Author – The Durango Herald

Randy Newman cared enough about his new album to help pay for it

LOS ANGELES - So, finally, at 73, Randy Newman has written a straightforward, autobiographical love song, right? “She Chose Me,” a ballad on “Dark Matter,” his first album in nine years, ope...

DATE: Jul 29, 2017 | CATEGORY: Music

A Laurie Anderson pilgrimage? Just don’t tell her you’re calling it that

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – You are sitting, floating through the virtual clouds, when you hear that unmistakable voice coming through the headphones. The glittering buildings. Paper bei...

DATE: May 26, 2017 | CATEGORY: Visual Arts

As the stars he parodied disappeared, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic remains

LOS ANGELES – One day last summer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, on break from “Hamilton,” stopped by neighbor Jimmy Fallon’s house in the Hamptons. They both love music and Fallon has a listening roo...

DATE: Feb 19, 2017 | CATEGORY: Music

Bill Murray’s greatest role? Being Bill Murray

Let’s start with one of those crazy Bill Murray stories. A couple years ago, a guy named Ted Melfi had a movie idea and desperately wanted Murray to star. Except Melfi had never m...

DATE: Oct 19, 2016 | CATEGORY: Film, TV and Streaming

Randy Newman’s first new song in years is about bare-chested Vladimir Putin

A new Randy Newman song doesn’t come around every day. He’s notoriously slow in the studio, a master craftsman who has only released four studio albums in the past 36 years. But w...

DATE: Oct 11, 2016 | CATEGORY: Music

They took Grandmaster Caz’s rhymes without giving him credit - now he’s getting revenge

NEW YORK - Grandmaster Caz, clutching a mic as the bus rambles toward Harlem, remembers when he and his buddies decided to act. It was the late 1970s and disco had taken over. Patti LaBelle....

DATE: Sep 30, 2016 | CATEGORY: Music

Bill Murray to receive Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at Kennedy Center

WASHINGTON – Bill Murray, whose special blend of boyish enthusiasm and molasses-thick sarcasm has made him the most consistently successful comedian launched by “Saturday Night Live,” has be...

DATE: Jun 14, 2016 | CATEGORY: Film, TV and Streaming

Lionel Richie makes the best speech ever at an awards show you can't see

NEW YORK – “This is the top of the line,” Lionel Richie said Thursday night, as he held the Songwriters Hall of Fame lifetime achievement award. “I’m going to have to say that this is the be...

DATE: Jun 10, 2016 | CATEGORY: Music

A museum director who believes in more than the gallery walls

DATE: Nov 2, 2015 | CATEGORY: Visual Arts

Tom Petty was a heroin addict in the '90s. Here's why he's finally talking about it

The idea for a new unauthorized Tom Petty biography came from a surprising source: Tom Petty. “He didn’t want it to be authorized because he felt like authorized meant bull----,” ...

DATE: Oct 12, 2015 | CATEGORY: Books

Deadheads threaten to sue as promoter tries to fit more fans into farewell concerts

Can’t we just throw a flatbed up on Haight Street, dose the Corona and play “Dark Star” ’til the sun goes down? Yes, another day, another Grateful Dead ticket outrage spreads over...

DATE: Jun 9, 2015 | CATEGORY: Music

The ‘quiet surfer dude’ who rebuilt the Harvard Art Museums

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – When Tom Lentz interviewed for the top job at the Harvard Art Museums back in 2003, the hiring committee received a strange warning. The soft-spoken director of the Smiths...

DATE: Jan 6, 2015 | CATEGORY: Arts and Entertainment