rain

A NOUGHTIES pop star looks unrecognisable 23 years after his controversial hit, as he braved the rain at a UK festival.

This US singer, now 54, shot to fame in a quirky Detroit rock band – but can you guess who he is?

The star in question is Dick Valentine, who is known for the band Electric Six, which he founded with friends from high school.

The band launched into the spotlight in the early noughties, and were known for their controversial song Gay Bar.

The tune was released in June 2003, and lead singer Dick, who’s real name is Tyler Spencer, has now revealed how he came up with the song.

Speaking in the rain at Download Festival, he told the Academy Music Group: “The real story, I was in a rock and roll bar. Okay, and so there’s ambient noise, there are people talking, there are drinks clinking.

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“In the background, on the jukebox, right, you’re hearing the song that they’re playing in the jukebox, but you can’t quite make out the lyrics.

“The song on the jukebox was Girl You Want by Devo, where the lyrics are, ‘She’s just a girl, just a girl, girl you want.’

“Those are the lyrics, those are the actual lyrics.”

Continuing with his story, Dick said: “But I thought he was saying, ‘She’s just a girl, just a girl in a gay bar.’

“And so I started singing that, and my friend was like, ‘No, no, no, what are you singing?’

“So then I’ve got this lyric now about a girl in a gay bar, right, I’ve got this, and it hasn’t been used, so now this is mine.

“So that was the genesis of it. It was just a misheard lyric in a pub, and it worked out really well for me!”

When Gay Bar was released over twenty years ago, the track certainly caused a stir.

While the song and music video got a lot of airplay the lyrics mentioning the Iraq war, which was ongoing at the time, were edited because they were perceived to have been offensive at the time.

Meanwhile, Electric Six shot to fame with their first single, Danger! High Voltage, which soared to No. 2 in the UK charts.

Along with Dick, the original line-up included Cory Martin on drums, Anthony Selph on lead guitar, Joe Frezza on rhythm guitar, and Steve Nawara on bass.

Over the years the band has experienced various changes in members, but Dick has always remained at the helm.

Electric Six continue to perform, and are currently on tour right now in the UK.

When dozens of farmers bade farewell to their family members on the morning of Friday, June 12, and headed out in different directions to work on their farms, 17 of them were not lucky enough to return home alive. The farmers were killed after terrorists invaded their fields in the Maradun Local Government Area (LGA) of Zamfara, North West Nigeria.

Locals say 13 other farmers were injured during the attack, with three of them referred to the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital (UDUTH) in Sokoto. A survivor of the attack, who identified himself only as Bello, told HumAngle that he was on his farm in the outskirts of Gora in the Maradun LGA, at around 9 a.m., when he heard the first gunshot. He said he thought it was one of the Yan Sakai local security guards, but it became clear that it was a terrorist attack when the gunshot sounded a second time. Yan Sakai security volunteers are young people carrying weapons to protect residents from terrorist attacks. 

Bello recalled that he was lying face down while others fled. As the gunfire persisted, he managed to pull himself to the other side of the road before running home. “I was lucky, my farm is right on the side of the road; most of those killed had their farms a little bit away from the road,” he said.

For over ten years, rural terrorism has become widespread and persisted in Zamfara and other northwestern states. In many ungovernable areas, farmers are compelled to pay a farming tax before they are permitted to work on their fields as the wet season arrives. The armed groups also require farmers to make payments running into millions to cultivate their crops. Even after paying, not all communities are granted access to their farmlands. Many communities have been displaced, and food stores have been torched because residents failed to pay the required farming tax.

HumAngle recently reported that about 40 leaders of a farming community were abducted at a peace deal meeting with a terrorist leader in a village in the Maradun LGA. The community leaders were lured into a meeting to discuss how much they would pay to a terror group, only for them to be abducted by the leader of the criminal syndicate. In a separate report, we also documented how farmers were being displaced after paying millions of naira as farming tax to terrorists in Zamfara.

“There were a lot of motorcycles with bandits on top, shooting sporadically, but I managed to escape. The bandits [terrorists] must have divided into groups because there were gunshots from all corners,” Bello said.

The chairman of the Maradun LGA, Sanusi Dosara, stated that the recent devastating attack reflects the ongoing efforts of terrorists to disrupt farming activities in the state. Since early June, there has been an increase in attacks aimed at farmers in Zamfara. 

Prior to the latest incident, two farmers were killed while tending to their fields near the Kaya community, not far from Gora in Maradun. Earlier, eight farmers were killed in an attack in Gima village, located in Anka LGA. According to locals, the farmers who lost their lives in the Gima assault were: Sani Kanen Tidurogo, Salisu Kadda, Bello Kyabe, Ibrahim na Yakubu Ziti, Yusuf Malan Rabi, Masaudu Sani Adake, Abdulmajid Sani, and Adamu Dungo.

“The terrorists are intentional about what they want,” Abdulmudallib Anka, a resident, told HumAngle. His house in Anka is filled with internally displaced persons from Gima and other villages. “The day of that attack, the terrorists circled a group of farmers working on their farms before they started shooting sporadically.”

Abdulmudallib noted that the recurring attacks have shown the terrorists are ready to continue their onslaught against the civilian population, so as to stop them from gaining access to their farms. There have also been reports of attacks in which farmers were killed in the communities of Kaura Namoda, Tsafe, Zurmi, and Birnin Magaji LGAs over the past few days.

Sulaiman Abdullahi, a youth leader in Birnin Magaji, said the situation has forced several farmers to stop going to the farm.

“Early June, farmers were attacked outside Tungar Danjuma and Gidan Kyafda, which led to the death of about six farmers with several others injured,” Sulaiman said. “That same day, farmlands on the Birnin Magaji – Kaura Namoda road were also attacked around 1 p.m.”

In Zurmi LGA, the terrorists struck on June 7 and invaded the outskirts of the town, along the road to Kaura Namoda, killing two farmers working on their farms. 

US President Donald Trump says Iran has agreed to not acquire nuclear weapons and will ‘suffer unbelievable consequences’ if they do. His remarks came during a meeting with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim at the G7 summit in France.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Golden Tempo closed out the Triple Crown season Saturday the same way he began it: In the winner’s circle.

The circumstances were different from the Kentucky Derby, when the late-running son of Curlin was helped by a hot pace that tired out the front-runners.

There was no such setup in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, but Golden Tempo showed he didn’t need it.

Ridden again by Jose Ortiz, the Derby champion stormed into the stretch and outfinished Commandment to win a thrilling stretch duel by 1¼ lengths at Saratoga Race Course.

“Golden Tempo is amazing. Jose is amazing,” said trainer Cherie DeVaux, who added to her historic win as the first woman to capture the Derby by becoming the first woman to win two Triple Crown races.

“Amazing feeling,” she said on Fox Sports.

Golden Tempo was sent off as the co-fourth choice with Commandment at 6-1 and returned $14 for a $2 win ticket. Renegade, the Derby runner-up, finished third as the 17-10 favorite and Chief Wallabee, the second choice at 5-1, was fourth. The rest of the finishing order: Emerging Market, Growth Equity, Vitruvian Man, Ottinho and Powershift.

This marked the second straight year the Derby winner also captured the Belmont after skipping the Preakness, with Golden Tempo following Sovereignty. It’s the fifth time in the past six years that a horse used that formula to win this race.

Could Golden Tempo have won the Triple Crown?

“It’s not something I want to think about,” DeVaux said. “We made our decision and he won today and we’re going to be happy about that.”

Trainer Cherie DeVaux lifts the August Belmont Trophy as she stands next to winning jockey Jose Ortiz, left, after Golden Tempo’s victory in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Al Bello / Getty Images)

Golden Tempo, a homebred of owners Phipps Stable and St. Elias Stables, won for the fourth time in six starts. He earned $1.2 million from the $2-million purse to push his career total past $4.6 million.

Despite his victory five weeks ago in Kentucky, the general feeling about Golden Tempo entering the Belmont was pessimism. Not one of the 19 experts surveyed in Saturday’s Daily Racing Form selected him to win, with just two picking him second. The consensus was he would not finish in the top four.

The lack of pace was one reason, and sure enough, the race played out pretty much as expected, with Renegade’s stablemate, Powershift, dawdling through the first six furlongs in 1 minute, 12.38 seconds, about a second and a half slower than the same distance for the Derby (1:10.90).

Golden Tempo, ridden by jockey Jose Ortiz, crosses the finish line to win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

As he was in the Derby, Golden Tempo was last for more than half the race, but Saturday he trailed eight horses instead of 17 and never was more than about eight lengths behind the leader.

Growth Equity, who had been stalking Powershift, took the lead as the field turned into the stretch, but he soon was passed by Chief Wallabee. Before the field had run another furlong, though, Golden Tempo had moved around Renegade to the front. Commandment was on Golden Tempo’s outside but was unable to get past in the final furlong. In fact, the winner was pulling away as they reached the finish.

The final time wasn’t fast, 2:03.49 for 1¼ miles at Saratoga, which was hosting the Belmont for the third and final year while Belmont Park is rebuilt. The race started about five minutes after rain began falling in upstate New York.

Baffert’s Nysos dominates Met Mile

Nysos crosses the finish line to win the 133rd running of the Met Mile at Saratoga on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

The afternoon did not begin well for trainer Bob Baffert, who saw his top 3-year-old, Crude Velocity, routed by DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens and his leading sprinter, Imagination, come up empty in the True North. But Nysos, the best horse in Baffert’s barn, salvaged the day — and then some — with a dominant win over Journalism and five others in the Grade 1 Met Mile.

“I’ve always thought he was one of the best horses in training and today he showed it,” Baffert said of the 7-5 favorite, who returned $4.94 after clocking 1:34.85, just 0.13 off the track record.

The victory was not without an anxious moment or two. Jockey Flavien Prat rushed Nysos to the lead out of the gate, but when he was joined on the pace by Antiquarian, Saudi Crown and Knightsbridge, the jockey dropped Nysos back to fourth place at the midway point.

“When he took him back I just thought, ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’” Baffert said.

Not surprisingly, Prat did. After Knightsbridge passed Antiquarian on the far turn, Prat took Nysos around those two as they moved into the stretch and pulled away. Knightsbridge was four lengths back in second with Journalism another three-quarters of a length behind in third.

“It felt like down the backside, the pressure from the outside never really stopped,” Prat said. “I figured I had to give him a chance, knowing he was carrying 126 [pounds] and he hasn’t run for [four] months, and it just played out good. When I tipped him out, he gave me a great run.”

It was the eighth win in 10 lifetime starts for Nysos, a 5-year-old son of Nyquist. He was second in the two defeats.

“He’s one of the best horses I’ve ever trained,” Baffert said.

The victory earned Nysos a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in October at Keeneland, but the horse won that race last year and Baffert has a bigger prize in mind.

“We’re going for the Classic,” he said, mentioning the Aug. 22 Pacific Classic at Del Mar as a possible race to bridge the gap between now and Oct. 31.