Latest news with #DaddyG
Metro
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Fans left 'crying in airport' after 90s icons scrap gig at last minute
Massive Attack fans have been left in tears after the band abruptly cancelled their upcoming gigs, mere hours before they were due on stage. The trip-hop group, first formed in 1988 and consisting of Daddy G and 3D,rose to fame in the 90s with albums Blue Lines and Mezzanine. Just two hours before doors were scheduled to open at the KunstRasen in Bonn on Monday night, an email was released letting fans know it had been cancelled. 'Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Massive Attack concert has been cancelled today,' the short statement said. 'Tickets can be returned where they were purchased.' The scheduled concert in Berlin's Spandau Citadel, due to take place tonight (Tuesday, July 8) has also been scrapped. A similar message appeared on the tour agent's website which read: 'We regret to inform you that tomorrow's Massive Attack show (July 8, 2025) cannot take place due to unforeseen circumstances. Tickets will be cancelled automatically.' No official announcement has come from Massive Attack themselves, with fans left confused by the sudden silence. 'They cancelled 2 hours before show entrance. Totally disappointing,' lucydreams420 wrote on the band's subreddit. Critical-War5750 said: 'I'm in Bonn now. Flew in from UK earlier, checked into my hotel, saw updates on here before I got email from TM [Ticketmaster] confirming. At 4pm local time.' 'My girlfriend is currently in the airport and she just saw the news,' added Zizifron. 'She's in tears. I don't know how to calm her.' 'Missed massive attack in 2019 and I wanted to see them so badly that I flew out to Europe just for them to cancel the day before,' shared trollfuneral on X. 'Massive Attack concert cancelled, what the hell do I do in Bonn now?' added privtonio. 'Unprofessional,' slammed Xikon. 'In Bonn, the cancellation announcement came 100 minutes before the gates opened… That's anti-fan! 'They cancelled the Pohoda festival on the 10th so not Germany related I guess,' added ResidualFox as fans discussed potential causes. Their appearance at Pohoda Festival in Slovakia on July 10 has reportedly been axed; meanwhile, a rescheduled date has been promised for the Bonn show. Many suspected a band member may have become ill, resulting in the rapid cancellation and inability to share a formal statement. Critical-War5750 continued: '[If] it's serious illness, then I don't blame at all and wish for speedy recovery. It's annoying tonight, but more important things in life.' Others speculated that the band's political statements, particularly those supporting Palestine, may have been a factor, especially after the furore surrounding Kneecap and Bob Vylan. Last year, Massive Attack cancelled all dates on their US tour, again with just days to go. More Trending The Teardrop musicians were due to headline concerts in New York, Boston, Washington DC and Atlanta but called it all off. The message, shared on the band's Instagram story at the time, read: 'Due to unforeseen circumstances, Massive Attack must regrettably cancel their upcoming performance at III Points Festival in Miami FL on October 19, as well as their shows in Atlanta GA, Washington DC, Boston MA, and Forest Hills NY. Metro has reached out to Massive Attack's team for comment. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Rock frontman addresses 'deafening booing' at Black Sabbath's and Ozzy Osbourne's final concert MORE: 90s TV magician Wayne Dobson dies aged 68 decades after multiple sclerosis diagnosis MORE: Noel Gallagher's ex Meg Mathews explains why she left Oasis' comeback gig early
Evening Standard
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Massive Attack at LIDO Festival: 'a moment of unity and a call to action'
That's probably how it should be right now, yet after a thrillingly brutal Risingson - 3D and Daddy G still utter icons of cool - there's a solemnity to the occasion that stifles the thrills early on, Take It There and Future Proof merely holding the mood. Things shift upwards with The Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser joining them for Black Milk and then a spiraling version of Tim Buckley's Song to the Siren where her legendary voice startles even further, truly godlike as the world behind her crashes into rocks.
New York Times
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Gene Barge, R&B Saxophonist Who Played on Landmark Hits, Dies at 98
Gene Barge, one of the last surviving saxophonists of the golden age of R&B, whose career ran the gamut of 20th-century Black popular music, died on Sunday at his home in Chicago. He was 98. His death was confirmed by his daughter Gina Barge. Known by the nickname Daddy G, Mr. Barge played on landmark hits of the rock and soul era, beginning with Chuck Willis's swinging remake of the blues standard 'C.C. Rider.' Galvanized by Mr. Barge's moaning tenor saxophone, 'C.C. Rider' reached No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1957 and stalled just outside the Top 10 on the pop chart. In 1963, Mr. Barge was featured on Jimmy Soul's calypso-derived 'If You Wanna Be Happy,' a No. 1 pop and R&B hit. Mr. Barge also played the wailing tenor part on Fontella Bass's 'Rescue Me' (1965) and supplied the rhythmic drive, with members of the Motown house band the Funk Brothers, for Jackie Wilson's 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)' (1967). Both records topped the R&B chart and crossed over to become Top 10 pop hits. His greatest acclaim, though, came in 1961 with 'Quarter to Three,' a No. 1 pop single recorded with the R&B shouter Gary U.S. Bonds. Hoping to capitalize on the success of 'New Orleans,' his first big hit, Mr. Bonds created 'Quarter to Three' by adding lyrics to 'A Night With Daddy G,' a churning instrumental that Mr. Barge had recently written and recorded with his band the Church Street Five. 'Oh, don't you know that I danced/I danced 'til a quarter to 3/With the help, last night, of Daddy G,' Mr. Bonds sings on the opening chorus. ('A Night With Daddy G' would prove doubly auspicious when Dion borrowed its melody for 'Runaround Sue,' a finger-snapping wonder that topped the pop chart in late 1961.) Despite having the benefit of Mr. Barge's snaking saxophone runs — and despite the record's affinity with the twist dance craze of the day — 'Quarter to Three' was an unlikely sensation. Muffled and lo-fi, it sounded as if it had been recorded in a bathroom or a stairwell. 'This record is fuzzy, muzzy and distorted,' the British television producer Jack Good wrote in a 1961 issue of Disc, the popular weekly music magazine later absorbed into Record Mirror. 'According to present-day technical standards it is appalling. However, for my money, the disc is not just good, it's sensational and revolutionary.' Mr. Good's assessment of the record proved prescient. An exuberant fusion of doo-wop, Black gospel and incipient frat rock, 'Quarter to Three' not only inspired the big-beat rock 'n' roll of the Beatles and the garage-rock of bands like the Kingsmen and the Sir Douglas Quintet. It also provided a blueprint for the sax-and-vocal exchanges between Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen, a rapturous call and response that came to define the E Street Band, which often performed 'Quarter to Three' in concert. Breaking into pop music when the saxophone was ascendant (and before it was supplanted by the electric guitar), Mr. Barge was as distinctive and versatile a stylist as King Curtis, if less well known. Over six decades, he played on or produced records by Muddy Waters, the Chi-Lites and the incendiary Detroit funk band Black Merda. He also toured with Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones. Sources differ as to how Mr. Barge came to be known as Daddy G. The sobriquet, though, was already gaining traction before the release of 'Quarter to Three,' when the Philadelphia disc jockey Hy Lit adopted 'A Night With Daddy G' as the theme song for his radio show. Shortly afterward, the doo-wop group the Dovells paid homage to Mr. Barge on their 1961 hit 'Bristol Stomp,' singing, 'We ponied and twisted and we rocked with Daddy G.' James Gene Barge Jr. was born on Aug. 9, 1926, in Norfolk, Va., the oldest of eight children of James and Thelma (Edwards) Barge. His father played banjo and worked as a welder in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. His mother managed the home. Mr. Barge played clarinet in high school and took up the saxophone only after his father brought home a waterlogged tenor that he had found on a torpedo-damaged ship. He was 20 at the time and had just completed two years in the Army Air Forces. After graduating from West Virginia State College in 1950 with a degree in music, he taught high school and pursued music as an avocation. Jazz was a formative influence, especially the effervescent phrasing of the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young. The first recordings Mr. Barge made under his own name were a pair of instrumentals for Checker, a subsidiary of Chess Records, in 1956. 'Country,' his first single, was a hit along the Eastern Seaboard. 'When Chess heard it, they said, 'What the hell is that?' Mr. Barge said of the record in a 2007 interview with Virginia Living magazine. 'They had never heard a saxophone sound like that before. They even gave it a word: funk. That was the reputation I got — that Gene Barge could play funky.' Around 1960 Mr. Barge began his brief but fruitful association with the producer Frank Guida, whose Legrand label released 'A Night With Daddy G' and Mr. Bonds's early singles. Mr. Barge and Mr. Bonds had a second major hit together with 'School Is Out,' which reached the Top 10 in 1961, but enjoyed only modest success after that. In 1964, as independent record labels with national distribution increasingly dominated regional markets, Mr. Barge abandoned teaching — and Norfolk's small Legrand imprint — and moved to Chicago to work for Chess Records. While there he played on R&B hits like Little Milton's 'Grits Ain't Groceries' and Koko Taylor's 'Wang Dang Doodle' and produced albums, including Buddy Guy's acclaimed 1967 effort, 'Left My Blues in San Francisco.' In the late 1960s, he also directed the musical ensemble of the Chicago chapter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Operation Breadbasket, an organization headed locally by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Mr. Barge later ran the gospel division of Stax Records and, over the ensuing decades, worked as a freelance musician, producer and arranger, most notably on Natalie Cole's Grammy-winning single 'Sophisticated Lady (She's a Different Lady).' In the late 1970s he took a detour into acting, working locally in Chicago (he made his screen debut in the independent 1978 film 'Stony Island') before eventually landing roles in Hollywood action thrillers like 'Under Siege' (1992) and 'The Fugitive' (1993). Mr. Barge remained active into the 2000s, serving as a consultant for Martin Scorsese's 2003 PBS documentary series 'The Blues' and playing on records like Public Enemy's 'Superman's Black in the Building' and with the avant-garde jazz trumpeter Malachi Thompson. 'Gene Barge is the flyest octogenarian I know,' Chuck D of Public Enemy told Virginia Living in 2007. 'To go from Muddy Waters to Public Enemy is a good trick.' In addition to his daughter Gina, Mr. Barge is survived by another daughter, Gail Florence; three siblings, Celestine Bailey, Kim Williamson and Milton Barge; two grandchildren; and several great-grandchildren. His wife, Sarah Barge, died in 2008. His first marriage ended in divorce. Mr. Barge's career might not have gotten off to the start it did with Chuck Willis's 'C.C. Rider' were it not for his patience and good humor. After playing the grinding riff on the demo that persuaded Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records to record it as a single, he was flown to New York for the session, only to find that another saxophonist had been hired instead. 'Ertegun and Wexler told me they were going to pay me, but they didn't want me to play,' Mr. Barge told Virginia Living. 'I went down to the liquor store, man, got me a pint and sat down on the floor to listen to them. They did 27 takes and weren't satisfied. So Chuck said, 'Look, why don't you let Gene run down one to get the feel?' So I ran down one and they said, 'Hold it, that's it, you got it. Let's cut it.''
