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The Great Paul Shaffer Part of All Star Show with Patty Smyth, Average White Band, Jazz Great Bob James, Lisa Fischer

Roger Friedman
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The Great Paul Shaffer Part of All Star Show with Patty Smyth, Average White Band, Jazz Great Bob James, Lisa Fischer

Musicians United for ALS is coming together on April 15th for a great cause.

“Letterman” bandleader and great musician Paul Shaffer will be part of an all star band for a night to raise money for ALS United Greater New York. The concert, conducted by Rob Mathes (Sting, Elvis Costello) will take place at the Concert Hall at SUNY Purchase in Westchester County on April 15th. (There are plenty of trains, don’t worry!)

This particular night is on honor of beloved music producer Wayne Warneke, whose wife, Vaneese Thomas, is the daughter of late R&B legend Rufus Thomas. Her sister is the Queen of Stax Records, Carla Thomas.

Wayne — well known as producer of stars like Chaka Khan, Patti Austin, and Luther Vandross — and Vaneese have made some amazing records together including the current “Stories in Blue.” Vaneese is also well known as one of Aretha Franklin’s backup singers for many years before Aretha died. Wayne was diagnosed with ALS in 2022.

The line up for this show is staggering. Guest stars include Shaffer, Patty Smyth, the Average White Band, jazz great Bob James, Lisa Fischer, and more. Former Yankee great Bernie Williams will be on guitar. Shawn Pelton (Saturday Night Live), Will Lee (Letterman), Robbie Kondor (Carole King), and Oz Noy.

Organized by Westchester musician Mickey Rosen, and supported by Title Sponsor The Lasdon Foundation, the evening will be MC’d by Vincent Pastore of “The Sopranos” and led by celebrated arranger and producer Mathes as musical director.

What a great night! And the tickets are tax deductible, which is always nice!

A silent auction will feature exclusive items, including a signed tennis ball from John McEnroe and guitars signed by Willie Nelson, Buddy Guy, and Joe Bonamassa.

How to buy tickets:

● What: Fundraising concert for ALS United Greater New York
● When: Tuesday, April 15, 2025
● Time: Cocktail Reception at 5:30, Performances start at 7:00 pm
● Where: The Concert Hall, SUNY Purchase, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY
● Ticket Prices: $215 – $250
● VIP Sponsorships: Available
● Ticket Link: https://alsunitedgreaternewyork.ticketspice.com/a-night-for-wayne
● Contact: Louis Toscano at anightforwayne@gmail.com or 845-507-2885.

amFAR: Assets, Revenue Are Down, Salaries Are Up, Cost of Cannes Party $5.2 Million

Roger Friedman
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amFAR: Assets, Revenue Are Down, Salaries Are Up, Cost of Cannes Party $5.2 Million

amFAR and the Met Gala are the two screwiest charities of all time. They’re staged for ego, and there’s a lot of it.

amFAR just announced Duran Duran as the musical guest for Cannes this year, and Taraji P. Henson as host.

Do any of them know what goes on with amFAR? I’ve been writing about it for 20 years.

Their latest tax filing shows assets and revenue are down, salaries are up. The cost of the 2023 Cannes event was $5.2 million. CEO Kevin Frost’s salary was a little over $600,000.

And still they come, whoever’s in Cannes by the second Thursday of the festival. Eurotrash loves a good amFAR. They don’t care where the money goes.

“SNL” Looks for Trouble With Controversial Musical Guests Lizzo, Morgan Wallen Featured on Next Shows

Roger Friedman
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“SNL” Looks for Trouble With Controversial Musical Guests Lizzo, Morgan Wallen Featured on Next Shows

“Saturday Night Live” is looking for love in all the wrong places.

They’ve booked country star Morgan Wallen as musical guest for March 29th and Lizzo for April 12th.

Wallen is notorious for being caught on home video using the “N” word. His album sales are huge in red states. But will the “SNL” audience — or even cast — hold it against him?

Lizzo, as I wrote yesterday, is not selling records since she was sued in 2023 for sexual harassment by her ex dancers.

The new schedule is below. One thing we can all be excited about is Elton John and Brandi Carlile on April 5th. They’re promoting their new album but Elton had better sing a hit. Maybe he can Brandi can do “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” Please God.

“White Lotus” Ratings: Incest is Best as Sam Rockwell Speech, Brothers Kissing, Sends Numbers Up to Highest Yet

Roger Friedman
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“White Lotus” Ratings: Incest is Best as Sam Rockwell Speech, Brothers Kissing, Sends Numbers Up to Highest Yet

Sam Rockwell’s surprise appearance and startling speech on Sunday’s “White Lotus” was a hit.

So was the two brothers’ incestuous kiss. (Wait til viewers see what happens next.)

The result was a gain of 150,000 viewers on HBO linear channel on Sunday. The show scored its highest ratings yet with 828,000 fans tuning in.

Both Rockwell and the kiss were surprises to the East Coast. But social media posts were off the wall when the other time zones kicked in. That certainly helped.

Rockwell just about cinched an Emmy Award (although he’ll be up against Bradley Cooper in “The Righteous Gemstones.”)

The kiss and its fallout will not get Emmy notice however. “The White Lotus” will be best to go for nods with Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, and Leslie Bibb.

Stay tuned. Sunday, as the song went, will never be the same.

Two Thumbs Down: Chicago Movie Critic Richard Roeper Leaving Sun Times After 37 Years

Roger Friedman
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Two Thumbs Down: Chicago Movie Critic Richard Roeper Leaving Sun Times After 37 Years

It’s the end of another era.

Movie critic Richard Roeper says he’s leaving the Chicago Sun Times after 37 years.

Roeper became famous when he took over Gene Siskel’s spot on “Siskel and Ebert” when original host passed away much too young from cancer.

He’s been a mainstay of Chicago media and film criticism for almost four decades.

“I have decided to accept a buyout from the Sun-Times,” said

Roeper. “I’m excited for the next chapter in my career, as I have no plans of retiring or even slowing down. I will continue to review films and TV series every Friday on ‘Windy City Weekend’ on ABC-7 Chicago, and I’ll keep recording new episodes of ‘The Richard Roeper Show’ podcast every week. I also intend to continue writing reviews regularly. See you at the movies.”

Roeper taking the buyout means what you think: like the NY Daily News and many other big city newspapers the tradition of print journalist is winding down. Also, as with many businesses, they only want to pay cheaper younger people to do the jobs.

Roeper was once suspended by the Sun Times for buying Twitter followers. Who could blame him? I’d do it now if there were any Twitter people left.

Congrats, Richard!

Kanye West New “Album” Courts Trouble with Uncleared Motown Song, Son Saint Bashing Heads with Mallet

Roger Friedman
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Kanye West New “Album” Courts Trouble with Uncleared Motown Song, Son Saint Bashing Heads with Mallet

Kanye West has put out a new 29 minute video of music he’s created.

The opening scenes feature his young son, Saint, age 9, in a wrestling ring, bashing in the heads of wrestlers with a mallet.

He’s no Saint. PS Pitiful that Kim Kardashian, the child’s mother, allowed this.

The video is called, overall, “Bully,” and it’s from a man who has preached adoration of Hitler and Nazis strongly for the last few weeks on social media.

There are other issues. “Bully” is full of samples and covers of songs written by others and likely not cleared for usage.

One of them is the Supremes song, “You Can’t Hurry Love,” sung by someone else. It’s hard to believe the Motown music publisher, Sony/EMI, allowed this. The song was written by Holland Dozier Holland, who would never permit a Kanye West sample.

Also sampled is The Moments’ “To You with My Love.” The owner is the estate of the late Sylvia Robinson, creator of the Sugarhill Gang, singer of “Pillow Talk,” and “Love is Strange.” She was a mogul with a lot of lawyers.

Kanye has posted a couple of versions of the video to Twitter (X), which should be getting takedown letters from lawyers soon.

Billboard Names 80 Least Successful Female Singers of the 21st Century, Chosen by 7 Men and 1 Woman

Roger Friedman
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Billboard Names 80 Least Successful Female Singers of the 21st Century, Chosen by 7 Men and 1 Woman

Billboard magazine went out of its way today to infuriate their readers and create clickbait.

They named the 80 least successful female singers of the 21st century.

I’ve been getting tweets saying absurd things like “Gwen Stefani from No Doubt is number 59 but solo Gwen is 32,” “Camlla Cabello is 51,” “Madonna is number 36.”

What’s it based on?

Hilarious: Who ranked this group? Eight Billboarders made these decisions. Seven of them are men. So LOL. This is just an after hours bar game, like darts. They didn’t even ask their editorial director, Hannah Karp, or their two very famous female editors Gail Mitchell and Melinda Newman!

The top 20, or the least unsuccessful, I guess, will be out today. They will be — unsurprisingly — Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, SZA, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and so on.

The rest of the list is just insulting. Can you imagine Olivia Rodrigo bragging that she’s number 21 of all females in the last 25 years? Is Billboard sending them all plaques?

Some of the artists are actuall dead. Many haven’t been contemporary for a long time. Some, like Madonna, should be in the top 10 just by their ability to sell out arenas. Fergie, who hasn’t had a hit since 2006, actually managed to hit number 28– way above the aforesaid Madonna.

The whole thing is a joke. You can read 21-100 here. But the site is screwed up, so ignore the meaning of the tabs at top. When you click on 1 through 8 you actually get 100-80. Barbra Streisand is 88– again lol she’s the most famous female singer in the world. Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks together are 81, even though McVie is dead, and Nicks is booming.

Complete freak show.

Danity Kane is number 100.

Shock: Ex Vanity Fair Writer Says He Was Paid $500K During Heyday for Just Three Long Articles Per Year

Roger Friedman
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Shock: Ex Vanity Fair Writer Says He Was Paid $500K During Heyday for Just Three Long Articles Per Year

Bryan Burroughs, former writer for Vanity Fair during its heyday, has made some astonishing revelations about his time at Graydon Carter’s page turning periodical.

Burroughs, a very accomplished journalist, says he was on an annual contract that paid him almost $500,000 a year for most of his tenure spread over two and a half decades.

This was when SI Newhouse owned and ran Conde Nast. It was the height of magazine mania, before the internet came and in ended a gilded era.

Burroughs recalls in a book review-cum-memoir for The Yale Review: “For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story. Then, as now, $166,000 was a good advance for an entire book. Yes, I realized it was obscene. I took it with a grin.”

This what journalists always heard about Vanity Fair but never saw spelled out. It’s shocking even now, when, as Burroughs says, he’d be lucky to get $20,000 for one story (and that’s a massive overestimate).

The news comes as part of Burroughs’ review of the legendary former editor’s memoir “When the Going Was Good.” Carter’s Vanity Fair was a must read every month, documenting the nexus of the arts, culture, politics, crime, great wealth, and royalty. When something BIG happened, it was featured in Vanity Fair the next month. Unlike the current version, you had to have it and couldn’t put it down.

Carter has always been generous to his writers. He still is, even in these diminished times, with his monthly Airmail.com.

Burroughs’s Vanity Fair pay was similar to those of his colleagues, but in a world apart from other writing jobs at the time.

He says: “Nowadays, though, such windfalls are a distant memory.” He adds: I was treated like a prince…In Sydney, they put me up in a Four Seasons suite overlooking the opera house. In London, it was Claridge’s…The staff’s perks were posher still. Breakfast—any breakfast—could be expensed. Dinner parties at one’s home could be catered on the company’s dime. Town cars famously stood ready to whisk you anywhere. Editors received interest-free loans to buy new homes; Condé Nast even covered moving costs. Cash advances were a signature away. There was an “eyebrow lady” who swanned in to tweeze everyone’s brows.”

I can tell you that during my concurrent decade at Fox News, I stayed in Holiday Inns, and that was lavish. There was no cash to get an advance from. You get the point!

None of this is in Carter’s book, presumably, but I can’t wait to read it nevertheless when it’s released next Tuesday. This is all Burroughs’s experience. But just this slight piercing of the veil will come as a shock, I think, but not a surprise to those of us slugging it out in the real world.

PS in reference to Burroughs’ comment that $166,000 was a good advance for entire book: another understatement. An advance of $166,000 for any book other than Marlo Brando’s autobiography would have been considered a windfall.

Pop Fizz: Lizzo’s Comeback Failing As Two New Singles Sink, Lawsuits Continue to Plague Her

Roger Friedman
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Pop Fizz: Lizzo’s Comeback Failing As Two New Singles Sink, Lawsuits Continue to Plague Her

Pop R&B star Lizzo is still having career trouble.

In August 2023, Lizzo was sued by former employees for sexual, racial and religious harassment, assault, false imprisonment and disability discrimination, in addition to other allegations.

The plaintiffs — dancers and a make up stylist — managed to grab a lot of publicity especially since the overweight Lizzo — who celebrated women being comfortable with their size — was accused of weight shaming.

Immediately the singer’s record sales tanked.

She was dropped from one of the lawsuits in December 2024 but the harrasment suit continues.

Lizzo herself slimmed down, and two weeks ago she released the first of two new single, hoping for a comeback. So far that hasn’t materialized.

The first single “Love in Real Life,” tanked and disappeared after one week. It’s had 7.8 million views on YouTube. Total sales including streaming: only 29,266 according to Luminate.

Now the second one, released last Thursday night, has done the same. The feisty “Still Bad” has not made the iTunes chart at all. The single is being snubbed by all the fans who’d made Lizzo a household name.

“Still Bad” has only yielded 1.5 million YouTube views in five days.

Sometime soon, Lizzo says she’s releasing the “Love in Real Life” album. If her marketing approach doesn’t change she may wind up in the same boat as Katy Perry with her last album, i.e. dead in the water.

It’s all kind of stunning. Lizzo — real name Melissa Jefferson — was on top of the pop world until the lawsuits and allegations. In 2023, her song “About Damn Time” won Record of the Year, and her album “Special” was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album.

But two years later, it’s back the drawing board.

TV’s “Severance” Serves Up A Sly Hollywood Inside Joke About 3 Key Characters: Burt, Fields, and Irving

Roger Friedman
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TV’s “Severance” Serves Up A Sly Hollywood Inside Joke About 3 Key Characters: Burt, Fields, and Irving

Is it a posthumous dig?

Or is it a tribute? Or both.

On the hip Apple series, “Severance,” a character named Burt (the great Christopher Walken) brings a co-worker — named Irving (John Turturro) — home to meet his husband, named Fields (John Noble).

Burt and Irving have been on “Severance” for 25 episodes. Fields is a newcomer, and wants to know more about his husband’s past.

Burt, Irving, Fields? There are no coincidences in life, you know.

Burt and Irving (who may be gay, no one knows yet) sound a lot like Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street.”

Burt and Fields, however, are a more suspicious pairing to the memory of Hollywood insiders. They could be a homage to Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, of course.

But it’s “Fields” with an s, which causes ears to perk up. That points to late, infamous Hollywood lawyer, Bert Fields.

Fields was Tinsel Town’s scariest and meanest lawyer. He represented Michael Jackson in his 1993 scandals,worked for Tom Cruise, and was tied to ex-con private Anthony Pellicano. Bert Fields was involved in every high profile contretemps and relished the spotlight. He left many admirers and haters behind.

To make the story funnier, Burt and Fields tell Irving how they call each other a nickname, “Attila.” As in, Attila the Hun. They say it’s a play on the word ‘hon,” as in honey, But a lot of people thought of Bert Fields as Attila the Hun. LOL.

Is “Severance” pulling our legs? Taking the piss< Or it just all happening on its own?

I vote for one or two, or both!

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