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There’s a particular niche of sophisticated, loungy music that thrived from the late ’90s into the mid-2000s. It grew out of ELO’s regal rock and Serge Gainsbourg’s loucheness, taking on bits of U.K. trip-hop, midcentury exotica, the Largo scene’s orchestral flourishes and Daft Punk’s talkboxes. I don’t quite have a word for it — conversation-pit-core? — but a primary text of it is Air’s “Moon Safari.”

The French duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel released “Moon Safari,” Air’s debut LP, to wide acclaim in 1998. The band’s meticulously hazy synth pads paired beautifully with ultra-minimal funk bass and loping tempos. “Moon Safari” set a new benchmark for upmarket French pop, with singles like “Sexy Boy” and “Kelly Watch the Stars” proving they had chops for hooks as well. The band immediately followed it with the score for Sofia Coppola’s debut feature, “The Virgin Suicides,” and those two albums locked in Air as the ultimate turn-of-the-century band for tasteful European melancholy.

At the Bowl on Sunday, the band revisited the whole of “Moon Safari” with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, capping off KCRW’s festival season there. Since that album’s release, Coppola’s daughter Romy grew old enough to become an influencer herself, yet “The Virgin Suicides” remains a mood-board favorite for Gen Z. Fellow travelers like Bonobo, who opened the night with a DJ set, have become arena stars in their own right.

“Moon Safari” has held up wonderfully on its own merits. But as algorithms funnel audiences deeper into formless background listening, Sunday’s show was a reminder that chill can be compelling. Air’s intense focus gave these wispy songs a strong backbone too.

From the opener of “La Femme d’Argent,” lifted by Godin’s nimble basslines, the vibes were, as they say, immaculate. Dressed in all-white formalwear, the band took care to show how much compositional rigor went into this album’s laid-back feeling. The arrangements highlighted the nuanced tones of each of Dunckel’s many synths, and how the band’s Beatles-y chord changes could keep your ears locked into the most stark passages.

Extra credit goes to Air’s creative direction and lighting designer, who locked the band inside a rectangular elevated platform that gave the look of performing inside a James Turrell sculpture. It’s a neat conceptual challenge to visually enliven a famously blissed-out album like this onstage, and Air did it with exquisite panache on Sunday.

The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra usually kicks back on shows like this, adding some sizzle and arrangement richness but functioning more as another band member. The orchestra’s horns perked up during “Ce Matin-là” and raised the dramatic temperature on closer “Le Voyage de Pénélope,” but the whole set was an exercise in restraint as a means of making sure every good idea gets its shine. “Moon Safari” didn’t need much else, but what it got was illuminating.

The back half of the set went into the band’s score work for Coppola — “Highschool Lover” and “Alone in Kyoto,” from “The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost In Translation” respectively, stirred the wistful elder millennials among the crowd, this writer included. They adopted a Daft Punk-ish distance on “Electronic Performers,” touting how “MIDI clocks ring in my mind … We need envelope filters to say how we feel,” but they didn’t really need that wink and nudge. When they broke the spell of ethereal cuts like “Cherry Blossom Girl” for heavier, krautrock-driven numbers like “Don’t Be Light,” they proved that being roused from tasteful stoned pondering is as fun as falling into it.

The Irish rap group has been denied entry for their alleged support for Hamas and Hezbollah, accusations the group denies.

Irish band Kneecap has slammed the Canadian government for banning the rap trio from entering the country over accusations that it was endorsing political violence and terrorism by supporting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Kneecap has emerged as one of the most controversial groups in the music business, with gigs cancelled and the rappers barred from other countries over their strident pro-Palestinian stance.

Vince Gasparro, a Liberal member of the Canadian parliament and parliamentary secretary for combating crime, on Friday said Kneecap members were deemed ineligible for entry because of actions and statements that violate Canadian law.

Kneecap has “publicly displayed support for terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas” that goes beyond artistic expression, said Gasparro in a video on social media.

“Canada stands firmly against hate speech, incitement to violence and the glorification of terrorism. Political debate and free speech are vital to our democracy, but open endorsements of terrorist groups are not free speech,” he said.

Canada designated both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations in 2002.

In response, Kneecap said Gasparro’s comments are “wholly untrue and deeply malicious” and threatened to take legal action against him.

“We will be relentless in defending ourselves against baseless accusations to silence our opposition to a genocide being committed by Israel,” it said in a social media post. “There is no legal basis for his actions, no member of Kneecap has ever been convicted of a crime in any country.”

Kneecap was scheduled to perform in Toronto and Vancouver next month.

A message to Vince Gasparro and our many fans across Canada. 👇 https://t.co/66avCapPgn pic.twitter.com/ySsrgpMs6J

— KNEECAP (@KNEECAPCEOL) September 19, 2025

Canada’s immigration ministry declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy reasons.

The Canada-based advocacy organisation Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said the government’s decision was a stand against “incitement, hate and radicalisation”, while Jewish organisation B’nai Brith called it a “victory”.

Kneecap has faced criticism for political statements seeming to glorify Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanese group Hezbollah, with festivals like Germany’s Hurricane and Southside dropping them from their lineups this past summer.

In May, group member Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who was initially charged under the Anglicised name Liam O’Hanna, and who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence in the United Kingdom for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a performance in London in November 2024. He denies the offence, saying the flag was thrown on stage during the group’s performance.

Kneecap has accused critics of trying to silence the band because of its support for the Palestinian cause throughout Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 people and reduced much of the enclave to rubble since it began in October 2023. They say they do not support Hezbollah and Hamas, nor condone violence.

In July, Hungary slapped a three-year ban on the Belfast-based group, who had been due to perform at the Sziget Festival in Budapest in August.

Kneecap performed in April at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California, where they accused Israel – enabled by the US government – of committing genocide against the Palestinians. That prompted calls for the rappers’ US visas to be revoked, and several Kneecap gigs have since been cancelled as a result.

After selling out stadiums across the UK, Oasis are continuing to Japan, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, where fans including Natalie Slater from Preston, Lancashire, will watch the brothers

Oasis fans who missed the band’s UK comeback have found out how to see them live for just £96.

Natalie Slater is travelling halfway across the world to Australia in November, when she will watch Noel and Liam perform. After selling out stadiums across the UK, Oasis are continuing to Japan, Brazil, Mexico and Oz.

Unlike in the UK – where the band infuriated fans by relying on a pushy dynamic pricing platform that saw hardcores fork out hundreds of pounds for tickets – demand to see the Mancunian act is significantly lower in Australia.

In fact, there are still tickets available on a number of platforms to see Oasis live at Docklands in Melbourne and the Marvel Stadium in Sydney.

Natalie, from Preston in Lancashire, explained: “I wasn’t able to get a ticket in the UK. They are so rare and expensive. It was just impossible. The only people I know who went bought their tickets on the secondary market.

“We’re in the North, so many of my friends thought it was a big cultural moment. But most of us couldn’t go and didn’t.”

Natalie took advantage of the fact a work trip to Australia aligns with the gigs. “The planets aligned. I think it’s a good cultural moment. I was a massive Oasis fan as a kid,” she explained.

“It is in a stadium, but I managed to get a seat that looks quite close to the front.”

Analysis by ethical ticket resale platform Twickets found that British fans can fly to Melbourne, watch the band live, and stay for five nights, all for under £900.

The breakdown

Return flights London–Melbourne 31 October – 5 November: £627

Oasis ticket (via Twickets) 4 November, Marvel Stadium, Melbourne: £135

Five nights’ Melbourne house, double bedroom, via Airbnb: £106

Total: £867

For many UK fans, the idea of travelling abroad might seem extravagant, but with return flights to Australia currently lower than the rest of the year’s prices, the total package of flights, gig tickets, and accommodation comes in under £900.

That’s still less than the £1,000+ figures quoted for unofficial Oasis resale tickets, where buyers risk paying inflated prices with little protection if things go wrong. By contrast, tickets listed on Twickets are capped at face value or less, plus booking fee.

Richard Davies, founder of Twickets, said: “Fans shouldn’t have to remortgage their homes to see their favourite bands. Our research shows that you can fly halfway around the world, stay in a hotel, and see Oasis live, all for less than what touts are demanding for a single ticket here in the UK.”

MEXICO CITY — It was pouring buckets of rain at the Estadio GNP Seguros on Saturday night, when Oasis played one of two sold-out reunion shows in Mexico City.

Lined at the entrance were tents stuffed with bootleg tour merch and fans seeking respite from the water. You could hear the sloshing of wet socks and Adidas Sambas as they price-checked knockoff memorabilia emblazoned with the Gallagher brothers’ iconically muggy faces.

For 200 pesos, you could get a T-shirt with Noel and Liam Gallagher as fighting cats, or characters from “Peanuts” and “The Simpsons.”

While a downpour isn’t the ideal weather condition for an outdoor concert — my Bohemian FC x Oasis collab football jersey went unseen under a fashionable rain parka — it was certainly fitting for a band that routinely, perhaps obsessively, sings about rain. Yet for Mexican fans of Oasis who’ve anxiously waited years to finally see the brothers reunite, it was all sunsheeeeIIIIIINE.

Outside the entry gates, father and son Santiago and Omar Zepeda, both sporting bucket hats, had a palpable buzz radiating off them as they eagerly waited to enter the stadium. It was a multigenerationally significant day for them.

“I came for the first time with my dad in ’98 at the Palacio de Deportes to see Oasis, and now I get to bring my son,” said Santiago, who came from Guadalajara with his 14-year-old in tow. “There was a moment that I said we’ll just go without tickets and see what we do. We’ll get in because we’ll get in. I feel incredible to be able to have done what I did with my father 27 years later now with my son.”

In August of last year, the Manchester-bred Gallagher brothers — who had been openly feuding for decades — declared that war was over on the 30th anniversary of their 1994 juggernaut debut, “Definitely Maybe.”

“The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over,” they announced. As reunion tour dates opened, and two Mexico City stops were announced, Mexican fans expressed pure elation and flooded Ticketmaster once the sale went live. As you can imagine, it was online bedlam.

Waiting in the Ticketmaster queue filled Esteban Ricardo Sainz Coronado, 24, and Sara Pedraza, 25, with dread. The young couple came in from Monterrey, Nuevo León, but it was uncertain whether they’d make it to what Coronado called “a collective reunion that’s cultural and transcends more than music history.”

Pedraza waited three hours in Ticketmaster’s virtual line, almost missing school and her chance to secure seats as she kept getting bumped off the site. “I stubbornly kept trying and after I don’t know how many attempts, it worked,” Pedraza said. “It was such a huge relief.”

Like Coronado and Sainz, the reunion tour is millions of fans’ first opportunity to see Oasis play live, as they would have been far too young or not even born yet during their heyday. For longtime Oasis heads, it was a chance to once again be in community with their favorite band.

British bands have long had a foothold in Mexico’s alternative scenes, with fans of all ages still packing bars and venues to hear Primal Scream, Blur, Pulp and, of course, Morrissey and the Smiths. These groups have had an enduring, impassioned following that has been explored in books, articles and films, with Mexicans often feeling a spiritual and cultural connection to the U.K.’s music scene stemming back to the Beatles. Oasis could have sold out shows across Mexico 10 times over.

After acrimoniously (and unsurprisingly) breaking up in 2009, the hope to ever see the Gallaghers fill a stadium with the staple of acoustic jam sessions worldwide, “Wonderwall,” dimmed. The brothers’ endless swipes at each other in the media post-breakup didn’t give fans hope they’d get back to “living forever.” Mexican fans even prayed to La Virgen de Guadalupe that the infamously combative brothers wouldn’t break up again even hours before showtime.

“As long as they don’t fight!” said Hector Garduño, who came to the show with his partner, Sofia Carrera, from Querétaro. “That’s what we want, for them not to fight.”

Gracias a la virgencita, the tour has seemingly been all love. The skies eventually cleared up on Saturday, and the stadium indeed filled with Oasis’ soaring, anthemic bangers for 2 ½ hours. For days leading up to the Mexico City date, fans in my orbit and social feeds debated how the show would compare with the crowd at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, where Oasis played the previous weekend.

“[Mexican audiences are] on another level,” said Garduño. “I think these dudes are going to be taken by surprise. I expect jumping, screaming, crying; the emotion of hearing those songs that really move you.”

Mauri Barranco, who came to the show with her best friend, said “I feel like we give a lot of ourselves. That’s why so many artists like coming to Mexico.”

Meanwhile, Alberto Folch, from Mexico City, saw his own audience participation as a challenge. “With all the vibes, with all the emotion, we’re ready to jump, to show them what Mexico is made of,” he said. “Tonight we’re rock ‘n’ roll stars.”

The 65,000 fans in attendance undoubtedly showed up sobbing and screeching with unbridled elation. Liam Gallagher played to the locals, donning a sombrero de charro during “Wonderwall” and the show closer “Champagne Supernova.” The band sounded as if no time had passed since its salad days, with the members’ vocals and musicianship arguably tighter than ever — perhaps a positive side effect of pulling back from the rock star lifestyle now that they’re in their 50s. The sound reverberated clean across the stadium as well (shoutout to L-Acoustics, who provided the sound for the reunion tour), and was praised nonstop by fans I spoke to throughout the weekend. I heard a lot of emphatic cries of “el sonido, güey!”

I pogo’d along with my fellow “madferits” as we turned away from the stage and linked arms to do the Poznań: a signature move at every show, borrowed from Manchester City F.C. fans. During “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” we shouted every lyric and were sprayed by flying beers thrown in raucous excitement.

I’ve never felt more giddy to get splashed with spit-riddled beer — and seemingly neither did anyone around me, who shouted joyful obscenities in Spanish. Three men behind me even sobbed into each other’s chests during “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and the stadium filled with cellphone lights as Noel Gallagher crooned “Talk Tonight.”

The rain didn’t fall again, but even if it had, it would have still felt like the sun.

The cultural legacy of the 1984 rock-mock-doc “This Is Spinal Tap” is of sufficient amplitude that, to give the band’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) his knob-twiddling due, it’s gone way past 11.

Perennially quotable, ad-libbed to Brit-accented perfection by co-creators Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer and finessed into an iconic spoof by director Rob Reiner, “Spinal Tap” was born. The movie both ridiculed (and, slyly, furthered the cause for) the metal world’s idiotic excesses, but also an industry’s love of a satisfying comeback saga.

When your fake movie becomes gospel truth to admiring music legends and a pretend forgotten band goes on to play Wembley in real life, the fine line between clever and stupid (again, so quotable) suddenly looks like a rarefied space for a sequel to exploit.

Yet when the key comic minds behind that singular sendup of past-prime glory-seekers aim to rekindle their magic, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” leaves one thinking some classics are better left in their original, endlessly re-playable states.

Not that the sight, 40 years on, of the sweetly clueless Tufnel, McKean’s prickly frontman David St. Hubbins and Shearer’s man-of-few-blurts Derek Smalls reuniting for one last concert won’t trigger a low-wattage 83-minute-long smile. But the concept of Tap being revered (by legend cameos Paul McCartney and Elton John, no less) saps the comedy of outsider tension, making for something closer to a feature-length outtake reel than a fresh take on clownish notoriety.

There’s agreeable silliness early on in seeing where the trio has landed in their solo lives, from acknowledged retail dreamer Nigel’s cheese-and-guitar shop to the fringes of the recording world, where California-transplanted David finds himself composing phone-hold music. In these moments, you get a glimpse of the special sauce of personality delusion that Guest, as a director, turned into a mini-genre (“Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind”). But when dead Tap manager Ian Faith’s daughter, Hope (Kerry Godliman), having inherited daddy’s contract, forces the members to gather in New Orleans for an arena show, the whole thing loses an essential oddball energy, trying to coast on a masterpiece’s fumes.

Gag encores are pitfalls. The famous drummer mortality problem is a case in point, wearing out its understandable reviving with star cameos (Questlove, Lars Ulrich) and a lackluster tryout montage. Then, after the hiring of an energetic young replacement (Valerie Franco), a humor opportunity is missed when we wonder why she isn’t pushing back on having to play songs like “Bitch School.” Even the band’s second chance at a Stonehenge showstopper is more like a joke in name only.

The three leads can still, when given room, generate an anything-can-happen vibe, even if the improvisatory pearls are in short supply. But there are quite a few instances when the promise of comedic friction is undercooked or ignored and the new strains of hinted lunacy (as when Guest regulars John Michael Higgins and Don Lake show up) never quite soar.

The funniest addition, because it feels genuinely pointed about the milieu, is Chris Addison as the band’s aggressive promoter Simon, who prides himself on being impervious to enjoying music, and tells our septuagenarian rockers that for posterity’s sake, ideally, two of them should die during the show. Thankfully, nothing in “Spinal Tap II” will kill off the original’s legacy. It’s just a nostalgia lap you wish had more 11.

A BRITISH rock band has split with a long-serving member just days before kicking off a UK tour.

Crawlers have ‘decided to part ways’ with their drummer Harry Breen a year after their debut album, The Mess We Seem to Make, reached number seven in the UK charts.

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A statement on Instagram reads: “After a period of reflection, and discussion with our drummer Harry Breen, we’ve each decided to go our separate ways.

“CRAWLERS continues, louder and more alive than ever before. we can’t wait to continue to tell our story, and to forge that beside you on our upcoming headline shows and when we join Pierce the Veil in arenas across Europe this autumn.

“Evolution is in motion, the future is big, there’s a new world building around us and it’s ours to share. all we have is us. yours always, holly, liv & amy.” 

Harry had been due to head out on the band’s new UK tour which kicks off in Portsmouth next week.

It’s thought that the band will have a session drummer to fill in for the tour dates.

The band are also due to head out on tour in Europe with US rock giants Pierce the Veil later in the year. 

The band first formed in 2018 after band members Holly, Liv and Amy met while studying at performing arts college.

Harry joined soon after. The band went on to gain a huge internet following after their song went viral on TikTok.

Following their success, the band gained support from BBC Radio 1 and MTV.

They have also performed multiple sold-out headline tours across the UK.

In 2023, their song So Tired was used in DC universe series Doom Patrol.

Their debut album The Mess We Seem to Make was released in late 2024 and entered the official charts at number seven. 

Last year they had been set to support alt legend Jane’s Addiction on their reunion tour but after frontman Perry Farrell fought with guitarist Dave Navarro on-stage, the band split and run was pulled.

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In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”

Terry Reid, the bombastic British singer who famously passed on fronting both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, has died. He was 75.

Reid’s representatives confirmed his death in a statement to the Guardian. He had been treated for cancer just before his death, and a GoFundMe had been set up for donations.

Reid, born in Cambridgeshire, England, had a uniquely resonant and soulful voice with an enormous range that earned him the nickname “Superlungs.” He was a coveted figure among the arena-rock titans of the era — even vocal powerhouse Aretha Franklin once claimed in 1968 that “There are only three things happening in England: the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Terry Reid.”

Reid first found local success in the teen rock group the Redbeats, and soon joined the band Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers. After a performance at London’s Marquee club, where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards caught Reid’s set with the Jaywalkers, the Rolling Stones brought the group on a support tour. Also on that package — Ike & Tina Turner and the Yardbirds, then the main project of guitarist Jimmy Page.

Reid, who had also become close friends with Jimi Hendrix then, left the Jaywalkers to become a solo act. The Stones asked him to support them on a U.S. tour. Citing those tour obligations, he declined Page’s offer to front a new group he was forming. Reid instead recommended vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham of Band of Joy, and that group soon debuted as Led Zeppelin.

“Lots of people asked me to join their bands,” Reid told the Guardian. “I was intent on doing my own thing. I contributed half the band — that’s enough on my part!”

Led Zeppelin wasn’t only the massive act Reid nearly fronted. He also turned down Ritchie Blackmore’s pitch to front Deep Purple, after Rod Evans left the band in 1969. Ian Gillan took the job instead.

As a solo artist, Reid signed a deal with the influential talent manager Mickie Most, and his debut 1968 LP, “Bang Bang, You’re Terry Reid,” included a song, “Without Expression,” he wrote at 14. That song would become a popular cover of the era — John Mellencamp, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and REO Speedwagon all took a crack at it.

He supported Cream, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull on tour (and nearly opened for the Stones at the infamous Altamont festival, but skipped that date), but he never achieved chart success commensurate with his proximity to fame. Yet exquisitely performed albums like 1973’s ‘River” remain cult classics in the ’70s rock canon, and in the ’80s he turned to session work with Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley and Jackson Browne. Reid befriended Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso after they moved to the U.K. during Brazil’s military coup, and he played both the first Isle of Wight festival and opened the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury’s 1971 festival, with David Bowie side stage.

Reid later moved to California and lived outside Palm Springs in his later years. His musical reputation was revived by both the crate-digger era of DJs (the virtuoso turntablist DJ Shadow collaborated with him) and the ’90s and 2000s rockers enamored with his vocal prowess. Chris Cornell, Marianne Faithfull and Jack White’s band the Raconteurs covered his songs. He reportedly recorded a number of unreleased tracks with Dr Dre. Reid told the Guardian the rap mogul “became fascinated with [Reid’s album] ‘Seed of Memory’ and invited me into his studio where we reworked it alongside his rappers, a fascinating experience.”

Reid is survived by his wife, Annette, and daughters Kelly and Holly.

A MAN tried to kill his wife using a “murder kit” in a “brutal and ferocious attack”.

Muhammad Khan, 53, slashed his estranged wife’s neck with a Stanley knife, repeatedly stabbed her, and beat her with a hammer on January 18 this year.

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The horror, which also saw the victim strangled with an exercise band and knifed 15 times, unfolded inside her Rochdale home.

Khan had come to the property under the guise of collecting his belongings.

But instead he took with him weapons, bleach and white spirit, with the plan to murder his victim.

She was eventually rescued when her family arrived and her brother broke into the house.

He restrained Khan, who was “smirking”, as his wife lay fighting for her life.

The terrified family members tried to lock him in the garage but he escaped.

Witnesses reported seeing him dump his “murderous kit” before cops later detained him.

He callously asked officers what the sentence was for murder and how long he’d be in prison.

Prosecuting, Chloe Fordham, told Minshull Street Crown Court: “During the attack, she was pleading with the defendant not to kill her, and telling him to think of their children, saying if he killed her, they would not have their parents.

“The defendant didn’t seem to care. He pulled out a hammer and hit her hard on the head. He then tried to strangle her.”

In a victim impact statement, the woman said: “The calculated and brutal nature of the attempted murder by my husband has left significant physical injuries and deep lasting psychological trauma.

“This was not a crime of impulse, but deliberate, premeditated and planned.

“This was not an attack by a stranger, but by the person I should have been able to trust the most, somebody who was meant to protect me.”

Addressing Khan, she said: “The only request I ask is that you declare the words ‘I divorce you’ in front of my family, to release me from this marriage. I hope after all I have endured, you can grant me this freedom.”

The victim, who shares a son with her abuser, said the attack has also scarred their child.

Their eldest son had said in the statement: “The last time you hurt Mama you said you would never do it again. I don’t understand why you have now.

“If you killed her, we would be orphans. I never want to see you again.”

Defending, Ian McMeekin said: “He knows himself that the behaviour was inexplicable and inexcusable.”

Khan was sentenced to 27-and-a-half years behind bars for attempted murder.

The judge told him: “This was a murderous kit you had bought specifically – the knife to attack her and the bleach to clean up afterwards.”

Khan, of Bernard Street, Rochdale, was jailed for 27-and-a-half years.

He will spend an extra five years on licence and made the subject of a life-long restraining order for life.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or chat at thehotline.org.

Hey, hey, they’re the Runarounds, the latest Pinocchio band to straddle the line between fiction and fact. Meet Charlie (William Lipton), guitar! He’s a romantic! Neil (Axel Ellis), also guitar! Not just a pothead! (He reads Ferlinghetti.) Topher (Jeremy Yun), lead guitar! The quiet one! Wyatt (Jesse Golliher), bass! The even quieter one! And Bez (Zendé Murdock), drums, replacing Pete (Maximo Salas), henceforth the “manager,” who surely has been named for Pete Best, or I will eat my Beatles fan club card.

They have been assembled for your fist-pumping adulation from a reported 5,000-plus hopefuls responding to an open call for musicians and dropped into the center of a teenage musical soap opera, also called “The Runarounds,” premiering Monday on Prime Video.

This rockin’ concoction comes to you courtesy of Jonas Pate, creator of the Netflix teenage treasure-hunt series “Outer Banks,” and like that show, it is a wish-fulfilling fantasy set in Pate’s native North Carolina, specifically the seaside city of Wilmington, which offers a lot of lovely scenery and adorable domestic architecture. And like that show, it is all about being young and wanting to be free, like the bluebirds. Unlike that show, everybody here keeps their shirts on, in the actual sense (though not at all in the metaphorical).

The eight-episode season begins just as high school is ending, which in dramatic terms means parties and a scene in which someone makes a graduation speech. (That will be Sophia, played by Lilah Pate, daughter of Jonas.) Charlie, who has just turned 18, is avoiding telling his parents that he’s not going to go to college, even though he’s been accepted to one. (To just one is the perhaps unintended implication.) His entire future, in his head at least, depends on “getting signed” by the summer’s end — which, in music business terms, is 20th century thinking, but like a lot of music being made today, this is an old-fashioned show. That, and getting Sophia, the beautiful, overachieving sad girl he’s been crushing on for four years, to notice him.

Charlie, Toph, Neil and Pete have been playing unspecified gigs under an unfortunate name I’ll not repeat, and they feel pretty good about the band, although strangely it takes until the pilot for them to realize that Pete is a terrible drummer. After some group soul-searching and flyer-posting, they pick up Bez, who drums so well one wonders why he isn’t in three other bands already — or why there seems to be no other groups around, or any sort of music scene. He brings along his friend Wyatt, who picks up a bass, and a new band is born. Wyatt’s interiority, shy smile and young Jeff Tweedy vibe makes him immediately the most intriguing Runaround.

Charlie (William Lipton), Wyatt (Jesse Golliher) and Bez (Zendé Murdock) in a scene from “The Runarounds,” which is set in Wilmington, N.C.

(Jackson Lee Davis / Prime Video)

Along with Sophia, who writes poems that might be lyrics, the female element is filled out by Amanda (Kelley Pereira), Topher’s controlling, capable girlfriend, who will prove a secret weapon for the band, and Bender (Marley Aliah), who goes about with cameras, likes Neil and wholly embodies a somewhat scary, casually cool, not-at-all pixieish dream girl. They don’t get to be in the band, but as actors, they do a lot to support their nonprofessional castmates. (Lipton, the only professional actor in the band — including in 328 episodes of “General Hospital” — comes across as less authentic than the untrained others, though that may be in part because he’s saddled with the heaviest storylines and has to say things like, “I want to write love songs that change the world.”)

As in “Outer Banks,” and two out of every three teen shows ever, most are at odds with their parents, catnip to young viewers who are even occasionally at odds with their own parents, over even minor things because — parents! Charlie’s are played by Brooklyn Decker, whose character teaches film, and Hayes MacArthur, whose character has spent 12 years working on a novel — that is, only working on a novel, which is to say not working; somehow they are not divorced. (And money is becoming an issue, and there is a Big Secret that will shake the family.) “What kind of work is done in a bathrobe, father?” says Charlie’s mouthy little sister, Tatum (Willa Dunn).

Neil’s father, who has health problems, assumes his son will join him in his painting business; Topher’s are conservative stuck-up pills who, like Amanda, have him slated for a career in finance. Bez’s father is also a musician but thinks his son is wasting his time with the Runarounds. Wyatt’s mother is some sort of addict, who hates him. Sophia’s father is self-medicating after the death of her mother some years before, leaving her to pick up the pieces. (“I’m doing everything right on paper but I don’t feel alive,” she says.) Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends, playing in a band?

Wyatt will find a job and a refuge, and the band a rehearsal space in a music store run by nonparental adult Catesby (Mark Wystrach), who spent 18 years in Nashville experiencing success and failure and knew Charlie’s mother once upon a time — so that’ll be a thing. (The store apparently does no business at all.) For inspiration he sends the kids way out in the country to a secret show by his old friend Dexter Romweber (a real person, now deceased, played by Brad Carter), who will shake their nerves and rattle their brains and leave them with words of encouraging and discouraging wisdom before disappearing into the night and a fictionalized fate.

Every so often, we get a performance — at a graduation party, a county fair, a wedding, a roadhouse, a prestigious opening slot, where the crowds react as if they’re extras in a TV show. (The kids can play, and the songs aren’t bad.) As they struggle toward their goal, they’ll meet disaster and resistance. They’ll fuss, they’ll feud. They’ll make mistakes, they’ll make sacrifices, they’ll make trouble, though no trouble that can’t be fixed with an apology or checkbook or someone to bail them out. (I am pretty sure in the long history of underage kids sneaking into clubs, none has ever been arrested and put in jail, but maybe things are different in Wilmington.) They’ll get high and stay out all night, talking heart to heart, which does seem authentically teenage. (The “Wizard of Oz” costumes less so.)

There are niche references for the pop-musically informed: Catesby telling Wyatt to put a couple of P13 pickups into a ’68 Silvertone guitar; moving from the two to the five chord; name-dropping storied rock clubs (the 40 Watt, the 9:30). “This isn’t some f— Squier I got for Christmas,” Neil wails when his Gretsch White Falcon disappears. When Charlie rides his bike off a roof into a swimming pool in the midst of Pete’s party, that is almost certainly in homage to the “I am a golden god” scene from “Almost Famous”; later, they’ll nick an idea from the Beatles.

As with other manufactured bands before them, the line between what’s real and what’s retail is blurred. You can buy Runarounds-branded merch (T-shirts and hoodies, a beach towel, a sweatband, lighters). You can stream their “album,” co-produced by the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, and released by actual major label Arista, from all the usual musical platforms. They’ve got dates scheduled from mid-September to late October in the South, mid-Atlantic and Northeast in legit rock halls, though whether they will identify themselves by their character names, I don’t know. (That wasn’t a problem for the Monkees, who just used their own.) I doubt they’ll be sleeping on floors or tripled up at a Motel 6, unless things are worse than I know at Amazon. If they split the driving, I hope they’re more responsible with that than the characters they play.

It’s a fluffy show, sometimes catching something real, frequently improbable, never completely ridiculous. But the audience at which it’s aimed may be happy enough with an aspirational fairy tale that reflects their own feelings about their own feelings, for which the music itself is a megaphone and a metaphor.

“All good pop songs are a little corny,” says Charlie.

“Maybe,” replies Sophia, which is the right answer.

A decade ago, “Weird Al” Yankovic launched his 12th concert tour, which covered 200 shows over two years. Somewhere along the line, the pop world’s foremost parodist was backstage putting on a fat suit “for literally the 1,000th time” when he was suddenly struck by the desire to “go out on stage and do a show like a regular musician.”

Soon after, he launched his “Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour,” playing small venues with no video screens, no costume changes, no props or choreography, and none of the song parodies that made him famous. The songs were still comedic — “Everything I write winds up a little warped,” he says — but were original tunes that were pastiches of, say, Frank Zappa or They Might Be Giants’ style. He enjoyed it so much he revived the concept a couple of years ago.

Yankovic, 65, has also not released a parody song for more than a decade, in part, he says, because there’s no longer a “monoculture where it’s more obvious what the hits are,” but also because he enjoys the challenges of those original pastiches, some of which take months for him to develop.

“I wanted to prove that I’m more than just the parody guy,” says Yankovic, who also co-wrote the 2022 TV film “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.” The loopy biopic satire starred Daniel Radcliffe and earned Yankovic an Emmy nomination for his writing. (Recently, he also had self-parodying cameo in “Naked Gun.”)

“The smaller tours cleansed the palate for me and were fun for my band and the hardcore fans,” he says. “But now we’re back playing the big tent. We’ve ramping up the silliness.”

(Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times)

Now, having proved he was more than the parody guy, Yankovic has re-embraced the whole full-throated “Weird Al” parody thing — his “Bigger & Weirder” tour, which comes to the Kia Forum in Inglewood on Saturday, features plenty of video screens, lots of costume changes and props, and twice as many band members.

And, of course, it features parodies covering decades of pop music: The Knack (“My Bologna”), Michael Jackson (“Eat It”), Madonna (“Like a Surgeon”), Coolio (“Amish Paradise”), Nirvana (“Smells Like Nirvana”) and Robin Thicke (“Word Crimes”).

“The smaller tours cleansed the palate for me and were fun for my band and the hardcore fans,” he says. “But now we’re back playing the big tent. We’re ramping up the silliness.”

That includes reviving not just old songs but also old bits. “Some fans feel comfort in repetition, which is OK,” he says. While he’ll change up individual jokes, “we’re trying not to change too much what people came to see — if we don’t fulfill their expectations, they’re liable to walk away disappointed.”

(His fans are committed enough that some even parody his songs with their own rewrites. Yankovic is particularly impressed by Steve Goodie, who parodied his “Hardware Store” with “Dumbledore” and even has a one-man show called “AL! The Weird Tribute (and How Daniel Radcliffe Got Mixed Up in This Nonsense).” “It’s fun and gratifying and a little ‘Inception’-like,” Yankovic says, although he has yet to parody Goodie’s parody.)

And so band newcomer Probyn Gregory, a musician who worked with Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel and Eric Clapton, spends “Smells Like Nirvana” dressed like a janitor and mopping the stage as part of the performance. “He’s an amazing artist, but you can’t have a sense of shame and be part of this entourage,” Yankovic says.

For the most part, of course, Yankovic is putting Gregory and the other multi-instrumentalists he hired to more practical uses — three of them are women because he wanted three-part female harmonies, but between them they also can add percussion, guitar, saxophones and more. “I needed somebody that could play the trumpet and then someone to play clarinet for the polkas,” he says. “In the arenas, I hear our sound and think, ‘Wow, this is much, much bigger than it’s ever been.’”

It’s also more layered, with all those instruments enabling him to “stretch and do songs that were out of our reach as a five-piece.”

To show off his band, Yankovic drops the funny stuff at one point in each show, covering a classic song and playing it straight. In recent weeks, the group has played Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” the Box Top’s “The Letter,” the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove,” and even Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”

“It’s a rotating slot and almost every night is something different,” he says. The fans get into it, he says, although when he talks to them about it, he sometimes finds their reactions “baffling.”

“People sometimes say, ‘Oh, you guys can really play. You can really do real music,’” he says. “What do you think we’ve been doing? Just because the words are funny, it’s not real music?”

Yankovic is a “pop culture sponge” and has always listened to various music genres, first for pleasure and then for work. “I just like to soak it in and regurgitate it in my own demented way,” he says. But he was also raised on Dr. Demento, and was heavily influenced by Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, and Monty Python. Those comedians taught him that craftsmanship matters even, or especially, when you’re being silly.

“I think that the craftsmanship is one of the reasons that the humor works so well and I think the best parody is material that emulates the original source as closely as possible,” he says. “It helps the joke if you’re sucked into thinking you’re listening to a particular pop song and then think, ‘Wait a minute, these aren’t the lyrics I’m used to.’”

For that to work, the craftsmanship in his writing and arranging must be matched by the musicianship in his band; he hopes his audience appreciates both sides of that coin.

He adds that he thinks he personally has improved over time. “I think I’m a better singer now than I was in the ’80s and I’m a better musician and a better arranger,” he says.

Even with the four newcomers, Yankovic relies heavily on his original band. “I’ve got one of the best bands in the world and they do every genre flawlessly, and that’s what helps make the whole act work,” he says. “The core band has been together for over 40 years and we’re kind of telepathic in the way we communicate now, so we’re a lot better than we were back in the day.”

AN American rock band has canceled their remaining tour dates, with the frontman making a confession about the ‘hardest decision’ he had to make.

Earlier this month, The Dangerous Summer, which was formed in 2006, revealed their summer tour would expand into the fall – but this is not the case anymore.

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Fans are gutted after learning that the band has unexpectedly canceled all of their remaining tour dates for the year.

Their frontman AJ Perdomo penned a touching statement about needing to step away from music for a while.

He penned, “There is no easy way to say this, but I am burning out from being on the road so often.

“It is the hardest decision in the world to make, but I have decided to cancel the remaining tour dates for the rest of the year.”

He added, “I need to go home and be a father, a fiancé, and a creative. I need to work on my life at home for a moment.

“I have the dreamer’s disease. Next year will be 20 years since this band has started.

“It has become such a large part of my existence, and how I value myself as an individual. I have been overworking to fill a hole in my heart that no amount of shows or success will be able to fill.”

Opening up further, AJ continued, “When I am standing up on stage singing a song like ‘What’s an hour really worth?’ I start to think about the life that is passing me by while I am away from home.

“It broke my heart to tell my band, my manager, and my team of agents—but they have been extremely supportive of my decision to take some time away from touring.”

Reassuring the band’s fans, AJ urged that this was not the end.

“This isn’t the end, and in fact, making new music is one of the driving factors in this decision,” he explained.

“Creating music is where my heart truly lies, and I need to get back to it.

“Please continue supporting live music, and the bands/venues that we had intended on hitting this fall/winter.

“Music and art need your support more than ever.”

Fans were quick to react to the sad news of the tour being canceled, but were understanding of AJ’s reasoning for doing so.

One fan replied to his post on X saying, “’ll speak for every fan and say take all the time you need! Cherish those moments with your fam and we’ll see you again later.”

A second added, “That sucks but totally understand AJ. Do what you need to do and see ya back on stage at some point.”

While a third wrote, “Much love and respect, AJ. Enjoy the time with your family.”

The Dangerous Summer had a “messy breakup” before reuniting.

They were initially together from 2006 until 2014 when they disbanded.

They then reunited in 2017.

When the band was not together, AJ had settled into a more lowkey lifestyle.

He had gotten into the groove of raising his daughter with his wife in L.A, as per a report three years ago.

“I loved the life I created,” AJ told Metro Times in 2022, adding, “I kind of loved having a nine-to-five. You know, the grass is greener.”

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Irish rap group Kneecap has canceled all U.S. dates on its upcoming tour after its fiery criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian causes brought legal trouble and criticism.

“To all our US based fans, we have some bad news,” the trio said in a statement. “Due to the close proximity of our next court hearing in London on September 26 — as the British government continues its witch-hunt — with the start of the U.S. tour, we will have to cancel all 15 U.S. tour dates in October. With every show fully sold out this is news we are sad to deliver. But once we win our court case, which we will, we promise to embark on an even bigger tour to all you great heads.”

The U.K. court hearing stems from charges that Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, allegedly displayed a flag in support of terror group Hezbollah at a show in London last year. (Ó hAnnaidh has denied the charges and said the band does not support Hezbollah).

The band’s Canadian shows will continue as scheduled.

The status of Kneecap’s U.S. tour was already shaky after it split from booking agency (and visa sponsor) Independent Artist Group in April following a Coachella performance that included intense criticism of the Israeli government and its attacks on Gaza.

The band also drew the ire of local British police after its recent Glastonbury performance, which included similar Palestinian advocacy that prompted an investigation but as of yet no charges.

Nearly 40 years into Deftones’ career, the Sacramento-bred band are anything but a legacy act. As proved by the visceral allegiance from countless fans half their age thrashing at their feet as they perform on stage, the band continues to be as explosive as they were when they conquered the Warped Tour in the late ‘90s.

The band’s late-era surge in popularity with generations of fans who missed their first (and second) go-round inspires and surprises them.

“It does freak me out when I sit back and, in retrospect, think about it,” Chino Moreno says of Deftones’ longevity. Sitting backstage in a Victoria, Canada, arena during a break from the band’s pre-tour rehearsal, kicking off in Vancouver on Friday, Moreno, 52, is relaxed as he discusses their place in the hard rock landscape.

Since roughly 2022, the singer has noticed that the crowds at some of the band’s meet and greets were younger. In some cases, fans in their teens and early 20s were introducing their parents to the band’s catalog, including their turn-of-the-century classic, “White Pony.”

That stature has only grown as elements of Deftones’ amorphously aggressive sound, which has elements of post-hardcore, trip hop and, most relevant to their revival, shoegaze, have attracted a much younger audience. They’ve broken out from being a cult and critical favorite from the nü-metal scene to being widely appreciated as one of the most important and influential bands of that era.

“I’m not a big social media person,” Moreno says of the medium that’s enabled a new generation to discover Deftones. “There are positive sides to it, like amongst all the noise, you can share music. It is neat that everybody’s much more connected to be able to share it like that.”

Yet, he’s aware that based on the online resurgence, Deftones don’t have to release a new album. Even so, seeing this influx of a younger fan base invigorated the band. It has driven the band to push themselves not just on stage, but in the studio.

Chino Moreno of Deftones performs at the Kia Forum on March 5, 2025.

(Clementine Ruiz)

“Having this whole new generation of eyes on us and more attention now than we’ve had in decades. So why not embrace it?” he says. “I love that I met a lot of parents and children, fathers and daughters, and they’re at the show together as a bonding experience, and to talk about some type of art you both connected over … it’s really cool.”

The band also knew that if they were going to write and record, it had to be for the right reasons.

Recording “can’t be where the label needs [the album], or we need money,” Moreno explains. “We’ve made records under those circumstances before, and it sucks the fun out of the experience. We’re bratty in that way where we only want to do something if it’s something we want to do. The minute someone tells us we have to do it, then we fight it.”

With the band’s members now scattered across the U.S., Deftones couldn’t wait to get back into the studio together, just like they did as teens when they had a space that felt more like a clubhouse. As Moreno puts it, it excited them to be able to “experiment and hang out together. Locking ourselves in a room for six hours a day, five days a week, was fun. It was like going back into the clubhouse again.”

With “Private Music,” Deftones once again joined forces with Nick Raskulinecz, who produced “Diamond Eyes” and 2012’s “Koi No Yokan” (“Dude, we have to finish the trifecta!” Moreno says he told Raskulinecz whenever they’d see each other.) Throughout the last year and a half, the band and Raskulinecz worked together through a variety of sessions before deciding on the 11 songs that constitute the album. Without a definitive timetable to release their 10th studio album, it allowed for a much more relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere than before. That said, the time between 2020’s “Ohms” and “Private Music” was the longest span between Deftones albums.

“We’re in a mind frame where it’s like we don’t have to make a record,” he says. “It gave us a kick in the butt. If people are talking about us holding us to a certain standard and pushing ourselves. So the fact that we’re gonna do it, we might as well make it great.”

A band this far into its career is generally in their victory-lap era. Write, record, release an album, go on tour, play mostly the hits, sprinkle in a new song, repeat. Not Deftones. Throughout this album, which is another significant achievement, the band mixes the moody and melodic to create a genre-bending album full of fire and fury. Look no further than the equally bombastic “My Mind Is a Mountain” and “Locked Club,” the menacing “Ecdysis,” the soaring Moreno-powered “I Think About You All the Time,” and the push-and-pull of the methodical “cxz.” Throughout the sessions, which included three additional songs left in various states, Deftones wrote and recorded batches of songs in different locations, which Moreno says allowed for a respective track to have its own sonic personality as a product of its environment.

“‘I Think About You All the Time’ was written in Malibu at 8 in the morning and was pretty fast,” he says. “We put it aside then, after dinner that night, we made some coffee and went out and finished it. Whereas with ‘Ecdysis,’ it was the last song we wrote, and it was while we were in the studio. We were looking at our collection of songs that we already had and just going, like, ‘OK, where does it fit within this batch of songs?’ We wanted something jagged and also a little weird that was more experimental but with an aggressive approach.”

As their tours have gotten bigger, external factors have given the band a new appreciation for their ongoing success. During the band’s 2024 Coachella appearance, guitarist Stephen Carpenter felt his performance wasn’t up to his standard, telling Zane Lowe of Apple Radio that he was “completely out of it for both shows. I barely had enough energy to stand up. All I could think about during those shows was, ‘Please, just don’t fall over on stage.’” Later, he’d find out that he has Type II diabetes.

A few years before Carpenter learned of his health issues, Moreno got sober. Those changes enabled the bandmates, friends since they were teens, to become even closer, despite any misconceived notion that they’ve been at odds. Though Carpenter doesn’t travel internationally with Deftones due to his condition, when the band was on the road in the States earlier this year, he and Moreno were busmates. They pushed each other to remain on their respective lifestyle-changing tracks.

“I think we’re both very proud of each other,” Moreno says of their changes. “He is so on it. He’s an obsessive person about a lot of things, and now he’s obsessed about his blood sugar and about his health. It’s parallel to my sobriety. So we get on the bus after a show, and we’re all into our diet. With my sobriety, I think he sees me being a better version of myself.”

Deftones perform at Kia Forum.

(Clementine Ruiz)

“Private Music” stands not just as a wonderfully cohesive riff-heavy body of work with a relentless energy that is the next shapeshifting step in the Deftones catalog, but is also a well-balanced album. It’s a logical sonic step for the Deftones universe. The band has also been building its annual Dia de Los Deftones festival. The lineup for the sixth edition, taking place in November in San Diego, includes Virginia Beach, Va., hip-hop heroes Clipse, beloved metal band Deafheaven, Rico Nasty, 2hollis and more. Comparing curating the festival to compiling a mixtape, Deftones is the common thread that ties these diverse artists together, which Moreno calls “a fun experiment.”

Decades later, it’s Deftones’ music and adventurous sonic spirit that keep the crowds coming back, anticipating the group’s next move. It’s allowed them to gradually build on successes without being weighed down by the past. Now, it’s moved so quickly and exponentially that they’ve barely had time to catch their collective breath — with another stretch of arena dates and a pair of co-headlining stadium shows with System of a Down on the docket.

“I’m excited to be busy,” Moreno says. “I’m the type of person who has been lucky enough to have done this for pretty much all of my adult life. We didn’t get to go out and tour ‘Ohms’ after it was released, and this is such a different time. I really love this batch of songs, so I’m eager to go play them and stay busy for the next couple of years.”

Brent Hinds, who sang and played guitar in the Grammy-winning metal band Mastodon until he left the group this year, died Wednesday night in a motorcycle crash in Atlanta. He was 51.

His death was reported by Atlanta’s WANF, which cited a police report that said Hinds was riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when he was struck by an SUV whose driver had failed to yield while making a turn. Hinds was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

In an Instagram post, Hinds’ former bandmates said they were “in a state of unfathomable sadness and grief” and that they were “still trying to process the loss of this creative force with whom we’ve shared so many triumphs, milestones, and the creation of music that has touched the hearts of so many.”

Known for its complicated riffs and its high-concept storytelling, Mastodon built a large and devoted audience with intricately plotted albums about illness, suicide and “Moby-Dick.” The band’s music drew clear inspiration from Black Sabbath and Slayer and influenced subsequent metal acts like Baroness and Pallbearer.

Yet Bill Kelliher, Mastodon’s other guitarist, said, “We’re not really a metal band,” during an interview with The Times in 2017. “I feel we’re more like a really heavy, groovy rock band with some prog elements and some pretty deep emotional lyrics. They’re loosely based on tragedy and things that really shake up human beings in real life.”

Mastodon formed in 2000 and made two albums for the respected indie label Relapse Records — including 2004’s “Moby-Dick”-steeped “Leviathan,” which Hinds told the New York Times allegorized “the struggle between man and music” — before signing to the Warner Music imprint Reprise for 2006’s “Blood Mountain,” which earned a Grammy nomination for best metal performance.

The band — in which Hinds, bassist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor took turns as lead singer — made five more LPs for Reprise; “Sultan’s Curse,” from 2017’s “Emperor of Sand,” won a Grammy for best metal performance. Mastodon’s most recent album, “Hushed and Grim,” came out in 2021.

Hinds grew up in Birmingham, Ala., where he learned to play the banjo before turning to guitar. In a 2009 interview with the Guardian, he described his younger self as “a total hellion” and said he was “very dysfunctional at school.” He added that he would “take LSD and come to class still tripping. I was too creative, never doing my homework, just filling my notepad up with drawings of skulls.”

He met Sanders when the latter came to Birmingham to play with an earlier band; Hinds soon moved to Atlanta to make music with Sanders, then the two formed Mastodon with Kelliher and Dailor. In 2009, Mastodon played the Coachella festival and toured with Metallica; six years later, Hinds appeared as an extra in an episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

In March, Mastodon announced that Hinds had left the band in a statement that said they’d “mutually decided to part ways.” Yet Hinds later wrote on Instagram that his former bandmates, whom he called “horrible humans,” had fired him “for embarrassing them for being who I am.” He went on to accuse them of using Auto-Tune in the studio and said he had “never met three people that were so full of themselves.”

Information on Hinds’ survivors wasn’t immediately available.

The lead singer of the regional Mexican band Enigma Norteño, Ernesto Barajas, was shot and killed on Tuesday in the municipality of Zapopan in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, according to ABC 7.

The singer was killed by two individuals riding a motorcycle, according to authorities. The prosecutor’s office of the state of Jalisco has already opened an investigation into the murder, according to ABC 7.

The band from Sinaloa is known for its “viral drug ballads,” a musical style known to glorify organized crime. Enigma Norteño has dedicated its songs to members of the Jalisco Nueva Generacion and Sinaloa cartels. The genre has been banned by a third of the states in Mexico.

The killing of Barajas comes three months after the dead bodies of five members of the Mexican regional band Fugitivo were found in the northern city of Reynosa.

In July, the Council of the Judiciary of the State of Jalisco agreed to drop the criminal case against the Mexican regional band Los Alegres Del Barranco. The band came under investigation after it displayed a photograph of a leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación during a show.

In April, the Mexican government announced a music contest to encourage Mexican artists to create music that does not glorify a violent lifestyle. The competition was created to encourage musicians to write songs about love, heartbreak and peace, according to Billboard.

“While the contest won’t solve this issue overnight, and we’re not neglecting the underlying causes — for that, there’s a whole national security program — we felt it was important to create creative spaces through culture for Mexican and Mexican-American youth who are passionate about music,” Claudia Curiel de Icaza, secretary of culture for Mexico, told Billboard Español.

Authorities from the state of Jalisco did not respond to a request for a comment in time for publication.

At a time when most of their peers have retired, threatened to call it quits or died, the Beach Boys continue to perform 120 shows per year. Led by original singer Mike Love and longtime multi-instrumentalist Bruce Johnston, this version of the Beach Boys performs the sounds of Southern California to three generations of fans, something which isn’t lost on Love.

“The positivity that our music generates, and the good vibes and good feelings, is a wonderful thing to see,” Love says. “It’s an inspiration to me to see kids with their parents or their grandparents at our shows.”

This weekend, the Beach Boys return to Long Beach for the first time in nearly 15 years to the day, when they performed at Harry Bridges Memorial Park. As Love recalls, the band played one of its first shows in the city at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium on New Year’s Eve 1961.

“That first concert we were paid for as the Beach Boys at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium for the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance,” he recalls. “We played three songs and got $300, but also on that show was Ike Turner and Kings of Rhythm. We got to hear Tina Turner sing this song called ‘I’m Blue.’ It was primordial and blew my mind.”

Thousands of shows later, the Beach Boys continue to have a receptive audience who will gladly see them perform the hits of yesteryear. Love has no issue leaning into the band’s 1960s heyday. In fact, he sees it as his duty to spread “peace and love” through the Beach Boys’ concerts.

Chatting hours before he departed his Lake Tahoe, Calif., home to fly to Southern California for the band’s latest string of shows, Love reflected on nearly 65 years of the Beach Boys, feeling like he finally got his due by being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, why he’s looking forward to the decidedly un-Beach Boys crowd at Riot Fest, and honoring his late cousin Brian Wilson.

Mike Love

(Udo Spreitzenbarth)

How did it feel to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame?

Better late than never, but it was a great honor. It meant a lot because I wasn’t recognized for my contribution to so many of the Beach Boys’ hits over the years. So, the recognition is a good thing. There are various reasons I wasn’t recognized for it. My uncle [Beach Boys original manager] Murry [Wilson], didn’t put my contribution of the lyrics. “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Be True to Your School,” a lot of great songs that I wasn’t credited for. We fired my uncle as manager to get even for me, and he excluded me when he handled the publishing. We didn’t know what publishing was when we started in 1961. We were unsophisticated regarding the business end of it, and we just loved creating music. We loved harmonizing. That was a family tradition that morphed into a long-lasting profession because my cousin Brian and I got together and wrote some songs that people still love to this day.

What is it about the songs that continue to bring people together at a time when people can hardly agree on anything?

The harmonies and the positivity go a long way towards eliminating the negativity. In “Good Vibrations,” I wrote every word of it. I even came up with (sings) “I’m thinking of good vibrations / She gave me excitations” with the chorus melody as well as all the lyrics. But that was written in 1966. The Vietnam War was percolating, and there were student demonstrations. There were problems with integration, and stuff like that made the news. But I wanted to write “Good Vibrations.” I wanted to write this song. I wrote a poem about a girl who loved nature. She was only into the peace, love and flower power, which was also going on at that time. The juxtaposition of the negative and the positive is pretty amazing. It turns out there’s a psychologist in Sheffield, England, who wanted to find out which songs made people feel the best. And our song “Good Vibrations” came in at No. 1, which is unbelievable. In 1966, when it went to No. 1 in England, we were voted the No. 1 group in Great Britain, with No. 2 being the Beatles. Incredible. That was a pretty amazing achievement.

You’ve been joined on stage by the likes of Mark McGrath and Dexter Holland from the Offspring. What does that say to you about the longevity of what the songs have meant?

Dexter sounded amazing on it! He is a really good singer, obviously, but he wanted to do “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and so we rehearsed backstage [at Oceans Calling Festival in Maryland last September], ran through it about once or twice, and came out on stage in front of 40,000 people, and it was pretty amazing! Mark McGrath is just the most positive and fun guy ever. We have the same birthday, so he’s a few years younger than I am (laughs).

And of course, John Stamos, who inducted you into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

He’s been with us since he was Blackie on “General Hospital.” At this point, he is pretty much an honorary Beach Boy and family.

In the days after Brian’s death, the clip of the band appearing on “Full House” made the rounds on Instagram. What’s it like to remember that when both Brian and Carl were there and you appeared on that show?

John Stamos likes to say that we need this music more than ever now because of so much negativity in the world, and I agree. When I was writing, I accentuated the positive with the harmonies, giving that warm feeling, and the subject matter being fun at times. We’d maybe been a little introspective on “God Only Knows,” maybe “In My Room,” and “The Warmth of the Sun.” The upbeat songs are all fun, positive, and make people feel good. We were just in Spain, and we had standing ovations every night. It was amazing.

What’s wild is seeing the Beach Boys appear on the historically punk festival Riot Fest. Are you familiar with it?

Yeah! We were invited to do it a year ago, but we are doing it this year. Our songs go over well with every demographic and all kinds of people. It doesn’t matter what the format of this is. We’ve done very well with some country festivals, enormously well. It doesn’t matter what the genre of the festival appeals to. We played Stagecoach last year, and there were 70 or 80,000 people at our set. Singing along and dancing around, so we had a great time at that one.

Who are you looking forward to seeing at Riot Fest?

Who is on it other than us?

On your day, it is Weezer performing the Blue Album, Jack White, a reconfigured version of the Sex Pistols, Dropkick Murphys, All Time Low, James …

Weezer! They did “California Girls” on a tribute show that aired on Easter Sunday a few years ago. There’s a lot more guitar in that particular version (laughs). Maybe one of those guys will come and sing with us. What happens at those things is that you’re with a lot of people you don’t ordinarily see, and people like to do unique things.

Do you think the Beach Boys would be considered a punk band, if that was a term, in 1961?

If you listen to some of our songs, like “Surfin’ Safari,” “Catch a Wave” and “Hawaii,” there’s a lot of tempo there. I think those songs appeal to all kinds of genres.

Does returning to Long Beach, near where you all grew up, carry more weight with the loss of Brian?

Well, we have a tribute song called “Brian’s Back” that I wrote many, many years ago. So, back when that was released (in 1976 as part of “15 Big Ones”), we did a video tribute to Brian that we play every night at our concerts, which people love and appreciate. He may have passed on, but he’s always with us every night in the music.

Elton John said that the “Pet Sounds” album would be the one album that would be played forever, which is an amazing accolade,” Love said. “So those songs are pretty much immortal to some degree. So if somebody is capable of replicating them as closely as possible for the record, then great.”

(Udo Spreitzenbarth)

Do you see the Beach Boys continuing to tour in name after you and Bruce are done?

I’m not sure. We haven’t given that a whole lot of thought because we’re very active these days with this configuration. Elton John said that the “Pet Sounds” album would be the one album that would be played forever, which is an amazing accolade. So those songs are pretty much immortal to some degree. So if somebody is capable of replicating them as closely as possible for the record, then great.

But the problem is that mortality is an issue, of course. So, at some point in time, nature will take over and say, “OK, you’re out of here, huh?” But in the meantime, I think we’ve got a good several years to go.

What do people misunderstand about your and Brian’s relationship?

Well, there’s a lot of misinformation given out over this early part of our careers that says I didn’t like the “Pet Sounds” album, which is bull—, because I actually named it and Brian brought it to Capitol Records, who didn’t know what to do with it. If you listen to the tracks of “Pet Sounds,” you say, “How the heck did he ever do that with the greatest musicians in L.A., the Wrecking Crew?” My cousin Brian did some amazing stuff that’ll stand the test of time, if Elton John is right, forever. It’s a true blessing to be able to do what started as a family hobby and became a long-lasting profession.

Is “That’s Why God Made the Radio” the last Beach Boys album, or do you all have one more left in you?

Anything’s possible. We don’t have immediate plans, but I do think of that kind of thing from time to time.

Need a model for how to thrive in the stranglehold of the modern music economy? How about a band of Australian garage-rockers who cut albums at the pace of an Atlanta rap crew, tour like peak-era Grateful Dead and who just told the biggest company in streaming to go to hell.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are a fascinating phenomenon in rock. Over 15 years, their LPs have flitted between genres with insouciant musicianship, pulling from punky scuzz, regal soul, krautrock, electro-funk and psychedelia. These LPs come at an insane clip — sometimes up to five in a year, 27 so far. Their freewheeling live shows made them a coveted arena act, when few new rock bands can aspire to that.

Two weeks ago, they became probably the most high-profile band to take their music off Spotify in the wake of Chief Executive Daniel Ek’s investments in an AI-driven weapons firm. The band self-releases on its own labels — they needed no one’s permission.

King Gizzard returns to the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, this time backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for a live read of its new album “Phantom Island,” a standout LP that adds deft orchestration to its toolkit. The band’s frontman, Stu Mackenzie, spoke to The Times about giving Spotify the boot, how the L.A. Phil inspired the new record’s arrangements and what they’ve figured out about staying afloat while artists get squeezed from all sides today.

What was your initial reaction to Daniel Ek’s investments in an AI arms company?

A bit of shock, and then feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked. We’ve been saying f— Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented. We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought “I don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now.” I don’t really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing. But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.

Was choosing to leave a complicated decision for the band?

The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people. But sometimes you’ve just got to say, “Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now.” In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship.

As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that, because that’s not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes. I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that. In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I’m just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us.

Do you think Spotify noticed or cares that you left?

I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we’ve released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together. I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you’ll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive. It feels like an experiment to me, like, “Let’s just go away from Spotify, and let’s see what happens.” Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.

“Phantom Island” is a really distinct record in your catalog for using so much orchestration. I heard some conversations with the L.A. Phil planted the seed for it?

We played this Hollywood Bowl show a little over two years ago, and being the home stadium of the L.A. Phil, we naturally chatted with them at the show. It did plant a seed of doing a show there backed by the orchestra. We happened to be halfway through making a record at that exact time that we weren’t really sure how to finish. When we started talking about doing a show backed by an orchestra, we thought, “Let’s just make an album with an orchestra.” We rearranged and rewrote these songs with a composer, Chad Kelly. We knew the songs needed something, and we ended up rewriting the songs to work for a rock band in a symphonic medium.

Were there any records you looked to for how to make that approach work? I hear a lot of ELO in there, Isaac Hayes, maybe the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

To be completely honest, I just don’t think there was a model for it. I think we landed on something that we only could have made because we wrote the songs not knowing there were going to be orchestral parts. When you ask me what were the touchstones, well, there weren’t any. I was probably thinking of a lot of music from the early ’60s, a lot of soul and R&B music at that time, which had often had orchestral arrangements. Etta James, for instance, was in the tone and the feel. This isn’t the perfect way to do it, but it was a really serendipitous process.

Your live shows are pretty raucous to say the least; how did you adapt to keep that feeling with orchestras behind you on this tour?

I was pretty anxious, to be honest. We only had one rehearsal the day before the first show. We had to go in and cross our fingers, like, “Okay, I think that’s going to work. I’m just going to hope that it translates.” Our rehearsal was the most intense two and a half hours, but for the show, you’re just like, “All right, this is it.” You’ve just got to commit to what’s on the page.

We’ve had some really awesome people collaborating with us — Sean O’Laughlin did the arrangements for the live shows, and Sarah Hicks is an amazing conductor. We’re just a garage rock band from Australia; we’re very lucky to get to honestly work with the best of the best.

On the other end of the venue spectrum, what was it like playing a residency in a Lithuanian prison?

It was a real prison until really recently [Lukiškės Prison 2.0 in Vilnius, Lithuania]. The history is very dark — like, very, very dark. But there are artist spaces there now, and it’s quite a culturally positive force. They’re the things that make you restore your faith in humanity. You spend so much of your life losing faith in it, and then you go to places like that, and you’re like, “Yeah, humans are okay.”

Speaking of threats to humanity, I think your band contests the idea that artists need to use AI to make enough music to be successful on streaming. You’re proof you can make a ton of music quickly, with real people.

Making music is fun as f—, especially making music with other people. That’s a deeply motivating factor, and we just have a ton of fun making music together. It feels human, it feels spiritual, it feels social. It’s deeply central to who we all are as human beings. And it doesn’t feel hard. It doesn’t feel like we’re fighting against some AI trend or anything. We just make music because it feels good.

You’re an arena act with your own label, and pretty autonomous as a band. Do you think you’ve figured out something important about how to be successful in the modern music economy?

I think we’ve been good at asking internal questions, and questioning what everybody else does and whether we need to do that or not. Sometimes we do the same thing that everybody else does. Sometimes we do something completely different because it makes sense to us. I think we’ve been quite good at being true to ourselves and being confident, or maybe reckless enough to do that.

I do think there’s some serendipity and fate in the personalities of the other guys in the band, and the people that we work with, who have have also been on a pretty unconventional journey and have faith that — in the least pretentious way possible — that other people will dig it, and not worry too much about the other other stuff.

Do you hope to see more and bigger bands striking out on their own, since the big institutions of the music business have yet again proven to not really reflect their values?

I just know what has worked for us, and I’m not sure that means that it’ll work for other people. I don’t know if there’s a model in it. If there is a model, it’s that you don’t have to follow a path if you don’t want to. The well-treaded path is going to work for some people, but you don’t have to stay on that.

I think one thing about this band is that we’ve all been at peace with failing. That if this all fell apart and we went back home and we got regular jobs, I think we would say, “Well, we’re proud of ourselves. We had a good time.” We did what we wanted to do and just suffered the consequences along the way. We’re probably being reckless enough to make potentially selfish decisions over and over again. But people, for some reason, want to come out and see us do that, and we’re super grateful.

Tuesday night, Gustavo Dudamel was back at the Hollywood Bowl. This summer is the 20th anniversary of his U.S. debut — at 24 years old — conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and becoming irrepressibly besotted with the amphitheater.

He walked on stage, now the proud paterfamilias with greying hair and a broad welcoming smile on his face as he surveyed the nearly full house. The weather was fine. The orchestra, as so very few orchestras ever do, looked happy.

For Dudamel, his single homecoming week this Bowl season began Monday evening conducting his beloved Youth Orchestra Los Angeles as part of the annual YOLA National Festival, which brings kids from around the country to the Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood. But it is also a bittersweet week. Travel issues (no one will say exactly what, but we can easily guess) have meant the cancellation of his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela‘s trip to the Bowl next week. Dudamel will also be forced to remain behind with them in Caracas.

After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday’s savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel. The soloist was Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whose recent recording of Ravel’s complete solo piano works along with his two concertos, has been one of the most popular releases celebrating the Ravel year (March 7 was the 150^th anniversary of the French composer’s birth).

Ellington and Ravel were certainly aware of each other. When Ravel visited New York in 1928, he heard the 29-year-old Ellington’s band at the Cotton Club, although his attention on the trip was more drawn to Gershwin. Ellington knew and admired Ravel, and Billy Strayhorn, who was responsible for much of Ellington’s music, was strongly drawn to Ravel’s harmony and use of instrumental color.

On his return to Paris, Ravel wrote his two piano concertos, the first for the left hand alone, and jazz influences were strong. Cho played both concertos, which were framed by the symphonic tone poems “Harlem” and “Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called tone parallels.

There has been no shortage of Ravel concerto performance of late — or ever — but Ellington is another matter. Although the pianist, composer and band leader was very much on the radar of the classical world — “Harlem” was originally intended for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Leopold Stokowski attended the Carnegie Hall premiere of “Black, Brown and Beige,” as did Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Frank Sinatra — Ellington never played the crossover game. The NBC “Harlem” never panned out and became a big-band score. Ever practical, Ellington, who composed mostly in wee hours after gigs, always wrote for the occasion and the players. He tended to leave orchestration to others, more concerned with highlighting the fabulous improvising soloists in his band.

The scores, moreover, were gatherings, developments and riffs on various existing songs. “Harlem” is an acoustical enrapturement of the legendary Harlem Renaissance and one of the great symphonic portraits of a place in the repertory. “Black, Brown and Beige” is an ambitious acoustical unfolding of the American Black narrative, from African work songs to spiritual exaltation with “Come Sunday” (sung by Mahalia Jackson at the premiere) to aspects of Black life, in war and peace, up to the Harlem Renaissance.

Both works are best known today, if nonetheless seldom heard, in the conventional but effective orchestrations by Maurice Peress and are what Dudamel relies on. The version of “Black, Brown and Beige” reduces it from 45 to 18 too-short minutes.

The primary reason for these scores’ neglect is that orchestras can’t swing. The exception is the L.A. Phil. With Dudamel’s surprising success of taking the L.A. Phil to Coachella, there now seems nothing it can’t do.

The time has come to commission more experimental and more timely arrangements. But even these Peress arrangements, blasted through the Bowl‘s sound system and with the orchestra bolstered by a jazz saxophone section, jazz drummer and other jazz-inclined players, caught the essence of one of America’s greatest composers.

Ravel fared less well. The left-hand concerto has dark mysteries hard to transmit over so many acres and video close-ups of two-armed pianists trying to keep the right hand out of the way can be disconcerting. This summer, in fact, unmusical jumpy video is at all times disconcerting.

Ravel’s jazzier, sunnier G-Major concerto is a winner everywhere. But for all Cho’s acclaim in Ravel, he played with sturdy authority. Four years ago, joining Dudamel at an L.A. Phil gala in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cho brought refined freshness to Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. In Ravel at the Bowl, amplification strongly accentuated his polished technique, gleaming tone and meticulous rhythms, leaving it up to Dudamel and a joyous, eager orchestra to exult in the Ravel that Ellington helped make swing.

Karle Ofarrell was about to board a Ryanair flight from London Gatwick to Dublin when staff told her that her bag was too big and that she’d have to pay an extra charge

A group of passengers stepped in to try to save a woman from paying a £75 Ryanair cabin bag charge.

Karla Ofarrell was travelling from London Gatwick to Dublin when a Ryanair worker asked her to make sure her luggage fit in the bag sizer. And when the 35-year-old was told it was too big, a group of men offered their belts.

As a team, they tried to wrap the belt around the bag to squash it down and pass the check. But the staff member wouldn’t back down. The intervention came after a Mirror reporter was forced to fork out a significant chunk of cash to take her water bottles on a Ryanair flight.

Have you got a Ryanair story to share? Email [email protected]

“Staff came directly over to me while I was sitting down and asked me to put my bag in the bag holder,” Karla, from Dublin, told Luxury Travel Daily. “It fit in, but the staff said it didn’t, and I would need to make the case shrink somehow to fit it behind the tape.

“They didn’t pull anyone else’s bag, and when I argued that it fit, she said the bag was a danger to fly with, so I would need to make it smaller or else it wouldn’t fly. Three or four men who were standing nearby started to offer their belts.

“I tried two different ones that were too small, and then finally one belt that would fit and make the case smaller. The flight attendant wasn’t happy about it, shushed the crowd and said they were disturbing other passengers.

“Someone shouted out, ‘Micheal O’Leary is charging €10 for having the craic’. The flight attendant got more and more irate and wouldn’t accept the bag with the belt. They ignored my attempts at boarding. She made me wait until last and said she wouldn’t let me fly unless I paid the fine and I could ‘take all the pictures I wanted’.

“Me and the other passengers agreed that she wanted to make an example out of me, so she doubled down because she was embarrassed.”

Karla had already forked out £385 for the return flight on 9 July and £40 for priority boarding. She claims that when she pointed this out to the staff, they threatened to ban her from flying. Karla says she made a complaint to Ryanair.

She added: “The fines are an unbelievable waste of time and bad press. Unfortunately, we had to fly Ryanair due to flight times for meetings.”

A Ryanair spokesperson said: “This passenger booked a Regular fare for this flight from London Gatwick to Dublin (9 Jul), which allowed them to carry a small personal bag and a 10kg cabin bag onboard. As their cabin bag exceeded the permitted size, they were correctly charged a standard gate baggage fee (£75) by the gate agent at London Gatwick Airport.”