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      Dennis Thompson, Drummer and Last Remaining Member of MC5, Dies at 75

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      The musician brought his hard-hitting style to the band, which helped lay the foundation of American punk rock and is set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Dennis Thompson, the drummer whose thunderous, hard-hitting style powered the proto-punk sound of the loud, outspoken and highly influential Detroit rock band MC5, died on Thursday in Taylor, Mich. He was 75.He died in a rehabilitation facility while recovering from a recent heart attack, his son, Chris McNulty, said.Mr. Thompson was the last surviving member of MC5, a band that was politically outspoken and aligned with the countercultural left, supporting the anti-Vietnam War movement and protests against racism. The band will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in October.Musically, MC5 was known as one of the forefathers of punk rock, starting with the breakout 1969 live album, “Kick Out the Jams.” The group’s song of the same name was its best-known, covered by Henry Rollins and Bad Brains, The Presidents of the United States of America and Rage Against the Machine.When Mr. Thompson joined MC5, short for Motor City Five, in 1966 at 17 years old, his intense playing style earned him his nickname “Machine Gun” from his bandmates for how ferociously he played the drums. He played that way because the group could not afford to connect a microphone to his drums in its early days.“The amps were turned up to 10, so he basically just had to hit the drums as hard as he possibly could to be heard,” Mr. McNulty said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cass Elliot’s Death Spawned a Horrible Myth. She Deserves Better.

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      Onstage with her group the Mamas & the Papas at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, Cass Elliot, the grand doyenne of the Laurel Canyon scene, bantered with the timing of a vaudeville comedian. “Somebody asked me today when I was going to have the baby, that’s funny,” she said, rolling her eyes. The unspoken punchline — if you could call it that — was that she had already given birth to a daughter six weeks earlier.“One of the things that appeals to so many people about my mom is that there’s a certain level of triumph over adversity,” that daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, said over lunch at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles on a recent afternoon. “She had to prove herself over and over again.”Elliot was a charismatic performer who exuded infectious joy and a magnificent vocalist with acting chops she did not live to fully explore. July 29 is the 50th anniversary of her untimely death at 32, a tragedy that still spurs unanswerable questions. Might Elliot, who was one of Johnny Carson’s most beloved substitutes, have become the first female late-night talk show host? Would she have achieved EGOT status?Half a century after her death, her underdog appeal continues to inspire. Last year, “Make Your Own Kind of Music” — a relatively minor 1969 solo hit that has nonetheless had cultural staying power — became such a sensation on TikTok that “Saturday Night Live” spoofed it, in a hilariously over-the-top sketch in which the host Emma Stone plays a strangely clairvoyant record producer. “This song is gonna be everywhere, Mama,” she tells Elliot, played by Chloe Troast. “Then everybody’s gonna forget about it for a long, long time, but in about 40, 50 years, I think it’s gonna start showing up in a bunch of movies, because it’s a perfect song to go under a slow-mo montage where the main character snaps and goes on a rampage.”Cass Elliot performing on her television special “Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore” in September 1973. After she went solo, she found it hard to shake her nickname.CBS Photo Archive, via Getty Images“S.N.L.” didn’t make a single joke about Elliot’s weight — something that was unthinkable half a century ago. During the height of her fame, Elliot seemed to co-sign some of the jabs at her expense with a shrugging grin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      He Sang ‘What a Fool Believes.’ But Michael McDonald Is in on the Joke.

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      The voice of Michael McDonald has been compared to velvet, silk and sandpaper, melted chocolate and last year, by a besotted 11-year-old girl, an angel. He has harmonized with the best in the business. But his latest duet might cause even the most Botoxed foreheads of Hollywood to furrow.“How you like us so far?” joked Paul Reiser, the actor and comedian, from one corner of a squishy sofa in McDonald’s Santa Barbara, Calif., aerie on a recent Tuesday morning. He was there to talk about the singer’s memoir, which they wrote together and will be published by Dey Street Books on May 21.In the other corner, emanating the equanimity that’s as beloved as his baritone, was the man whose 50-plus-year career has included backup vocals for Steely Dan, Elton John, El DeBarge, Toto, Bonnie Raitt and on and on — backup so extensive and distinctive it’s inspired playlists on Apple Music and Spotify. He was wearing a paisley-patterned shirt, black trousers and, as one might expect of an angel who must tread this cursed Earth, puffy Hoka sneakers.McDonald, 72, has also spent decades in the spotlight, albeit sidlingly, often with his famous blue eyes shut. (“Singing is such an intimate act,” he explains in the book, “and like kissing, it does no real good to see what the other person is doing.”) He led the Doobie Brothers in various iterations with his gospel-inflected keyboard style; released nine solo studio albums traversing multiple genres and continues to make live appearances at venues from Coachella to the Carlyle.Paul Reiser, left, with McDonald. The actor, known for “Mad About You,” said his musical collaborator is “very introspective.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesThe book is titled “What a Fool Believes,” after the Grammy-winning hit McDonald wrote in 1978 with Kenny Loggins, though with some hesitation. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s just too obvious,’” he said. “I wanted it to be something clever and mind-provoking, and I couldn’t really think of anything because, you know, I have a problem provoking my own mind.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eurovision 2024: How to Watch and What to Know

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      This year’s edition of the international song competition takes place in Sweden. The run-up has been overshadowed by the conflict in Gaza.A Croatian techno-rocker named Baby Lasagna strutting onto TV screens worldwide? It must be time for the Eurovision Song Contest.Since 1956, Eurovision has been pitting countries against each other in a fierce battle of over-the-top pop music, outlandish costumes and go-for-broke stagings. Fans of minimalism should abstain, because at Eurovision, even a modest ballad can be performed with wind machines, fur-lined capes or musicians playing upside down in a gigantic hamster wheel.The format is fairly simple: Each country chooses an act to represent it, and those acts perform live in two semifinals and one “grand final.” After the performances, the audience at home gets to vote and someone is crowned. The combined broadcasts are wildly popular: Last year, they reached 162 million people around the world.Here’s a rundown of this year’s hotly tipped acts, advice on how to watch from the United States and why the event is being hosted in Sweden this year.How does Eurovision work?Malin Akerman and Petra Mede, the hosts of this year’s contest, during the semi-final on Tuesday.Jessica Gow/EPA, via ShutterstockBaby Lasagna is one of 37 acts competing in this year’s edition, which is organized, as usual, by the Switzerland-based European Broadcasting Union, or E.B.U. As the number of participating countries expanded over the decades, the E.B.U. set up two semifinals to winnow the field; the first took place on Tuesday, and the second happens Thursday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Steve Albini’s 10 Essential Recordings

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      The musician and audio engineer, who died on Tuesday at 61, gave artists including Nirvana and PJ Harvey an authentic representation of their work at a reasonable price.The Chicago noise wrangler Steve Albini’s signature recording technique was the invisible force that brought alternative rock’s most recognizable sounds to life. Preferring the term “recording engineer” to “producer,” he championed a style of elevated realism that remains as influential as the tracks he captured — most famously drum-heavy albums by Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey and the Jesus Lizard.Those sessions would define his career, but Albini, who died on Tuesday at 61, was loathe to say he had a “sound.” Bands of all D.I.Y. genres — from the famous to the unknown — converged on his Electrical Audio studio seeking what he really provided: an organic, authentic and honest representation of their work at a reasonable price.Albini estimated he’d recorded “a couple thousand” albums in a 2018 interview; his productivity was related to the purity of his process. Albini sessions were done quickly and affordably. Instruments were recorded with room microphones to capture the natural reverberations of the space. Analog gear and one-take recordings were preferred. “Anyone who has made records for more than a very short period will recognize that trying to manipulate a sound after it has been recorded is never as effective as when it’s recorded correctly in the first place,” he told Sound on Sound magazine.Here are 10 songs that demonstrate his philosophy of the studio. (Listen on Apple Music or Spotify.)Pixies, ‘Where Is My Mind’ (1988)For the first record he recorded outside of his friend circle, Albini used the buzzy Boston band Pixies as lab animals for his sonic ideas: loading its debut album, “Surfer Rosa,” with off-the-cuff studio chatter, refusing to use silence in between songs and making the bassist Kim Deal sing the reverb-soaked background vocals on “Where Is My Mind?” in the studio’s echo-y bathroom. In retrospect, Albini said his production touches were intrusive, but the next generation of alt-rock titans found them invigorating. “‘Where Is My Mind?’” later became one of the records that other bands would reference when they wanted to work with me,” he told The Guardian. “Nobody expected it to take off because no underground American band of that generation had even a fleeting notion of commercial success as a goal. People just wanted to blow minds.”The Breeders, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ (1990)When Albini worked with Deal on her solo project the Breeders, “I instantly preferred it to the Pixies,” he said in the book “Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies.” “There was a simultaneous charm to Kim’s presentation to her music that’s both childlike and giddy and also completely mature and kind of dirty.” The band, often in pajamas, banged out its debut LP, “Pod,” in the first week of a two-week session. “Steve Albini wasn’t interested in ‘perfecting’ a song or a performance: His métier was getting the best sound from the equipment and pressing ‘record,’” the Breeders bassist Josephine Wiggs said in a 2008 news release. “He was utterly pleased with himself when mixing the record, saying, ‘Look — no EQ!’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Steve Albini, Influential Producer of Nirvana and Pixies Albums, Dies at 61

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      A musician and audio engineer, he helped define the sound of alternative rock while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry.Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered studio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative music in the 1980s, ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Pixies, along with hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago. He was 61.The cause was a heart attack, said Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded — as raw as possible — and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was a visionary in the studio and one of rock’s most acerbic wits.On his own, he led the bands Big Black and Shellac, both of which venerated loud, abrasive guitars and snarling vocals. In those groups, and in virtually every project he worked on, Mr. Albini clung to punk’s defiant do-it-yourself ethic with an almost religious tenacity.He also long maintained an impish zeal to provoke and offend. Big Black’s last, most acclaimed album, from 1987, has a typically unprintable title, and he once dismissed Nirvana — the group that later hired him to record the album “In Utero” (1993), at the peak of their fame — as nothing but “R.E.M. with a fuzzbox.”Nirvana hired Mr. Albini to record the album “In Utero” at the height of the group’s fame.DGCWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Madonna’s Hits-Filled Celebration Tour, Dissected

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      Hear five standouts from the set, and six we wish she’d played.Pablo Porciuncula/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDear listeners,Lindsay is desperately seeking some time off this week, so I am the first of your guest playlisters: Caryn, the pop music editor. I’m going to tell you a secret — you could consider it one of my confessions on a dance floor. I saw Madonna’s Celebration Tour seven times; eight if you include the livestream from Rio de Janeiro on Saturday night, where the Queen of Pop wrapped her first-ever retrospective with a free show before an estimated 1.6 million people on Copacabana Beach.Some have asked why, so a brief explanation: I believe Madonna is the most important and influential solo figure in pop history, and I don’t skip opportunities to see her onstage, where she has innovated and thrilled throughout her four-decade career. (If you’re wondering who was behind “60 Times Madonna Changed Our Culture,” wonder no more.) I was too young to catch the Virgin or Who’s That Girl tours — and nobody took me to Blond Ambition or the Girlie Show (ahem, parents) — so my live history begins with Drowned World in 2001 and I have done my best to catch up.The Confessions Tour from 2006 is the best I’ve seen in person, the Tears of a Clown revival at Art Basel in 2016 was the zaniest, and Celebration is the first one I’ve reviewed (on its U.S. leg’s opening night in October). Repeated viewings haven’t changed my initial critical overview, though some parts of the show grew on me, some vocal performances sharpened up, and some of the extemporaneous speeches Madonna gave during the two breaks each night designed for them were stunningly raw and moving. (See Bonus Tracks below for more on that.)But the point of today’s playlist is to take a deeper (and deeper) look at the songs Madonna did — and didn’t — select for the tour. The first five tracks are my favorites from the show, which has a lot to do with how she staged them. The second six are songs that were sorely missed, so should you ever do a Celebration 2, M, please consider them official requests.Crazy for you,CarynListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ Posts a Huge Second Week on the Chart

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      After a blockbuster opening, the singer’s new album earned the biggest second-week totals since 2015, nearly doubling the rest of the Top 5 combined.In its second week of release, Taylor Swift’s latest blockbuster album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” holds at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, nearly doubling the rest of the Top 5 combined.One week after tallying the largest opening week since Adele in 2015 — selling the equivalent of 2.6 million albums in the United States — “The Tortured Poets Department” sold another 439,000 album units, down 83 percent, according to Billboard, but still the highest second-week total since Adele’s “25” almost a decade ago. Last month, Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter,” opened with 407,000 sales in its debut, then the biggest sales week for any release so far this year.Whereas Swift’s total last week included 1.9 million copies in traditional album sales — 859,000 for vinyl alone — and factored in advance orders, that number dipped 94 percent in week two, to 107,000. Instead, “The Tortured Poets Department” was consumed largely via digital streaming this time, with about 429 million plays of the album’s 31 tracks, down from a record 891 million the week prior.Also on this week’s chart, the country singer Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” released in March 2023, jumps two spots to No. 2, with 69,000 units. Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You,” the first of the pair’s two recent albums (and the one featuring Kendrick Lamar dissing Drake on the hit single “Like That”), is No. 3 with 61,000 units. Rounding out the Top 5 is “Cowboy Carter” at No. 4 with 52,000 units and Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” at No. 5 with 41,000 units. More