May I explain something to all of you youngsters and Grammy voters? The Kinks’ “Time Song” is a song. It’s written by one person, Ray Davies of the Kinks. Now it’s been released for the first time as part of the 50th anniversary of the Kinks’ “Village Green Preservation Society.” All you people who think you are songwriters because you lifted a “beat” please listen to this song. This should win the Grammy this year for Best New Song. Just lovely.
Friday Box Office: Predicted Failures “Happytime Murders” and “A.X.L.” Bomb, “Crazy Rich Asians” Repeats at Number 1
“Crazy Rich Asians” repeats at number 1 this weekend. They’re going to pick up another $20 million. Lovely!
The box office is otherwise a treacherous place if your reviews are really no good.
Both GlobalRoad’s “A.X.L.” and STX’s “Happytime Murders” scored just 22% each on RottenTomatoes. The reviews weren’t wrong, and they didn’t help.
GlobalRoad is almost out of business anyway. “A.X.L.” only made $812,500 on Friday night for a possible $2.1 million weekend. So that show is over. According to sources, Global Road has run out of money which is why they pulled Johnny Depp’s Notorious BIG movie set for September. They can’t promote it. And, says a source, “they can’t deal with Johnny Depp.”
STX is a mystery to me. I’m sure they are nice people. But what are they doing? “Happytime Murders” is puppet porn. Last night it made $4 million for a projected weekend of $11 million. Their other movies this year were Amy Schumer’s beleaguered “I Feel Pretty” – -$48 million– “Den of Thieves” — $45 million– and — “Adrift” — $31 million. Quality is clearly not their objective.
They also have Mark Wahlberg’s disaster, “Mile 22,” which hit the $19 million mark last night after 8 days of release. Mark will have to serve a lot of Wahlburgers to make up for this one. STX has the potential to release one two actually good movies in their mix, I’m sure of it. Please, guys, try.
PS GlobalRoad used to be Open Road, which won an Oscar for “Spotlight.” But then they put out “Marshall” and now the universe is punishing them.
Charts: Nicki Minaj Has Good News-Bad News As Her Own Album Struggles, But Guest Appearance is a Hit
For Nicki Minaj, the charts today are good news, bad news.
The bad news is that her “Queen” album finished fourth for the week, behind Ariana Grande, Travis Scott, and Drake. Nicki’s music struggled with total sales of 89,863. Most of that was streaming. She had CDs and downloads of just 25,000.
The good news is that she’s featured on a horrible rap single by 22 year old 6 by 9, or whatever he’s called. It’s just completely unlistenable, like all of his stuff. But it’s number 1 in streaming. It’s called “Fefe” and it’s on something called ScumBag Records. So she can take heart in that, her consolation prize.
Last week, meaning ending a week ago, “Fefe” earned $192,500 in streaming revenue. Nicki’s single, “Barbie Dreams,” made $155,193. That will keep her in wigs and eyelashes depending on her cut of “Fefe,” which Tony Bennett is not covering on his new album.
I was going to print the lyrics to “Fefe” but they are of course X rated and filthy. They are accompanied by “music” sampled from something immemorable.
Ariana Grande sold over 230,000 copies of her “Sweetener,” more CDs and downloads than streaming. Her royalty rate is higher and she actually has songs. Manager Scooter Braun did a great job, and of course she did, too.
Aretha Franklin’s “30 Greatest Hits” sold 50,000 copies all in after selling about 25,000 copies last week just on Thursday after her death was announced. Her dedicated station on SiriusXM, 49, is a big hit there and will continue through Labor Day weekend. It’s quite a tribute.
Aretha Franklin Will Get Royal Send off Fit for a Queen: Bill Clinton, Smokey Robinson, Clive Davis, Cicely Tyson Among Funeral Speakers
The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, will get a royal send next Friday in Detroit. Her funeral, which is said could last as long as four hours, has incredible line up.
Former President Bill Clinton leads the list of speakers that includes Clive Davis, Smokey Robinson, Cicely Tyson, and Bishop TD Jakes. Aretha’s great friend Jesse Jackson is on the list as well as former US Attorney General Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and award winning actress Cicely Tyson (who by the way is 91 years young).
Performers include Stevie Wonder, Faith Hill, Ronald Isley, Jennifer Hudson, Chaka Khan, Yolanda Adams, Jennifer Holliday, Shirley Caesar, and the Clark Sisters, as well as Aretha’s son, Eddie, who has a beautiful voice and is a chip off the old block.
A clutch of politicians, clergy, and prominent friends of Aretha’s will also make remarks including professor and TV personality Michael Eric Dyson. The Rev. Jasper Williams, Jr., Pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, will deliver the eulogy.
UPDATE As Fox News Ignores Reality, Ratings Drop: MSNBC’s Maddow and O’Donnell Open Wide Lead Over Hannity, Ingraham
Fox News’s insistence on ignoring the reality of the actual news is costing them, big time.
With Trump associates either being found guilty or ratting the criminal president out, Fox News refuses to report what’s going on. Even their most ardent viewers are looking elsewhere for a reality check.
On Thursday night, Rachel Maddow had 3,674,000 viewers to Sean Hannity’s 2.9 million. Lawrence O’Donnell followed Maddow with 2.774 million to Laura Ingraham’s 2.29 million.
On Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow scored 3.5 million viewers on MSNBC at 9pm. Over at Fox News, Sean Hannity– still in Trump’s pocket and up his you know what, finished with 3.1 million.
The MSNBC margin continued at 10pm, where Lawrence O’Donnell, following Maddow, beat Laura Ingraham by another 300,000 viewers.
At 8pm, Fox News’s insipid Tucker Carlson brought in just 2.5 million viewers. That’s a divide of 1 million people between Carlson and Maddow. (Carlson did beat MSNBC’s Chris Hayes at 8pm, but that may be because the Fox News viewers are older and asleep by the time Maddow comes on.)
Right now, at 1:50pm, Foxnews.com’s top story is about conservatives feeling unwanted on college campuses. A story about Trump associate Allen Weisselberg making an immunity deal to flip on Donald is way down below, nearly hidden. There’s also an incorrect entertainment story about Sony admitting that Michael Jackson’s vocals were faked on a posthumous album.
Crazy Rich Asians: South Korean Boy Band BTS First US Release Explodes Gangnam Style, Swamps iTunes Singles, Album Charts
Was it only six years ago that Korean rapper Psy conquered the world with “Gangnam Style”?
Today, Sony’s Columbia Records released a compilation album by South Korean boy band BTS, and it’s like the Beatles, NSync, and Backstreet Boys mania rolled into one.
Columbia signed BTS in the US only, but the instant monster success will save the label and its new chief Ron Perry, who’s been aching for a hit.
The BTS album has shot to the top of the iTunes album chart, beating Ariana Grande, Drake, and One Direction’s Liam Payne.
The individual tracks from the BTS album now occupy most of the top 20 of the iTunes singles chart. Twelve of the top 13 singles are from the BTS album.
In South Korea, BTS hails from the KPop label. In Japan and elsewhere, they’re distributed by Def Jam.
BTS is also known as the Bangtan Boys. There are 7 members. The group formed in 2013. The Sony/Columbia album was first released by Big Hit Entertainment last September, almost a year ago. It sold 96,000 copies but vanished once Sony signed on and planned this relaunch.
Robin Leach, Bon Vivant, Columnist, Host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Dead at 76
May I tell you something? Robin Leach was a great guy. Despite the pompous TV persona, he was so much fun and a very good friend. He would do anything for you. I am sad to read that he has died at age 76. I didn’t know he’d had a stroke last November.
Las Vegas columnist John Katsilometes reported Robin’s death on Twitter.
“Sad to report the death of famed celeb reporter, friend and colleague #RobinLeach @ 1:50 a.m. in #LasVegas. He would have been 77 Wednesday. He suffered a second stroke Monday. He in hospice care. He’d been hospitalized since Nov. 21, after suffering a stroke in Cabo San Lucas.
Statement from #RobinLeach family: “Despite the past 10 months, what a beautiful life he had. Our Dad, Grandpa, Brother, Uncle and friend Robin Leach passed away peacefully last night at 1:50 a.m. More from #RobinLeach family: “Everyone’s support and love over the past, almost one year, has been incredible and we are so grateful. Memorial arrangements to follow. With love, Steven, Gregg and Rick Leach.”
Robin captured the gestalt of the crazy 1980s with his tag line “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” He understood the “Dynasty” era, the Donald Trump era, of gross and excess wealth. He just loved all of it, and knew that the aspirational quality of his show would draw fans.
He was also a family man, and had three stepsons who he doted on.
Robin, we will have a Champagne toast to you today! God speed! You will really be missed.
Donald Trump’s Presidency In Peril as Key Aide Gets Immunity, Follows Other Loyalists Out the Door
The party is over. Or should we say the wake.
Donald Trump’s illegitimate presidency, that has caused immeasurable harm to the world, is now finally in peril.
The Wall Street Journal— a conservative newspaper, by the way– reports that key Trump aide Alan Weisselberg has made an immunity deal with federal prosecutors. Weisselberg joins Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker in flipping on Trump. These men don’t want to go to jail so they’ve wisely decided to cooperate and reveal what they know of Trump’s criminal enterprises.
There’s also former campaign manager Paul Manafort, found guilty this week on 8 of 18 felony charges including five counts of tax fraud, one count of failure to file a report of foreign bank and financial accounts and two counts of bank fraud. He would have been convicted of 10 more charges except for one very stupid female juror, according to reports.
Trump is done. Even his most ardent supporters can’t defend what’s happened. But most intelligent people won’t be happy until they see Kellyanne Conway and her group of lunatics including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in shackles. I can’t wait to hear the explanations for Weisselberg at a press conference.
We in New York told you outside of it that Trump was a lowlife lying scuzzball. No one wanted to believe it. Here you are. Even if you’re in a rural state and you believe coal is coming back, and America will somehow be like “Ozzie and Harriet” you must understand what’s going on now. If not get your kid to explain it to you.
Surprise! Best Buy Lied to Us Last May, They Have Stopped Selling CDs in Stores, Online
I don’t know why I’m surprised by this. Last May I called Best Buy’s PR department and asked them if the company was going to stop selling CDs.
A spokesman sent me this statement: “The way people buy and listen to music has dramatically changed and, as a result, we are reducing the amount of space devoted to CDs in our stores. However, we will still offer select CDs, vinyl and digital music options at all stores.”
Hello, he lied! (Tip of the hat to Lynda Obst.) I walked through Best Buy last night on 23rd St. and Sixth Avenue. The CD’s are gone. Are you selling CDs, I asked a clerk? Answer: “Whatever’s left in the discount tubs.” There are no more shelves of CDs. It’s over.
On the Best Buy website, CDs are non existent. Gone, baby, gone.
Target is still selling the silver disks on line. But WalMart is almost done with them. There’s very little left on the WalMart site. If you want CDs, you’re down to a smattering of physical retailers, like FYE in your mall, if you have a mall. Other than that it’s amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Think of this: you cannot walk into Best Buy and purchase a Beatles CD. Or Rolling Stones, Dylan, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Frank Sinatra. (You can buy a coffee maker.)
I’m actually amazed that hi end audio companies, like Cambridge Audio, Denon, Marantz, and Creek are still selling CD players. Who’s buying them if there are no CDs? Now I really have to keep my Creek player in good shape. There will be few ways to replace it in the future.
Of course, the new music is so bad, and the so called music is so poorly produced and engineered, why buy a CD or a player anyway? Of Kanye West? The Carters? Drake? Most new releases aren’t even being produced on CD, they’re just “dropped” digitally onto streaming services or onto iTunes and amazon for downloading.
The compact disk, RIP 1982-2018. That was fast, man. I look at all boxed sets, Miles Davis, the Beatles, Sam Cooke, Aretha. They are relics. When the 50th anniversary of the “White Album” is released, it will be via blockchain or telekinesis or through vents in the air conditioning. Good lord.
Oh yeah, so Best Buy lied. I mean, so what? Look at the White House. All bets are off in the truth department.
Anthony Scaramucci: “I do want the President to stop what he’s doing on Twitter. It’s hurting him.”
“This is my second press conference,” said Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s short-lived former White House Communications Director to journalists Wednesday afternoon in the James Madison Room at the Princeton Club in Manhattan. The Mooch was behind the podium moderating, just like old times, except this was a faux press conference with a faux “Trump Family,” led by film, television and stage actress Gina Gershon (Bound, Showgirls), who plays Melania Trump.
Ms. Gershon has nailed perfectly the First Lady’s accent, her hair style and attitude for the musical parody review, “The First Annual Trump Family Special,” that will run Thursdays from Sept. 13 through Dec. 6 at 9:30 at the Triad on West 72nd St. The show is created by Danny Salles and features book, lyrics and direction by Salles, with music and additional lyrics by Tor Hyams and Lisa St. Lou.
Ms. Gershon was joined by fellow cast members Lisa St. Lou (Ivanka Trump), Marissa Mulder (Marla Maples), Suzanne Sole (Ivana Trump), Peter Hargrave (Eric Trump) and Brian Sills (Donald Trump Jr.) who performed a ditty from the show, with lyrics like, “It’s great that all you Democrats can take it on the chin, chin, chin, to all you haters, debaters and queers, we’re here for six more years, so Hail to the Chief, …”
Then the “Trump family” fielded —in character — questions from the press.
As hands flew up, the Mooch pointed, “The Fox reporter in the back.”
“What do you plan to say in your speech when you win best musical at the Tonys,” the reporter asked Gershon, who replied in perfectly nuanced Melania tones:
“Well I can assure you it won’t be anything like that over-rated Robert De Niro speech at the Oscars when he said, “Fuck Trump,” because…well nobody really wants to do that.”
Asked what she had to say about Paul Manafort’s conviction for financial fraud, Melania/Gershon replied, “In Slovenia we have a saying, never trust a man who over-dyes his hair.”
After the 15-minute press conference, Scaramucci, who looks a decade younger than his 54 years, hung around to chat with journalists who peppered him with political questions.
Did he think the President did anything illegal?
“Yesterday was a very bad day for the President,” he conceded. “But at this point it’s not clear that he’s done anything illegal, meaning the President of the United States. But whether he did something illegal or didn’t do something illegal, you can’t indict a sitting President. You know that from the Constitution, so this will become a political story more than a story of criminality.”
How he felt about the convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen: “When I saw the news yesterday, cause I’m a human being the same way you guys are human beings, my heart went out to Paul, it went out to Michael, their families and the children that are associated with these families. That’s where my heart went,” he said. “People do make mistakes in life and they make some mis-decisions… That was my original reaction and so listen at the end of the day though I think both had felt they’d been treated fairly,” he said. “I’m proud to call Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen friends of mine. Even though they did something wrong and they’ve admitted guilt to doing things that are wrong, I don’t think you cut and run from your friends. In the neighborhood where I grew up in you learn never to do that.”
Back to the President, I asked the Mooch what he thought were the chances he’d be impeached?
“It was not a good day for the President,” he conceded, “but the way the House and the Senate are configured I think the chances of him being impeached are quite remote. You have to get the entire vote done in the House and then you gotta get two-thirds of the Senate to get an impeachment so I don’t really think that’s the issue for the President. What’s at issue for the President is the political environment. If the political environment changes on him, that’s really what buried Richard Nixon. It wasn’t whatever the facts were. It was the political environment changed and that’s where the problem lies. But right now, today, what’s today’s date, the 21st or the 22? I don’t see him getting impeached.”
On another track, I asked him about Melania. What’s she really like?
“I have an enormous amount of respect for Melania. She’s a terrific mother. I think she’s been a great partner to the President and she’s always been unbelievably kind and gracious to me and my wife and my family members. Every interaction I’ve ever had with Melania, she’s a very warm, very caring, loving person.
I asked Scaramucci if he read Frank Bruni’s editorial, where he called her possibly the Greatest First Lady and that she was trolling the President.
“I didn’t read the piece,” he said. “But I think the stuff about trolling, if people are making suggestions she’s trolling the president, I’m not inside her mind. I don’t know if she’s trolling the President or not, but I do want the President to stop what he’s doing on Twitter. It’s hurting him.”
Why can’t he?
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Scaramucci told me. “I think in fairness to him he would say that Twitter was a device that he used to control the news cycle and to hop over the mainstream media that was decidedly negative on his candidacy and so I think he would say he used that as a device to create his own media outlet for his own ideas and his own views but what happens with the President, because he’s such a heavy counterpuncher, when people are hitting him I think he’s overusing Twitter in the counterpunching and I think it’s costing him. I think the average American says, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re doing a great job, but stylistically if you changed tone a little bit you’d be more popular.”
Couldn’t you just say knock it off?
“Who could? You think you could? I’m on the record saying I couldn’t. But I’m also on the record saying I like him and I want him to do well.”