Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Rolling Stones to rock New Orleans Jazz Fest after two previous tries
NEW ORLEANS | The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is usually akin to a 14-ring musical circus — a variety of musical acts playing simultaneously on stages spread throughout the sprawling infield and grandstand of a historic horse racing track.
That changes Thursday afternoon, when 13 stages go silent before The Rolling Stones make their first appearance at the 54-year-old festival.
“We didn’t want to have 13 empty stages and no people in front of them when the Stones start singing favorites like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ “ festival producer Quint Davis told The Associated Press ahead of the festival. “Everyone who bought a ticket for that day primarily bought one to see The Stones.”
Jazz Fest is the second stop for the Stones on their Hackney Diamonds tour, launched in support of the well-received album they released last year, their first album of original material in 18 years. They had been scheduled to appear at the 50th Jazz Fest in 2019 but had to cancel because of Mick Jagger’s heart surgery. A subsequent planned appearance was scrubbed in 2021 when the festival was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the gates opened under an overcast sky and slight breeze, hundreds of fans poured onto the festival grounds, most wearing T-Shirts with the Rolling Stones’ signature “lips with tongue out” logo or one emblazoned with just the band’s name.
“I was torn between seeing them before they die or seeing them before I do,” Nathan “Bam” Schulman, 75, an acupuncturist from Eugene, Oregon, said laughing.
Schulman said he had seen the Stones perform years ago in Oakland, California, but looked forward to Thursday’s performance.
“They’re such an inspiration,” he said. “I look back at them and remember a time of adventure, a time of being whoever you want to be, a time of being myself and when we’d say ‘Screw the establishment.’ They inspire me to keep on living.”
Vickie Clay, 38, who works in the auto industry in New Orleans, said seeing the Stones in person “was on her bucket list.”
“It will be my first time seeing them,” she said. “I hope Mick Jagger does his ‘chicken dance’ moves, but whatever he does will be worth every penny.”
Kerry Dantzig, 54, of San Francisco, said she regularly attends Jazz Fest “for the food, for the music and to meet up with old friends.”
“I’m hoping Mick and the Stones sound good,” said a smiling Dantzig, who works in the insurance industry. “I mean, they’re 80 years old, you know? Still, I can’t wait to see Mick Jagger shaking his caboose.”
Henri Lellouche, 63, a retired advertising executive from Fairfield, Connecticut, said he has seen the band perform previously and added that it was a good idea to combine them with Jazz Fest.
“I haven’t heard a lot of their new stuff. But I love the older music, the blues tinge, and I love watching them perform. I mean it’s hard to believe they’re the same age as Joe Biden,” he said.
Fans of New Orleans rhythm and blues artists will be watching to see if the legendary group perform “Time Is On My Side,” which was an early hit for the band. New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas had success with the song in an earlier recording, and Thomas told WVUE-TV in an interview that “there’s a possibility” she might perform it with the band.
Thursday’s weather for the outdoor festival is a little sketchy. Forecasts show a mostly cloudy skyline, with temperatures in the mid-80s Fahrenheit (around 30 Celsius). But there’s up to a 40% chance of rain in the afternoon.
Dumpstaphunk, a funk-fusion band born in New Orleans with descendants from the city’s well-known Neville family, plays just before the Stones hit the festival’s largest stage. Dumpstaphunk is mourning the recent death of bassist Nick Daniels III, a co-founder of the group who died Sunday. A cause of death has not been released.
Spears reaches divorce settlement with estranged husband Asghari
LOS ANGELES | Less than a week after reaching a court settlement with her father, Britney Spears has reached one with her soon-to-be-ex-husband.
Spears and Sam Asghari submitted an agreement for dividing up their assets to a judge for approval, according to documents filed in a Los Angeles court on Thursday, nine months after they separated.
The filings gave few details but said neither Spears nor Asghari will get future spousal support. Asghari had said in his initial petition that he would seek financial support. Any future disputes would need to be settled in private arbitration.
A judge is likely to sign off on the stipulated solution soon and declare both of them single.
Emails seeking details or comment from lawyers for both Spears and Asghari were not immediately returned.
The two had no children together, so no custody agreement was necessary. Spears wrote in her memoir published last year that she and Asghari had a miscarriage early in a pregnancy about a month before they married.
The 42-year-old pop superstar and Asghari, a 30-year-old model and actor, separated in July, about 13 months after they married and seven years after they began dating. He filed for divorce in August.
Their marriage at her home in June 2022 in front of guests including Selena Gomez, Drew Barrymore, Paris Hilton and Madonna, was seen as a triumphant milestone in her newly reclaimed life after she was freed six months earlier from the court conservatorship that controlled her life and money for more than 13 years.
Last Friday, Spears and her father, Jamie Spears, reached a settlement on the lingering issues from that legal arrangement, avoiding what could have been a long, ugly and revealing trial that was scheduled to start later this month.
The first wrongful-death trial in Scott concert deaths has been delayed
HOUSTON | The start of the first civil trial stemming from the 2021 Astroworld festival, at which 10 people were killed in a crowd surge, has been delayed.
Jury selection had been set to begin next Tuesday in the wrongful-death lawsuit filed the family of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old Houston resident who was killed during the crowd crush at the Nov. 5, 2021, concert by rap superstar Travis Scott.
But Apple Inc., one of the more than 20 defendants going to trial next week, filed an appeal this week, automatically delaying the start of jury selection.
“Unless I hear differently, the trial is stayed,” state District Judge Kristen Hawkins said during a court hearing Thursday.
Apple, which livestreamed Scott’s concert, is appealing a ruling by Hawkins that denied the company’s motion to be dismissed from the case. Apple has argued that under Texas law, it can appeal Hawkins’ ruling because its defense claims are being made in part as a member of the electronic media.
Apple is arguing that in livestreaming Scott’s concert, it was acting as a member of the electronic media and its actions merit free speech protection.
“It remains our position that our conduct is protected by the First Amendment,” Kent Rutter, one of Apple’s attorneys, told Hawkins during a court hearing Thursday.
Hawkins said she hopes to hear from the appeals court by Monday, but there is no timetable for a decision.
Lawyers for Dubiski’s family have alleged that her death was caused by negligent planning and a lack of concern over capacity at the event. Her lawyers allege that how Apple placed its cameras around the concert site affected the placement of barriers and reduced available crowd space by the main stage.
Rutter argued that it was broadcasting an event “with significant public interest” and that by doing so, it was acting as a member of the media and gathering news.
But Jason Itkin, one of the attorneys for Dubiski’s family, said that Apple has described itself in business records as a company that makes smartphones and computers but doesn’t mention of news or news reporting. Itkin added that the company’s Apple News app is a subscription service that aggregates the stories of other news organizations.
“This is not a free speech case. They know that,” Itkin said.
During the hearing, Hawkins appeared skeptical about Apple’s claims about being a member of the electronic media, asking Rutter that if a livestream were set up in a zoo to watch animals, would that be news.
“Yes, it would be,” Rutter said.
Over 4,000 plaintiffs filed hundreds of lawsuits following the concert. Dubiski’s case had been chosen by attorneys in the litigation to be the first to go to trial. More than 20 defendants, including Scott, Apple and Live Nation, the festival’s promoter, had been set to go on trial Tuesday.
Following a police investigation, a grand jury last year declined to indict Scott, along with five others connected to the festival.
Schneider sues ‘Quiet on Set’ makers for defamation, sex abuse implications
LOS ANGELES | Former Nickelodeon producer and writer Dan Schneider sued the makers of “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” on Wednesday, alleging the makers of the documentary series wrongly implied that he sexually abused the child actors he worked with.
Schneider filed the defamation suit against Warner Bros. Discovery and other companies behind the series in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Schneider, a former teenage actor, was a central figure in Nickelodeon’s dominance of kid culture in the 1990s and 2000s with his work on the sketch shows “All That,” “The Amanda Show” and “Kenan & Kel,” and as an executive producer on shows including “Zoey 101,” “iCarly” and “Victorious.”
He is also the key figure in “Quiet on Set,” which aired on true crime cable channel ID in March, has since been streaming on Max, and has made major waves among Nickelodeon’s former stars and viewers. It uses cast and crew interviews to describe the shows’ sexualization of young teens and a toxic and abusive work environment that many said Schneider was responsible for. It also includes descriptions of sexual abuse of child actors, including “The Amanda Show” and “Drake & Josh” star Drake Bell, by crew members who were later convicted for it.
But Schneider, who parted ways with Nickelodeon in 2018, said in the suit that the “Quiet on Set” trailer and episodes of the show deliberately mix and juxtapose images and mentions of him with the criminal sexual abusers to imply he was involved.
“’Quiet on Set’s’ portrayal of Schneider is a hit job,” the suit says. “While it is indisputable that two bona fide child sexual abusers worked on Nickelodeon shows, it is likewise indisputable that Schneider had no knowledge of their abuse, was not complicit in the abuse, condemned the abuse once it was discovered and, critically, was not a child sexual abuser himself.”
The suit names as defendants Warner Bros. Discovery — the parent company of ID and Max — and the show’s production companies, Sony Pictures Television and Maxine Productions.
Emails seeking comment from representatives from the three companies were not immediately returned.
The four-part series suggests that Schneider’s shows had a tendency to put young women in comic situations with sexual implications, and depicts him as an angry and emotionally abusive boss.
It includes direct allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination from women who worked as writers under him on “All That.” They said he showed pornography on his computer in their presence in the writers’ room and asked for massages, joking they would lead to the women’s sketches making the show, which Schneider has denied.
It also includes an interview with Bell in which he describes “extensive” and “brutal” sexual abuse by a dialogue coach when he was 15, and with the mother of another girl who was sexually abused by a crew member.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Bell has.
After the initial release of the show, Schneider broadly apologized in a YouTube video for “past behaviors, some of which are embarrassing and that I regret.”
But the lawsuit says the show and especially its trailer unjustly implicate him in child sexual abuse by showing images of him — including some with his arm around young actors — over discussions of an environment that was unsafe for them.
The suit seeks damages to be determined at trial for what it calls “the destruction of Schneider’s reputation and legacy” through “false statements and implications.”
Nickelodeon, which is not involved in the lawsuit, said in a statement on the series that it cannot “corroborate or negate” allegations from decades ago, but it investigates all formal complaints and has rigorous protocols for working minors.
“Our highest priorities are the well-being and best interests not just of our employees, casts and crew, but of all children,” a network spokesperson said in a statement, “and we have adopted numerous safeguards over the years to help ensure we are living up to our own high standards and the expectations of our audience.”
—From AP reports
