Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White dead at 74—brother

Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White, who broke racial barriers by building a wide following for pop takes on funk and R&B, has died. He was 74.

His death is the latest in a string of prominent musicians who have passed away since the start of 2016.

Earth, Wind & Fire triumphed with a string of hits in the 1970s including “September,” “Shining Star,” “After the Love Has Gone” and “Boogie Wonderland.”

White, who suffered for years from Parkinson’s disease, forcing him to stop touring, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, his brother and a representative for the band said.

“My brother, hero and best friend Maurice White passed away peacefully last night in his sleep,” his brother and bandmate Verdine White wrote Thursday on Facebook.

“While the world has lost another great musician and legend, our family asks that our privacy is respected as we start what will be a very difficult and life-changing transition in our lives.”

Maurice White formed Earth, Wind & Fire in Chicago in 1969 and quickly became known for his skill at songwriting as he crafted intricate and readily danceable tunes that borrowed heavily from the city’s R&B scene, but kept a tight structure in line with pop hits.

The band was one of the early acts to break the color barrier in pop music, in 1979 becoming the first African-American act to sell out New York’s Madison Square Garden.

While never disappearing completely, Earth, Wind & Fire enjoyed a career resurgence after the election of President Barack Obama, who invited the band as one of the first performers after he entered the White House in 2009.

The band won acclaim not only for their songwriting but for their energetic live shows, led by a forceful horn section and featuring a kalimba, an African percussion instrument played by plucking metal tines.

White, a tenor, alternated on vocals with Philip Bailey, who offered a quickly recognizable falsetto.

Earth, Wind & Fire sold nearly 100 million albums worldwide and was nominated for 17 Grammy Awards, winning six.

Earth, Wind & Fire was due to be honored this year with a Grammy lifetime achievement award.

Coincidentally, the other honorees include Jefferson Airplane, whose co-founder Paul Kantner died last week, also at 74.

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Chicago officials release reports in police shooting of teen

CHICAGO — Hundreds of pages of Chicago police reports released late Friday by city officials depict a contrasting narrative to squad car video footage in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.

Several officers, including the one now charged with murder in Laquan McDonald’s death, reported that McDonald approached officers while armed with a knife. However, squad car video released last week shows McDonald veering away from officers down a four-lane street in October 2014 before he was shot 16 times. It shows officer Jason Van Dyke opening fire from close range and continuing to fire after McDonald crumples to the ground.

Van Dyke told an investigator that McDonald was “swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner” and that McDonald “raised the knife across chest” and pointed it at Van Dyke, according to one police report. Another report describes how Van Dyke feared for his life.

“In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald, to stop the attack,” one document reads. “McDonald fell to the ground but continued to move and continued to grasp the knife, refusing to let go of it.”

The details emerged in hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed reports that prompted supervisors to rule McDonald’s death a justifiable homicide hours after he was shot.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office charged Van Dyke last month, the same day the city released video of the shooting. City officials had fought in court for months to keep the video from public release, before deciding in November not to fight a judge’s order.

The release of the footage triggered protests and calls for public officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to resign. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called for an overall federal probe of police department practices, which top Democratic presidential candidates to local Illinois politicians have echoed. Emanuel has since fired the police chief, expanded a body camera program and formed a task force.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the Independent Police Review Authority conducts all investigations of officer-involved shootings and the agency was given the case report and videos. He said that the US Department of Justice’s investigation was also ongoing.

“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action,” he said in an emailed statement.

Messages left for the authority, Emanuel’s spokeswoman, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ spokeswoman and a police union weren’t immediately returned.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Creed Recording New Album, Revisiting Their Past on Tour

Creed are simultaneously looking back and ahead these days. While the band is hitting the road April 13th in Chicago for a month-long tour that will find them playing their first two albums, My Own Prison and Human Clay, from start to finish, the band is also well into working on a new album, their first since 2003's Weathered.

"We spent about three to four weeks together jamming and writing new material," frontman Scott Stapp tells Rolling Stone. "We feel five [new songs] have the symmetry and continuity within themselves and will make the record. So if you want to look at it from that perspective, we’re halfway there."

Right now there is no timeline for the record, though Stapp says, "We could begin tracking as soon as March, and [if that happens] of course we’ll have a record out this summer." Regardless, the whole band is in agreement that the top priority is making the best record they can. "We’re gonna continue to write until we feel we have the strongest, best album we’ve ever done. That’s our goal. If it takes all year to do that and the album doesn’t come out until next year, then so be it."

Given their excitement about the new record, is there a chance the band could preview some new material on the upcoming tour? "We would love to. If we get it where it needs to be, we'll definitely play it," guitarist Mark Tremonti says.

Tremonti agrees with Stapp's assessment that they have about five tracks locked in to make the record. "There's two that you might hear on the radio," he says. "There's one heavier, high-energy type of tune. And there's kind of a moodier, slower, longer finger-picked song, like 'Faceless Man.' It's kind of all over the place, but we're very happy with what we've got so far."

There will also be some clues to the new album in the older material when the band revisits the first two albums on their upcoming tour. "It just reminds you to not overcomplicate things," Tremonti says. "We'll stick to making a record formed around these big melodies that I think were always kind of the essence of the band."

Adds Stapp: "As we’re going through this material, jamming and stuff, I think it brings back the memories of how things were before the success – our relationships and how we looked at what to do, an appreciation for it all. It’s definitely rubbing off on the new music."

source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/creed-recording-new-album-revisiting-their-past-on-tour-20120301

BMW to pay $3M fine for US recall issues

CHICAGO—German carmaker BMW has agreed to pay $3 million in civil penalties for failing to report safety defects soon enough, US safety regulators said Friday.

Federal safety regulators launched an investigation in 2010 after noting a “troubling trend” in which “BMW appears to maintain a practice, by design or habit, in which it provides little information in its initial filings.”

The initial reports were missing critical information such as plans to remedy the problem and it took BMW over 30 days on average to update the reports with required information, the safety regulator said.

A review of 16 BMW recalls issued in 2010 found “a number of instances” in which the automaker did not comply with federal law, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

While BMW denies that it violated federal law, it agreed to make internal changes to its recall decision-making process in order to “ensure timely reporting to consumers and the federal government in the future.”

US law requires automakers to report defects within five days and promptly issue a recall to correct the problem.

“It’s critical to the safety of the driving public that defects and recalls are reported in short order,” David Strickland, head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, said in a statement.

“NHTSA expects all manufacturers to address automotive safety issues quickly and in a forthright manner.”

source: http://business.inquirer.net/44115/bmw-to-pay-3m-fine-for-us-recall-issues