As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene? When you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, it’s easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot – particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. “I don’t blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking they’re minted,” says artist manager Dan Potts. “But the reality is quite different.” Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. There’s been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says we’re in a “cost-of-touring crisis”. Pretty much every cost attached to touring – van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink – has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. “[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,” he says. “Artists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. That’s if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.” Continue reading...
What broke me as a child was my mother’s death from breast cancer. But around that shattering, I became a person – and learned how to parent my son I try to remember her hands. They were younger than mine are now. I imagine her long fingers and yellow, uneven and unpolished fingernails. Or had her nails fallen out? I am eight, about to turn nine; she will be dead in two weeks. Today is Mother’s Day and I am allowed to stay home alone with her while everyone else goes to church. I am to be her helper, so I carry a basket up from downstairs. I set it on her bed. She is sitting up. I know this is meant to be our day, our time; it is the first and last time I will be alone with her in this house. But I don’t want to be here. Within weeks, she has transformed from my mother into a ghost, a skeleton; no hair, scarves covering her head. I know I am supposed to want to be with her on this day, but how can I want that? To be with a dying woman, my disappearing mother, whom I resent. It is too much. “What are you doing?”, I want to scream. “What do you expect me to do now, here without you?” Continue reading...
Drake used AI to simulate the voice of the late rapper and have him chide Kendrick Lamar, which the estate calls a ‘flagrant violation’ The estate of the late Tupac Shakur has sent a cease and desist letter to Drake, following the release of a Drake track that uses an AI version of Shakur’s voice to lambast Kendrick Lamar. As seen by Billboard, the letter instructs Drake to remove the track, Taylor Made Freestyle, within 24 hours, or face legal action. Continue reading...
TV journalist Scott Bryan looks back at the making of I Wanna Marry “Harry” – and the dubious ethics behind the show. Plus: five of the best podcasts hosted by pop stars • Don’t get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up here The wild, format-pushing and often skin-crawling world of early 00s reality television has made for some brilliant retrospective podcast series in recent times. There’s Something About Miriam was one of the most shocking examples, with its “six guys date the woman of their dreams and discover she is transgender” brief. Wondery’s gripping Harsh Reality (now adapted for TV as Miriam: Death of a Reality Star, airing on Channel 4 from 29 April) revisited the murky series after its star Miriam Rivera was found dead fifteen years after filming. Continue reading...
Blades of famous cabaret venue fall from roof overnight The blades of the Moulin Rouge windmill, one of the most famous landmarks in Paris, have collapsed, firefighters have said, just months before the French capital hosts the Olympics. There was no risk of further collapse, Paris firefighters said after the incident overnight. Continue reading...
First minister reportedly plans to run minority administration amid dispute over decision to ditch climate change target The powersharing deal between the SNP and Scottish Greens at Holyrood has been brought to an end, PA Media is reporting. Good morning. Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has reportedly abandoned the SNP’s power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens. He called an emergency meeting of his cabinet this morning, and the co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, who were ministers, were seen leaving soon afterwards. Yousaf reportedly sacked them, and plans to run a minority administration. The Greens were angered when the Scottish net zero Secretary Mairi McAllan announced last week the Scottish government was to ditch a key climate change target. That, combined with the decision to pause the use of puberty blockers for new patients attending the only Scottish gender identity clinic for children in Glasgow, resulted in the Greens saying last week that they would have a vote on the future of the powersharing deal. Continue reading...
Fighting with Pride charity will lead work for memorial at National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire The UK’s first memorial commemorating the “lost legion” of LGBT people who have served in the armed forces is to be built at the National Memorial Arboretum. The memorial will be built after a charity spearheading efforts to get justice for veterans affected by the pre-2000 ban on LGBT people serving in the UK armed forces was awarded a £350,000 grant. Continue reading...
Jailed since the first intifada, Abu Srour charts a deeply personal journey through the conflict that has defined his life Attempts to end the violence in Gaza have focused on the exchange of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. One of the many Palestinians is Nasser Abu Srour, who has been incarcerated since 1993 for his alleged involvement in the death of an Israeli intelligence officer during the first intifada. This is the fourth time the prospect of freedom has been raised, the past three ending in disappointment, even when his release was part of a 2013 peace process pledge brokered by the Obama administration. His experience might be difficult to imagine but for the extraordinary memoir he has written, translated into lyrical prose by Luke Leafgren. “This is the story of a wall that somehow chose me as the witness of what it said and did,” he begins. In a prison, walls are ever present, the single reliable feature of the world. The idea of the wall becomes a focal point for Abu Srour’s narrative, the stability to which he clings, the source of comfort and continuity. Continue reading...
English Heritage hopes new entrance at Grime’s Graves will mean more people can explore neolithic site Nine metres below the grass level of an undulating Norfolk field, at the bottom of a very deep hole, Jennifer Wexler is talking about what makes this subterranean space particularly special. “I’ve spent a lot of time crawling around [down here], and you can go into certain spaces where you see someone’s tool and think: someone just put that down 4,500 years ago, and it’s still here,” she says. Continue reading...
Sombre documentary focuses on the former Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, and how he is becoming a Mandela-like figure since his imprisonment in 2002 Here is a film that offers something not generally on offer in the media: an envisioning of the future and a road map, or part of a road map, out of the present situation in Israel and Palestine. It’s about Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, an initial supporter of the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords who became progressively disillusioned with the slow choreography of international consensus, and was ultimately imprisoned in 2002 for authorising deadly attacks on Israel. Barghouti’s position is not that he is innocent, but that an Israeli court has no right to try him. During the long years since, he has gone on hunger strike, been beaten and abused in captivity; his grownup children have themselves been targeted and arrested and his wife Fadwa has been repeatedly refused permission to visit him. But the film shows that something else has been happening as well: the Mandela-isation of Barghouti, a process which the Israeli forces themselves may well come to see as convenient, when in some future time they need an internationally accepted figure with whom to negotiate. Continue reading...
Pre-tax profits drop to £2.3bn between January and March, down from £2.6bn last year • Business live – latest updates Profits at Barclays tumbled 12% in the first quarter, as higher UK interest rates weighed on demand for mortgages and loans and its investment bank was hit by a backdrop of economic uncertainty. The UK bank said pre-tax profits fell to £2.3bn in the first quarter, down from £2.6bn last year, when it reported the strongest quarterly profit since 2011 after a string of interest rate hikes by the Bank of England. Continue reading...
Animals ran through rush-hour streets, colliding with vehicles and leaving four people in hospital Two of the military horses that broke loose during a morning exercise and bolted through central London on Wednesday are in “serious condition”, a minister has said. The runaway horses, including one white horse drenched in blood, ran through the rush-hour streets of the capital, colliding with vehicles and resulting in four people being taken to hospital. Continue reading...
Radek Sikorski to set out priorities of new government as fears grow that conflict could spread beyond Ukraine Continue reading...
Our writers take a look at the best prospects coming out of college, and which teams needs to nail their picks over the coming days It feels like a lock that it will be LSU’s Jayden Daniels, thought I wouldn’t put it past the Commanders to fall in love with Michigan’s JJ McCarthy. Daniels is a funky prospect; he was a starry duel threat at LSU, but it’s tough to see whether the best elements of his game – his running, his deep ball – will smoothly transition to the NFL. He doesn’t possess Lamar Jackson-esque breakaway speed and has a brittle frame. As a thrower from the pocket, he has a snappy delivery but struggles to shift to his second and third reads. There is some RGIII to his game. Do Washington really want to tread that path again? OC Continue reading...
Former National Enquirer publisher says he helped Trump to suppress negative stories that threatened 2016 election campaign The former tabloid publisher David Pecker will continue testimony at Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial on Thursday, following his testimony earlier in the week. Pecker, the former chief executive of American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer, testified that he used his position to help Trump kill negative stories that threatened his campaign. Continue reading...
Dissidents and broadcasters feeling unsafe after stabbing of Pouria Zeraati in London call for ‘deterrent signal’ A former BBC journalist has said the UK government will “pay a heavy price” for its lack of action against the Iranian regime, which could lead to more “threats” and “operations” in Britain, after the stabbing of an Iranian journalist in London. Sima Sabet, a former journalist at the BBC World Service and the dissident channel Iran International, said there would be more transnational repression unless the government issued a “deterrent signal” to the Iranian regime. Continue reading...
The late elder statesman understood the need for a progressive realignment of British politics. That prize shouldn’t be lost David Marquand and Frank Field, both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the long-serving backbench MP had very different temperaments too, one searchingly academic, the other a bold moraliser. They also disagreed about many of the big issues in British politics, the European Union above all. But they also had some hugely important things in common. Both started as free-thinking Labour MPs – Marquand in 1966 and Field in 1979. Both possessed a rare degree of intellectual and spiritual hinterland. Both then went on lifetime political journeys. These took them increasingly away from Labour, though they always remained in Labour’s orbit. Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Despite relegation to England’s fourth tier, Cod Army have cast net to be like ‘City Football Group but on a much smaller scale’ Fleetwood United’s celebrations on becoming second division champions in the United Arab Emirates could not be dampened even by a freak thunderstorm in Dubai. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the captain Ben Pringle told the Guardian. “It was the most rain they have had for 75 years. Cars were underwater on the motorway.” This is not supposed to happen in the glittering city of skyscrapers and excitement but then Fleetwood Town, a club that have just dropped into England’s fourth tier, are not really supposed to be at the head of a stable of international clubs that also includes Waterford FC in Ireland and Western Cape Fleetwood in South Africa. Continue reading...
Our season was defined by tragedies off the pitch and a remarkable resilience that guided the team through it During lockdown, many turned to baking exotic sourdough or participating in one-time Zoom quizzes. I, however, created an animation with my kids to explore how the mind works, emphasising emotion and intuition as life’s dominant forces. The philosopher Jonathan Haidt uses the elephant and rider metaphor to illustrate this: the elephant represents our emotional, instinctive self, full of raw passion, while the rider symbolises our rational mind, often struggling to control this surge of emotions. Since September emotion has been the dominant force in my universe. At Grimsby Town, we’ve spent seven months circling the drain of relegation and only in our penultimate game of the season against Swindon Town did a plug of mathematical certainty finally go in. Continue reading...
The latest Neil Gaiman story about two ghosts on the run has spells, shenanigans and supernatural horrors galore. It’s impossible not to be entertained by such escapist adventures Given the amount of exposition clunked out, the first episode of Dead Boy Detectives sure is confusing. But I think I have it worked out. There are two boys – best friends Charles (Jayden Revri) and Edwin (George Rexstrew). They are both dead – lippy Charles carked it in the 1980s, stiffly Edwardian Edwin in 1916. Somehow they are both still on Earth (though we learn that Edwin spent some time in hell before escaping) and are using their time to find souls trapped less happily here and release them. The first we meet is a maddened first world war soldier in a cursed gas mask they must slice off before Death (Kirby, formerly known as Kirby Howell-Baptiste). They always have to hide from Death lest she collect them too. They are actually dead boy detectives on the lam. Fortunately, they can jump into mirrors to escape and to travel. Charles also has a backpack that holds an infinite number of items, which is such a cheat by the creators that you can only applaud wildly. What else do you need to know? Oh, they can be hurt by iron. Iron’s a thing for them. So now, on with the show! Which is aimed at a young audience, who should love it. It whips along and, after the confusing start, finds a clairvoyant and a groove that work brilliantly. The clairvoyant, Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson, with screen presence to burn) joins the pair after they release her from a demonic possession. She can’t remember a thing about herself but has a psychic vision that tells her where a missing child is being held, surrounded by black magic and supernatural horrors. Continue reading...
Tired of colonial artefacts being hoarded, Chidi Nwaubani and Ahmed Abokor use tech to redistribute them from museums in audacious digital heists In March last year, two men in tracksuits, wearing hockey masks and carrying matching laundry bags, headed for the British Museum. Just outside, patrolling police asked the two strange-looking men where they were going. “We’re going to the British Museum to loot back stolen goods,” one of them said. “Well, we’ll see you in there then!” the policewoman answered. But no arrests were made, as nothing incriminating happened. What did take place was a “digital heist” of one of the most famous objects in the British Museum, an artefact that is, according to Egyptologist Monica Hanna, “a symbol of western cultural power” and “of British imperialism”: the Rosetta Stone. Continue reading...
Israel says the graves were dug by people in Gaza a few months ago but the corpses had been examined by IDF soldiers Al Jazeera reports that Israel continues its aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The news network writes that “An airstrike targeted a family home in the area of Fukhari, east of Khan Younis. The extent of casualties remains unclear. Meanwhile, more Israeli air raids took place in the western part of Rafah, following earlier reports of overnight strikes on a home in the southernmost city of Gaza that killed at least five.” Continue reading...
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy. There’s takeover excitement in the mining world this morning after Australia’s BHP made a takeover approach for smaller rival Anglo American The Board is currently reviewing this proposal with its advisers. There can be no certainty that any offer will be made nor as to the terms on which any such offer might be made. Pending any further announcements Anglo American shareholders should take no action. A further announcement will be made as and when appropriate. Continue reading...
The Clash are the touchstone for a story that stretches back to the 50s, told in interviews with many campaigning rockers There’s no better time than now for a documentary on popular music’s role in the fight against racism and fascism. And in true punk spirit, this lo-fi indie packs in a lot of history and righteous passion for not much budget – even if, to be brutally honest, its core narrative is a very minor part of that history, centred on a bunch of ageing Clash fans. The Clash are very much the touchstone here. Motivated by musicians such as Eric Clapton echoing the National Front’s racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, Joe Strummer and co became key players in the Rock Against Racism movement in the late 70s, alongside acts including Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson and Aswad. (The 2020 doc White Riot lays out the story in more detail.) While some punk bands, such as the Sex Pistols, flirted with Nazi imagery, the Clash drew a line in the sand and stood against fascism and racism, as various musicians, writers and commentators from back in the day point out. Continue reading...
Nothing had changed for contents insurance on my London flat but it raised the renewal from £78 to £251 I am 92 and live in a fifth-floor flat. The block is very secure, with a concierge and fobs for access to each floor. Last year I insured the contents of my home against fire and flood only, with Saga, for £78 (the building is insured by Islington council for £10 a month). Nothing has changed; but this year my renewal quote is £251. I’m trying to get to the bottom of this huge rise. I thought Saga was an organisation that cared for elderly people. Apparently not. Continue reading...