Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Oprah Winfrey may be Chicago’s biggest tourist attraction. Sure there’s the lakefront, the Bulls, the Art Institute, Magnificent Mile, Wrigley Field and Gino’s East. But how many of them can really make you feel better about yourself?
Rowdy heavy metal rocker Axl Rose cancelled a concert at the Rosemont Horizon and skipped town to escape the long arms of persecuting prosecutors, a representative for the singer says. Leaving thousands of fans waiting outside the Rosemont Horizon, Rose’s band, Guns N’ Roses, canceled a Friday night show half an hour before doors were to open so that Rose could avoid being served with misdemeanor arrest warrants for his alleged role in a Missouri riot last year.
As a pre-teen, Charlie Sexton studied guitar with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Now 23, the former solo artist is teamed up with two members of Vaughan’s band Double Trouble, as well as another Vaughan pupil.
Music today looks better than ever, thanks to videos that airbrush ordinary-looking folks to pinup perfection and catapult so-so singers to superstar status. If looks can thrill, then MTV delivers the goods. The network has made music fair game for artists who sometimes control their visually enticing pecs better than their voices.
Guns N’ Roses have been hailed and assailed as everything from rock ‘n’ roll’s messiahs to self-indulgent spoiled brats living out a hedonistic fantasy. They are musicians whose musical justification always has packed a stronger punch than the convoluted interviews they don’t readily grant anymore.
A woman wearing nothing more than a bikini bottom and a tan walked past a group of men. Instead of trying to get her phone number, they quickly and politely asked her to leave. As part of the production team for “Hollywood Squares,” their job was to keep the audience’s attention on the stars of the TV game show.
Steven Gottlieb could very well have become a successful Wall Street lawyer. Instead, Gottlieb, educated at Yale and Harvard Law School, founded a record company. But lest you think a new Madonna might be discovered on his label, let’s get the facts straight: The first and only album released on TeeVee Toons is last winter’s successful “Television’s Greatest Hits,” a two-record compilation of 65 themes from American television. More than 300,000 copies were sold in the United States, it went gold in Australia and it hit No. 18 on the charts in Japan.