"The city was concerned that we didn't have the financial stability," said Herb Paloff, president of Seashore Events. Paloff said he'd had little time to acquire corporate sponsors after the contract was signed in January. Instead, he went to private investors, some of whom took flight after the first oldies weekend drew only several hundred people.
Wildwood administrator Bradley Blubaugh said the city broke the contract
because the $40,000 check required as a performance bond bounced.
MUSICAL MAYHEM
A St. Louis prosecutor says he'd like to see another videotape of a July 2 Guns N' Roses concert before deciding whether to pursue criminal charges against singer Axl Rose. A tape by one of the band's entourage does not provide a good look at several people who say they were injured during the riot that followed a truncated GNR show at the Riverport Amphitheater in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights, said St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch.
"Once they're down below head level (on the floor), you can't see," McCulloch said. "People around them are standing up on chairs."
Several audience members and at least one security guard claim to have been hurt during the melee or to have been assaulted by Rose. McCulloch expects to decide this week whether he'll file charges against Rose, who abruptly stopped the concert when security guards failed to take a camera away from a fan. Nearly 80 people were injured and about $200,000 worth of damage was done to the venue in the riot that followed.
MAKING FRIENDS
Dionne Warwick reports that her Grammy-winning song "That's What Friends Are For" has raised millions for AIDS programs. The song she recorded in 1986 with Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder and Elton John had an enormous impact, she said at an AIDS forum last week in an Atlanta housing project. "And it's still selling," she said.
Although she's not planning another benefit recording, she told the workshop participants, "I want you to know that Dionne Warwick cares and Dionne Warwick does not care by herself. She has a multitude of friends.
"This disease does not care who you are," she said. "It loves everybody, and it's the kind of love we don't need."
BEAUTIFUL, BUT INVISIBLE
The most beautiful woman on TV isn't on TV. Jaclyn Smith, the former Charlie's Angel who hasn't had a series since Christine Cromwell in 1989, has topped TV Guide's nationwide poll to find the fairest in all of television land. Smith, who will be seen next season in the NBC telemovie The Tangled Web, was followed by Candice Bergen, Vanna White, Joan Lunden and Phylicia Rashad. Rounding out the top 10 in the Roper Poll were Kirstie Alley, Jane Pauley, Kathie Lee Gifford, Oprah Winfrey and Connie Chung.
Most attractive face? Smith again, followed by Bergen and Lunden. Best body: White, followed by Alley and Gifford. Most attractive personality: Winfrey, Rashad and Bergen.
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
Ken Burns, creator of the PBS epic documentary The Civil War, returned last week to Richmond, Va., capital of the Confederacy, to raise money for public television.
"Quite often, the history of the Civil War has been so romanticized that it's impossible to recognize, or it's been done looking over the shoulder of the North," Burns said during a news conference at the Museum of the Confederacy. "It's been impossible to appreciate that there were many, many different groups and feelings in the South."
Gov. L. Douglas Wilder declared Aug. 3 as "Ken Burns Day" in Virginia. First shown in September, Burns' 11-hour series attracted 38.9 million viewers - the highest ever for a PBS series.
