Innholdsfortegnelse for April 7, 2016 i Rolling Stone

TO EXPLORE OUR ARCHIVES, VISIT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/COVERWALL  FOLLOW US ON TV ‘AMERICAN IDOL’ SAYS GOODBYE FEATURE THE FRAT-BOY SMUGGLERS MUSIC THE STORY OF ‘DESTROYER’ FILM STILL DAZED, STILL CONFUSED DEEP IN DYLAN’S ARCHIVES ALL THIS AND MORE AT  ROLLINGSTONE.COM/PODCAST Rolling Stone POLITICS MATT TAIBBI CULTURE ROB SHEFFIELD MOVIES PETER TRAVERS ROCK & ROLL DAVID FRICKE…

When contributing editor David Kushner was four years old, his brother Jonathan, 11, set out on his bike from their home in Tampa, Florida, to buy candy. Eight days later, his mutilated body was found in a shallow grave. In his memoir, Alligator Candy, Kushner investigates this tragedy, writing about his family’s loss and about how random acts of vio- lence in the 1970s redefined American childhood. Kushner spares none of the graphic details of his brother’s murder. “To me, it wasn’t just about finding out the truth,” he says. “But how do you live knowing that the worst possible things can happen? To tell that, I had to go to the darkest part of the story so that I could come out of it.”…

Diplo was expecting around 40,000 Cubans to show up when he and his dance crew, Major Lazer, played Havana’s José Martí Anti-Imperialist Platform on a recent Sunday afternoon. Instead, they got 10 times that many. Almost half a million fans, most of them teenagers, came out – a sea of bodies that stretched infinitely in front of the recently reopened U.S. Embassy. “It was the biggest show we ever played,” says Diplo. “They were absolutely crazy. Energy, so much energy. It was really emotional.” Major Lazer were only the second U.S. act to play a major concert in the communist country in more than 50 years (after Audioslave in 2005), and the first since President Obama called for restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2014. Right now, Cubans are gearing…

When ethan hawk turned 40 a few years ago, he did a couple of things. “One is I got my motorcycle license,” Hawke says, splayed out in the corner booth of a Manhattan cafe. “I had it before, but I got it again. But when I went to buy a bike, the guy said, ‘You have four kids? I’d wait till the youngest graduates from high school.’ And I thought, ‘You know what? That’s a really good idea.’ ” The other thing Hawke did was start working a lot. “I basically pressed the panic button,” he says. “When I was young and everybody wanted me to be a movie star, I was like, ‘Eh, we’ll see.’ But all of a sudden I turned 40, and I just wanted to…

Not for the first time, Tracy Morgan is getting a glimpse of heaven. “Look at this,” he says, pointing to a city-size mass of white clouds, framed against a marbleblue horizon, outside the window of his leased private jet. “Ain’t no war up here. Ain’t nothing going on up here. This is the friendly skies. This is calm. Ain’t no room up here for none of that bullshit from Earth.” He leans back in his tan leather seat, takes a breath, checks the color touchscreen of the high-end new insulin pump he just got yesterday. (“It’s basically my whole pancreas,” he explains. “It’s kind of complicated.”) On a Friday afternoon in early March, Morgan is headed to a Michigan casino for a date on his first stand-up tour since the…

“It’s gonna be all right If you’re on a sinking ship. The California kids Will throw you a lifeline.” —Weezer, “California Kids” Weezer Weezer Crush Music/Atlantic The Weezer cult will always rest on the band’s 1996 overshare masterpiece, Pinkerton, where Rivers Cuomo bared his soul about his fears and fantasies, sniffing a teenage Japanese girl’s fan letters and drooling over cello players. Latter-day Weezer fans understandably cherish the myth that Pinkerton was reviled by the adult world, but in truth, nobody even noticed it; there were loads of major-label sophomore flops in 1996 (Weezer’s sold slightly better than Sponge’s, slightly worse than the Gin Blossoms’). Yet Cuomo took it hard. Like a Scarlett O’Hara wandering the burned-out ruins of the grunge plantation, he shook a fist at the…

What are the best and worst parts of success? I’m one of those few people that loves notoriety. I love being loved by people that love the songs that my band loved enough to record. Now, the other side is everybody’s got a camera attached to their iPhone, so you can’t go anywhere without a picture. I have a great T-shirt that says go fuck your selfie that I walk through airports with. It sounds like some of the time you hate it. It depends on how you wake up in the morning. Sometimes, you’re in the gym at 7:30 in the morning, and you haven’t had your coffee and everyone you meet is like, “Oh, my God!” It’s like getting pecked to death by chickens. But then I have…

Trump Rising my political-fangirl hearteats madly for Matt Taibbi, even when he’s scaring me to death [“President Trump, Seriously,” RS 1256]. After Obama’s inclusiveness and diplomacy, the pendulum has swung to his polar opposite: a racist Neanderthal. Actual qualifications take a back seat, as “likes” and retweets are the currency; it’s no accident that fans are called “followers.” Taibbi is right: We created Trump, and we may be getting what we deserve. Lisa Oxman, Los Angeles quite unexpectedly, i’ve become a Trump fan. I’ve viewed every anti-Trump article as a test of a writer’s ability to sway my support for bringing real change to the American political scene. How, then, can I describe Taibbi’s article? Maybe “unflinchingly accurate.” It’s probably the most refreshing political article I’ve read. Jay Harbst, Boise, ID…

1. Kendrick Lamar “Untitled 03: 5.28.13” We’re still reeling from Lamar’s 2015 opus, To Pimp a Butterfly, and now he surprise-drops a set of brilliant leftovers. Untitled Unmastered’s funksoul standout is an anti-corporate blast that’s as thrilling as it is scathing. 2. Anohni “Drone Bomb Me” Transgender art-pop singer Anohni (formerly Antony) is releasing an album co-produced by Kanye collaborator Hudson Mohawke. This single is as darkly devastating as its title – sung from the perspective of a girl whose parents have been droned, and who wants the same. 3. Parquet Courts “Berlin Got Blurry” The most exciting thing about the best indie band of the past five years is how it refuses to sit still. The dusky guitars on this hopped-up rocker from the upcoming Human Performance evoke the…

People had been telling Don Cheadle for years that he should play Miles Davis in a movie. But it wasn’t until he heard it from the musician’s nephew at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 that the 51-year-old House of Lies star knew he had to do it – so long as they didn’t go the standard biopic route. “I said, ‘I think we’ve got to make a movie about him as a gangster,’” Cheadle recalls. “‘Do something that Miles himself would want to star in.’” He laughs. “And then I had to make it.” The partially crowd-sourced result, Miles Ahead, is anything but a typical cradle-to-grave life story. For one thing, it focuses primarily on the late-1970s period when Davis wasn’t making music and had become…

It’s hard not to love Bernie Sanders. He has proved to be a gifted and eloquent politician. He has articulated the raw and deep anger about the damage the big banks did to the economy and to so many people’s lives. He’s spoken clearly for those who believe the system is rigged against them; he’s made plain how punishing and egregious income inequality has become in this country, and he refuses to let us forget that the villains have gotten away with it. I’ve been watching the debates and town halls for the past two months, and Sanders’ righteousness knocks me out. My heart is with him. He has brought the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations to the ballot box. But it is not enough to be a candidate of anger.…

Kendrick Lamar Untitled Unmastered Top Dawg Entertainment HHH ½ “pimp, pimp: hooray!” the cheer repeating throughout Kendrick Lamar’s latest. Following Kanye’s work-in-progress The Life of Pablo, Compton’s finest drops a similarly unfinished-feeling set that functions as a victory lap after the triumph of 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Of course, nothing’s that simple with Lamar. This 35- minute set begins in a bedroom, vocalist Bilal sexing up a lover over soul-jazz foreplay. Then Lamar details an apocalyptic reckoning with “death faces screaming in agony.” And this is a jam about uplift. The tracks are simply numbered and dated, although it’s unclear when they were finished; Lamar had previously premiered versions of “Untitled 03,” “Untitled 08” and “Untitled 02” on Colbert and Fallon. Ultimately, Untitled Unmastered is an inspired collection of…

A FASCINATING STORY on the possibilities and dangers of AI. We cure diseases on the one hand, and kill jobs on the other. I thought about it as I deposited a check without an envelope and scanned and paid for groceries, with not another human anywhere in sight. Caroline Barnett Via the Internet YANN LECUN TALKS ABOUT building empathy into robots so they can “become an extension of our intelligence and power.” What could possibly go wrong? Susan Smith Via the Internet WHILE GRATEFUL FOR JEFF Goodell’s comprehensive reporting, I found myself agreeing with Tesla’s Elon Musk, who likened the development of artificial intelligence to “summoning the demon.” Even if it was an overstatement, the concern is real. And all this coming from a guy on technology’s cutting edge, who…

The Kiss guitarist is releasing his new covers collection, Origins, Volume 1, which features a guest appearance by Paul Stanley. Thin Lizzy “Emerald” This is a real heavy song that just barrels through and has a cool breakdown with dual guitar leads playing the harmony part. It just has an awesome ambience. Cream “White Room” Cream had a huge influence on my playing. This is a classic wah-wah song. I’d play it on my upcoming tour, but I don’t use pedals because I might trip over them. Kiss “Deuce” This is the first song that Gene, Paul and Peter played when I walked into the audition. It just grabs your attention right away. Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven” This is Jimmy Page at his best. I don’t even know how…

Before last year, courtney Barnett was a relatively obscure Australian singer-songwriter known for spinning mesmerizing rock songs out of prosaic life experiences (allergic attacks, real-estate open houses). But then she got nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy, and beat out Tame Impala and eight other acts for the prestigious Australian Music Prize. “They’re some of my favorite bands, so it’s kind of overwhelming,” she says from the road. In April, Barnett will embark on her biggest tour yet, which will include gigs at Coachella and New York’s Governors Ball. She’ll be playing one of her catchiest songs ever, her new single “Three Packs a Day,” an ode to ramen noodles that recalls one of her 1990s alt-rock favorites, the Lemonheads. She’s also thinking about her next album: “I might…

If there was a moment during the early primary season when you could almost feel the self-delusion infecting the Republican establishment, it was on the night of the South Carolina primary, when an utterly deflated Jeb Bush, onetime shoo-in for the nomination, suspended his campaign, and Marco Rubio, the supposed “last best hope” of the GOP, declared a sort of victory without actually winning. The Florida senator had come in second, barely, eking out a win over Ted Cruz by two-tenths of a point – though, as it would be argued incessantly, this was a score, given that Rubio came in fifth in New Hampshire and had almost been left for dead. Some 400 South Carolinians had shown up for Rubio’s election-night watch party, which was held in a cavernous…

<div class="thin-border"></div> Born to Be Blue Ethan Hawke Directed by Robert Budreau HHH ½ everything that makes ethan Hawke an extraordinary actor – his energy, his empathy, his fearless, vanity-free eagerness to explore the deeper recesses of a character – is on view in Born to Be Blue. Hawke plays Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter and vocalist who hit dreamboat status in the 1950s and whose longtime addiction to heroin led to his death in 1988 at age 59. It sounds like a standard tsk-tsk Hollywood biopic. Ha! Born to Be Blue is anything but. Canadian writer-director Robert Budreau plays riffs on Baker’s life without getting stuck on facts or formula. The effect is hypnotic and invigorating. Budreau merely sketches Baker’s early career as the James Dean of jazz. Then…