music

Famed Tejano singer-songwriter and master accordionist Leonardo “Flaco” Jiménez has died. He was 86.

Jiménez’s family shared the news of the musician’s death on his official Facebook page Thursday night. A cause of death was not disclosed.

“It is with great sadness that we share tonight the loss of our father, Flaco Jiménez. He was surrounded by his loved ones and will be missed immensely,” his family wrote. “Thank you to all of his fans and friends — those who cherished his music. And a big thank you for all of the memories. His legacy will live on through his music and all of his fans. The family requests privacy during this time of sadness and grievance.”

Over his more than seven decades in the music industry, the San Antonio native garnered six Grammy Awards, received a National Medal of Arts from President Biden and established himself as a pioneering accordion virtuoso who helped nationalize the popularity of Tejano and conjunto music in the U.S.

Jiménez is perhaps best known for his work with the Tejano music supergroup Texas Tornados, which included the talents of Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers. Texas Tornados won the Mexican/Mexican-American Performance Grammy in 1990 for their song “Soy de San Luis.” The band’s Spanglish style is on full display in their most popular track “(Hey Baby) Que Pasó?”

In 2022, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, led by Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, included the 1989 hit in its list of nominees to Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, in an effort to increase Latino representation in the U.S.

Castro, a San Antonio native, shared a statement on Facebook regarding Jiménez’s death.

“I am saddened by the passing of San Antonio music legend Leonardo ‘Flaco’ Jiménez,” he wrote. “He was a pioneer in conjunto music — receiving a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, National Medal of Arts, and a place in the National Recording Registry for his work. Texas is proud of his legacy. May he rest in peace.”

Jiménez’s 1992 album, “Partners,” was inducted into the National Recording Registry in 2020.

“People used to regard my music as cantina music, just no respect,” Jiménez told the Library of Congress. “The accordion was considered something like a party joke … I really give respect to everyone who helped me out on this record, and I’m flattered by this recognition.”

His skills on the “party joke” of an instrument were so well recognized that the famed German musical instrument manufacturer Hohner collaborated with Jiménez in 2009 to create a signature line of accordions.

“The music world has lost a true legend. Flaco Jimenez was a global ambassador for Tex-Mex Conjunto music, bringing its vibrant sound to audiences around the world,” Hohner wrote in a social media post following Jiménez’s death. “His passion and virtuosity on the three-row button accordion inspired generations of musicians across cultures and continents. Since 1976, Flaco was a proud partner of Hohner, a relationship built on mutual respect and a shared love for music. It was an incredible honor to work alongside such a talented, humble, and gracious artist.”

Jiménez was born on March 11, 1939, in San Antonio to a family with a storied musical background. He first began performing at age 7 with his father, Santiago Jiménez, who himself was a pioneering figure in the conjunto movement. At 15, Flaco appeared in his first recording with the musical group Los Caporales.

He went from local fame to modest international recognition on the folk scene when musicologist Chris Strachwitz recorded him for his Arhoolie label, and after being featured in a 1974 Les Blank film on Texas-Mexican border music.

Then in 1976, Ry Cooder tapped him to be a member of his Chicken Skin Revue. Jimenez worked with Cooder on several projects, including the soundtrack to the 1982 film “The Border,” which starred Jack Nicholson.

He won the first of his three Grammy Awards for best Mexican-American performance in 1986 for his album “Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio” and his last in the category in 1999 for his work with the supergroup Los Super Seven. He also won Grammys for his solo albums “Flaco Jiménez” in 1994 and “Said and Done” in 1999, as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

The list of artists with whom Jiménez collaborated is as long as it is distinguished and includes Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Dwight Yoakam and Linda Ronstadt.

Jiménez played the accordion on the Rolling Stones’ “Sweethearts Together,” a Tex-Mex-infused ballad off of their 1994 album, “Voodoo Lounge.”

Jiménez’s success and recognition far surpassed anything he could have imagined for himself, he told The Times in 1994.

“I thought that it was always just going to be a local thing. I’d only hear my dad and other groups in San Antonio, or even here just in the barrio,” he said. “I think that audience started changing when I began to ‘bilingual’ a lot of stuff and started playing rock ‘n’ roll and with a little country to it. Then the reaction of the people, not just the Chicanos but the Anglos, was stronger.”

Speaking with The Times in 1996, Jiménez said he was delighted that crossover with country had helped to bring the distinctive sound of accordion-based Tejano music to a wider audience.

“It’s more respected and more listened to than ever before. I’m satisfied. At the level Tejano or conjunto music is now, we can communicate with the mainstream,” he said.

Reflecting on how far the reach of conjunto had come, Jiménez recalled one of his earliest and most impactful memories introducing the genre across the globe.

“Conjunto or Tex-Mex music was not known at all. We went on tour to Switzerland, and when I got to the concert hall there was just one microphone and one chair. They thought I was going to give a concert with pura acordeon — just the accordion,” he said.

“I said, ‘Hey, where’s the rest of the amps and whatever?’ And they managed to get a drum set so we did our thing. Then the audience noticed, ‘Hey, this is fun!’ And it got really wild. Because when I play, I’m really just having a party with the audience.”

Times staff writer Fidel Martinez contributed to this report.

Greg Saunier already had reasons to be wary of Spotify. The founder of the acclaimed Bay Area band Deerhoof was well acquainted with the service’s meager payouts to artists and songwriters, often estimated around $3 per thousand streams. He was unnerved by the service’s splashy pivots into AI and podcasting, where right-wing, conspiracy-peddling hosts like Joe Rogan got multimillion-dollar contracts while working musicians struggled.

But Saunier hit his breaking point in June, when Spotify’s Chief Executive Daniel Ek announced that he’d led a funding round of nearly $700 million (through his personal investment firm, Prima Materia) into the European defense firm Helsing. That company, which Ek now chairs, specializes in AI software integrated into fighter aircraft like its HX-2 AI Strike Drone. “Helsing is uniquely positioned with its AI leadership to deliver these critical capabilities in all-domain defence innovation,” Ek said in a statement about the funding round.

In response, Deerhoof pulled its catalog from Spotify. “Every time someone listens to our music on Spotify, does that mean another dollar siphoned off to make all that we’ve seen in Gaza more frequent and profitable?” Saunier said, in an interview with The Times. “It didn’t take us long to decide as a band that if Daniel Ek is going harder on AI warfare, we should get off Spotify. It’s not even that big of a sacrifice in our case.”

A small band yanking its catalog won’t make much impact on Spotify’s estimated quarterly revenues of $4.8 billion. But it seemed to inspire others: several influential acts subsequently left the service, lambasting Ek for investing his personal fortune into an AI weapons firm.

Spotify did not return request for comment about Ek’s Helsing investments.

This small exodus is unlikely to sway Ek, or dislodge Spotify from dominating the record economy. But it may further sour young music fans on Spotify, as many are outraged about wars in Gaza and elsewhere.

“There must be hundreds of bands right now at least as big as ours who are thinking of leaving,” Saunier said. “I thought we’d be fools not to leave, the risk would be in staying. How can you generate good feelings between fans when musical success is intimately associated with AI drones going around the globe murdering people?”

Swedish mogul Ek, with an estimated wealth around $9 billion, may seem an unlikely new player in the global defense industry. But his interest in Helsing goes back to 2021, when Ek invested nearly $115 million from Prima Materia and joined the company’s board. [Helsing, based in Germany, says it was founded to “help protect our democratic values and open societies” and puts “ethics at the core of defense technology development.”]

With his investment, Ek joined tech moguls Jeff Bezos and Palmer Luckey in pivoting from nerdier cultural pursuits (like online bookselling and virtual reality) into defense. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers said then that Ek’s actions “prove once again that Ek views Spotify and the wealth he has pillaged from artists merely as a means to further his own wealth.”

A range of anti-Spotify protests followed later, like a songwriters’ rally in West Hollywood in 2022 and a boycott of Spotify’s 2025 Grammy party, after Spotify cut $150 million from songwriter royalties. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their catalogs in response to Rogan spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

Yet eventually, both relented. “Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” Young said in a pithy note in 2022. “I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created.”

Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, in 2023.

(Noam Galai / Getty Images for Spotify)

Ek’s latest investment seems to have struck a nerve though, especially in the corners of music where Spotify slashed income to the point where artists have little to lose by leaving.

After Deerhoof’s announcement, the influential avant-garde band Xiu Xiu announced a similar move. “We are currently working to take all of our music off of garbage hole violent armageddon portal Spotify,” they wrote. “Please cancel your subscription.”

The Amsterdam electronic label Kalahari Oyster Cult had similar reasoning: “We don’t want our music contributing to or benefiting a platform led by someone backing tools of war, surveillance and violence,” they posted.

Most significantly, the Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard — an enormously popular group that will headline the Hollywood Bowl Aug. 10. — said last week that it would pull its dozens of albums from Spotify as well. “A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology,” the band wrote, announcing its departure. “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better?”

“We’ve been saying ‘f— Spotify’ for years. In our circle of musicians, that’s what people say all the time for well-documented reasons,” the band’s singer Stu Mackenzie said in an interview. “I don’t consider myself an activist, but this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves. We saw other bands we admire leaving, and we realized we don’t want our music to be there right now.”

Ek’s moves with Prima Materia come as no surprise to Glenn McDonald, a former data analyst at Spotify who became well known for identifying trends in listener habits. McDonald was laid off in 2023, and has mixed feelings about the company’s priorities today. It’s both the arbiter of the record industry and a mercurial tech giant that only became profitable last year while spinning off enormous wealth for Ek.

“It’s well documented that Spotify was only a music business because that was an open niche,” McDonald said. “I’m never surprised by billionaires doing billionaire things. Google or Apple or Amazon investing in a company that did military technology wouldn’t surprise me. Spotify subscribers should feel dismayed that this is happening, but not responsibility, because all the major streamers are about the same in moral corporate terms.”

McDonald said the company’s push toward Discovery Mode — where artists accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for better placement in its algorithm — added to the sense that Spotify is antagonistic to working artists’ values. More recently, Spotify rankled progressives when it sponsored a Washington, D.C., brunch with Rogan and Ben Shapiro celebrating President Trump’s return to the White House, and raised $150,000 for Trump’s inauguration (Apple and Amazon also donated to the inauguration).

While Ek’s investments in Helsing are not directly tied to Spotify, the money does come from personal wealth built through his ownership of Spotify’s stock. Fans are right to make a moral connection between them, McDonald said.

“Ek represents Spotify publicly, and thus its commitment to music. Him putting money into an AI drone company isn’t representing that,” McDonald said. “He can do whatever he wants with his money, but he is the face of a company as controversial and culturally important as Spotify. So yeah, people want to hold him to a less neutral standard.”

For artists looking to leave the service, the actual process of getting off Spotify varies. For King Gizzard, which releases its catalog on its own record labels, it was easy to remove everything quickly. Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu needed time to clear the move with several labels and former band members who receive royalties.

Being a smaller, autonomous band enabled Saunier to act according to his values, even at the cost of some meaningful slice of income. He has considered that, by torching his band’s relationship with Spotify, Deerhoof’s music could slip from away from some fans.

“Everyone I know hates Spotify, but we’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no other option,” he said. “But underground music is filled with so many beautiful examples of a mom-and-pop business mentality. I don’t need to dominate the world, I don’t need to be Taylor Swift to be counted as a success. I don’t need a global reach, I just need to provide myself a good life.”

Yet the only artists that might genuinely sway Ek’s investments would be ones with a global reach on the caliber of Swift. She has pulled her catalog from Spotify before, in 2014 just after releasing her smash album “1989.”

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for,” she said, before eventually returning to Spotify in 2017.

It’s hard to imagine her, or other comparable pop acts, taking a similar stand today, especially as the major labels’ fortunes are so bound up in Spotify revenues. Spotify reported a $10 billion payout to rights holders in 2024, roughly a quarter of the entire global recorded music business. Its stock has surged 120% over the last year, but in the second quarter of 2025, the firm missed earnings targets and dropped 11% this week, for the stock’s worst day in two years. “While I’m unhappy with where we are today, I remain confident in the ambitions we laid out for this business,” Ek said in an earnings call.

This recent, small exodus most likely didn’t contribute to that. But it might add to a creeping sense among young listeners that Spotify is not a morally-aligned place for fans to enjoy beloved songs.

“I actually think Spotify will eventually go the way of MySpace. It’s just a get-rich-quick scheme that will pass, become uncool, one that had its day and is probably in decline,” Saunier said. “They wrote an email to me seemingly to do face saving, which makes me think they’re more desperate than we think.”

Acts like Kneecap, Bob Vylan and others have been outspoken around the war on Gaza, at real risk to their careers — proof that young fans care deeply about these issues. While Ek would argue that Helsing helps Ukraine and Europe defend itself, others may not trust his judgment.

“Maybe it’s silly to expect cultural or moral leadership from Daniel Ek, but I don’t want it to be silly,” McDonald said. He thinks fans and artists can morally stay on Spotify, but hopes they build toward a more ethical record industry.

“It’s hard to see what ‘stay and fight’ consists of, but if everyone leaves, nothing gets better,” he said. “If we’re going to get a better music business, it’s going to come from somebody starting over from scratch without major labels, and somehow building to a point where we have enough leverage to change the power dynamic.”

King Gizzard’s Mackenzie looks forward to finding out how that might work. “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to us, though it would be cool if he did,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve made a lot of experimental moves in music and releasing records. People who listen to our music have been conditioned to have trust and faith to go on the ride together. I feel grateful to have that trust, and this feels like an experiment to me. Let’s just go away from Spotify and see what happens.”

This year promises to be one of the most exciting editions of the Latin Grammys.

As the Latin Recording Academy prepares to unveil the nominations for the award’s 26th edition on Sept. 17, the eligibility period — from June 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025 — includes a number of high-profile albums that not only contributed to the ongoing Latin music boom on a global level, but also pushed the movement forward with their radical choices and genre-defying sounds.

Now a vital part of the Latin pop DNA, the urbano genre continues to redefine and challenge itself, while the rootsy strains of música Mexicana have deservedly gained a privileged seat on the table like never before. The fields of folk, rock, electronica and tropical are still expanding, and artists such as Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, Becky G, Fuerza Regida and Natalia Lafourcade are vying for awards with some of the most ambitious albums of their careers.

De Los assistant editor Suzy Exposito and contributing writer Ernesto Lechner discuss their predictions on the songs and albums that are most likely to be nominated. The following conversation has been edited for length.

Ernesto Lechner: This seems to be an easy year in terms of the two obvious candidates for Latin Gammy history. Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” is the kind of album that defines not only the year it came out — 2025 — but also the entire decade. And Natalia Lafourcade’s mystically tinged “Cancionera” finds the perennial Grammy favorite at the apex of her craft. Going back to Benito’s masterpiece, its conceptual gravitas is almost grander than the songs themselves.

Suzy Exposito: I’m really gunning for Album of the Year for this one. The amount of thought and intention that he placed on this record. The cultural significance of the songs, not just in terms of the history of Puerto Rico, but the way in which he directly engages with the Caribbean diaspora at large through salsa.

E.L.: I love how lovingly he delves beyond salsa to also include plena. He goes back to Rafael Cortijo — the roots, the very essence of boricua culture. And the album has this Beatles-like quality where it’s incredibly commercial — a No. 1 record, the album that everybody is listening to — but there’s no compromise on the artistic front. It’s an ambitious, fully realized statement.

S.E.: Is any album by Benito just another Bad Bunny album? I don’t think he dabbles in filler the way other artists do.

E.L.: The photo of the plastic chairs on the cover could have been taken in the suburbs of Lima, or San Salvador, or Medellín. Benito makes such an inclusive, pan-Latin statement. Which brings me to nominate the title track, “Debí Tirar Mas Fotos,” as a perfect contender for Song of the Year.

S.E.: When I first heard it, I started to cry. It’s a very sentimental song. I was recently in Puerto Rico and went to a plena jam session. It was happening in the street, and you could see people of all ages playing together, singing traditional songs, drinks in hand. There was something really beautiful and timeless about that communal experience.

E.L.: A similar passion for music permeates Lafourcade’s “Cancionera.” Recorded live on analog tape, it has a pristine, wooden-floor kind of warmth. She embodies this mystical character, the cancionera, and it’s a very mature album. I love “Cocos en la Playa” — a frisky, beautiful tropical song that’s so lovely and authentic. For my money, it’s going to be a battle between those two albums in all the major categories.

S.E.: I feel that Natalia Lafourcade is the conservative choice at the Latin Gammys, and it feels bizarre to say it. This is a woman who was making pop-rock in the 2000s. She is a virtuosa, and a master of her craft, but her nomination is predictable because now she represents the gold standard for the Latin Academy.

E.L.: She’s definitely the safest choice between the two. Besides Benito and Natalia, there are a few albums that could very well appear in the major categories, and one of them is Cazzu’s “Latinaje.”

S.E.: That album is such a statement piece. I loved seeing Cazzu break away from the Latin trap sound that she defined and blending it with other things. She’s a great songwriter, and her transformation is fascinating. I think this is the year when many young people are going back to their roots, and then making something new out of it.

E.L.: I had a conversation with Cazzu a few months ago and told her that “Latinaje” made me feel vindicated. As a fellow Argentine, I’ve always felt that we’re an integral part of Latin America. She proved it with this beautiful love letter to so many essential genres. There’s salsa, merengue, South American folk, and “Dolce,” a gorgeous corrido tumbado about that infamous red dress that went viral. And she did it all so genuinely.

S.E.: It may be hard for her, because she came up as an MC. I wonder if the Latin Academy will know in what categories to place her, since this is such a multi-genre album. I mean, she’s an international girl.

E.L.: And of course, Rubén Blades has a new album out, and it’s beautiful as always. “Fotografías” is another sumptuous, big band salsa session. It combines new compositions with songs that Rubén had given to fellow Fania artists in the ‘70s, and now recorded them himself.

S.E.: That’s a great move on his part. “Hey, remember those songs? Yeah — I wrote them!” It sounds ridiculous to say that Rubén is another safe choice, but I can see him in all the big categories. Which brings me to another artist who made a salsa-influenced album: Rauw Alejandro and “Cosa Nuestra.”

E.L.: I love the Afro-Caribbean vibe on “Cosa Nuestra” and the silky duet with bachata star Romeo Santos on “Khé?” I feel this one has been overshadowed a little by Benito’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” My favorite Rauw Alejandro album remains 2021’s “Vice Versa” with the awesome, ‘80s influenced mega-hit “Todo De Ti.”

S.E.: My favorite song on “Cosa Nuestra” is “Se Fue,” the duet with Laura Pausini, which is also like a moody ‘80s song. Raúl has made it a point to polish up his nostalgia for old forms of music. Michael Jackson is one of his most influential artists.

By the way, we should mention Fuerza Regida and their ninth studio album, “111XPANTIA.” They have never been nominated for a Latin Grammy, so I’m rooting for them because they have experimented in a really bold way. Their lead singer, Jesús Ortiz Paz, has shown a lot of intention behind his creative decisions beyond making the same corridos or mining from the same old ‘90s rappers. Their music is cheeky; sonically, it pushes boundaries.

E.L.: You’re never gonna have a bad time with this new wave of música Mexicana stars, considering the staggering melodic richness of their songs and the immediacy of the lyrics.

S.E.: On that note, I think it’s time for Ivan Cornejo to get a Latin Grammy nod for “Mirada” — the production has this ethereal quality that sounds so mature and progressive for the genre. I also want to applaud DannyLux for his ambitious “Leyenda,” which is a psychedelic take on sierreño music, à la George Harrison.

E.L.: What about Becky G? Last year I was asked to write about “Encuentros,” and I just had to surrender to the elegance of this pristine música Mexicana session. Her voice sounds huge on this record.

S.E.: I really hope they don’t silo her in the música Mexicana categories, because this is a very mature album for her. She grew up singing mariachi music with her family, so it’s a beautiful full circle moment for her.

E.L.: “Encuentros” would be a perfect Album of the Year candidate because it celebrates the music of her grandparents but at the same time transcends it. I love that Becky said she’s never looking back after recording her two traditional albums of rancheras and lush Mexican pop.

This brings me to a more general observation: I believe we’re experiencing an era of absolute splendor, and the Latin Grammys nominations are bound to reflect that. It’s like every single Latin American country has blossomed, wearing its most elegant clothes and throwing some amazing parties. The richness and breadth of the music being recorded throughout the continent is off the charts.

S.E.: I agree. Creatively, the last couple of years have been the most exciting for Latin music in a really long time. I think we’re going to remember the 2020s for the bold decade that it is.

The trailblazing artist, son of legendary Fairuz and composer Assi Rahbani, was also a playwright, pianist and political provocateur.

Lebanese musician and composer Ziad Rahbani, son of the iconic singer Fairuz and a pioneer of fusion jazz, has died at the age of 69 of a heart attack.

“On Saturday at 9:00am, the heart of the great artist and creator Ziad Rahbani stopped beating,” said a statement from the hospital where he was being treated in the capital, Beirut, on Saturday.

Rahbani influenced generations of Lebanese people with his songs and especially his plays, whose lines are known by heart by both young and old.

He was the son of Fairuz, the last living legend of Arabic song – and one of the most famous Arab women worldwide – and composer Assi Rahbani, who, along with his brother Mansour, modernised Arabic song by blending classical Western, Russian, and Latin American pieces with Middle Eastern rhythms.

“I admire the music of composers like Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie,” Rahbani once said. “But my music is not Western, it’s Lebanese, with a different way of expression.”

Fairouz also became an icon for young people when Rahbani composed songs for her influenced by jazz rhythms – he called it “oriental jazz”.

Lebanon’s leaders paid a heartfelt tribute to the Lebanese composer, who was also a playwright, pianist and political provocateur.

President Joseph Aoun called Rahbani “a living conscience, a voice that rebelled against injustice, and a sincere mirror of the oppressed and marginalised”.

“Lebanon has lost an exceptional and creative artist, a free voice that remained faithful to the values of justice and dignity” and who said “what many did not dare to say”, said Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.

Rahbani’s works reflected the hybrid heritage of Lebanon, which, until the civil war erupted in 1975, was a cultural melting pot. It also reflected the ensuing sectarian strife, which involved bloody street battles between rival militias and three years of violent Israeli occupation after the 1982 invasion.

While Fairuz transcended the powerful sectarian divides in the country, her son chose to be resolutely left-wing and secular, denouncing Lebanon’s longstanding divisions. His breakout play, Nazl el-Sourour (Happiness Hotel), premiered in 1974 when he was only 17, portrayed a society disfigured by class inequality and repression.

The play follows a group of workers who take over a restaurant to demand their rights, only to be dismissed by the political elite.

In another play, Bennesbeh Labokra Chou? (What About Tomorrow?), he plays a jaded bar pianist in post-civil war Beirut. The work features some of Rahbani’s most poignant music and biting commentary, including the famous line, “They say tomorrow will be better, but what about today?”

Rahbani was also a composer of staggering range. He infused traditional Arabic melodies with jazz, funk and classical influences, creating a hybrid sound that became instantly recognisable. His live performances were legendary, when he often played piano in smoky clubs in Hamra, one of Beirut’s major commercial districts.

In recent years, Rahbani appeared less in the public eye, but younger generations rediscovered his plays online and sampled his music in protest movements. He continued to compose and write, speaking often of his frustration with Lebanon’s political stagnation and decaying public life.

“I feel like everything is over, I feel like Lebanon has become empty,” wrote Lebanese actress Carmen Lebbos, his former partner, on X.

Rahbani is survived by his mother, now 90, his sister Reema and brother Hali.

It’s a summery, late-afternoon Saturday on the backyard lawn of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with the kind of warmth and variety of sounds, sights and smells that have defined weekends in many Los Angeles neighborhoods for generations. This one happens to be for a KCRW Summer Nights event headlined by East L.A. soul revivalists the Altons, but the blend of demographics, cultures and backgrounds on display gives it an authentically local feel that could be mistaken for an informal block party in any decade — except perhaps for the screen printer creating band merch and a design of Snoopy humping an ice cube with an expletive about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That same blend of history and cultures that has brought Los Angeles together across generations is also what’s given the Altons their signature sound and made them one of the city’s latest breakout stars. When they go on tour and bring their unique blend of soulful “oldies,” modern rock and bilingual R&B around the world, they aren’t just sharing their music but also their culture.

“On any given weekend, you can have some party down the street playing cumbia or music that your parents grew up on, their next door neighbor might have a punk rock show, and another guy down the street that’s just listening to oldies and Art Laboe,” vocalist and guitarist Bryan Ponce explains about the roots of the Altons’ diverse sound stemming from their collective Los Angeles childhoods. “We all grew up on all of this music that we’d hear in our neighborhoods, so all of our influences just came together and came out in our music.”

The Altons members Adriana Flores, Caitlin Moss, Bryan Ponce and Joseph Quinones perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes on June 28.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

For a band that started with modest expectations nearly a decade ago, the Altons now find themselves heading out on international tours and playing to thousands of people at a time — as they will Saturday when they rock the Oldies 2 Souldies show with Los Lonely Boys at the Greek Theatre. And while their rise has been more of a gradual incline than anything particularly stratospheric, they’ve carved their own path without compromise. They’re willing to fuse genres, languages, tempos and sounds as they see fit and based on what they feel will work best for the songs and messages they’re wanting to deliver instead of catering to what may be popular in the moment, a choice that’s made them the face of the “oldies revival” now that millennials and Gen Z are falling back in love with tunes from their grandparents’ day.

“It’s incredible to play a show where a grandmother’s there with her daughter and grandkids, and just have multiple generations of people come together,” vocalist Adriana Flores says. “There’s not a lot of shows that I would even take my dad to, so I think it makes the music even more special and I’d like to be one of the bands shedding the light on what’s been happening in L.A. We’ve been doing it for years and just sharing the types of music we like — which is the retro sound of soul mixed with other elements. We like to show people what’s been happening in L.A. that’s not just Hollywood.”

The Altons’ Adriana Flores and Bryan Ponce perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in late June.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

That desire to show the “real” L.A. that they know and love is a driving force for the Altons, particularly as they go further and further from home. All of them — Flores and Ponce along with Joseph Quinones on guitar/backup vocals, Chris Manjarrez on bass, Christian “Elyzr” Meraz on keyboards and drummer Caitlin Moss — are proud to represent their East L.A. roots for those who only see the California that gets presented on television. The group eagerly reminisces about a fan they met at a show in France who had never set foot in California but loved the culture so much that he dressed the part of a classic cholo. “He looked like he could have been related to me or went to school with me,” Ponce says with a laugh. “He was bald, he had the Locs on, the Pendleton on and he was screaming our neighborhoods.” They recall the times they’ve felt like cultural ambassadors bringing their hometown heritage to cities like Boston.

But the self-placed weight of representing and sharing their lifelong culture isn’t always all fun and games. Just a matter of weeks before they were walking through the halls of LA Plaza’s museum to see their brand-new exhibition on the importance of East L.A. musicians, they were on tour in the U.K. feeling helpless as they watched the ICE raids and protests flood the city.

Bryan Ponce and Adriana Flores onstage at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

“You couldn’t really grasp what was going on,” Ponce says. “I would watch videos and see stuff online, but I didn’t really see it until we came home for a couple of days before we left again. [Manjarrez] and I live close to each other, and we started seeing videos of all these places and stores and people in our community. It was just devastating to have to leave again and see that they’re getting even closer to your house and seeing it happening on your street. You’re trying to go and play music to entertain people, but you’re also trying to find a balance. It’s like ‘Are we going to speak on what’s going on?’ Because some people thought that L.A. was burning down, and that’s not really the case.”

“Watching the community go through something so heartbreaking while being away was really difficult,” Flores adds. “It was really tough seeing our community being targeted, but I’d like to believe that music and being creative and spreading joy is a form of resistance. I hope that people can come to our shows and escape. Even though this is way bigger than us, we have to use our platform to be vocal about what’s going on. It’s scary times, but another scary time was the ‘60s when the whole civil rights movement was happening, and some of the best music came out of that because people were finding that outlet and creating.”

Out on the moody, flame-licked front patio of Mojave Gold in Yucca Valley, Ryan and Alexis Gutierrez took in their first goth show in their new neighborhood.

The couple had just moved to the high desert from the Inland Empire, and given the considerable face tattoo count between them, they’d been looking for some witchy fellow travelers.

After watching the electro project Tantra Punk’s set — a singer marauding across the stage, fogged over with blood-colored lights — the couple passed by a merch booth hawking fresh herbs planted in tiny metal pots. The two were pleasantly surprised they’d found their people here.

“I didn’t even know there was a scene for this out here,” Alexis said. “I literally just passed this place and thought it looked hip. We used to drive to San Diego for something like this.”

“It’s kind of slower out here in the desert, but there’s things like this that make it fun,” Ryan said, “Being in the alternative scene, having shows like this is really important to us.”

The six-week-old Mojave Gold is the most promising new entry in a desert music scene that, lately, has seen its share of high-stakes ownership drama at venues like Pappy & Harriet’s and the Alibi. Mojave Gold’s owners are betting on a more permanent, independent-minded scene for local acts and edgier nightlife in its wake.

“A part of why we moved here 10 years ago was that there are so many amazing musicians, and a lot more people live here now,” said the venue’s co-owner Cooper Gillespie. “I’m like, ‘Yes, bring on all the amazing music venues and new places for the music community to be.’”

The bar inside the nightclub is decorated in gold colors at Mojave Gold, a brand new music venue near Joshua Tree that’s counting on a continued interest in year-round nightlife in the fast-gentrifying area.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

While Joshua Tree is famous for its rough-and-tumble (if sometimes set decorated) roadhouse aesthetic, Mojave Gold looks more like it zigged left up the 111 from Palm Springs. A black and gilt disco vibe permeates the 500-capacity space, from the undulating wood ceiling made from salvaged Hollywood Bowl seats to velveteen booths and a winking poster advertising Quaaludes.

“There’s a purposeful make-out corner,” said Mojave Gold’s interior designer Brookelyn Fox, wryly arching her eyebrows toward the rear of the venue.

Mojave Gold’s attached restaurant is worth a visit in its own right (a cactus and citrus ceviche, charred cauliflower steak and a chocolate mole custard looked especially eye-catching). But in a small town with an outsize presence on the region’s music scene, it could help turn the area into a year-round tour stop in its own right and become a new festival-season mainstay.

“If you’ve got all these bands playing Coachella every year, well, only one of them is going to be able to play Saturday night at Pappy’s,” said Dale Fox, who manages the venue’s financing. “Now, there’s another place.”

Landers residents Gillespie and her Mojave Gold co-founder Greg Gordon are both former Pappy’s employees, working under longtime owners Robyn Celia and Linda Krantz. They suspected there was room for more live music than that beloved and hotly contested venue could handle year-round. They had their eyes on the former AWE Bar space since it closed after a brief run in 2023, with ambitions to rebuild it into a locals-first venue.

Patrons gather in the outdoor patio adjacent to the nightclub at Mojave Gold.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“The space and the time we’ve had is so much more than we could have done in L.A.” Gillespie said. “Everything takes a lot of time and money in the city, and out here, I feel like there’s a lot more space in all aspects of your life to create. We’ll have national acts, but also bring up our local talent and give them opportunities to have a place to call their own.”

They got lucky when Liz Garo, the talent buyer for the late, lamented Alibi in Palm Springs, was unexpectedly free and looking for a new project in the area after decades booking the Echo, Regent and other venues in Los Angeles. The shows so far have spanned the modern desert’s full range of scenes — country dance nights, the scuzzy punk of Throw Rag, cabaret drag acts and gothic folk from Blood Nebraska.

“It was a part of some music scenes where you didn’t even know who’s playing, but you went to the Echo because you knew all your friends were going to be there,” Gillespie said. “That’s what we want this place to be.”

Mojave Gold arrives as a new crop of nightlife spots have opened to serve both desert lifers and newcomers to the small towns near Joshua Tree National Park. The Red Dog Saloon, Más o Menos and the ad hoc gay bar Tiny Pony Tavern have found their footing for more ambitious desert nightlife. There’s still room for more, Gordon said.

“The big surprise for me when we opened, is that there was not one moment where I felt a sense of competition,” Gordon added. “None of the other restaurants or venues had this kind of cutthroat mentality. There’s no zero-sum thinking. I think we’re still so young out here that … everybody adds something to the market.”

Patrons dance to music from local artists on Desert Gothic night at Mojave Gold.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

But passions about development run deep out here, especially after the pandemic-fueled boom in property flipping. The sad fate of the now-shuttered Alibi, the brutal court skirmish over Pappy’s and the gleaming nearby Acrisure Arena (which just landed the kickoff date and sole SoCal stop of Paul McCartney’s tour) prove that moneyed interests still have their eye on the area’s land and cultural scene.

For now though, the string of little desert towns are happy the Airbnb flippers have taken a beating and longer-term visions for local culture are taking root. “Shout-out to the city government in Yucca,” Gordon said, saluting. “They’re constantly thinking of ways to beautify the area and respect Old Town and encourage curated growth.”

Patrons dance to Tantra Punk on Desert Gothic night at Mojave Gold.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Mojave Gold team hopes that this sometimes-shaky boomlet of independent music in the desert can foster a scene like Silver Lake’s in the early 2000s — big enough to be nationally influential, but neighborhood-y enough to roll in twice a week and see where the evening takes you. Even if it’s straight to hell on goth night.

“A big part of those scenes were free or very inexpensive nights when you even if you didn’t have a lot of money, you could go out and have a great time,” Gillespie said. “I hope that the focus here is on fostering the local creative community and not just profiting.”

Jonathan Singletary is almost ready to go live on Instagram. He scans his short-sleeve button-up — it’s clean and different from the one he wore last time. He takes a few deep breaths. He throws up a quick thank-you to God, opens Instagram, hits the white circle and goes live at 5:30 p.m. People from across the country begin to tune in for improvised music in a welcoming spiritual space. It’s time for “Piano & Prayer.”

The late afternoon Los Angeles sunlight shines through gauzy curtains behind Singletary, who sits at his piano with fingers poised over the keys. The music starts. On Instagram, members of the “Piano & Prayer” community greet one another and share where they are listening from: Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Houston, New York City, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey and even Chile.

Jonathan Singletary connects with new people and longtimers during his “Piano & Prayer” sessions.

(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)

Singletary riffs with the confidence of a musician who began playing a toy piano at the age of 5 in his family home in Nashua, New Hampshire. Now, a 38-year-old father of two, he starts vocalizing as he plays, sometimes forming words, but always in a soothing harmony.

During the early days of the pandemic, from his living room in New York, Singletary started “Piano & Prayer,” a weekly spiritual, but not necessarily religious gathering, for people to connect and share. For him, it was the perfect antidote to the isolation he was feeling.

“Hello, hello, welcome to ‘Piano & Prayer.’ Happy Monday,” Singletary says. He stops playing and turns toward the camera with a warm, welcoming smile.

Singletary’s eyes light up. “Jaden, good to see you, my mom’s in here, so many familiar faces, Hannah, good to see you, Aunt Jeanette, good to see you. I missed y’all, I missed this.” Singletary and his family had been on vacation for a couple of weeks, and he’s excited to be back. “Debra, good to see you.”

Debra Mazer, a “Piano & Prayer” original, is watching from Atlanta. “ I had Jonathan’s sessions on my pandemic roster . I had a schedule for myself that I put in the calendar because the Zoom groups were very important to my mental health and well-being,” Mazer says. She discovered this gathering by following Singletary’s then-financée, now wife, Elaine Welteroth, former editor in chief of Teen Vogue.

It was a tough time to be a professional musician in April 2020. “ I made music. I’ve done a lot of shows,  but all of that was shut down,” Singletary says. He credits Welteroth with encouraging him to combine social media with music. He remembers her saying, “ Go on in there and just play, just play some music.”

Jonathan Singletary played music at New York venues before the pandemic, but once stay-at-home orders were in place, he needed another outlet: Enter “Piano & Prayer.”

(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)

Singletary confesses it was a bumpy start. The first iteration was him playing acoustic versions of his songs: “I t didn’t fully resonate with me.” So he returned to his first instrument, the piano. “Piano & Prayer” wasn’t set up to be a moneymaking endeavor at first, but Singletary recently launched a Patreon, which allows creators to collect money directly from fans.

“ I was always playing piano for fun. I would go into the chapel at my Catholic high school, and I would play piano, and my friends would come in and lie on the floor and just zen out while I played,” he remembers. “This thing [“Piano & Prayer”] has existed for a while.”

Fast forward to 2020, instead of a chapel floor, isolated people from across the country carved out 45 minutes to connect. Mazer notes that while the world has moved on from COVID, “Piano & Prayer” is one of the online activities she started during the pandemic that she still attends regularly.

Jonathan Singletary riffs while playing during his Instagram sessions, sometimes just vocalizing as viewers share their prayers in the comments.

(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)

The Monday evening sessions are a blend of gentle piano music, meditation, prayer and community. During a recent livestream, 40 people gathered — those who want to share what they are thinking and feeling in the chat, offering prayers for themselves and others.

“For those affected by the flooding in TX,” one person shares.

“Praying for my students that they make up their work this summer session and pass to graduate,” someone types.

“Praying for the families in Texas. Lord, have mercy,” pops up.

Jonathan Singletary plays the piano in a corner of his home.

(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)

Singletary adopts a friendly approach, meeting people where they are with their religiosity or spirituality. Never preachy or too churchy — sometimes God is never mentioned. He was raised in a churchgoing family. “The church was a huge part. Has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember.”

For Singletary, the idea of going to church every Sunday changed during the pandemic. He didn’t feel safe, and then he moved to a new city and finding a new church was hard with social distancing.

On the other side of the country, it’s 8:30 p.m. and Bobby Brown’s four children, ages 5 to 12, are in bed. “Piano & Prayer” plays on his phone while Brown and his wife are hanging out in the humid night air. “ It’s just like a romantic thing in the background while we’re talking,” Brown explains.

“Then he [Singletary] throws out some prayers. We pause and take some deep breaths, because he tells us to and he reminds us to.”

Jonathan Singletary, with his children.

(Amanda Villarosa / For The Times)

Before relocating to Atlanta, Brown lived in Inglewood. He runs a nonprofit group called Donuts For Dads, a supportive community for fathers. This is where he and Singletary first connected. Brown says he didn’t realize his friend had this growing online community.

“ He doesn’t even promote it. It was just like, ‘Hey, I’m going live, ’” Brown laughs. “Whenever I see any of my friends go live, I just click to support them. Even if I can only hop on for a couple of minutes, try to throw some hearts in there.”

Both Mazer and Brown could be considered part of a larger trend of individuals who identify as spiritual rather than religious. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of U.S. adults report having grown more spiritual throughout their lifetime, compared with only 13% who say they have become less spiritual.

This data makes sense to Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, an associate professor in social studies and legal studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where her area of  expertise is the sociology of religion.

“ It’s like, no, religion’s not for me. But I like spirituality. All these shifts have happened across generations, especially amongst younger cohorts, the term religion itself now has almost a negative connotation in some contexts, but spirituality doesn’t.”

Singletary, who has about 25,000 followers, publishes the Instagram Lives on his grid and says the views on each “Piano & Prayer” session are usually around 1,000, but have reached as high as 5,000.

“This isn’t about people watching me do a thing. The most touching to me and maybe validating as well, is that I see people engaging with each other and encouraging each other and praying for one another and responding to each other’s prayer requests.”

For the moment, if it’s a Monday at 5:30 p.m., you can find Singletary at his black lacquered piano ready to welcome anyone who needs it into the “Piano & Prayer” family.

It’s another dry, sweltering morning in Las Vegas, and the guitarist Zoltan Bathory has just left his Gothic castle. Bearded and dressed in black, with a bundle of dreadlocks piled high on his head, he’s now piloting a small boat across a man-made lake filled with tap water, on his way to breakfast at a nearby café.

The newly renovated replica castle is a recent project and perk of Bathory’s 20-year career as guitarist and founder of the multiplatinum heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch. But last year, as the metal act began planning to celebrate those two decades of action, Bathory discovered that their longtime former label, Prospect Park, had quietly sold the masters to the first seven 5FDP albums.

The group, which retained 50% ownership in the masters but not “administrative rights,” was not informed before the sale.

“We were not privy to the deal. It was completely behind curtains. That’s the annoying part of this,” says Bathory. “I wish they had a conversation because we could have done a deal together, or maybe we would have bought it. We didn’t even get an option. We found out from somebody else. Well, wait a minute, what’s going on?”

With that anniversary coming up in 2025, 5FDP adjusted after finding inspiration in the example of pop superstar Taylor Swift, who responded to the sale of her catalog with a hugely successful series of “Taylor’s Version” rerecordings of entire albums. Swift re-created four of her records, each one topping the Billboard Top 200, before she finally bought back the rights to her catalog this year.

Five Finger Death Punch decided to follow that lead, and in January began rerecording the band’s most popular songs. The first batch of new recordings arrived under the title “20 Years of Five Finger Death Punch — Best of Volume 1,” released Friday, to be followed by “Best of Volume 2” later this year.

“When this happened, it came up immediately: ‘Well, this happened to Taylor and what did she do?’” Bathory says of the plan. “She battle-tested it. And she’s a big artist. ‘OK, that’s your move? Now this is our move.’”

It is just the latest chapter in a sometimes turbulent career for the musicians, as the band rose to become one of the most successful hard rock/metal bands of their generation, boasting 12 billion streams, surpassed only by Metallica and AC/DC. During its first decade, 5FDP released four platinum-selling albums in the U.S., beginning with its second release, 2009’s explosive “War Is the Answer.”

The unexpected sale of their masters — to the independent music publisher Spirit Music Group — was perhaps the final round in a frequently contentious relationship with Prospect Park founder Jeff Kwatinetz. In 2016, the label sued Five Finger Death Punch in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging breach of contract over a coming greatest hits package and the recording of a new album.

That lawsuit got ugly, including an accusation in its initial filing that the band was “attempting to cash in before the anticipated downfall of their addicted bandmate,” a blunt reference to singer Ivan L. Moody’s period of self-destruction at the time. The band countersued. The cases were settled out of court the following year.

A request for comment sent to Kwatinetz through his attorney was not returned by press time, but he told Billboard last month that the band’s current management stopped cooperating, so “I sold my half.”

As he settles into the small lakeside café over a glass of organic matcha tea and avocado toast, Bathory expresses little real anger over the suits and the sale, and looks back cheerfully at the band’s long relationship with the label. The guitarist says he actually enjoyed their heated discussions, reflecting not only their conflicts of the moment, but a shared history as the band rose from clubs on the Sunset Strip to stadiums around the world.

“With our former label president, this is probably the funniest relationship. In the past, we were suing each other for various [issues],” Bathory says with a smile. “We get on the phone, and we’re talking about a lawsuit, and he’s like, ‘You guys lost this injunction.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, f— you.’ ‘Oh, f— you!’ We had this back and forth, and then it’s ‘How’s the kids?’ And then we just talk about albums and music and whatnot for like an hour.

“And then, ‘OK, see you in court.’ ‘F— you,’” he adds with a laugh. “It’s a game of life. And I believe in the way of the samurai. The saddest day in the samurai’s life is when your worst opponent dies, because that’s the guy who kept you on your toes.”

Sessions for the new recordings unfolded quickly from 5FDP’s current lineup that also includes baseball bat-wielding singer Moody, longtime bassist Chris Kael, and two newer members, drummer Charlie Engen and lead guitarist Andy James.

The musicians recorded their parts separately, re-creating songs some of them had by now performed live nearly 1,000 times around the world. The resulting tracks are not exact replicas of the originals, but are faithful to their spirit while leaving room for the natural evolution that happens through years of touring.

The result on “Best of Volume 1” is a potent representation of the band’s history, opening with the snarling riffs of “Under and Over It.” The first volume includes 13 rerecordings and three live tracks. When played side-by-side with the originals, the new self-produced songs never sound like tired retreads but are powered by some contemporary fire in the band’s performances.

The first public glimpse in the project was a rerecording of “I Refuse,” a power ballad from 2018, this time as a duet with Maria Brink (of In This Moment), released as a single in May.

Once news of the project, and its inspiration, began to spread, Five Finger Death Punch began to hear from a new constituency: Swifties.

“What’s kind of crazy is that I see Taylor Swift’s fans on our social media and bulletin board going, ‘Yeah!’ That’s the most bizarre thing,” Bathory says of the new voices cheering the band forward. “We are so far away from each other in style. But it seems like it hit a chord. I guess people who don’t necessarily understand or are privy to the music business and how it works still feel like this is not right.”

While the band is also six songs into recording its next album of new material, Bathory says the new best-of recordings are expected to be fully embraced by the band’s famously intense following.

“Our fans are pretty hardcore,” Bathory says. “They’re very engaged, and they know exactly why we did this. So I think, just to support the band, they will switch [their allegiance to the newer versions] anyway. But these recordings are going to live next to each other.”

Founded in 2005, Five Finger Death Punch was the culmination of the rock star dreams of Bathory that began as teen in Hungary, first as a fan of British punk rock, before turning to metal after discovering Iron Maiden (with early singer Paul Di’Anno). He built his own electric guitar to look like one used by the L.A. heavy metal band W.A.S.P., with a skull-and-crossbones painted onto the surface.

Rock music wasn’t played on TV or the radio in the then-communist country, so Bathory and his friends traded cassette tapes of any punk and metal they got their hands on. “Somebody always somehow smuggled in a record, and we would all copy it,” he remembers. “It created this subculture where we didn’t just look at it as music. It was the sound of the rebellion.”

Bathory also dressed the part, drawing attention for his Def Leppard T-shirt with the Union Jack flag, studded leather jackets and belts, and long hair. Kids who adopted that look and spoke in the language of Western hard rock actually risked arrest, he says.

“I’ve been chased around by the cops so many times,” he recalls with a laugh.

By his early 20s, Bathory moved to New York City with his guitar, about $1,000 in his pocket, and no English-speaking skills. While living in low-budget squalor, he slowly taught himself English, first by translating a random copy of the Stephen King novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” He played with bands that got nowhere, and after six years relocated to Los Angeles, and things started to change.

For a year, he played bass in the L.A. hard rock band U.P.O., which enjoyed some chart success, then formed Five Finger Death Punch, with a name inspired by the 1972 kung fu film “Five Fingers of Death” and Quentin Tarantino’s two “Kill Bill” epics.

Zoltan Bathory, founder and guitarist of the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch, pilots a small boat on the man-made lake outside his Las Vegas house.

(Steve Appleford)

“I knew exactly what I wanted. There was a vision,” says Bathory.

That vision got clearer when he first saw singer Moody performing with the nu metal band Motograter. It was Bathory’s good fortune that Motograter would soon break up. He reached out to Moody in Denver.

“He was special — his performance, his voice. That star quality thing is a real thing,” notes Bathory of the growling, emotional singer. “You could tell he was a rock star, right? I’m like, OK, that’s the guy.”

In their first years as a band, the quintet played more than 200 shows annually. “We played every little stage that exists,” Bathory says.

Sitting beside the guitarist now in the café is Jackie Kajzer, also known as radio DJ Full Metal Jackie, who first spotted the band on MySpace. She soon caught an early set at the Whisky a Go Go and was immediately sold on their sound and potential. She was also a junior manager at the Firm, a leading management company at the time representing Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

Kajzer urged the company to sign the ominously-named Five Finger Death Punch, and after two showcase performances on the Strip, it did. The metal band was soon added to the side stage of the high-profile 2007 Family Values Tour, followed the next year by the traveling Mayhem Festival, leaving a powerful impression among new fans and fellow artists.

“When you find something that makes you feel something, it makes it worth fighting for,” says Kajzer, who has remained part of the band’s management team ever since, now at 10th Street Entertainment. “I had never felt it before. PS: I’ve never really felt that again, that same early feeling. You believe in it and you want to shake everyone else and make them get it as well.”

Five Finger Death Punch’s recording career began by uploading a few songs at a time — early versions of “Bleeding,” “Salvation,” and “The Way of The Fist” — to MySpace, then an essential platform for new acts, or what Bathory now remembers with a laugh as “the center of the universe.”

“It was extremely hard, but in the beginning we knew we had something because there was this instant interaction,” Bathory says of fan response. “We were all in bands before — many, many bands. We all recognized that, OK, there’s something different here. We didn’t have to convince people. It just started happening and it was growing really fast.”

Zoltan Bathory, stands beneath a Turkish lamp in his Las Vegas house.

(Steve Appleford)

“The ones that make it, they’re here for decade after decade,” he says of the larger metal scene, which enjoys a seemingly eternal audience. “The family [of fans] is extremely loyal and they’re there forever. Once you’re in, you’re in.”

The band’s first album, 2007’s “The Way of the Fist,” was largely recorded in Bathory’s apartment near the Sunset Strip. It reached halfway up the Billboard Top 200 album chart and eventually went gold, with 500,000 copies sold. While even greater success follower, there has also been the usual ups and downs in the life of a metal band, with group members coming and going, troubles with substance abuse, and arguments over creative choices.

After two decades together, the singer and the guitarist have survived.

“It’s still a tornado. It’s a band, a bunch of guys, so I don’t think it’s ever going to change. We built this freaking thing like it was a battleship,” says Bathory with a grin, sitting in the castle beneath an ornate Turkish lamp.

“It’s always going to be that we fight and argue, but at the end of the day, we always figure things out. We always climb the next mountain.”

Alan Bergman, the decorated lyricist who over the course of seven decades penned songs including “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “The Way We Were,” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” with wife Marilyn Bergman, has died. He was 99.

Bergman died late Thursday evening in his home in Los Angeles, family spokesperson Ken Sunshine confirmed in a statement to The Times on Friday. The songwriter “suffered from respiratory issues” in recent months but remained steadfast in his songwriting “till the very end.”

A Brooklyn native, Bergman was best known for his collaborations with his wife, Marilyn, which spanned music, television and film. The husband and wife, after meeting through composer Lew Spence, married in 1958. Together, they penned music for a variety of high-profile acts including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, John Williams and Barbra Streisand, with the last eventually becoming the couple’s muse.

The Bergmans were three-time Oscar winners. The couple won their first Oscar in 1969 for the moody “Windmills of Your Mind,” featured in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” shared with French composer Michel Legrand. Their second and third Oscar wins stemmed from works with Streisand: the title song from “The Way We Were” in 1974 (shared with Marvin Hamlisch) and in 1984 for the score of “Yentl,” shared with Legrand.

The composers and their work were consistent contenders at the Oscars, with their contributions to films “The Happy Ending,” “Tootsie,” “Yes, Giorgio” and the 1995 remake of Billy Wilder‘s “Sabrina” also receiving nominations from the academy. On the small screen, the Bergmans left their personal touch on numerous TV series from the 1970s to the 1990s, providing the theme music for shows including “Good Times,” “Alice,” “In the Heat of the Night” and Norman Lear’s “Maude.”

In addition to Oscars, the Bergmans also won four Emmys, two Golden Globes and two Grammys, including the song of the year award for “The Way We Were.”

Oscar-winning songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman at their home in 2008.

(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Alan Bergman, born Sept. 11, 1925 in Brooklyn, was a son of a salesman and knew from an early age that songwriting was his passion. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and pursued his graduate studies in music at UCLA. He briefly worked as a television director for Philadelphia station WCAU-TV but returned to Los Angeles to fully pursue songwriting, at the behest of mentor Johnny Mercer.

Alan and Marilyn Bergman are members of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which awarded the duo its Johnny Mercer Award in 1997. They also received the Grammy Trustee Award for lifetime achievement, the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Music Publishers Assn. Lifetime Achievement Award and honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and the University of Massachusetts. In 2011, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill honored Bergman with a distinguished alumnus award.

Marilyn Bergman died in January 2022 of respiratory failure at 93. After her death, Alan continued working, most recently collaborating with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, who will record his nine songs co-written with Bergman later this year for an upcoming album.

Alan Bergman is survived by his daughter Julie Bergman and granddaughter Emily Sender. He will be laid to rest at a private graveside burial. Ruth Price’s Jazz Bakery announced earlier this month it would celebrate Bergman’s 100th birthday with a tribute concert at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage in September. The performance will go on as planned, The Times has learned.

The family ask that donations be made in Bergman’s name to the ASCAP Foundation Alan and Marilyn Bergman Lyric Award and the Johnny Mercer Foundation.

Times pop music critic Mikael Wood contributed to this report.

Irish trio calls probe ‘state intimidation’ after band member taken to court over pro-Palestine message at Glastonbury.

Police in the United Kingdom have decided not to take any further action against Kneecap in a case related to the Irish hip-hop trio’s opposition to Israel.

Avon and Somerset police said in a statement on Friday that they carried out an investigation over the music group’s performance at Glastonbury Festival on June 28 and sought advice from the Crown Prosecution Service.

“We have made the decision to take no further action on the grounds there is insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any offence,” it said, adding that it has informed the band about the decision.

Kneecap, which has repeatedly taken a pro-Palestine stance during their shows and online, confirmed they were informed about the decision via a representative.

“Every single person who saw our set knew no law was broken, not even close,” they said in a post online, saying the investigation amounted to “state intimidation”.

One element of the political policing intimidation attempt is over.

We played a historic set at Glastonbury. Whole area closed an hour before due to crowds. A celebration of love and solidarity. A sea of good people at the world’s most famous festival.

Shortly afterwards we… pic.twitter.com/S0BsMeOM83

— KNEECAP (@KNEECAPCEOL) July 18, 2025

A member of the band had been charged with a “terrorism” offence for waving a flag of the Lebanese group Hezbollah at a concert in London in November 2024.

The Belfast-based trio had also been linking the struggles of the Irish under British colonial rule to those of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and siege for decades, and has been known for its political and satirical lyrics.

Avon and Somerset police said in their statement that an investigation is ongoing in relation to separate comments made on stage by rap-punk duo Bob Vylan.

Bob Vylan has also been supporting Palestinians and used the UK’s largest summer music festival in late June to lead the crowds in chanting against the Israeli military.

The duo chanted “death” to the Israeli army and “free Palestine”, leading to a criminal investigation by British police.

After the performance, which pro-Israel voices branded as “anti-Semitic”, UK broadcaster BBC said it would no longer live-broadcast musical performances deemed “high risk”.

The British government, a staunch supporter of Israel and a major arms provider to its Israeli military, also called the chants “appalling hate speech”.

Authorities in the United States revoked the visas of the musicians, who rejected being against any religious groups and said they are in favour of “dismantling a violent military machine” that has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military has killed at least 58,667 Palestinians in the besieged enclave since October 2023, and wounded nearly 140,000 others, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. About 20,000 children are among those killed.

In 2018, Paul Simon walked onto the Hollywood Bowl stage for what most in the crowd believed to be his last tour stop in Los Angeles, ever. Simon expected that too — he’d billed the event as his “Homeward Bound — Farewell Tour.” After 50 years of performing, a then-record three Grammy wins for album, a catalog of some of the most sophisticated and inquisitive American songwriting ever put to paper — he’d go out in full garlands.

So what a shock and delight when Simon, now 83, announced a few years later that he was not quite done yet. In 2023, he released a new album, “Seven Psalms,” an elliptical, gracious invocation for the arc of his life, drawing on biblical imagery and intertwined guitar fugues.

But even better, Simon would also return to the stage for a new tour, including a five-night run at Disney Concert Hall. For L.A. fans, these shows were one last chance to reconnect with Simon, who now had a profound late-career album to bookend his catalog. Those songs spanned from his years in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s to a Sabrina Carpenter duet on “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary special.

Wednesday’s show — the last of the Disney hall stand — got to all of it, with Simon still in exquisite form in the last light of his performing career.

If Simon, seven years ago, had any doubts about his interest or ability to perform live at this exacting level, they must have disappeared the second he got a guitar in his hand at Disney Hall. The set opened with a full run of “Seven Psalms,” a short yet profound song cycle in which a dense, ornamental acoustic guitar figure recurs over several songs in an intimate valediction.

“Seven Pslams” belongs alongside David Bowie’s “Blackstar” or Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” albums in the canon of wide-lens looks at the mystery of late life. Simon’s music was wise before its time even when he was a young man. But the perspective he has at this vantage, on the backside of 80 with a rejuvenated muse, was especially moving.

“I lived a life of pleasant sorrows, until the real deal came,” he sang on “Love Is Like a Braid.” “And in that time of prayer and waiting, where doubt and reason dwell / A jury sat, deliberating. All is lost or all is well.“

Simon’s band members for this stint — a dozen or so strong, spanning percussion, woodwinds and guitars — were mostly impressionists during this portion, adding distant bells and chamber flourishes to the patina of these songs.

While he kicked up his heels a bit on the bluesy “My Professional Opinion,” there was a trembling power in “Trail of Volcanoes” and, especially, “Your Forgiveness,” in which Simon took stock of his time on Earth and whatever lies next. “Two billion heart beats and out / Waving the flag in the last parade / I have my reasons to doubt,” he sang, followed by a gracious incantation: “Dip your hand in heaven’s waters, god’s imagination … All of life’s abundance in a drop of condensation.”

Paul Simon plays and sings Wednesday at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The hit-heavy back half of the show was a little rowdier. One fan even made a bit of history when he tossed a $20 bill onstage, which was enough for Simon to gamely oblige his request to play a verse of “Kodachrome.”

Simon and his band had looser reins here. “Graceland” and “Under African Skies” still radiated curiosity for the world’s musical bounty, with the fraught complexity of that album nonetheless paving a stone on the road for African music’s current global ascent. (He introduced his bassist, Bakithi Kumalo, as the last surviving member of the original “Graceland” band.)

An elegant “Slip Slidin’ Away” led up to a poignant “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” which took a tale of rock ‘n’ roll self-destruction and pinned it to a generational sense of cultural collapse. Simon didn’t reference any current events beyond the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon assassinations, but you could feel a contemporary gravity in the song.

Veteran drummer Steve Gadd reprised his jazzy breaks for “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” and the fatherhood ballad “St. Judy’s Comet” was a sweet, deep-cut flourish. (That mood continued when Edie Brickell, Simon’s wife and vocalist, slipped in from the side stage to whistle the hook on “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.) But the band hit full velocity on a pair of songs from “The Rhythm of the Saints.” “Spirit Voices” conjured an ayahuasca reverie with its thicket of guitars and hand percussion, while the sprawling and time-signature-bending “The Cool, Cool River” showed Simon the musician — not just the poet — still in absolute command.

Simon’s set never got to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or “You Can Call Me Al,” but the final encore wrapped with just him and a guitar and the eternal hymn of “The Sound of Silence.” His guitar work retained all its original power in the opening instrumental runs, and Simon looked genuinely grateful that, perhaps even to his own surprise, the stage hadn’t lost its promise or potency for him just yet.

Who knows whether Wednesday was the last time Angelenos will get to see Simon perform live (this tour wraps next month in Seattle). If it was, then it was a beautiful benediction for one of America’s defining songwriters. But if it wasn’t, take any chance you get to see him again.

Of all the pop hits vying to become the song of the summer, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” might be the most improbable: A stark and brooding ballad full of lurid Christian imagery — “Shatter me with your touch / Oh Lord, return me to dust,” goes one line — it’s about a guy seeking the kind of sexual-spiritual fulfillment not typically found on the beach or at a barbecue.

Yet the song, which has more than 720 million streams on Spotify, just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100 — more than a month longer at No. 1 than Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” to name one of the sunnier tunes soundtracking the season. (Among Warren’s other competitors: Drake, who posted an image of the current chart on Instagram on Monday showing his song “What Did I Miss?” at No. 2 behind Warren’s hit. “I’m taking that soon don’t worry,” the rapper wrote.)

“Ordinary’s” somber tone is all the more striking given that Warren — whose father died when he was 9 and who grew up in Carlsbad with a single mother he’s described as an abusive alcoholic — first made a name for himself as a founding member of Hype House, the early-2020s conclave of TikTokers known for beaming out goofy bite-size content from a rented mansion in Los Angeles. Half a decade later, Warren is still a faithful user of his TikTok account (with its 18.8 million followers), though these days he’s mostly driving attention — often with the help of his wife, fellow influencer Kouvr Annon — to his music, which combines the moody theatrics of early Sam Smith with the highly buffed textures of Imagine Dragons.

On Friday, Warren will release his debut LP, “You’ll Be Alright, Kid,” featuring guest appearances by Blackpink’s Rosé and by Jelly Roll, who brought Warren to the stage at April’s Stagecoach festival to sing “Ordinary” and to premiere their duet “Bloodline.” Warren, 24, discussed his journey during a recent trip to L.A. from his new home in Nashville, where he lives not far from Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims. “I was just texting Teddy,” Warren says as we sit down. “I got off tour and immediately was like, ‘Oh, I want to buy a go-kart.’ Teddy FaceTimes me, he goes, ‘You a—hole. I’m trying to buy a go-kart right now too.’ Apparently, I bought the last go-kart in Tennessee.” These are excerpts from our conversation.

“Ordinary” is clearly drawing on your identity as a Christian. Yet there’s something almost sacrilegious about the song.
I get that criticism a lot.

To me it’s what makes the song interesting — the erotic energy in a line like “You got me kissing the ground of your sanctuary.”
I’m worshiping my wife in a way — she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You can’t just write a song like that and be like, “Oh, baby, you’re my everything.” Everyone’s already done “You’re my world,” you know? I wanted to do something different — almost Hozier-esque. I wrote into it being like, I really love my wife, and I have a relationship with God — that’s something I can compare it to.

As the song has gone out, I’ve heard a lot of Christians’ opinions on it, and some people are like, “F— this guy.” There’s also so many people who think it’s a super die-hard Christian song and don’t like it either. I have to be OK with both sides hating me.

You’ve led a peculiar life, which obviously lends context to your music for anyone who knows the details. Yet “Ordinary” is big enough now that many listeners — maybe most listeners — are hearing it without knowing anything about you.
This new song I’ve been teasing [“Eternity”] is about grief, and people are like, “I can’t wait to play it at my wedding.” It’s cool that people are making it their own. It reminds me of Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved,” where people were like, “Oh my God, this is a breakup record.” No, he wrote it about his grandma.

Are you a Capaldi fan?
I love Lewis. I don’t look like a Justin Bieber/Shawn Mendes traditional pop star, but it’s cool because Lewis kind of made it popular to not give a f—. Lewis and Ed [Sheeran], I would say — I mean, I’ve seen Ed’s closet, and it’s just nine white Prada T-shirts.

You have an unusual voice.
Thank you — I think?

It’s deeper than most pop voices right now. Does it seem unusual to you?
No. I asked my wife, “Do I have a basic voice?” She was like, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “I live with this voice, and I think it just sounds like every other bitch.” But I’m my No. 1 hater.

I went back and looked at the series Netflix made about Hype House.
I’m so sorry.

There’s some significant fluctuations in your weight, and I was wondering how working in a visual field from a pretty young age shaped your ideas about eating and exercise.
When I started making money, I didn’t know what to do with it and I just used DoorDash every second I could. As time went on, especially in Hype House, you have so many people’s opinions and everyone’s pointing out your flaws, and the weight was definitely one of them. After that I was like, “OK, how do I fix this?” I’m 24 now — I was 22, 21 at the time, and I was like, “I should be in the best shape of my life.”

But it definitely does take a toll on you. Even now, if you go look at my TikTok comments, thousands of people are loving me. You go on Twitter, the first 400 comments are like, “He’s so ugly,” “His nose is crooked,” all these things. It hits a point where you have a thousand people loving you, but those two people not — you’re like, “Wait, are they the ones telling me the truth? Is everyone else just gassing me up?”

Kind of bleak.
It’s such a strange career. I have the Kids’ Choice Awards on Saturday, and I’m like, “Should I be eating this the next few days?”

Would you say you’re in a good place in terms of how you think about your physical appearance?
Looking in the mirror, probably not. But when it comes to having to approve a photo, I don’t give a s—. I’ll approve whatever, double chin and all.

Is that true?
Truly, I don’t mind, because I don’t think people are watching my videos for my attractiveness. That being said, if I was lighter, I think I’d be happier looking at myself. But at the same time, I don’t care because these songs to me are more about what they’re about and less about how I look. Also, it gives me some leeway if someone catches me lacking at In-N-Out.

Warren’s song “Ordinary” now has more than 720 million streams on Spotify and has just logged its sixth week since early June atop Billboard’s Hot 100.

(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)

You’ve said you don’t really drink or do drugs but that you get drunk once a year. What would be the occasion?
I just got drunk with Ed Sheeran — I drank two Modelos and I got put on my ass. This was at Santa’s Pub [in Nashville] — me, Noah Kahan and Ed Sheeran. They had just played something, and Ed was like, “Do you want a drink?” I was like, “If I’m getting drunk this year, it’s getting drunk with Ed Sheeran.” So he gave me a Modelo, and I was like, “Whoa, I’m feeling this.” He’s like, “OK, dude, I’m on my 11th.” He hands me a second one, and my wife had to drive me home.

So I’ve been getting a little loose with it. But it’s always beer — I don’t really drink any hard stuff. Nothing against it, I’ve just always preferred Diet Coke. I wish I liked alcohol.

I mean, you can cultivate this. It’s easy to do.
I’ve been trying. I had a sip of my friend’s old fashioned. I thought it was interesting — sugary, but I liked it.

Your song “The Outside” on this new record talks about the illusory nature of happiness and success.
I went into it wanting to write about the things that people go through to turn to God or another power or something to get out of their own heads. I wanted to depict people finding a sense of purpose.

“Hollywood wasn’t all that she thought / City of Angels but her wings got caught / She got high enough to think she met God.”
You move to L.A. to pursue a dream and you see God after doing a hallucinogenic — that’s referencing a friend of mine who’s now a Christian buff who did ayahuasca. The other [verse] is about health care — watching my friends who don’t have it because it’s so expensive.

“‘It’s just stress,’ so the doctor says / His young heart’s beating out of his chest / Student loans and medical debt.”
The Luigi Mangione case happened around the time we wrote that record.

Luigi was in your head as you were writing?
That second verse is literally about Luigi Mangione. Not to get political, but the things that I feel are necessary in life — you have to pay for it, and it causes people to turn to something like God. The song ends with me being like, “I talk to my dad in the sky, hoping he talks to me back.” That song means a lot to me.

Your music is extremely tidy, which stands in contrast to the singer-songwriter mode of the Zach Bryans —
And the Noah Kahans, where they’re flat in some parts and it doesn’t matter because the emotion’s there.

Why is your instinct as a musician to go for something neater?
Because I don’t have the luxury of being able to make what some people view as mistakes. Coming from TikTok to music, I feel like it needs to be neat — it needs to be, “Oh my God, this guy can do this.” The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged. I’m finding different parts of my voice. I’ve been listening to a lot of older music too, which has been really good.

Such as?
Hall & Oates — dude, “Rich Girl”? Billy Joel too.

Is there still a Hype House group chat?
I have a group chat with not all of them but the ones that — I’m not gonna name-drop them, but the ones getting popular with music. It was formative years in my life — my college experience, I guess. We’re able to look back on it and have a moment of, like, “That sucked, but it was also awesome.”

Would people in the house have called that you and Addison Rae would be the ones to break out as musicians?
No, I don’t think so — especially not me. Maybe Addison — Addison has always been cool. Everyone loved Addison, even in the house, and she’s always been so kind. Even to this day, she’s a good friend of mine. But no one would have guessed me. I don’t think anyone liked me.

In the house?
Just in general. The Netflix show — a lot of it was fake, but looking at that, I feel like I’m such a better person now.

“The next album I’m working on, it’s more rugged,” says Warren, whose debut LP “You’ll Be Alright, Kid” comes out Friday. “I’m finding different parts of my voice.”

(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)

Are you glad that “Ordinary” happened after the influencer moment in your life — that there’s a bit of separation?
I started this in 2020, 2021 — I put out my first song then, and I was still an influencer, vlogging, doing all those things. Everyone’s like, “He came out of nowhere,” and I’m like, I’ve been doing this for five years.

But nobody cared until well after your time as an influencer — which might be a good thing, right? I’m not sure the overlap served Lil Huddy. In a weird way, you might’ve gotten lucky.
I think about that often. I made videos with my wife — I never really made videos with the content house — and those videos were successful in their own right. I think a lot of my fans today were watching me at that time, but not for the Hype House. Actually, no, that’s not true.

It’s hard to generalize about the audience for a song this big.
All I do is put my head down and promote the records. I’m not paying attention to the scope of things.

Of course you’re checking the numbers.
I’m not understanding the scope besides the numbers. My monthly listeners [on Spotify], someone told me it was 50-something million — that’s sick. But I can’t contextualize that. If I’m walking down the street, how many people have heard the song and how many people know who I am? I know the song is big, but I’m under the assumption that the record’s bigger than I am.

That seems true.
OK, so what does that mean? I can compare it to a Lola Young, or is it a Benson Boone? I think that’s two separate things right now. Also, I don’t know the age demographic. If I walk into a bingo night, are they gonna know who I am?

A bingo night?
You know what I’m saying. The song is No. 1 on Hot AC — that’s adult contemporary. Is it someone’s mom? I don’t know who’s listening to the record. But I write songs about people passing away, and most people — no matter rich, poor, whatever — it’s typically gonna be your 40-and-up who are gonna relate to that record. Kids don’t necessarily deal with loss the same way.

Is it weird to think that a significant portion of your audience is people twice your age?
No, that’s f—ing rad to me — the older audience is the hardest to grab. I think it’s safe to say that most people judge notoriety on whether their mom knows who they are, right? If that’s where I start, that’s cool.

Fans of System of a Down desperately hoping the Armenian American alt-metal band will one day release a full-length follow-up to their chart-topping 2005 companion albums “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” can at least seek some solace in the latest offering from band co-founder Daron Malakian. “Addicted to the Violence,” the third album from his solo project Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, may lack System frontman Serj Tankian’s mellifluous singing, iconoclastic rants and feral screams, but its eclectic structure, melodic earworms, fetching vocal harmonies and poignant themes are sonically and structurally similar to System of a Down — and with good reason.

“All of my songs can work for either Scars or System because they come from my style and have my signature,” Malakian says from his home in Glendale. “When I wrote for System, I didn’t bring guitar riffs to the band. Like with [System’s 2002 breakthrough single] ‘Aerials.’ That was a complete song. I wrote it from beginning to end before I showed it to them.”

Malakian — who tackled vocals, guitar and bass — assembled “Addicted to the Violence” (out Friday) during the last five years, using songs he’d written over roughly two decades. The oldest track, “Satan Hussein,” which starts with a rapid-fire guitar line and features a serrated verse and a storming chorus, dates to the early 2000s, when System’s second album, “Toxicity,” was rocketing toward six-times platinum status (which it achieved nine months after release).

With Scars, Malakian isn’t chasing ghosts and he’s not tied to a schedule. He’s more interested in spontaneity than continuity, and artistry takes precedence over cohesion. None of the tracks on the band’s sporadically released three albums — 2008’s self-titled debut, 2018’s “Dictator,” and “Addicted to the Violence”— follow a linear or chronological path. Instead, each includes an eclectic variety of songs chosen almost at random.

“It’s almost like I spin the wheel and wherever the arrow lands, that’s where I start,” he explains. “I end up with a bunch of songs from different periods in my life that come from different moods. It’s totally selfish. Everything starts as something I write for myself and play for myself. I never listen to something I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, everybody’s gonna love this.’ For me, a song is more like my new toy. At some point, I finish playing with it and I go, ‘OK, I’m ready to share this with other kids now.’”

Whether by happenstance or subconscious inspiration, “Addicted to the Violence” is a turbulent, inadvertently prescient album for unstable times — a barbed, off-kilter amalgam of metal, alt-rock, pop, Cali-punk, prog, Mediterranean folk, alt-country and psychedelia — sometimes within the same song. Lyrically, Malakian addresses school shootings, authoritarianism, media manipulation, infidelity, addiction and stream-of-consciousness ramblings as dizzying as an hour of random, rapid-fire channel surfing.

Is writing music your way of making sense out of a nonsensical world?

I like to think of it as bringing worlds together that, in other cases, may not belong together. But when they come out through me, they mutate and turn into this thing that makes sense. In that way, music is like my therapist. Even if I write a song and nobody ever hears it, it’s healthy for me to make and it helps me work stuff out. When I write a song, sometimes it affects me deeply and I’ll cry or I’ll get hyped up and excited. It’s almost like I’m communicating with somebody, but I’m not talking to anyone. It’s just me in this intimate moment.

Is it strange to take these personal, intimate and therapeutic moments and turn them into songs that go out for the masses to interpret and absorb?

I want people to make up their own meanings for the songs, even if they’re completely different than mine. I don’t even like to talk about what inspired the songs because it doesn’t matter. No one needs to know what I was thinking because they don’t know my life. They don’t know me. They know the guy on stage, but they don’t know the personal struggles I’ve been through and they don’t need to.

Was there anything about “Addicted to the Violence” that you wanted to do differently than “Dictator”?

Different songs on the album have synthesizer and that’s a color I’ve never used before in System or Scars. Every painting you make shouldn’t have the same colors. Sometimes I’m like, “Will that work with the rest of the songs? That color is really different.” But I’m not afraid to use it.

[Warning: Video includes profanity.]

“Shame Game” has a psychedelic vibe that’s kinda like a hybrid of Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blue Oyster Cult, while the title track has a prog rock vibe redolent of Styx, Rush and Mars Volta.

I love all that stuff. I spend more time listening to music than playing guitar. It’s how I practice music. I take in these inspirations and it all comes out later when I write without me realizing it.

In 2020, System released the songs “Protect the Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz,” which you originally planned to use for Scars on Broadway.

At that time, I hadn’t recorded “Genocidal Humanoidz” yet, but I had finished “Protect the Land,” and my vocals on the song are the tracks I was going to use for my album. Serj just came in and sang his parts over it.

Why did you offer those songs to System when every time you tried to work on an album with them after 2010, you hit a creative impasse?

Because [the second Nagorno-Karabakh War] was going on in Artsakh at that time between [the Armenian breakaway state Artsakh and Azerbaijan], and we decided we needed to say something. We all got on the phone and I said, “Hey, I got this song ‘Protect the Land,’ and it’s about this exact topic.” So, I pulled it off the Scars record and shared it with System.

You released the eponymous Scars on Broadway album in 2008, almost exactly two years after System went on a four-year hiatus. Did you form Scars out of a need to stay creative?

At the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep releasing music, I needed a new outlet, so Scars was something that had to happen or I would have just been sitting around all these years and nobody would have heard from me.

You played a few shows with Scars before your first album came out in 2008, but you abruptly canceled the supporting tour and only released one more Scars song before 2018.

That was a really strange time. I wanted to move forward with my music, but we had worked so hard to get to the point we got to in System, and not everyone was in the same boat when it came to how we wanted to move forward. I just wasn’t ready to do a tour with Scars.

Was it like trying to start a new relationship after a bad breakup?

I might have rushed into that second marriage too quick. I had [System drummer] John [Dolmayan] playing with me, and I think that was [a sign that] I was still holding onto System of a Down. That created a lot of anxiety.

A few years later, you announced that you were working on a new Scars album and planned to release it in 2013. Why did it take until 2018 for you to put out “Dictator”?

I was writing songs and thinking they were amazing, but in my head I was conflicted about where the songs were going to go. “Should I take them to Scars? Is that premature? Would System want to do something with them?” I underwent this constant struggle because Serj and I always had this creative disagreement. I finally moved past that and did the second album, but it took a while.

“Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present,” Malakian said.

(Travis Shinn)

System of a Down played nine concerts in South America this spring, and you have six stadium gigs scheduled in North America for August and September. Is there any chance a new System album will follow?

I’m not so sure I even want to make another System of a Down record at this point in my life. I’m getting along with the guys really well right now. Serj and I love each other and we enjoy being onstage together. So, maybe it’s best for us to keep playing concerts as System and doing our own things outside of that.

The cover art for “Addicted to the Violence” — a silhouette of a woman against a blood-red background holding an oversize bullet over her head, and standing in front of a row of opium poppies — is the work of your father, Iraqi-born artist Vartan Malakian. Was he a major inspiration for you?

My approach to art and everything I know about it comes from my dad, and the way we approach what we do is very similar. We both do it for ourselves. He has never promoted himself or done an art exhibition. The only things most people have seen from him are the album covers. But ever since I was born, he was doing art in the house, and he’s never cared if anyone was looking at it.

Do you seek his approval?

No, I don’t. He usually is very supportive of what I do, but my dad’s a complicated guy. I admire him a lot and wish I could even be half of the artist that he is. And if he and my mom didn’t move to this country, I would not have been in System of a Down. I would have ended up as a soldier during Desert Storm and the Second Gulf War. That’s my alternative life. It’s crazy.

Have you been to Iraq?

When I was 14 years old, I went there for two months to visit relatives and it was a complete culture shock. I’m a kid that grew up in Hollywood, and I went to Baghdad wearing a Metallica shirt and I was a total smart aleck. Everywhere we went, I saw pictures and statues of Saddam Hussein. I turned to my cousin and said, “What if I walked up to one of the statues and said, ‘Hey Saddam, go f— yourself?’” Just me saying that made him nervous and scared. Talking like that was seriously dangerous and I had no idea. That was a definite learning experience of what I could have been. And it inspired me later to write “Satan Hussein.”

You had a glimpse of life under an authoritarian regime. Do you have strong feelings about the Trump administration and the way the president has, at times, acted like a dictator?

I don’t hate the guy and I don’t love the guy. I’m not on the right, I’m not on the left. There are some things both sides do that I agree with, but I don’t talk about that stuff in interviews because when it comes to politics, I’m not on a team. I don’t like the division in this country, and I think if you’re too far right or you’re too far left, you end up in the same place.

Is “Addicted to the Violence,” and especially the song “Killing Spree,” a commentary on political violence in our country?

Not just political violence, it’s all violence. “Killing Spree” is ridiculous. It’s heavy. It’s dark. But if you listen to the way I sing, there is an absolutely absurd delivery, almost like I’m having fun with it. I’m not celebrating the violence, but the delivery is done the way a crazy person would celebrate it. So, it’s from the viewpoint of a killer, the viewpoint of a victim, and my own viewpoint. I saw a video on social media of these kids standing around in the street, and one of them gets wiped out by the back end of a car and flies into the air. These kids are recording it and some of them are laughing like’s it’s funny. I don’t want to say that’s right or wrong, but from what I’m seeing, a lot of people have become desensitized to violence.

You’re releasing “Addicted to the Violence” about six weeks before the final six System of a Down dates of 2025. Have you figured out how to compartmentalize what you do with System of a Down and Scars on Broadway?

There was a time that I couldn’t juggle the two very well, but now I feel more confident and very comfortable with where System and Scars are. I love playing with System, and I want to do more shows with Scars. I couldn’t tell you how either band will evolve. Only time will tell what happens and I’m fine with that as long as it happens in a natural way. Everything we’ve experienced has brought us to where we are now. And now is all we’ve got because the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. So, the most important thing is the present.

The annual Tomorrowland festival is set to draw about 100,000 attendees, with many expected to camp on site.

A huge fire has engulfed the main stage of Belgium’s globally-renowned Tomorrowland electronic dance music festival, two days before the event was due to open to an expected audience of 100,000.

“Due to a serious incident and fire on the Tomorrowland Mainstage, our beloved Mainstage has been severely damaged,” festival organisers said in a statement on Wednesday.

“We can confirm that no one was injured during the incident,” it added.

Several hundred firefighters had fought to save the stage from the flames, and Antwerp prosecutors have opened an investigation, though they said the fire appeared accidental.

The annual Tomorrowland festival, held in the town of Boom, north of Brussels, is set to begin on Friday and approximately 100,000 participants are expected to attend, with many planning to camp on site for the duration of the event.

The 2025 edition is scheduled to run over the next two weekends.

Organisers said the festival’s campground will open as scheduled on Thursday, when attendees are expected to begin arriving, and emphasised that they are focused on finding solutions for the weekend events.

Several dozen DJs and electronic music stars, such as David Guetta, Lost Frequencies, Armin van Buuren and Charlotte de Witte, are to perform from Friday for the first weekend, with two-thirds of the events split between the now destroyed “Mainstage” and the “Freedom Stage”.

Founded 20 years ago by two Belgian brothers, Tomorrowland has become an internationally-renowned event. A winter festival is now held in the French ski resort of Alpe d’Huez and another in Brazil.

A SUSPECT has been arrested after American Idol music supervisor Robin Kaye and her husband were found dead in their home.

Robin and husband Thomas DeLuca, both 70, were found dead with gunshot wounds to their heads in their Los Angeles mansion on Monday, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to The U.S. Sun.

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Now, police have arrested suspect Raymond Boodarian, 22, although the nature of his arrest is not yet clear.

Family members had called for a welfare check for the couple on Monday, July 14, after they hadn’t been heard from in four days, police said.

When cops arrived at their home in L.A.’s swanky Encino neighborhood, they found blood at the front entrance of the house, TMZ first reported.

Officers smashed a window to get inside, where they discovered the couple’s bodies.

They were both declared dead at the scene at around 2:30 pm.

Footage obtained by ABC affiliate KABC showed the home’s sliding glass door was shattered.

Neighbor Hannah Massachi, a local realtor, told The U.S. Sun locals are “very shaken” and desperate for answers.

“They were a lovely couple, I saw them a few months ago,” she said, adding, “Why would somebody do this?”

“I’ve lived here for over 30 years. Everyone is proud to live in Encino and all the celebrities are here, all the movie stars. I’ve sold many homes here,” she said.

Police had been called to the couple’s $5 million home just days earlier.

EERIE SCARE

On Thursday, a suspect tried to get into Kaye and Deluca’s house while possibly carrying a gun, residents told NBC affiliate KTLA.

The couple’s neighbors said they called police after someone saw a person hopping the fence.

“We didn’t see or hear anything. My renter called 911 on Thursday because she saw somebody hopping the fence,” neighbor Amee Faggen told KABC before the victims were identified.

“And I have no idea if that was related or not. They came and left, the helicopters and police came.”

It’s unclear if the two incidents are related.

POOL CLEANER SPEAKS OUT

Kaye and Deluca’s pool cleaner, Mauro Quintero, turned up at their home on Tuesday to get paid like usual, he told The U.S. Sun.

Instead, he found crime scene tape and learned they had been murdered.

He said Deluca recently told him about another attempted break-in over a month ago.

“Tom told me about a month ago that people tried to break in in the middle of the night,” Quintero, 55, said, adding that the intruders were scared off by the couple’s two small dogs barking.

“But they have little dogs and they woke him up and they ran off.”

He said the couple put up security cameras after the scare. There were also spikes on the fence surrounding the home.

“They were really nice people, the lady especially,” Quintero recalled.

“I only ever saw the two of them at the house.”

Law enforcement sources said they believe the shooting happened Thursday during a possible burglary at the house, reports NBC4 Washington.

Following their tragic deaths, a spokesperson for American Idol said: “We are devastated to hear of Robin and her dear husband, Tom’s, passing.

“Robin has been a cornerstone of the Idol family since 2009 and was truly loved and respected by all who came in contact with her.

“Robin will remain in our hearts forever and we share our deepest sympathy with her family and friends during this difficult time.”

More to follow… For the latest news on this story, keep checking back at The U.S. Sun, your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sports news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures, and must-see videos.

Like us on Facebook at TheSunUS and follow us on X at @TheUSSun

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Tuesday night the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its 103rd season at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a beautiful evening. Lustrous twilight. Bright moon. Paradisal weather. Unusually light traffic. A program featuring Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev favorites. Cares could easily slip away once walking through welcoming and efficient security.

Still, the real world is never far away from the Bowl. One of the highlights of this season has fallen victim to a baffling Venezuela travel ban. Gustavo Dudamel can no longer bring his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now means that Dudamel will spend only a single week at the Bowl during his penultimate summer as L.A. Phil music director.

Some of the Bowl’s facilities have been dolled up a bit, but the amphitheater feels fragile after the January wildfires. The military on our streets has produced an L.A. edginess. Could that have contributed to the Bowl’s unusually low opening-night attendance? Ticket sales were said to have been strong, making the many empty seats worrisome no-shows.

What Tuesday night did herald was an L.A. Phil summer season with fewer splashy events than usual (no opera, for one), several conductors making their Bowl debuts and a good deal of Russian music. It was, moreover, a Tuesday that proved a relatively somber occasion, which, despite the lovely atmosphere, fit the mood of the times.

Danish conductor and Minnesota Orchestra Music Director Thomas Sondergard made his L.A. Phil debut. There is temptation to place every debut, along with every conductor invited back to the Bowl, as a potential candidate for the long list, short list or whatever list to be the L.A. Phil’s next music director after Dudamel departs for New York next year. But Bowl concerts tend to be hit-and-run events.

Sondergard demonstrated a sense of grandeur, sometimes shattering, other times starchy. But there were all the opening-night kinks to be worked out with audio, video, an orchestra just coming back from vacation and coping with minimal rehearsal time.

None of this played into Sondergard’s or the Bowl’s strengths as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A Minor opened the program. The bland Ballade is a lesser score by the late 19th and early 20th century British composer who deserves a revival for his more substantial works.

Pianist Kirill Gerstein performs with the L.A Phil on opening night Tuesday at the Hollywood Bowl.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

For Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the subdued blue shell lighting suddenly turned a shockingly vivid orange. Amplification met the glaring illumination with the evening’s piano soloist, Kirill Gerstein, unnaturally dominating a sonically repressed orchestra. The video monitors went their own crazy way, whether unmusically flipping from close-ups of fingers and lips or attempting surreal cornball special effects.

It was all too much (and in the orchestra’s case, too little), but Gerstein is a gripping pianist in any situation. He has just released an iridescent recording of a piece written for him and vibraphonist Gary Burton by the late jazz great Chick Corea. Thomas Adés wrote his heady Piano Concerto for him. Of all the great recordings of Rachmaninoff’s over-recorded Second Piano Concerto, Gerstein’s recent one with the Berlin Philharmonic may be the most powerful.

Every note, important or incidental, he hit in the Rhapsody had a purposeful intensity. What you could hear of Sondergard’s contribution was a starkly effective percussive response from the orchestra. It was, under any conditions, a striking performance.

Video and audio settled down for Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, which was written in 1944, a decade after Rachmaninoff wrote his Rhapsody. The world had momentously changed in those 10 years.

Both composers fled Russia after the 1917 revolution, but their relationships with their native land was very different. Although Rachmaninoff never returned, he remained thoroughly old-world Russian. He wrote his Rhapsody in idyllic Switzerland, before immigrating to the U.S., where he died in Beverly Hills in 1943.

Prokofiev spent years in Paris and in the U.S. as a modernist, but ultimately Mother Russia was too strong of a pull, and he returned despite the artistic restrictions of Stalinist Russia. His Fifth is a war symphony, written at a time of great nationalism, and it premiered in Moscow in January 1945 just after Russia had routed the Nazi invaders.

Sondergard’s performance lacked the soul of, say, André Previn. (Previn performed the Fifth at his first concert as L.A. Phil music director in 1985). Here, threatening thunder of the monumental first movement was followed by threatening lightning in the faster scherzo followed by the threateningly dark cloudy skies in the slow movement followed by the victorious bombing of the final movement.

The overpowering bigness of this performance happened on the day that the U.S. reaffirmed its commitment to Ukraine in its war with Russia. Three years ago, some questioned whether Russian music should be performed at all. Several other orchestras canceled performances of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” The Bowl’s annual “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” retained the Overture although the program began with the Ukrainian National Anthem.

This summer Russian music abounds at the Bowl with the usual Tchaikovsky (which will be part of the “Classical Pride” program Thursday), a full week of Rachmaninoff, along with more Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. It was with Tchaikovsky that Dudamel made his U.S. debut at the Bowl, the rest being history.

Russian music has, in fact, been a mainstay of the Bowl for 103 years. Russian performers and composers helped to make L.A. what it is artistically today. And how Russian composers, those who stayed and those who left, dealt with militarism, nationalism and the threat of repression has never felt more relevant.

Ever since operetta composer Victor Herbert sued Shanley’s restaurant in New York in 1917 to force it to pay for playing his song on a player-piano, songwriters and music publishers have depended on Performing Rights Organizations to make sure they get compensated.

For much of the last century, three organizations dominated the industry, a relatively staid and unglamorous corner of the music scene that remained largely unchanged throughout the eras of radio, records and CDs. But the rise of streaming has led to a surge in revenue and spawned a handful of new organizations looking to cash in.

Now there are at least half a dozen PROs in the United States, representing songwriters and publishers, each demanding that bars, restaurants, hotels and other venues pay a fee or risk being sued.

Businesses say the rising licensing costs have become overwhelming, and some question whether it’s even worth playing music at all. The House Judiciary Committee last fall asked the Copyright Office to investigate the current system and consider potential reforms. In February, the Office opened an inquiry and received thousands of comments from businesses and songwriters.

“The growing proliferation of PROs and their lack of transparency have made it increasingly difficult to offer music in our establishments,” hundreds of small businesses from across the country wrote to the Copyright Office in a joint letter.

“The issue is not that small businesses are unwilling to pay for music,” they wrote, adding that the current system is unfair and untenable. “Small businesses can be left feeling like PROs have them over the proverbial barrel.”

Creating a welcoming ambiance in a restaurant or yoga studio isn’t as simple as putting on a Spotify playlist. Streaming has unleashed trillions of songs, and every one must be licensed and have royalties paid to the songwriter whenever any track is played in public. Violations can cost up to $150,000 per infringement.

This booming market for music publishing has led to a windfall for the two major PROs. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, founded in 1914, and BMI, established in 1939, together represent more than 90% of musical compositions in the U.S. today with talent lists covering Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and Eminem, to name a few. SESAC, founded in 1931, rounds out the original three and operates on an invite-only basis.

ASCAP, the oldest and, as a nonprofit, the only PRO to publicly share data on its collections and payout, has seen revenue jump to $1.8 billion in 2024 from $935 million in 2010. Broadcast Music Inc., in its last public report as a nonprofit in 2022, showed record revenue of $1.6 billion, with 48% of that from digital sources.

This kind of growth hasn’t gone unnoticed. In just over the last 12 years, three new PROs have emerged. Legendary music manager Irving Azoff founded Global Music Rights in 2013, offering “boutique services” and royalty transparency, building a stable of more than 160 high-profile songwriters such as Bad Bunny and Bruce Springsteen.

AllTrack, founded in 2017, caters to smaller, independent songwriters. Pro Music Rights launched in 2018 and says it represents more than 2.5 million musical works, including AI-created music.

Many songs today are composed by several songwriters, each of whom could be affiliated with a different PRO. Therefore, to legally play those songs, establishments must pay for a license from each PRO. Most PROs offer blanket licensing agreements, meaning that they provide access to their entire repertoires for one fee. And while that gives a particular venue a wide range of musical freedom, it also means bars and restaurants are paying for thousands of songs they may never play or are essentially paying twice, in instances where a song with multiple writers is represented by more than one PRO.

The National Restaurant Assn. said its members pay an average of $4,500 per year to license music, or 0.5% of the average U.S. small restaurant’s total annual sales.

“This may not seem like a large amount, but for an industry that runs on an average pre-tax margin of 3%-5%, this cost is significant, especially since operators don’t clearly understand what they get for this particular investment aside from avoiding the very legitimate threat of a business-ending lawsuit,” the association wrote in public comments to the Copyright Office.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. said the mushrooming number of PROs has led to “significant increases in both financial and administrative burdens.” It gave an example of one “major global hotel chain” that reported the cost per hotel for PRO license fees rose by about 200% from 2021-25, with some hotels seeing increases of 400% or more.

A large hotel that hosts occasional live music events could be paying a single PRO $5,000 to $20,000 a year. If it’s paying all of the major PROs, it could be incurring as much as $80,000 in fees, according to the association.

BMI said its licensing fees have remained “relatively steady over the years” and are based on objective criteria that apply equally to all similar businesses. Fees for individual bars and restaurants start at just over $1 a day, according to BMI. Other factors that go into licensing fees include the occupancy rate, and the type of music being played — live, DJed or recorded, for example.

Songwriters’ livelihoods

In the 1917 Supreme Court case that delivered Herbert his victory over Shanley’s, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “If music did not pay, it would be given up.”  He wasn’t only referring to the songwriters, but also to the venues themselves and addressing whether music helped generate revenue. The ruling was a win for Herbert personally but also for ASCAP, which he had helped found, and established the royalty payment system that’s largely still in use today.

A spokesperson for ASCAP said an increase in fees paid to songwriters by venues is an appropriate and inevitable outcome of a growing market. The organization’s musical repertoires have grown exponentially over the years to include tens of millions of works, giving music users more music and more choice, the spokesperson said. ASCAP says about 90 cents of every dollar it collects from licensees is made available for distribution to its members as royalties.

“Licensees are seeking more regulation of PROs because they want to pay songwriters less,” ASCAP Chief Executive Elizabeth Matthews said in a statement to Bloomberg. “If transparency, efficiency and innovation are the goals, more free market competition among PROs is the answer— not unnecessary government intervention.”

Songwriters depend on PROs for their livelihoods, especially in the streaming era. Many individual songwriters wrote to the Copyright Office in defense of the PRO system, expressing concern that government regulation would only diminish their hard-won earnings.

“Every royalty payment I receive represents not just compensation for my work, but my ability to continue creating music that enhances these very businesses,” wrote Joseph Trapanese, a composer who has created scores for film and TV.

Performance royalties make up about half of total publishing revenue, which is collected by PROs and dispersed to songwriters, according to the National Music Publishers’ Assn. Last year, only about 5% of songwriters’ earnings came from bars, restaurants and other venues, a figure that is “significantly undervalued,” according to NMPA executive vice president and General Counsel Danielle Aguirre.

“There is a substantial opportunity for growth here,” she said, speaking at the group’s annual meeting in June.

The organization set a goal to significantly increase that money over the next year, likely by enforcing licensing requirements.

Several establishment owners equated the PRO’s efforts to collect fees to a mob-like shakedown, citing aggressive on-site confrontations and threatening letters.

BMI said it spends a lot of time trying to educate business owners on the value that music brings to their establishment, federal copyright law requirements and the importance of maintaining a music license.

Lawsuits are always a last resort, a spokesperson said, which is why BMI spends sometimes years on educational outreach. If those efforts are ignored, however, an in-person visit might occur, and BMI may take legal action.

Opaque, bureaucratic

Despite their differences, songwriters and businesses agree that the current system is opaque and bureaucratic and could serve both sides better.

Businesses complain about the lack of a comprehensive database of songs and the fact that there is no easy system for reporting which songs they’ve played. Meanwhile, songwriters claim that the sheer volume of music and businesses throughout the U.S. makes it hard to track where and when their work is played and to know whether they’ve been properly compensated.

“What’s really being called to question is, is this system working accurately—is the money that should be finding its way to the songwriters’ pockets finding its way in an efficient manner?” said George Howard, a professor at Berklee College of Music. “And the answer is ‘no.’ There’s no excuse for that with the level of technology we have today.”

BMI and ASCAP joined forces in 2020 to launch Songview, a free digital database showing copyright ownership and administration shares for more than 20 million works. The two PROs are exploring including GMR and SESAC, which would add even more songs to the platform.

Some of the complaints about the PRO licensing system go back decades. Michael Dorf, a producer and founder of the legendary Manhattan music club The Knitting Factory, has faced off with PROs numerous times over his 30-some years as a venue operator. In the 1990s, he signed singer-songwriters who performed at his club to his publishing company and submitted their setlists to the PROs, assuming he and his acts would reap the resulting royalties from their performances.

But no money came in

“We didn’t receive one penny,” Dorf, who’s also the founder and chief executive officer of City Winery, said in an interview. “To me, there is a cost of doing business, and we want to have the artists and the songwriters properly paid — we love that. What’s simply frustrating is to pay money and know it’s not going to the reason why it’s being collected.”

Caleb Shreve, a songwriter and producer who’s worked with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and is also chief executive at Killphonic Rights, a rights collection organization, said he hears music he has produced “all the time in yoga spots and bars, and I’ve never seen them on publishing statements.” Many songwriters are convinced the current system favors the biggest artists at the expense of middle-tier and emerging songwriters. Because of the blanket licensing system, BMI and ASCAP don’t track individual song use by those licensees and instead rely on proxy data, like what’s popular on the radio or through streaming platforms, to divvy up those collected fees.

Sometimes radio hits mimic what’s played in an arena, restaurant or bar, but not always.

ASCAP said it tracks trillions of performances every year across all media platforms and only uses sample surveys or proxy data when obtaining actual performance data isn’t feasible or is cost prohibitive.

Technology could be a way to solve the current issues without regulation. London-based Audoo is one company leading the way.

Founded by musician Ryan Edwards in 2018 after he heard his music being played in a department store and discovered he wasn’t getting paid for it, the growing startup uses proprietary listening devices it places in cafes, gyms and other public venues to recognize and log songs. It uploads the data to the cloud, ensuring every artist — not just the chart toppers — receives compensation for their work.

The company has attracted investment from music icons including Elton John and Adele, and its devices are used by PROs in the U.K. and Australia. It made its first foray into the US earlier this year, placing listening devices in about 180 establishments around the Denver area in a test run.The collected data underscored that what’s played in public places doesn’t necessarily mirror what’s on the popular playlists or radio and streaming platforms. Edwards likens the idea of using proxies to political polling — directionally helpful but not precise.

Audoo found that 77,000 unique tracks were played around Denver over two months, split among 26,000 artists, according to data viewed by Bloomberg News. On average, only 6.6% of the top-40 songs played in the venues also appeared on Billboard’s top radio-play chart.

In markets where Audoo has partnered with venues, Edwards said business owners have been proud to support particular songwriters and the music business writ large.

“All of a sudden it went from a push-and-pull of, ‘Why do I owe you money?’ to, ‘OK, I can understand music is funding the people who create,’” Edwards said.

Carman and Soni write for Bloomberg.

“A Beautiful Noise” is a jukebox musical that understands the assignment.

The show, which opened Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on the Broadway musical’s North American tour, exists to celebrate the rough magic of Neil Diamond’s catalog. If glorious singing of American pop gold is what you’re looking for, “A Beautiful Noise” delivers.

Diamond’s fans will no doubt feel remunerated by the thrilling vocal performance of Nick Fradiani, the 2015 winner of “American Idol,” who plays the young iteration of the double-cast Neil, the Brooklyn-born pop sensation who went on a rocket ship to fame and fortune that gave him everything in the world but the peace that had always eluded him. Fradiani vocally captures not just the driving excitement of Diamond’s singing but the note of masculine melancholy that gives the songs their grainy, ruminative subtext.

Hannah Jewel Kohn and Nick Fradiani play Marcia Murphey and the young version of the double-cast Neil Diamond, respectively.

(Jeremy Daniel)

Jukebox musicals, inspired perhaps by the commercial success of “Mamma Mia!,” tend to muscle an artist’s hits into flagrantly incongruous dramatic contexts. Anthony McCarten, the book writer of “A Beautiful Noise,” avoids this trap by setting up a framework that deepens our appreciation of Diamond’s music by shining a biographical light on how the songs came into existence.

The older version of , now the grizzled Diamond burnt out by tour life and desperate not to duplicate the mistakes he made in his first two marriages, is played by Robert Westenberg. He’s been sent by his third wife to a psychotherapist to work on himself. As he shares with the doctor (Lisa Reneé Pitts), he’s been told that he’s hard to live with — an accusation that his long, stubborn silences in the session make instantly credible.

Introspection is as unnatural to Neil as it was for Tony Soprano, but the doctor gently guides Neil past his resistance. Intrigued by his remark that he put everything he had to say into his music, she presents him with a volume of his collected lyrics and asks him to talk her through one of his songs.

Nick Fradiani, from left, Robert Westenberg and Lisa Reneé Pitts as both iterations of Neil and his doctor during an onstage therapy session.

(Jeremy Daniel)

“I Am … I Said,” which makes reference to a frog that dreamed of being a king before becoming one, cuts too close to the bone. That single will have to wait for a breakthrough in therapy, but he is lured back into his past when the Jewish boy from Flatbush talked his way into a meeting with Ellie Greenwich (Kate A. Mulligan), the famed songwriter and producer, who convinced him not to change his name and gave him the chance that set him down the road to stardom.

The production, directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Steven Hoggett, marks this therapy milestone by having backup singers and chorus members emerge from behind Neil’s chair. Out of darkness, musical euphoria shines through.

The show’s approach is largely chronological. “I’m A Believer,” which became a runaway hit for the Monkees, catapults Diamond into the big leagues. Once he starts singing his own material, he becomes a bona fide rock star — a moody Elvis who straddles rock, country, folk and pop with a hangdog bravura.

Neil’s first marriage to Jaye Posner (a touching Tiffany Tatreau) is an early casualty after he falls in love with Marcia Murphey (Hannah Jewel Kohn, spinning a seductive spell musically and dramatically). It’s Marcia who coaches him into playing the part of front man. The hits come fast and furious after that, but the frenzy of tour life exacts a severe toll.

Tiffany Tatreau as Diamond’s first wife Jaye Posner, from center left, Nick Fradiani and Kate A. Mulligan as singer-producer Ellie Greenwich in “A Beautiful Noise.”

(Jeremy Daniel)

Of course, everyone at the Pantages is waiting impatiently for “Sweet Caroline,” the anthem that never fails to transform into a sing-along after the first “bum-bum-bum.” The performance of this ecstatic number is powerfully mood-elevating.

Fradiani’s character work is most impressive in his singing. That’s when the inner trouble Neil has been evading since his Brooklyn childhood hauntingly resounds.

“America,” “A Beautiful Noise,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Love on the Rocks” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” songs heard countless times, take on more weight as the circumstances of their creation are revealed. The therapy gets a little heavy-handed in the protracted final stretch. But Westenberg, who’s a touch too emphatic early on, lends poignancy to the cathartic release that ushers Neil into a new place of self-understanding.

By keeping the focus where it should be — on the music — “A Beautiful Noise” thrives where more ambitious jukebox musicals stumble. This is a show for fans. But as the son of one who remembers the songs from family road trips, even though I have none of them in my music library, I was grooving to the sound of a bygone America, high on its own unlimited possibilities.

At the curtain call at Wednesday’s opening, Katie Diamond came on stage and video-called her husband as the Pantages audience collectively joined in an encore of “Sweet Caroline.” It wasn’t easy to hear Diamond sing, but it hardly mattered. Fradiani had supplied that dopamine rush for more than two hours with his virtuoso musical portrayal.

Germany shattered the world record for largest string orchestra as 1,353 musicians performed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The intergenerational event brought together players of all ages, beating the previous record set in Hong Kong in 2018.

Natalie Z. Briones is a concert veteran. She’s been to heavy metal concerts and a punk music festival where she napped most of the time. On Sunday, she attended her first baby rave.

Natalie is a few months shy of two. In the arms of her dad, Alvin Briones, 36, the pigtailed toddler squealed “Hi!” to anyone passing by the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood where the Briones family was lined up to meet Lenny Pearce, the mastermind behind Natalie’s favorite song, “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Natalie Z. Briones, held by her father Alvin Briones, sports rainbow face paint at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

It’s not the classic version most parents sing while slowly swaying and clapping — Pearce’s rendition rages with enough bass to rattle rib cages. Natalie is here for it, and so is her mom, Alondra Briones, who plays the techno remix during her drives to work even without Natalie in the backseat.

“It’s a pick-me-up,” said Alondra, 28, from Compton, before filing into the theater with other parents and caregivers for an afternoon rager with their kids.

In Pearce’s techno remixes of classic children’s music, an unexpected subgenre is taking off — toddler techno — which melds the cloyingly sweet lyrics of songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with the edgy beat drops associated with music from gritty warehouse parties.

The unlikely musical pairing creates a bridge between parents like Sandra Mikhail and her 6-year-old daughter, Mila. Both dressed in fuchsia at Pearce’s dance party, the mother-daughter duo were there to celebrate Mila’s promotion from kindergarten. In their Riverside home, Pearce’s music is on heavy rotation.

Children squeal in delight at the baby rave at the Roxy as Kuma the money, Lenny Pearce’s sidekick, hypes up the crowd.

“I can handle kids’ music now,” said Sandra, 38. “With the beat and [Pearce] adding that techno touch to it, it makes me able to tolerate listening to it all day long.”

For the last year, Pearce has been hosting sold-out dance parties boldly called baby raves — first in his native Australia — then on the first leg of his U.S. tour, which culminated in a June 29 double-header at the Roxy.

In the afternoon show timed for that sweet spot many parents know well — post-nap and right before the evening witching hours — Pearce pranced, high-fived kids and waved at babies being hoisted in the air.

Lenny Pearce vibes with the crowd at his sold-out show at the Roxy.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

At 34, he’s been an entertainer for most of his life. Over a decade ago, he was dancing in music videos as a member of the Australian boy band, Justice Crew. Now, he’s firmly affixed in his dad era. His dance partner is now a large balloon spider named Incy Wincy.

“I’m just being a dad on stage,” said Pearce in a video interview from New York. “I can make a clown of myself to entertain kids.”

From boy band to toddler techno

Lenny Pearce uses props during his shows, including an inflatable duck.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Pearce’s journey into children’s entertainment seemed preordained, if only because his identical twin brother is arguably the second most famous purple character on a children’s TV show (behind Barney, of course).

“We’re both in the toddler scene,” said John Pearce, the older twin by minutes, who in 2021 joined “The Wiggles” cast as the Purple Wiggle. “[My brother’s] stuck with it for a long time, and it’s all paid off now.”

At the Roxy, many parents and caregivers said they found Pearce through the Purple Wiggle. Others discovered him on social media: He has more than 2 million followers on TikTok and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

Before becoming children’s entertainers, the Pearce brothers were members of Justice Crew, a dance troupe that won “Australia’s Got Talent” in 2010. For a few years, the boy band’s future burned white hot with the aspiration to break through in the U.S. — a dream that never materialized.

Lenny Pearce started making what he calls toddler techno music after his daughter was born in 2022. As a dad, he says he’s happy to act silly for kids.

Most boy bands have a finite time in the spotlight, said Pearce. In 2016, he quit the Justice Crew to focus on DJing and music production, but the transition from boy band to toddler techno didn’t happen overnight. For a time, he worked as a salesperson at an Australian electronic store.

“People were like, ‘Aren’t you from Justice Crew?’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Now, do you want this lens with that camera?’”

In 2022, becoming a dad to his daughter Mila changed the course of his creativity. Pearce started remixing children’s songs with “ravey” music and filming himself dancing with her to the songs. Soon, other parents started sharing videos of their kids dancing to his songs, too. In this way, social media allows for ideas to be refined until something sticks.

In March, Pearce released his first solo album aptly titled, “Toddler Techno.”

All along the way, he imagined playing these songs at mini raves. For this generation of kids and their millennial parents, it’s not a stretch, said Pearce. Pretend DJ tables are just as commonly sold in toy aisles as construction trucks.

In the fall, Pearce and his baby raves will return to the U.S. — and, yes, to L.A. — in a 30-city tour. As a solo artist, he’s done what he couldn’t do in a band — he’s broken through to the U.S. and international audiences.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Pearce. “I always felt like I had something to say, but no one really listened.”

But are techno parties OK for kids?

Many attendees at the baby rave were wearing ear covers.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

The roots of techno — in Detroit or Berlin depending on whom you talk to — were always antiestablishment, said Ambrus Deak, program manager of music production at the Los Angeles Film School.

“It was exploratory,” said Deak, a longtime DJ who went by DJ AMB, about techno.

Toddler techno plays with that contrast — an edgy genre made safe for kids. Deak would not attend a baby rave — “It would be very cringe for me,” he said — but sees the appeal.

“I can definitely see a lot of people being into it,” said Deak, 48.

Still, not everyone is sold on the idea of taking kids to a rave — even one held in the middle of the day with a face-painting station. In the comments of Pearce’s social media posts, parents occasionally debate the appropriateness of exposing kids to drug-addled rave culture.

“I know that most people would say, ‘Is this the image we want to teach our kids?’” said Pearce. “What image are you imagining? Because if you think about it, they’re just kids with light sticks, right?”

He gets the concern, but kids don’t know about the darker sides of raves unless they are taught. And that’s not what his baby raves are about.

In the right dose, some experts say techno music and baby raves can be beneficial for kids and parents.

“Parents’ happiness and stress regulation also matter,” said Jenna Marcovitz, director of the UCLA Health Music Therapy program. “Techno can promote oxytocin and boost endorphins. It can encourage joy and play and really support brain development, emotional regulation and really enhance the parent-child bond as well.”

At the Roxy, one man vigorously pumped his fist to the beat of the music.

“Fist pump like this!” he shouted to the child on his shoulders. Both fists — little and big — jabbed the air.

How to keep it safe and sane

Glow sticks were a popular accessory at the event.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Everything — especially baby raves — should be enjoyed in moderation. The pulsating music, giant inflatables tossed into the crowd and sudden blasts of fog can overstimulate kids.

For the roughly one-hour show, the music is loud. Typically set to 85 to 90 decibels, Pearce said. Having a sensory support plan is key, said Marcovitz, who recommends toddlers wear headphones with a noise reduction rating of 20 to 30 decibels or higher — like this one or this one. Practicing dance parties at home, so your child knows what to expect, is also helpful.

At the rave, look for signs of overstimulation, which can present differently with each child — some might shut down while others might start shoving each other mosh pit-style. At the Roxy show, one toddler sat down, ate half a bag of Goldfish crackers and poured the rest on the floor. Another disappeared into the crowd for a few alarming moments before being returned by a good Samaritan.

Toddlers crawl and lay down amid the crowd at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

“For any child, I would recommend breaks every 30 minutes,” said Marcovitz. “Step outside.”

Because techno hypes people up — even little kids — it’s important to help a child regulate their nervous system back down after the show.

“Lots of cuddles, silence and hugs,” said Marcovitz.

Pearce also starts the party late, so the dance party before the rave can tucker kids out before he takes the stage.

Ashley and Todd Herles drove from Santa Clarita to the Roxy so their son, Oliver, 3, could meet Pearce before the show. They said they bought $120 VIP tickets, which included a meet and greet and table seats where Oliver got to high-five Kuma, Pearce’s dancing sidekick in a turquoise monkey suit. For Pearce’s November 23 show at the Novo in downtown Los Angeles, ticket prices currently range from $48 to $195, fees and taxes included.

Overall, Oliver loved it — until he didn’t.

“[The] meltdown happened around 1:40 so we left then,” said Ashley, 40.

They had big post-rave plans to refuel with french fries. But Oliver was tired.

And, most importantly?

“Our backs hurt,” said Ashley.

Children bopped along to the music from atop their parents’ shoulders during the dance party.