a swerve for Keys, but the truth is the overlap between the recording industry and musical theater is substantial. There is an ever-growing inventory of jukebox musicals biographical (“MJ,” about Michael Jackson) and fictional (“& Juliet”), as well as shows with original scores written by pop stars (“Here Lies Love”).Keys is a lifelong theatergoer who has dabbled in acting — she played Dorothy in a preschool production of “The Wizard of Oz” and had a cameo on “The Cosby Show” at 4 — but her passion was always music. She studied piano from age 7, was performing in a girl group and wrote her first song at around 11, and signed that recording contract at 15. Childhood moved fast — she skipped two grades and moved out at 16.“She knew a lot before she should have,” said her mother, Terria Joseph. (Mother and daughter both use stage names.)When Keys was a child, Joseph was a struggling actor — that’s how she qualified to live at Manhattan Plaza — who took survival jobs, particularly as a paralegal, while trying to find work as a performer. (Keys’s father, a flight attendant, did not live with them and was mostly not around; though Keys was close to her paternal grandparents, she was often estranged from her father. Now, she says, they are good.)Keys would tag along to auditions and rehearsals when her mother couldn’t afford a babysitter; when there was enough money, they would stand in line at the TKTS booth and buy discount theater tickets. Her mother recalls an early trip to “Cats,” and Keys remembers “Miss Saigon,” but the show that stands out most is “Rent,” in part because it’s about AIDS, which hit Manhattan Plaza, with its high population of gay artists, quite hard. “Rent,” like “Hell’s Kitchen,” was directed by Greif.She was valedictorian of her graduating class at the city’s Professional Performing Arts School, and attended Columbia University for a month before dropping out to pursue music. In 2001, with the release of “Fallin’,” and boosted by an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” her career took off.Keys has continued to see theater when she can, and in 2011 she co-produced a Broadway play, “Stick Fly,” about an affluent Black family wrestling with race and class. According to her mother, who is always trying to take her to more theater, Keys has long been thinking about developing her own show. “It was on her bucket list for some time,” Joseph said.“People know her centrality to decision-making matters to her,” the Public Theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said of Keys (above, at a rehearsal). “There’s nothing of the absent star about her.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“Stick Fly,” Keys said, “ignited this desire in me, across all mediums in regards to storytelling, to be able to start to hear, feel and see stories that I know exist, but in so many ways the world doesn’t see.” And when she started cooking up “Hell’s Kitchen,” she had audacious goals.“Because I have all the experience with seeing theater since a kid, I just was really ready to reinvent theater, too,” she said. “I just felt like there was so much to bring, so many worlds to collide and cross. I almost felt obligated to create that piece that would be something that people who absolutely can’t stand musical theater would love.”Hang on! There are people who can’t stand musical theater? Apparently, yes, and one of them is Keys’s husband, Swizz Beatz, a renowned hip-hop producer.“He’s not a fan,” Keys said, laughing. “Do not bring him to the show where in the middle of the sentence they break out into the song. He falls asleep. He cringes. He can’t take it.”So one goal, Keys said, is simply to create a show her husband will like. (The two make up a power couple, with multiple homes and a significant contemporary art collection; they have two children together, and are also helping to raise his three children from previous relationships.)And what about reinventing theater? When I ask her about that word, she qualifies it — mindful of how it might sound and wary after two decades talking to journalists. Keys said she thinks about her project differently now, because she believes that over the last decade, Broadway has made strides.“I don’t want you to now quote me and say I’m reinventing Broadway,” she said. “I want to be clear that there’s so many pieces that exist now that really do challenge, I think, what we were seeing. There of course needs to be more diversity on Broadway. Is there more already? Hell yeah. And we still need more.”I write about the business of Broadway, so one thing that has struck me, as I’ve been working on this profile, is Keys’s ownership — economic as well as artistic — of “Hell’s Kitchen.” Rather than finding Broadway producers to finance and shepherd the show, thus far she is doing so herself, retaining the rights to its commercial future.“I want to own my story,” she told me. “And I deserve to.”She consults, and is heard, on every strategic and creative choice: writing, casting, staging, marketing.Keys has been shuttling between her recording studio in Chelsea and the rehearsal space, while fine-tuning the show’s sound.Elias Williams for The New York Times“People know her centrality to decision-making matters to her,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public. “She’s been as involved as any artist I’ve ever worked with — she gets involved on a level of granularity that’s just astonishing. It’s not just music, but every sentence, every relationship, every actor. There’s nothing of the absent star about her.”Maleah Joi Moon, who at 21 is making a professional stage debut playing Ali, was taken aback to realize that Keys, whose music was a staple in Moon’s childhood home, would actually be involved on a day-to-day basis.“When I saw the project, I was like, no way was she really attached to this,” Moon said. “And to find out, once I got into the rehearsal room, that she was going to be so heavily involved — it was insane.”Keys radiated warmth as well as intensity during a rehearsal, a novel (“The Vanishing Half”) at her elbow while she bounced in her chair to the beat and tapped out ideas on her phone. “She’s very specific with her notes,” said Shoshana Bean, the actress playing Ali’s mother.She teaches songs to the ensemble. (“You’ve never been to a more charged, lively and thrilling music rehearsal than when she’s running them,” Greif said.) She instructs the stars on vocal technique. (“She has expressed herself about what parts of my voice she wants me to use,” said Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Ali’s father.)She even attended auditions for understudies, and she told me she was relocating a piano in her studio to try to replicate the sonic environment of the theater, thinking she would record the songs in the show and give demos to the band “so they get the feel, they get the swing, they get the idea, they get the energy.”“I’m very, very anal,” she said, “and I know how I want everything to sound.”Control has been a central theme of Keys’s career. While still a teenager, she successfully extricated herself from the contract she had signed with Columbia Records, chafing at efforts to mold her image and sound.“It’s important for me to properly express how I feel at the moment and not have it filtered through other people,” she told Oprah at age 20. Now she preaches self-determination. “If you don’t know what you want for yourself, then you’ll never, never get there,” she told me. “You’ll always be deterred.”Several times, as we talked, she circled back to her concerns about the way the music industry treats artists, and she said one of her long-term goals is “redesigning the industry.”“I feel like as a young artist, we get very taken advantage of, and it’s unfortunate we find ourselves in these circumstances that do not benefit us to the level that it should,” she said. “And I’m lucky. I am in control of all of my music and all of the things that I’ve created. But let me tell you, that’s not the normal story. And I had to fight for it.”Maintaining creative and financial control has become “a mission,” she said, and with “Hell’s Kitchen,” she believes the lessons she has learned are paying off.“For the first time in my life,” she said. “I’m doing something exactly right.”That startled me, given her success. “Really?” I asked.The score is a mix of new songs and Keys’s best-known hits, including, of course, “Empire State of Mind,” her 2009 collaboration with Jay-Z.Elias Williams for The New York Times“I really do,” she said. She explained that with previous projects, “I didn’t start out right, but kind of ended up right.” But this time, she said, “I didn’t want to go out and get too diluted and get too many partners. We have all the right partners, all the right minds. It’s the right mixture of experience and also newness that I think is important to continue to create a new world.”One night in mid-July, I took the subway to Barclays Center to watch Keys do what she is best known for: perform. For 90 minutes she entertained a rapturous crowd of 11,894 — strikingly more diverse, and younger, than most theater audiences. Her sparkling Yamaha piano was in the center of the arena, on a rotating stage, with runways extending out so she could work the crowd.Just before the concert, as she often does, she presided over what she calls a Soulcare Session, promoting her skin care line (“I call them offerings, not products — products is too transactional”), talking up empowerment (“The theme today is reminding ourselves to own our own power”), and posing for pictures with superfans who had paid a steep premium for up-close access (“You can talk to me about anything you want,” she said). Her staff sprayed the patrons with a “reviving aura mist” and invited them to select keys (get it?) with words of affirmation; attendees sat on embroidered pillows, black beanbags and purple cushions and asked Keys about her wardrobe, her writing process, her childhood. Some spoke about how her songs had helped them endure disease or emotional hardship.Keys has long had an entrepreneurial streak — she started a babysitters club when she was 11 — and it is ever-expanding. “I’m really interested in business at this point,” she told me when I asked about what’s next.She’s all-in on “Hell’s Kitchen,” of course. She intends to further build up Key SoulCare. And she’ll make more music.“I feel like I’m in a place where I can express myself clearly,” she said. “I am clear about what I want, what I don’t want. Who I want to do it with, who I don’t want to. I’m unafraid to be very vocal and verbal about that, and I feel like I’m in a place where I can do anything, anything. And I haven’t even begun yet.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Posts From Hospital Bed

      by

      “Never take life for granted enjoy it while you have it!” the rapper wrote on social media. He posted a picture from a hospital, saying he had been in a nine-day fight for his life.Krayzie Bone, a member of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, one of the most influential rap groups in history, has been fighting for his life for several days, he said in a post on social media on Monday that included a photo of him in a hospital.The cause of the hospitalization is unknown. The 50-year-old rapper, whose real name is Anthony Henderson, has for several years battled sarcoidosis, a rare autoimmune disease that can cause respiratory problems if it reaches the lungs. He was forced to postpone part of a 2016 tour as a result. The hip-hop news site All Hiphop reported that he had checked himself into a Los Angeles area hospital on Sept. 22 after coughing up blood.Krayzie Bone said on Instagram on Monday that he had just fought to stay alive for “9 days straight.” “Never take life for granted enjoy it while you have it!” he wrote.Known for its harmonies and buzzy hooks, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is one of the pioneering groups of the melodic rap that dominates the genre today. Mr. Henderson is one of five members of the group, which was formed in Cleveland in the early 1990s. They received a lift from Eazy-E, a founding member of the rap group N.W.A., who signed the group to his label, Ruthless Records, in 1993. “Creepin on ah Come Up,” their debut album on the label, sold millions and made them the first hip-hop group from Cleveland to break into the mainstream.Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were nominated for three Grammys, and won one in 1997 for best rap performance by a duo or group. (Their Grammy-winning hit, “Tha Crossroads,” was in part a tribute to Eazy-E, who died from AIDS in 1995.) Members of the group have collaborated with some of the biggest names in pop music history, including Tupac Shakur and Mariah Carey.“When our management got a call about Mariah Carey wanting to do a record with us, at the time, we didn’t even really understand how big Mariah Carey was,” Mr. Henderson told The New York Times in an interview published in August as part of a project celebrating five decades of hip hop. Krayzie Bone appeared on Carey’s track “Breakdown” off her 1997 album.“We knew of her, but we were so wrapped up in our newfound fame, we were just in our own little world. So, like, we almost didn’t even go.”In 2011, Mr. Henderson left the group but eventually reunited with his former bandmates. The city of Cleveland renamed a street after the group this summer.“The Bone Thugs style developed by just basically being in cyphers together,” Mr. Henderson told The Times. “We would smoke weed either in my mother’s basement or at whoever’s house we was at, and we’d just start rhyming, working on our harmonies and everything. We knew each other and we knew we could rhyme but when the other four would say the ad-libs, it would sound like we was harmonizing. It’s nothing we did on purpose — we just started doing it and that was our style one day.”Mr. Henderson was born on June 17, 1973. Along with his work with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Mr. Henderson has released solo albums since 1999, including “QuickFix: Level 3: Level Up,” which came out earlier this year. He also founded the nonprofit Spread the Love Foundation, a Cleveland-based initiative aimed at music education.Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are in the midst of a national tour and had returned to Cleveland with Krayzie Bone in August. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Stevie Nicks Unveils a Her Own Barbie at MSG

      by

      The performer worked with Mattel to create a doll in her likeness, wearing an outfit inspired by the one she wore on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours.” She showed it off onstage at Madison Square Garden.Midway through Stevie Nicks’s concert at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, the musician told the audience that she had a “surprise,” prompting speculation among audience members about a potential unexpected guest: Could it be Lindsey Buckingham?It turned out that the special guest was a Barbie made to look like Nicks, and its musical abilities were limited to a tiny ribboned tambourine.Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, officially unveiled the Stevie Nicks doll at midnight on Sunday, the latest addition to the world of Barbie tributes to musicians, including Tina Turner, David Bowie and Celia Cruz.(You may be thinking, that’s a lot of Barbie this year, and you are right. The audience at Madison Square Garden didn’t seem to mind.)Bradley Justice, a doll historian and proprietor of the Swell Doll Shop, which specializes in antique and vintage dolls, said that Mattel has been making celebrity dolls since the 1960s.“I see it as sort of a crossover branding, where you attract someone who previously may have not had an interest at all in the doll or the brand,” he said, “but suddenly is very excited to see their favorite singer or movie star or whatever immortalized in 11 and a half inches.”The Nicks doll’s outfit, as well as a pair of Pasquale Di Fabrizio black platform boots, was inspired by her look on the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album “Rumours.”At the concert, Nicks explained that she sent the album cover outfit, which she still had decades later, to Mattel to capture that time in her life. To roaring cheers, Nicks began to speak in a high-pitched Barbie voice, explaining how much the doll meant to her.Nicks wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that when she looked at the doll, she saw herself at 27.“All the memories of walking out on a big stage in that black outfit and those gorgeous boots come rushing back,” Nicks said, “and then I see myself now in her face.”At the concert, Nicks also chose a fan in the front rows to take one doll home and promptly began to serenade the woman, named Sara, with the track bearing her name from the album “Tusk.”The doll went on sale hours later for $55, and preorders sold out almost immediately.Mr. Justice said that it was normal for the celebrity Barbie dolls to sell out quickly. “When you hear it’s coming, you need to just go ahead and start limbering up your fingers for your keyboard to type in your credit card number,” he said.The design team behind the Tina Turner doll studied Turner’s hair “at all angles.”The rush on the Nicks doll comes after decades of Mattel’s creation of Barbie dolls that honor influential musicians, athletes and pioneers.Mr. Justice said that one of the first celebrity Barbie dolls, released in 1969, depicted Diahann Carroll as the star of “Julia,” the first American television series to chronicle the life of a Black professional woman.More recently, Mattel released a doll of Celia Cruz, the Cuban American singer who was known as the Queen of Salsa. The Cruz doll, dressed in a red lace mermaid dress, was unveiled in 2021 but only went on sale this year.Carlyle Nuera, who designed that doll, said on Instagram that the design team had gone back and forth “with the fabric vendor to get the right scale of the lace design and to maximize the gold metallic threads woven throughout.”A Tina Turner doll that was released in October 2022 has sold out in stores, but it is available on eBay for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.That doll depicts Turner in the outfit she wore in the music video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”Turner, who died in May, was very involved with her doll’s design process, Bill Greening, a Mattel designer, said in a news release. Mr. Greening explained that the design team studied Turner’s hair “at all angles” to capture her look. “Lots of teasing and hair spray was involved!” he said.David Bowie has been honored with two Barbie dolls dressed in two of his classic outfits.Left, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images; Chris Pizzello/Associated PressDavid Bowie has been commemorated with two Barbie dolls dressed in tribute to two of his famous looks.Linda Kyaw-Merschon, who led the design of the second doll, which was released last year, said that it was meant to be a Barbie as Bowie, “not Bowie exactly as himself.”The doll was dressed in a replica of the powder blue suit Bowie wore in the “Life on Mars?” music video.The earlier Bowie doll, released in 2019, dressed as Bowie’s alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, wore a metallic red and blue striped get-up with siren-red platform boots and a gold circle on her forehead.The Stevie Nicks doll was released after a big year for Barbie. The Barbie movie released in July made more than $1 billion in ticket sales at the global box office in a few weeks, according to Warner Bros., and has created a windfall for Mattel.Nicks told USA Today that she loved the movie and said “I had to come home and tell my Stevie doll all about it.”Melina Delkic More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Jay-Z and Mother Gloria Carter Honored at Brooklyn Public Library Gala

      by

      Senator Chuck Schumer, Mayor Eric Adams and other local dignitaries attended the library’s gala on Monday, which honored Jay-Z and his mother, Gloria Carter.On Monday night, at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, adults in tieless suits and flowing dresses populated the Youth Wing, sitting near stacks of children’s books, some on children’s chairs, with drinks in hand for the library’s 24th annual gala.The benefit, which raised $1.5 million, honored Jay-Z and his mother, Gloria Carter, the co-founder and chief executive of the Shawn Carter Foundation. (She did not attend.)Nearby were pieces from “The Book of Hov” exhibit — like encased CDs, magazine covers, Grammy and Emmy Award statues, and a full-scale replica of a studio — which features artifacts tracing the artist’s decades-long career. The exhibit opened in July and was extended through Dec. 4, Jay-Z’s birthday.Above a scribbled chalkboard, a large rendering of a green dragon hovered over stacked glasses on a bar that served Ace of Spades champagne and D’Ussé cognac, the rapper’s brands.“You have experienced the multiple open bars inside of the public library. That’s how you get literacy done,” joked Baratunde Thurston, the writer and cultural critic, while hosting the event.Gayle KingJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDid you happen to get one of the Jay-Z-themed library cards and if you did, which one?“I wasn’t gonna say, but all of them.”Gayle KingGuests gathered in the library’s main lobby for cocktails and a buffet.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesLinda E. Johnson, the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Public Library.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesNina Collins, the chair of the Board of Trustees at the Brooklyn Public Library.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesHundreds of guests spread onto the main floor for cocktails and a buffet of short ribs, roasted salmon and chicken with preserved lemon. The building’s information area was transformed into a cafeteria-like seating area.Xiomara Hall, a friend of Cassandra Metz, a library board member, flew in from Kansas City that morning after attending the last show on Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour.“This was my library growing up, and there was never a display or recognition of a Black artist that had an impact in this kind of a way, in this library, when I was growing up,” Ms. Hall said.“So it’s powerful for me to come back to my childhood library to see someone like him who’s also a Brooklyn native being honored like this.”Along with the exhibit, which came as New York City celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, the library has also introduced special edition “Book of Hov” library cards, with 13 cards designed with the rapper’s solo album covers.Since the exhibit started, more than 80,000 limited-edition cards have been issued and more than 20,000 new library accounts have been opened, according to library representatives.From left to right, Cassandra Metz and Xiomara Hall.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesXochitl Gonzalez, a writer and trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWhat do you think this collaboration means for the library and for Jay-Z?“It felt very cool and sweet to see this space transformed and taken over by somebody that was shaped by the same places that I was.”Xochitl GonzalezQuestloveJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesJune Ambrose, a stylist.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFor the evening remarks, guests moved outside to a covered structure along the library’s entrance as Questlove served as the D.J.In the front row of nearly 500 white folding chairs, Desiree Perez, the chief executive of Roc Nation, sat across from Linda E. Johnson, the president and chief executive of the library, and her husband, Bruce Ratner, the real estate developer. Clara Wu Tsai, the philanthropist and co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, and Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor of New York, were also seated there.Waiting in an undisclosed location nearby, Jay-Z walked quietly from behind the stage into his seat.The singer, Victory, performed a song against the sirens and car horns from the Grand Army Plaza roundabout.Speeches from elected officials, and well-known Brooklynites, praising Jay-Z were peppered with references to his music.“As Senate majority leader, I got 99 problems,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, as the crowd cheered.“By the way,” Mr. Schumer said, “I live across the street and I wake up every morning reading your lyrics,” referring to some of Jay-Z’s lyrics plastered on the facade of the library’s entrance, in celebration of the exhibit.“ … but we all know that Jay-Z is a business, man,” said Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.In a letter read by his sons, Jeremiah, 21, and Joshua, 19, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, who could not attend and sent his sons in his place, wrote that his children were inspired by “the life and times of Shawn Carter,” a nod to the rapper’s 1999 album.Senator Chuck SchumerJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFrom left to right, Joshua and Jeremiah Jeffries.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesLacey Schwartz Delgado and Lieutenant Governor of New York Antonio Delgado.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMayor Eric Adams spoke next, presenting the award for Ms. Carter to Jay-Z, who sipped from a glass of champagne during the ceremony. The Shawn Carter Foundation recently donated $1.5 million to the library, in partnership with Michael Rubin, chief executive of the sports merchandise company, Fanatics, and the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism founded by Robert Kraft.Mr. Adams said Jay-Z, and the exhibit, has played an important role in bringing a new generation of young people into the library.“Now, walking through those doors, you’re going to have young men and women walk in here only because you said it was alright,” Mr. Adams said.Taking the stage, Jay-Z, dressed in a Gucci tuxedo, said his mother had given him a “very bad excuse,” for why she did not attend.“She’d want to say she would have loved to be here with you guys. And she is incredibly honored. And it is overwhelming that her son is so incredible,” he continued, crediting his mother for telling him as a young child that he could be anything.As he spoke, police officers in uniform held up phones to record the speech.“I love you!” someone shouted from a crowd of about a dozen onlookers lining the police barricades along Flatbush Avenue.“And we love you,” he said, in response. “This is definitely Brooklyn.”Mayor Eric Adams presents the award to Jay-Z.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesJay-Z reflected on the exhibit at the library, which was kept a secret from him.“I thought maybe it was like a small room, and it was more than what I deserved,” he said. “I walked in, and I saw this incredible display.”“And my grandma Hattie White got to see it,” he continued. “She just turned 98-years-old, and she’s seen a lot of things.”“That experience was just overwhelming,” he said. As the speeches ended, Jay-Z slipped upstairs as guests strolled back to the main floor of the library for passed plates of doughnuts where Questlove continued to D.J. As a parting gift, guests were given a copy of “Decoded,” Jay-Z’s 2010 memoir.“That was so much fun,” one attendee said as she walked inside. “That was Monday night. What am I supposed to do on Tuesday?”

      .StoryBodyCompanionColumn blockquote {
      margin-top: -0.6em !important;
      margin-bottom: 1.2em;
      } More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Rod Wave Tops Olivia Rodrigo in Tight Race on Album Chart

      by

      The rapper and singer’s latest LP, “Nostalgia,” beat Rodrigo’s “Guts” to No. 1 by the equivalent of about 500 sales.Last week, the rapper and singer Rod Wave edged Olivia Rodrigo from the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart by just a few thousand sales. This week he has done it again, but the margin was narrowed to a few hundred.Rod Wave’s “Nostalgia” logs its second week at No. 1 with the equivalent of 88,000 sales in the United States, while Rodrigo’s “Guts” comes in second place with 87,500, according to the tracking service Luminate, which supplies the data behind Billboard’s charts. (Luminate’s publicly disclosed data is rounded.)Of the total “equivalent” sales number for “Nostalgia” — a composite figure that reconciles an album’s popularity on streaming services with old-fashioned purchases of physical albums and downloads — nearly all were for streaming. Rod Wave’s album accounted for about 125 million streams and just 500 or so purchases as a complete unit.Doja Cat’s “Scarlet” opens at No. 4, with the equivalent of nearly 72,000 sales, including 88 million streams. On the Hot 100 singles chart, her song “Paint the Town Red” — featuring a prominent sample of Dionne Warwick’s 1964 hit “Walk on By” — returns to No. 1, logging its second time at the top.On the album chart, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 3. The singer-songwriter Zach Bryan has two titles in the Top 10: His latest LP, “Zach Bryan,” falls two spots to No. 5 in its fifth week out, while a new five-song EP, “Boys of Faith,” with appearances by Bon Iver and Noah Kahan, arrives at No. 8. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Secretary of State Blinken Plays the Guitar to Launch “Music Diplomacy” Initiative

      by

      A viral video of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken introduced Americans to the guitar geek hidden within.It’s usually not a good sign when video of a senior government official singing goes viral on social media, where the crowds are as tough as they come.But when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken picked up a black Fender guitar at a State Department event on Wednesday night and joined a band for Muddy Waters’s “Hoochie Coochie Man,” the response on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, where the video has been watched more than eight million times, drew positive reviews — and more than a little shock.“I had. NO. Idea,” said one X user, who used an expletive to express her amazement, in the video’s most-viewed reply.To be sure, there was also snark of the don’t-quit-your-day-job variety, and some tut-tutting about decorum (“Ukraine is on fire and Blinken is playing the guitar,” one user said). But on the whole, Mr. Blinken’s soulful baritone and crunchy blues chords, showcased at an event promoting a State Department “music diplomacy” initiative that was attended by the Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, escaped the dreaded label of cringecore.Perhaps more interesting was the understandable surprise that America’s top diplomat has a rock ’n’ roll bone in his body. Mr. Blinken, 61, is unfailingly soft-spoken and so formal that he wore his suit jacket — buttoned, no less — for the jam.Music is Mr. Blinken’s greatest nonpolitical passion. He once told Rolling Stone magazine that “the thread that runs throughout my life is probably music,” and said that hearing his parents play “A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles as a child was a thunderbolt that has defined him ever since. “I remember being absolutely hooked,” Mr. Blinken said in an interview last week.His great guitar love is Eric Clapton, whom Mr. Blinken reports having seen live about 75 times.Mr. Clapton’s bluesy style and frequent covers led Mr. Blinken to discover the electric blues greats like B.B. King, Otis Rush and Luther Allison. One of them discovered him back: While living in Paris with his family at the age of 16, Mr. Blinken worked his way to the front of the stage during a performance by Mr. King, singing along with the lyrics he had memorized completely.“He sees me, I guess, and at the end he comes to the edge of the stage and bends down, and gives me his guitar pick,” Mr. Blinken said, sounding as though his mind remains slightly blown.As a young man, well before people called him “Mr. Secretary” and bodyguards followed him everywhere, Mr. Blinken played in bands and collected at least a half dozen guitars, including a high-end Martin acoustic “that I don’t deserve,” he said. Years of noodling at home with a four-track culminated in his release of three singles on Spotify, under the moniker Ablinken. (Say that out loud slowly for dad-joke effect.)The Spotify songs, which have collectively been streamed about 150,000 times — watch out, Harry Styles — show off a blues-rock sound with Everyman lyrics that bear no relation to the government official who talks about multilateral engagement and “diplomatic variable geometry.” (“And then I came home to you/But you said, ‘Let’s just be friends, yeah’” he sings over staccato electric chords in “Lip Service.”)Mr. Blinken noted that he had recorded and uploaded the songs between 2018 and 2020, during the Trump era, when he was out of government and unsure whether he would return. “I had little idea that there would be another run at government, or a public career of any kind,” he said. “And so when the president put me forward for this job, there they were.”The songs, which he has labeled “wonk rock,” occasionally pop up in his official life. They have been blared from speakers at overseas events, including before he addressed embassy employees in San José, the capital of Costa Rica, in June 2021. A Finnish radio station broadcast one when Mr. Blinken visited Helsinki in June to deliver a speech about the war in Ukraine.Mr. Blinken’s former band, which has played under the name of Cash Bar Wedding, was pretty cool, at least by the standards of Washington. His bandmates included Eli Attie, a former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore who went on to be a writer for “The West Wing,” and Jay Carney, a onetime spokesman for President Biden when Mr. Biden was vice president.Mr. Carney called the band mostly “an excuse to hang out and talk about music.” But the group was serious enough to take semiregular trips to music meccas like New Orleans, booking studios for a day of writing and recording songs.“As to the quality of the songs we created, let’s just say, mistakes were made!” said Mr. Carney, now head of policy and communications for Airbnb. They have jammed with indie-rock legends like Alex Chilton of Big Star, Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü and Aimee Mann.“Tony is actually a fine guitarist and songwriter,” Mr. Carney said. “We’re worried his State Department gig is a sign that he’s ditching us to launch a solo career.”Many foreign diplomats and leaders have clearly done their homework: No fewer than eight have given Mr. Blinken guitars or accessories like guitar straps as customary gifts (which he must purchase if he wants to keep). From Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, came a blue acoustic guitar with an engraving of U.S. and Israeli flags. Another guitar was offered by Qin Gang, the Chinese foreign minister who mysteriously disappeared this summer.In an interview, Mr. Blinken recalled a special rapport with Japan’s former foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, a skilled pianist, guitar player and Beatles nut. “We totally bonded over music,” Mr. Blinken said, calling it “a constant refrain in our diplomatic discourse.”Mr. Blinken with Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s former foreign minister, left, and Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, during the Group of 7 meeting in April.Pool photo by Andrew HarnikThat discourse could get nerdy. Invoking a famous Beatles track, Mr. Blinken recalled “bad pun references like, ‘This policy’s going to be a long and winding road.’”In April, Mr. Hayashi hosted a meeting of the Group of 7 foreign ministers in Hiroshima, Japan. When the ministers convened one evening after official business was concluded, Mr. Blinken produced a small travel guitar he sometimes takes on foreign trips. Mr. Hayashi brought his own. With the help of a karaoke machine, they strummed chords as the other ministers, briefly forgetting matters like Ukraine and climate change, joyously sang along.“It’s a wonderfully bonding thing to forget about the weight of the world for a couple of hours and come together just as friends with a common passion for music,” Mr. Blinken said.He noted that the United States has used music as a diplomatic tool for decades. Amid competition with the Soviet Union for global influence in the 1950s, the State Department sponsored foreign tours for jazz greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.Today’s version lacks that star power: Mr. Blinken’s new initiative includes a mentorship program for foreign music professionals that works in partnership with the Recording Academy, the organization that stages the Grammy Awards. English classes taught abroad by the State Department, which are hugely popular overseas, will now incorporate popular music lyrics.“Music is the most powerful connecter,” Mr. Blinken said. “It transcends virtually any kind of barrier you can think of.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      ‘We Taylor-gated’: Taylor Swift Fans Descend on a Jets Game

      by

      Football fans mingled with Swifties, on public transit, in the parking lot and at the game. Everyone was dressed for the occasion.It was a standing-room-only crowd gathered in the aisles of a New Jersey Transit train from New York’s Penn Station to New Jersey at 5 p.m. on Sunday evening.Multiple groups of friends were overheard asking the same question: Was this because of Taylor Swift?By now most Americans are well-versed with the Ms. Swift effect. Wherever she goes, whether it’s to perform or even just eat dinner, fans follow. Once word leaked that she might make an appearance at MetLife Stadium for a football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New York Jets to cheer on her rumored new boyfriend, Kansas City’s All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce, it was assumed the crowds would show up en masse. The fact that tickets to the game and Mr. Kelce’s jersey — he sports No. 87 for the Chiefs — showed notable increases in sales (and cost), according to multiple media outlets, only confirmed those suspicions.Ms. Swift did indeed show up at the game and watched it from a private suite with friends Sophie Turner, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Hugh Jackman. People in the stadium who were close enough to see the celebrities spent much of the game gawking and taking photos. (Ms. Swift waved to fans multiple times.)Hana Kim and Courtney Takahashi were unable to secure tickets for the Eras Tour, but they snapped up tickets for Sunday’s Jets game.Elaine Gitles, who is a fan of the Chiefs and Ms. Swift, was ahead of the curve with a Kelce T-shirt she purchased after last season’s Super Bowl.On the train, two Jets fans couldn’t believe their good fortune. “We have four season tickets, and we sold two for $90,” said Michael Callaghan, 30, who lives in Kips Bay. “They were going for $50 before Taylor was going.”“We should get Swift bracelets that say Jets on them,” quipped his friend, Ryan Dwyer, 36, who lives on the Upper West Side.At Secaucus Junction, where travelers from Penn Station have to transfer to get a train to the Meadowlands, strangers were joking with one another about whether they were fans of football or Ms. Swift.Sean Patrick and Tom Wagner wanted to dress up for the occasion. They failed to secure sweatshirts large enough, but made things work with masking tape and a marker.When Elaine Gitles, 26, who works for a software company and lives in the East Village, was showing off her red T-shirt that said “Travis Kelce is Hot,” an older man in a green Jets jersey yelled, “It’s a great Taylor Swift jersey.”Ms. Gitles clarified that she’s a Chiefs fan, and she bought the shirt when her team won the Super Bowl last season. But she’s not mad about being labeled a Swiftie (as Ms. Swift’s fans are nicknamed), since she is one of those as well.“I went to Eras three times,” Ms. Gitles said of Swift’s wildly successful Eras Tour. “It’s the best coincidence of all time that my favorite musical artist is joining the best football team of all time.” (She also shared the lyrics she came up with that Ms. Swift could sing if her relationship to Mr. Kelce falls through: “He played the field like he played me. A travesty.”)To get ready for Halloween, and Sunday’s game, Caye Schnackel had a bedazzled jersey overnighted to her that features Mr. Kelce’s No. 87.While some fans sported replica jerseys for Mr. Kelce, other fans improvised, making their own for Ms. Swift.Other people who stopped to chat in Secaucus were Hana Kim, 24, and Courtney Takahashi, 25, both special education teachers in Westchester. The duo couldn’t afford tickets for Ms. Swift’s concert at the MetLife Stadium in May, so they sat in the parking lot outside the stadium and listened to the whole thing from their cars instead. “We Taylorgated,” said Ms. Takahashi.“We bought football tickets as soon as the news came out,” said Ms. Takahashi. “I don’t even care if we see her. Just being in her presence, breathing the same air, feeling her vibe, that is good enough for me.”Outside the stadium, as some fans were tailgating with grills and coolers of beer, others were brainstorming the best way to get a peek at Ms. Swift.“I’ve been looking at social media, waiting to see if we could see which box she was in and if we could see her,” said Shae Mermis, 33, who lives in Crown Heights and was at the game with her girlfriend and parents.Stella Fee, 44, and her daughter, Zoe Fee, decided they would hang out on the V.I.P. level. “We are season ticket holders in the level below, so we are allowed to go up a floor to where the boxes are,” she said.Fans close enough to see Ms. Swift in the stands worked hard to get her attention, and she waved to at least a few of them.Fans had varying ideas for appropriate game day outfits.As soon as she saw Ms. Swift in Mr. Kelce’s box last week at the Chiefs game in Kansas City, Caye Schnackel, 26, a fashion designer who lives in Brooklyn, decided she and her boyfriend would have to dress as the celebrity couple for Halloween. “I looked at him and said, ‘I am going to be Taylor, and you are going to be Kelce,’ and that was that,” she said.Joseph Kacinski wore a blonde wig and a jersey with Mr. Kelce’s number.Scarlett Reilly brought a sign with Mr. Kelce’s number, 87, and what Ms. Swift says is her lucky number, 13.She found the perfect outfit at Nova Lee Boutique — a bright red jersey with 87 written on it, made entirely of sequins — and had it overnighted so she could get it in time to wear to Sunday’s game in addition to Halloween.“I’m just so obsessed with Travis now,” she said. “I am so jealous of Taylor. I am going to try and win him over today.” (Her boyfriend, Krzysztof Miezgiel, who was next to her, just laughed.)Lexi Gordon dressed to look like Ms. Swift and took selfies with Jets fans.Sean Patrick, 47, went to a T-shirt printing company at a local mall the morning of the game to try and get the saying, “Where’s Taylor?” printed, but he was told it wouldn’t be ready in time. His friend, Tom Wagner, 59, from Manahawkin, N.Y., went to Walmart and bought the largest pink sweatshirt he could find but it still didn’t fit. So they decided to take pink masking tape, write phrases about Taylor Swift on it with a marker, and attach them to football jerseys.The pair spent four hours tailgating in the parking lot, making pulled pork and chicken on four different grills and watching other football games on a television they set up with a portable satellite dish. “We had about 50 people come up to us and ask to take photos,” said Mr. Wagner. “I’ve never had more fun at a Jets game in my life.”“The atmosphere is crazy,” he added. “I’ve never seen a team bring a crowd like this.”T-shirts from Ms. Swift’s “Eras Tour” broke up the traditional football jerseys. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Review: U2 Was in Las Vegas Limbo on Sphere’s Opening Night

      by

      In the inaugural show at Sphere, a $2.3 billion venue, a band unafraid of pomp and spectacle was sometimes out-pomped and out-spectacled.Perhaps the true gift of Las Vegas is how it renders the extraordinary as mundane. A place where the simulacrum of glamour available to everyone ensures no one gets the real thing. A city responsible for billions of dollars of commerce that has the texture of a Fisher-Price play set. A hub for some of the country’s most beloved performers that blurs the lines between superstar D.J.s, cheeky magicians and bona fide vocal heroes.And so there was Bono on Friday night, onstage, tantalizingly close, freakishly accessible and, in some moments, perhaps just a tad lost. His band, U2, was inaugurating Sphere, a hyperstimulating new performance venue in which the whole exterior is a screen, and essentially the whole interior as well. Friday’s concert was the first of a 25-show residency, titled U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, that runs through the end of the year.Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, no band played with the aesthetic of grandiosity more than U2, and no band made a philosophy of futurist communication so central to its visual presentation. So the choice of U2 to show off what Sphere was capable of made sense — a messianic band for a messianic venue.For two hours, the group — Bono, the Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton on bass and Bram van den Berg, filling in for Larry Mullen Jr., on drums — wrestled with a venue equally as obsessed with hugeness, pomp and spectacle as U2 is. The setting was lavish, and the gestures were often colossal. And yet for all the vividness of the setting, there was still something not quite complete about this performance, which at times was winningly small, at others winningly huge, and at still others a futile ramble.For this show, U2 leaned heavily on its 1991 album “Achtung Baby,” from the tail end of its commercial high point — an album that found the band, which excelled at earthen anthems, reaching for more ambitious and unexpected sounds. But playing it in full (though not in order) meant peaks and valleys. Meshed in vocal harmony on “Mysterious Ways,” Bono and the Edge sounded vibrant. Bono, who throughout the night performed his signature contortions that recall a person who just received an electric shock, was largely delivering his pleading howls with commitment, at least in the show’s first half. Throughout, Clayton was dutiful and stoic, and van den Berg brought a raw fervor that Mullen doesn’t quite approach.But some of this era’s indelible songs were, here, something less than that: Both the signature ballad “One” and the dreamily tragic “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” felt tentative and less invested than usual. (The same went for the curiously dry version of “Desire” that appeared later in the show.) And a batch of “Achtung Baby” songs that appeared just after the show’s midpoint, including “So Cruel,” “Acrobat” and “Love Is Blindness,” verged on grim and asphyxiating, rendering the huge room inert.From left, the Edge, Bono, Bram van den Berg (filling in for Larry Mullen Jr.) and Adam Clayton. The venue’s stage itself is strangely vulnerable, and the band at times felt tantalizingly close, our critic writes.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationThere were a few lovely flourishes where U2 referred to other musicians — sprinkles of “Purple Rain” and “Love Me Tender” at the end of “One”; throaty nods to “My Way” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” late in the night.In truth, the performance peaked at the end, with a majestic run: “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You,” “Beautiful Day.” And it was here that the band used the venue to most potent effect. Suddenly, the room was bright, as if a nightclub performance had been yanked out into nature — you could really see the audience, consisting largely of 40- and 50-somethings, including huge smatterings of loyalists in vintage U2 shirts and Vegas bros in tight Dan Flashes get-ups.It was a welcome and thoughtful recalibration of band to room, and audience to band. Just before then, during the new song “Atomic City,” the entire screen was an uncannily clear street view of Las Vegas, with the buildings being slowly dismantled through the course of the song, a clever visual gimmick. (For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the sphere at all, or only to display building-high videos of themselves.)For some parts of the show, the band hardly used the screens at all, or simply displayed building-high videos of themselves.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live NationEarlier in the set, U2 had used the screen just as aggressively but to less potent effect, making it plain how daunting a blank slate of this size can be. At one point a long rope — perhaps a nod to a magician’s endless handkerchief — was strung from the floor up to the peak of the dome, where it intersected with a balloon illustration. A young woman came onstage to walk with Bono as he, and then she, held the bottom of the rope. For a time she sat in it like a swing, awkwardly and perhaps not terribly safely. It was confusing and distracting.When the screen was full, it was often cluttered — with Barbara Kruger-esque phrases, during “The Fly,” or with digitally crisp art that could have been cooked up on an A.I. generator like Midjourney. (The illustrated endangered animals that appeared in the sky near the end of the show were an exception.) Sometimes things delved into the realm of discomfort: During “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” the screen filled with Vegas iconography and characters from films based in the city (Elvis Presley, but also Don Cheadle and Nicolas Cage). The collage streamed downward, as if it were falling behind the stage, which in turn made the stage appear as if it were tilting slightly upward, lending the whole affair the air of seasickness.Moments like these underscored that, as much as U2 was playing a concert, it was providing a soundtrack for Sphere’s technological wizardry. And also its technological quirks. The four spotlights behind the stage were mobile. A drone whizzed around, gnat-like, though it was unclear where the footage it was presumably filming was destined for. This isn’t quite a conceptual spectacle like the Zoo TV Tour, the original “Achtung Baby” showcase.Sphere is the brainchild of James Dolan, a broadly reviled New York sports and real estate magnate, who spent $2.3 billion bringing the space to life. It looks prescient, a glimpse of what even ordinary architecture might resemble a few decades hence. The entire outside surface is an LED screen — always on, and always changing (though it repeats). Watching it from the windows of a landing airplane, say, or a taxicab the night before this show, you might have seen it as a pumpkin, or a yellow emoji face, or a moist eye, or an ocean with creatures swimming through it.Impressively detailed and lightly shocking, Sphere registers in intensity if not scale — at 366 feet, it is not even one of the 40 tallest buildings in Las Vegas. But on some level, its power is grounded simply in the novelty of the shape, even in a town that already has a pyramid and a palace and a castle. (Dolan has already indicated plans to build similar structures in other cities.)The entire exterior of Sphere is a video screen, and essentially the entire interior as well.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesBut inside it is, simply, a concert venue, albeit one with distinct advantages and challenges. In dry stretches, when the space between the band and the huge screen and the crowd was palpable, the result paralleled the airy emptiness of a corporate convention gig. In a stadium show, you can almost obscure a low-enthusiasm performance — here there was nowhere to hide.That’s because, despite the visual ambition the space demands, little of that burden falls on the band itself, which is largely confined to the size of stage one might find in any regional theater across the country (augmented by a Brian Eno-inspired turntable structure, though it wasn’t used terribly effectively). It is a strangely vulnerable and inelegant setup for what is essentially a sinecure gig for a still-craved band.At the end of the night, Bono began cataloging his thanks. “I’ll tell you who’s one hard worker — Jim Dolan,” Bono said. “You’re one mad bastard.” He also thanked Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, Michael Rapino, Guy Oseary, Jimmy Iovine and other executives. Earlier, he’d acknowledged some special guests: Paul McCartney, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg. (Also in the audience, though not acknowledged: Flavor Flav.)It was a folksy way to spotlight the sheer extent of the labor, visible and invisible, that had just been performed. And it also highlighted the tension that remained, even at the end of the night, unresolved: Was this a big show or a small one? Was it selling intimacy or grandeur? Was it extraordinarily mundane, or mundanely extraordinary? More