Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
Travis Kelce brings back music festival
in Kansas City
LOS ANGELES | Travis Kelce is keeping himself busy: On the heels of winning his third Super Bowl, earning a Webby nomination for his podcasting endeavors and garnering headlines for his newfound relationship with Taylor Swift, the superstar tight end will continue living his best life with his annual music festival next month.
Kelce announced Tuesday the headliners for his second annual Kelce Jam festival. The event will be held May 18 and livestreamed from the Azura Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, Kansas — a metropolitan area of Kansas City.
The event will feature performances by Lil Wayne, 2 Chainz and Diplo.
“I like to keep it fresh, new and keep people coming back for more,” said Kelce, whose festival brought out 20,000 attendees last year. He said his event will continue to celebrate the success of the Chiefs, who won their third championship in four trips after defeating the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58 in February.
Along with Kelce’s on-field triumphs, he’s thrived away from the football field, too. He along with his brother, Jason Kelce, a recent NFL retiree, earned a Webby nomination Tuesday for their flourishing podcast “New Heights.” He’s also appeared in countless headlines for his relationship with Swift, a 14-time Grammy winner who recently set the award’s record with the most album of the year wins.
Swift is not expected to attend Kelce Jam since she’s scheduled to perform on tour on the same date in Stockholm, Sweden. But even though she might not be in attendance, Kelce — who has displayed a strong stage presence — said he might ask Swift for some tips.
“The only thing I can learn from her that translates into how I can perform is just how relatable she is on stage,” said Kelce, who hosted “Saturday Night Live” last year. “She’s very comfortable. She brings everybody into the room with her. She makes it an intimate setting even though there’s 70,000 people at every show. It’s pretty impressive.”
Kelce said safety has been a top priority entering Kelce Jam after the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally shooting that resulted in the death of a woman and nearly two dozen injuries.
“Our hearts and hands are still out to the families and everybody involved and everything that happened at the parade,” said Kelce, who reportedly donated $100,000 to families of the two kids who were shot during the parade. Swift donated the same amount to the family of the woman who was killed in the shooting.
The event’s producers, Medium Rare, said safety measures will be expanded by bringing in a “specialized live event security and risk team” who have worked on high-profile festivals such as the U.S. Open, Coachella and Lollapalooza.
“It’s still a touchy subject knowing how serious it was,” Kelce said. “We’re definitely taking security extremely serious at Kelce Jam. You’ll definitely feel safe being there.”
In all, Kelce said he wants to bring joy to a city that has celebrated him and his team. He hopes his teammate and three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes can join the festivities this time.
“I think it’s going to keep going up,” he said. “Hopefully we keep winning Super Bowls so we got something to celebrate.”
Miranda Lambert, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj submit letter to AI developers
LOS ANGELES | Stevie Wonder, Miranda Lambert, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, Peter Frampton, Katy Perry, Smokey Robinson and J Balvin are just some of the over 200 names featured on a new open letter submitted by the Artist Rights Alliance non-profit, calling on artificial intelligence tech companies, developers, platforms, digital music services and platforms to stop using AI “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists,” according to the letter.
The Artist Rights Alliance is an artist-led non-profit organization that advocates for musicians in a precarious digital economy.
The letter, while acknowledging the creative possibilities of new AI technology, addresses some of its threats to human artistry. Those include using preexisting work to train AI models — without permissions — in an attempt to replace artists and therefore “substantially dilute the royalty pools that are paid out to artists.”
“This assault on human creativity must be stopped,” the letter reads. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
The full letter is available here.
Last month, Tennessee became the first state to pass legislation designed to protect songwriters, performers and other music industry professionals against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. Supporters say the goal is to ensure that generative AI tools cannot replicate an artist’s voice without their consent.
The bill — dubbed the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act or “ELVIS Act” — goes into effect July 1.
“We employ more people in Tennessee in the music industry than any other state,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee told reporters shortly after signing the bill into law. “Artists have intellectual property. They have gifts. They have a uniqueness that is theirs and theirs alone, certainly not artificial intelligence.”
The Tropicana
Las Vegas closes
after 67 years
LAS VEGAS | In the 1971 film “Diamonds are Forever,” James Bond stays in a swanky suite at the Tropicana Las Vegas.
“I hear that the Hotel Tropicana is quite comfortable,” Agent 007 says.
It was the Tropicana’s heyday. The lavish casino was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its past under the mob cemented its place in Vegas lore.
But after welcoming guests for 67 years, the doors to the Las Vegas Strip’s third-oldest casino were chained shut on Tuesday. Demolition is slated for October to make room for a $1.5 billion Major League Baseball stadium — part of the city’s latest rebrand as a hub for sports entertainment.
Robert “Videobob” Moseley was among the final guests to check out of the Tropicana before it closes for good at lunchtime. Sad to see the landmark go, Moseley paid $600 for a standard room and spent the previous night at the casino with friends.
“We’re losing this iconic part of Vegas,” Moseley said. “They’re gonna kill Vegas.”
Charlie Granado, a bartender at the Tropicana, said it’s a bittersweet ending for the place he’s called a second home for 38 years.
“It’s time. It’s ran its course,” Granado said. “It makes me sad but on the other hand, it’s a happy ending.”
The population of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, had just surpassed 100,000 when the Tropicana opened on a Strip surrounded by vast, open desert. It cost $15 million to build three stories with 300 rooms split into two wings.
Its manicured lawns and flashy showroom earned it the nickname “Tiffany of the Strip.” There was a towering tulip-shaped fountain near the entrance, mosaic tiles and mahogany-paneled walls throughout.
Black and white photographs from that time give a view into what it was like inside the walls of the Tropicana at its height when it played host to A-list stars — from Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds to Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
Mel Tormé and Eddie Fisher performed at the Tropicana. Gladys Knight and Wayne Newton have held residencies there.
In a city known for reinvention, the Tropicana itself underwent major changes as Las Vegas evolved. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the casino’s now-beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor.
Barbara Boggess was 26 when she started working at the Tropicana in 1978 as a linen room attendant.
“The Tropicana was pretty much sitting here all by itself,” Boggess said. “It was desert all around. It used to take me 10 minutes to get to work. Now it takes an hour.”
Now 72, Boggess has seen the Tropicana through its many iterations. There was the 1980s rebrand as “The Island of Las Vegas,” with a swim-up blackjack table at the pool, and the South Beach-themed renovation completed in 2011.
Today, only the low-rise hotel room wings remain of the original Tropicana structure. Yet the casino still conjures up vintage Vegas nostalgia.
“It does give an old Vegas vibe. When you first walk in, you see the stained glass and the low ceilings,” JT Seumala, a Las Vegas resident who visited the casino in March, said. “It does feel like you step back in time for a moment.”
Seumala and his husband stayed at the Tropicana as a way to pay tribute to the landmark. They roamed the casino floor and hotel, turning down random hallways and exploring the convention center. They tried their luck at blackjack and roulette and made conversation with a cocktail server who had worked there for 25 years. At the end of their stay, they pocketed a few red $5 poker chips to remember the mob-era casino.
Behind the scenes of the casino’s opening decades ago, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.
Weeks after the grand opening, Costello was shot in the head in New York. Police found in his coat pocket a piece of paper with the Tropicana’s exact earnings figure and mention of “money to be skimmed” for Costello’s associates, according to The Mob Museum.
By the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen mob operatives with conspiring to skim nearly $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges connected to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions.
But the famed hotel-casino also saw many years of mob-free success. It was home to the city’s longest running show, “Folies Bergere.” The topless revue, imported from Paris, featured what is now one of the most recognizable Las Vegas icons: the feathered showgirl.
During its nearly 50-year run, “Folies Bergere” featured elaborate costumes and stage sets, original music that at one time was played by a live orchestra, line dancers, magic shows, acrobats and comedy. The cabaret was featured in the 1964 Elvis Presley film “Viva Las Vegas.”
Today, the site at the south end of the Las Vegas Strip intersects with a major thoroughfare named for the Tropicana. It is surrounded by towering megaresorts that Las Vegas is now known for.
But nearby are the homes of the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders, who left Oakland, California, in 2020, and the city’s first major league professional team, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.
The ballpark planned for the land beneath the Tropicana is expected to open in 2028.
“There’s a lot of controversy as far as if it should stay or should it go,” Seumala said. “But the thing that I do love about Vegas is that it’s always reinventing itself.”
March Madness: Ratings up after most-watched Elite Eight in five years
NEW YORK | The Elite Eight game between NC State and Duke produced the largest audience for an Easter Sunday telecast on any network in 11 years.
The Wolfpack’s 76-64 victory over the Blue Devils in the South Region final averaged 15.1 million viewers on CBS, according to Nielsen. The 2013 Elite Eight game between Duke and Louisville averaged 15.6 million.
Overall, the NCAA Tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, a 4% increase over last year.
Sunday’s first game between Purdue and Tennessee averaged 10.4 million, making it the most-watched early regional final in five years.
Sunday’s viewer average of 12.8 million is a 30% increase over last year, and the most-watched Elite Eight doubleheader since 2019.
Thursday and Friday’s Sweet 16 games on CBS, TBS and truTV averaged 10.3 million, up 5% from 2023.
Alabama’s victory over North Carolina on Thursday night on CBS was the most-watched regional semifinal game, with a 7.8 million viewer average. Duke’s win over Houston on Friday night drew 7.3 million on CBS.
—From AP reports
