Entertainment

Granderson: Soul singer Frankie Beverly's legacy of healing

Published

2 years ago

September 14, 2024

Granderson: Soul singer Frankie Beverly's legacy of healing

When Frankie Beverly, lead singer of the soul band Maze, passed away this week, I thought of the audience on his recordings from one November night in 1980 at Saenger Theater. His album “Live in New Orleans” captured more than a concert. It captured a turning point in history.

Opinion Columnist

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.

President Carter had lost his reelection bid barely a week earlier. Nearly 60% of Orleans Parish, where Beverly was recording, voted for Carter. The GDP grew a stunning 4.6% during Carter’s only term, but inflation was 13%, as was the poverty rate. His opponent, Ronald Reagan, blamed social programs and welfare recipients for the economic woes. When Reagan first workshopped that rhetoric, in his 1966 campaign for governor of California, the “war on poverty” had just begun; the overall poverty rate was 17%, but for Black America in 1965 it was more than 40%.

By 1980, Reagan and his party had a clear record of dislike for the war on poverty and those it intended to help. He cut more than $22 billion from social programs within his first two years. And when Reagan left the White House, the county’s poverty rate was back up to its highest since — wait for it — 1965.

Listening now, I know that in New Orleans in 1980, Beverly singing “we’ll get through these changing times” was about all of this and the road ahead. His music was both the calm before the storm and the tool needed to find peace in the middle of it. That is why “Joy and Pain” — the fourth track on the live album — sounds less like an R&B concert and more like a revival.

“Sometimes we go through life and things don’t work out the way you want all the time,” he begins. “As you grow older, you kind of learn to live with the joys and pain of life, y’all .… Can I get a witness to that?”

As a child, I thought I understood what Beverly was talking about in “Joy and Pain.” And then, as Beverly said, you grow older. And with wiser eyes you are more able to see just how painful it must’ve been for parents to not be able to feed their children or keep the lights on.

By the time “Live in New Orleans” was released in 1981, nearly 1 in 7 Americans had plunged into poverty, crack was appearing in major cities and the U.S. divorce rate was at its peak. Beverly’s music kept the Black community’s spirits lifted — much in the way Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp became voices for the white working class during this same era.

Frankie Beverly in white hat and linen shirt hold a microphone onstage

Over and over you can be sure
There will be sorrow but you will endure.
Where there’s a flower there’s the sun and the rain —
Oh, but it’s wonderful, they’re both one and the same.

At one point during the recording, Beverly recalls a story in which someone asked why he chose New Orleans to record a live album. His answer was perfect in its simplicity: “Well, why not, ya dig?” Through the long lens of time, we can now see Beverly’s choice of city was the perfect backdrop.

After enslavement came the New Orleans massacre of 1866, the Race Riot of 1900 and other terrorist attacks that left countless dead and destroyed Black businesses and homes. When construction of Saenger began in 1924, there was prosperity in New Orleans, but Jim Crow laws kept Black people disenfranchised.

And then just two months after the theater opened, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 devastated the region, causing more than $1 billion in damages — equal to a third of the federal budget at the time.

The flood killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 700,000 others. Many of the victims were descendants of the enslaved who had been forced into sharecropping. About a mile from Saenger is the restaurant where civil rights figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. would pray and eat as they met with local leaders, strategizing on how to dismantle oppressive laws.

This rich and textured history — each turning point — all contributed to the shaping of the New Orleans community and is reflected in the audience voice heard on that 1980 recording. The hits were established before Saenger. What made the album transformative was confirmation of a shared experience and shared resilience, expressed by those who attended.

The summer “Before I Let Go” first hit the airwaves, the death of Ernest R. Lacy would spark months of protest in the streets of Milwaukee.

Lacy, a 22-year-old Black man, was helping his cousin paint his apartment when he decided to walk to a store to grab a bite to eat. Police confronted him, claiming he fit the description of a rape suspect. Lacy died while in their custody. The woman who had been raped later identified her attacker, and he was convicted. Lacy was innocent.

During times in which it was easier to give in to hate and despair, Beverly advocated for love and resolve with a string of timeless classics that can be heard at any cookout worth fighting 405 traffic to get to. A soothing balm full of wisdom and warmth, Maze concerts were part family reunion, part community therapy.

Beverly received lifetime achievement awards from both BET and the NAACP. His career stretched across eras, his voice led to nine gold records, and his music influenced generations.

But, to the shame of the Recording Academy, he never received a Grammy. The Grammys could still correct that oversight and honor Beverly as he should be. Because it wasn’t talent that limited Beverly’s reach; it was the industry.

Black people had created the blues long before Mamie Smith walked into the studio in 1920 to record what’s considered the first blues record. The success of Smith’s recording led to “race records,” which led to Billboard having a list of the “most popular records in Harlem” in the 1940s.

Motown was ignored during award season for decades. By 1985, the American Music Awards had landed on a “Favorite Black Single” category as a way to keep everyone happy. It was decades after decades of trying to contain something as organic as music, like forcing an amoeba to hold a shape.

Frankie Beverly performs in white cap and shirt during 100 Black Men "Le Cabaret" sponsored by Ford

It’s still a struggle for the industry — so much so that the nation was riveted early this year when Tracy Chapman took the stage with Luke Combs and together, with the help of a story about poverty in America, they reminded us all that music was never meant to keep us apart.

It’s there to hold us together.

Beverly understood that as well as anyone.

@LZGranderson

Entertainment

AI actor Tilly Norwood to star in first movie

Published

4 minutes ago

July 6, 2026

Press Room

AI actor Tilly Norwood to star in first movie

Controversial AI actor Tilly Norwood will star in her first movie, a comedy drama called “Misaligned.”

The film portrays Tilly as an AI being with “no real body” and lived experience but with access to everyone else’s, according to Particle 6, the London-based company behind Norwood.

Norwood drew intense ire from many Hollywood actors last year, when an executive behind her creation said Norwood would soon be signed to a talent agency. Some actors worried that AI characters trained on human likenesses without permission or compensation could one day replace them in movies and shows.

Particle 6 emphasized that the movie is a “hybrid production” with film and TV professionals working with AI specialists.

“Our ambition with Tilly Norwood has always been to show the creative industry what is possible with AI at any one point in time,” said Eline van der Velden, Particle 6 chief executive in a statement. der Velden said the film will help traditional filmmakers “upskill and transition to a world where AI will play an increasingly important part.”

“We remain passionate about helping people develop AI skills that will ensure they – and the industry – continue to thrive,” der Velden said.

In “Misaligned,” the plot progresses when Tilly is later convinced by a rogue bot to ignore her guardrails and start developing ambitions of her own, which make her more human and famous, and “Tilly begins to develop shame that her very being has been built on the whole of humanity,” Particle 6 said.

“The film will absolutely be funny, chaotic and self-aware — very Tilly,” van der Velden said in a statement. “But underneath it, there’s something deeper about identity, performance, and our very human fears around AI. And yes, art will most definitely be imitating life.”

AI remains a controversial topic in Hollywood, as many people in the entertainment industry are preparing themselves for the way the technology will change jobs and the way things are done. AI companies have touted how their tools could lower the cost and the amount of time it takes to produce visual effects . Meanwhile, writers and actors have expressed worries about their work being misused to train AI models.

“They are taking our professional members’ work that has been created, sometimes over generations, without permission, without compensation and without acknowledgment, building something new,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said last year regarding the controversy surrounding Tilly Norwood.

“But the truth is, it’s not new. It manipulates something that already exists, so the conceit that it isn’t harming actors — because it is its own new thing — ignores the fundamental truth that it is taking something that doesn’t belong to them,” Astin said.

SAG-AFTRA did not immediately return a request for comment on Tilly’s first movie.

The union has been advocating for more AI protections for actors, recently approving a contract with major studios in which producers agreed to “a principle strongly favoring human performances” and that producers would only use a synthetic if it “brings significant additional value to the motion picture.” If a producer decided to use a synthetic in a role that could be done by a human, they would need to notify the union and bargain in good faith.

SAG-AFTRA is also supporting the NO FAKES Act, a federal bill that would give individuals the authorization to use their own voice and likeness in digital replicas and creates a way to hold bad actors liable.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review – The Fetus (2025)

Published

9 hours ago

July 6, 2026

Press Room

The Fetus, 2025.

Directed by Joe Lam.
Starring Bill Moseley, Lauren LaVera, Julian Curtis, Evan Towell, and Ariel Yasmine.

SYNOPSIS:

A couple become pregnant with a half-human, half-demonic fetus with a thirst for blood-and must uncover its terrifying origins before it’s too late.

In The Fetus, Alessa (Lauren LaVera) discovers she has accidentally gotten pregnant by her boyfriend Chris (Julian Curtis), but instead of this being a cause for celebration Alessa tells Chris that they must visit her father Maddox (Bill Moseley) instead of going to a hospital as Maddox insisted she do that if she ever got pregnant. Chris has his own reasons for not wanting a baby and goes along with her, but Maddox is not an easy man to get to know as he is blind and suffering from PTSD as a result of being in Vietnam.

However, there are bigger stakes here than just trying to impress your girlfriend’s father as it is revealed that Alessa’s baby is the result of a pact Maddox made with a demon decades before, and that his blindness was due to him not sacrificing Alessa to that demon. Now he has a second chance to appease the demon with the vampiric tentacle monster that keeps appearing to suck the blood of anyone who isn’t kin, and Chris has to step up and decide whether he wants to be a father or not.

Or something like that, as The Fetus is a little confused by its own mythology. Taking its cue from Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive!, The Fetus is a low-budget indie affair that has its star names to thank for lifting it up and out of the bin marked ‘utter nonsense’ and into the realms of watchable nonsense. What’s the difference? Well, there is no way to try and sell it as a serious horror movie as the premise is totally daft, the visuals give it the look of a Megadeth music video from the 1990s and it ties itself up in knots trying to tell us who needs to be sacrificed and why (although neither become very clear by the end of it), but Bill Moseley has made enough of these types of schlocky horror movies to know exactly what he’s doing and how to pitch it, plus Lauren LaVera has enough clout with modern horror audiences to give it some appeal and she proves once again why she is one of the best scream queens of recent times (although she is better than this movie), and so the combination of these two actors gives The Fetus more weight than it would have had if two lesser-known actors were in the roles.

Julian Curtis as Chris also lends an air of comic relief, although when the plot is as silly as it is you cannot help but deliver your lines with that sort of sarcastic smirk on your face (”You can’t get pregnant overnight” – well, she did and no one questions it). He plays off against Bill Moseley very well and, if nothing else, his character is the one that has the biggest arc, and if you wanted to dig deeper and salvage some sort of message about nature versus nurture, what it means to be a father, telling your girlfriend when the condom splits and that type of thing then it is there, but don’t stress too much if you just want to watch vampiric tentacles coming out from between Lauren LaVera’s legs because that is really what everyone is here for rather than social commentary.

The Fetus works because everyone involved knows exactly what kind of movie they are making, and that movie is a low-budget black comedy about a demonic baby with naff-but-passable effects and three lead performers who bounce off each other very well. Going into it expecting The Exorcist or The Omen levels of filmmaking quality is only going to lead to anger and disappointment, and you can’t really be angry at a movie that has a man sticking his you-know-what into a fiery hole in the floor to conceive a baby. Temper your expectations and go into The Fetus prepared to enjoy 84 minutes of diabolical baby B-movie hilarity and you’ll have a good time… maybe.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Chris Ward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

Entertainment

Inside the all-star America250 concert at the L.A. Coliseum

Published

10 hours ago

July 6, 2026

Press Room

Inside the all-star America250 concert at the L.A. Coliseum

In New York, the Brooklyn Bridge went up in flames briefly during a fireworks display. In Washington D.C., stormy weather delayed a grievance-filled speech by President Trump.

And here in Los Angeles? On Saturday night, tens of thousands of Angelenos joined voices peacefully at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum to sing along with Chris Stapleton as the country star compared a lover to Tennessee whiskey.

A unifying cultural figure beloved by both liberals and conservatives, Stapleton was the headlining act at a Fourth of July benefit concert that also featured Smashing Pumpkins, Chaka Khan, Maren Morris and Queen Latifah. (I’d be surprised if those five names had previously appeared together in the same sentence.) The show, with tickets priced at $17.76, was presented by America250, a bipartisan commission that Congress created in 2016 to plan celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday; proceeds went to Feeding America, which calls itself the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the United States.

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“No politics — just purpose” is how America250 Chair Rosie Rios described the night in remarks from the stage, and it wasn’t hard to interpret the distinction she was seeking to draw between her group and Freedom 250, Trump’s rival semiquincentennial initiative that organized Saturday’s windblown event on the National Mall (not to mention an earlier concert by Vanilla Ice that was called off due to the threat of rain).

But here’s the thing: Compared with the president’s celebration, where he complained about his treatment by the justice system and suggested we should refer to his current term as his third, the show at the Coliseum really did feel like a politics-free zone — the somewhat rare occasion these days when folks from different walks of life come together just to listen to music and drink overpriced micheladas.

Said Stapleton not long into his set: “I won’t waste time talking.”

America250’s success was hardly a sure thing. Despite the relatively low price, tickets moved slowly in the weeks before the concert; one guy I talked to Saturday told me he’d paid six bucks for a discounted pass. Yet to my eyes the Coliseum was close to full by the time Stapleton came on.

The country singer was as solid and soulful as always, snarling gently through “Bad as I Used to Be,” then trading loving harmonies with his wife, Morgane, in “Millionaire.” He closed with “Tennessee Whiskey,” of course — a trusty yet somehow un-shopworn piece of Americana that’s earned a place on the shelf next to Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” and Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”

Smashing Pumpkins was perhaps a stranger fit for an explicitly patriotic event — “The world is a vampire,” frontman Billy Corgan sneered in “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” — yet the band sounded sharp and punchy in the ’90s alt-rock hits that have brought zoomers and even Gen Alpha kids into its audience.

Billed not inaccurately on the concert’s poster as “the legendary Chaka Khan,” the 73-year-old funk doyenne flexed her vocal chops in jammy renditions of “Ain’t Nobody” and “Tell Me Something Good” and got people hoisting their drinks for “I’m Every Woman.” Morris, who’d flown in from New York after attending her pal Taylor Swift’s wedding on Friday night, made an improbably smooth segue between her and Zedd’s synthed-up “The Middle” and the rustic “My Church.”

As the show’s host, Queen Latifah dispensed uplifting thoughts about American idealism throughout the evening but also got a slot of her own to do her classic “U.N.I.T.Y.” with help from a rambunctious drum line. It’s an unapologetic message song about demanding respect, and what was moving about hearing it here is that nobody seemed put off by that idea.

I’ll wave a flag for that.

Here are more photos from Saturday’s concert: