for SAN QUENTIN, Calif., May 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, award-winning music producer David Jassy and the Music Program at San Quentin State Prison are releasing their groundbreaking project, San Quentin Mixtape, Vol. 1. The 17-track project was written, recorded and produced within the walls of San Quentin State Prison (via the Youthful Offenders Program) over the course of four years and will be distributed on all streaming platforms via Equity Distribution.
The project delves into the incarcerated men's life experiences, exploring the struggle of incarceration and aiming to encourage young people to learn from their mistakes and choose a better path. The project, which doesn't use profanity, has received widespread acclaim from the entertainment world, including Kim Kardashian West, J. Cole, DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Common, T.I., Fat Joe, Snoh Aalegra, Maxwell, Nick Cannon, Talib Kweli, Russell Simmons – all of whom are featured on the mixtape's intro with the exception of Kardashian West. Stream San Quentin Mixtape, Vol. 1 HERE. 
San Quentin Mixtape, Vol. 1 was the brainchild of award-winning producer and songwriter David Jassy, who had been incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison for 11 years until his sentence was commuted by California Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2020. Prior to his incarceration, Jassy had written and produced for the likes of Britney Spears, Sean Kingston, Ashley Tisdale, Heidi Montag and Charice Pempengco (now known as Jake Zyrus).
"Music is a form of therapy that unites people from all backgrounds," Jassy said. "I really wanted to use this program to help the young, talented kids I saw rapping on the yard. I didn't want them to waste their potential and channel their energy into violent behavior, so it is a blessing to finally introduce this project to the world. It's been incredible to watch these guys flex their creative muscles and get the support of the music and entertainment industry."
All proceeds from sales of San Quentin Mixtape, Vol. 1 will benefit the National Center for Victims of Crime, The Boys & Girls Club of Oakland and Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (or "The Nabe"). Jassy specifically selected the latter two because several young men in his Music Program hail from the Oakland area and wanted to support organizations devoted to deterring youth from street life.
"This album is truly a testament to the power of music," Fat Joe said. "It's inspiring to watch these young men use music as a rehabilitative tool – both to express themselves and send a positive message to communities across the country. Creating an album is a complex process, so for these young men to achieve this goal from within San Quentin State Prison, they should be very proud."
After being incarcerated in several higher security prisons, Jassy was transferred to San Quentin State Prison, located in the San Francisco Bay Area and renowned for its rehabilitative programming. Jassy was exposed to several educational and programming opportunities, and began to pursue an idea, which formed while making music with a group of young incarcerated men. Jassy worked through his contacts in the music industry and also partnered with the nonprofit Dream Corps and its criminal justice program #cut50.
Donors supported the program by contributing audio equipment that eventually expanded into a full production studio within the Media Lab at the facility. Working with San Quentin, Jassy established a music-focused initiative as part of the Youthful Offenders Program. Over time, Jassy used the program to teach program participants how to write, produce and record their own music in a studio. He also taught them to express their stories and channel their emotions, writing lyrics without profanity. 
The program uses the process of creating music as a rehabilitative tool that encourages accountability, personal transformation, and self-exploration. In several instances, Jassy paired members of rival gangs on the same song to foster unity. 
Jassy's music program particularly resonated with Kim Kardashian West, J. Cole, Common and MC Hammer, each of whom personally visited the incarcerated men at San Quentin to learn more about their recording process and offer words of encouragement. 
Criminal justice reform organization #cut50 learned about Jassy's story, supported the music program, and advocated for his release. When Newsom finally commuted Jassy's sentence in March, the news prompted Kardashian West to thank the governor and lauded the Youthful Offenders music program via her Twitter account.
Since his release, Jassy has returned to his native Sweden, where he will be resuming his career while still providing beats for the Music Program at San Quentin State Prison. For more information, please follow [@sanquentinmixtapes] to stay up to date with the latest music endeavors from the Music Program at San Quentin State Prison.

Reposted from https://www.wfmz.com/
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Lady Gaga has officially left her Joanne phase — and her Ally Maine phase, for that matter. While the shapeshifting multi-hyphenate for the most part abandoned her Monster-Balling, meat-dressing persona while focusing on her recent musical projects (the Tony Bennett jazz collaboration Cheek to Cheek, the stripped singer-songwriter vibe of Joanne and A Star Is Born), her absolute banger of a sixth studio album, Chromatica, marks her triumphant and trippy return to disco-stick-wielding, poker-faced, bad-romancing electropop.
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But Chromatica isn’t exactly a flashback to Gaga’s The Fame era — it goes deeper and flashes farther back than that. In the lead-up to Chromatica’s release, Gaga posted a “Welcome to Chromatica” playlist on Spotify, a seven-hour virtual rave with remixes of her new floor-fillers, “Stupid Love” and “Rain on Me,” sliding right in between inspo cuts by house music and techno icons like Frankie Knuckles, Moby, Tiësto, Basement Jaxx, Bob Sinclair, Todd Terry, Roger Sanchez, Cassius, Axwell, and Tchami (the latter two have production credits on her album). And while Chromatica leans more pop than those tracks, it’s still a glorious exercise in future-nostalgia; in particular, the ebullient opening opus “Alice” and a slinky collab with K-pop girl group Blackpink, “Sour Candy,” wouldn’t sound out of place on a playlist next to ‘90s club queens like Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, or CeCe Peniston.

The lyrics to Chromatica’s confessions on a dance floor, however, still tap into the raw, keening pain of Gaga’s more recent heart-on-fringed-sleeve ballads like “Million Reasons” and the Oscar-winning “Shallow.” The aforementioned edge-of-glory empowerment anthem with Ariana Grande, “Rain on Me,” was inspired by their friendship forged from shared trauma; another remix-ready track, “Sine From Above,” pairs its glitchy bonkers beats with the unexpectedly gut-punching line “When I was young, I felt immortal,” stoically delivered by her 73-year-old duet partner and another dear friend, Sir Elton John. Elsewhere, Gaga fembotically raps about self-sabotage and medication dependence on “911,” while “Free Woman” reflects on her survival of a sexual assault by an unnamed music producer.

Reposted from: Yahoo News: Click here

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Even by the standards of flashy show-tune fundraisers, this one was remarkable. Some 150 singers, dancers and musicians — including several well-known alumni of the hit musical “Hairspray” — recorded themselves at home, singing the show’s rafter-raising finale, “You Can’t Stop the Beat.”

Janet Roston, a Los Angeles-based choreographer, devised household-themed movements for the dancers, who performed kicks on their beds and spins in front of their stoves. Actors brandished ladles and whisks as mics; singing parents shimmied with their babies in Snuglis; and stars such as Martin Short, Harvey Fierstein, Andrea Martin and Kristin Chenoweth belted out Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s bouncy verses. Steven Weber and Jackie Hoffman even sang in the shower. (Separately.)

The result, unveiled on May 15, was a hyperdynamic collage — one of the most exuberant Broadway music videos of all time — and another charitable coup for the Actors Fund, the 138-year-old health and welfare philanthropy for the entertainment industry. The group, which operates among other things a well-known assisted-living facility in Englewood, N.J., has for decades been a service nexus. But over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, with vast swaths of stage, film and television personnel cast into unemployment, the fund has become an even more visible lifeline, as the beneficiary of one starry Web event after another.

Since lockdowns across the nation began in early March, the fund and affiliates such as Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS and various union charities have raised more than $27 million — the largest amount of giving in a compressed period in the fund’s history. According to Actors Fund president and chief executive Joe Benincasa, the group has so far dispensed more than $11.4 million to 9,700 individuals.

“We received the equivalent of seven years’ worth of applications for assistance in eight weeks,” Benincasa said. “In direct financial assistance, we’ve distributed more than five times the amount we do in a year. This is a marathon. We’ll be among the last businesses to get back to normal. So we’re in it for the long haul.”

That the mobilization would occur so quickly around the Actors Fund seems preordained, considering the natural and technical resources of the industry and the lead role celebrities have long played in fundraising. The high-profile rollout of events began in March, soon after the pandemic’s casualties began to rise, with a three-hour revival of Rosie O’Donnell’s popular talk show. With O’Donnell presiding from what looked like a spare room off her garage, a roster of performers including Billy Porter, Barry Manilow, Gloria Estefan and Patti LuPone came on from their homes to converse informally and sing.

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The 138-year-old Actors Fund has been a service nexus for performers and those in allied jobs in need.
The 138-year-old Actors Fund has been a service nexus for performers and those in allied jobs in need. (The Actors Fund)
The evening’s outpouring set an exemplary pace: O’Donnell raised more than $600,000 for the fund via the event directed by Paul Wontorek and streamed live on Broadway.com. Benefit veterans Seth Rudetsky and husband James Wesley set up a punishing fundraising regimen of their own: “Stars in the House,” a daily live-streamed Broadway concert series that launched in March with guest star Kelli O’Hara; Episode 118 recently featured Debra Messing and Victoria Clark.

Reunions of Broadway casts; composers opening their songbooks; actors including Brian Stokes Mitchell, the Actors Fund chairman, and Audra McDonald donating their talents have become de rigueur. Actors of the Tony-winning “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” participated in April in a video rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Andrew Lloyd Webber initiated “The Shows Must Go On” — streaming versions of musicals such as “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera” on his YouTube channel. Even pretend musicals have gotten into the Actors Fund act: A recording of the 2015 performance of “Bombshell” — the musical-in-the-making during the NBC series “Smash” — was streamed on May 20, with an introduction by Renée Zellweger. (The day after, a team of producers including Steven Spielberg announced that “Smash” itself would be turned into a Broadway musical, at some unspecified time after Broadway reopens.)

The rollout continues Friday evening, with an Actors Fund streaming benefit, “Laughter in Lockdown,” for comedians in crisis. It features, among others, Wanda Sykes, Ray Romano, Carl Reiner, Dave Attell and Judd Apatow. The event is staged by NYlaughs.org, a nonprofit group that presents free comedy throughout New York City, and it’s just one of the other organizations raising money in the entertainment sector. Artists Striving to End Poverty produced the critically acclaimed 90th birthday concert on the Web for composer Stephen Sondheim in late April. And Play Per View streams Zoom readings of contemporary plays to benefit arts groups; on June 13, it presents Will Arbery’s “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” a finalist this year for the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The ascending quality of many of these efforts is illustrated by the achievement of “You Can’t Stop the Beat.” It is hard to imagine topping the collective verve that radiates out of the screen.

The creative team behind the mission to bring this version to the public gathered recently to discuss it on Zoom: choreographer Roston and her co-director, known as David O; composer Shaiman; producer Christopher Sepulveda and editor Ally Rice.

“You Can’t Stop the Beat” comes at the celebratory climax of “Hairpspray,” as characters of all sizes and colors unite in an expression of belief in themselves. “When we started talking about the song, it was about the joyous defiance,” David O said. “That emotion of seeing 150 people singing in their own homes. It’s just not a musical beat; it’s a heartbeat.”

It’s just not a musical beat; it’s a heartbeat,” co-director David O said of the Actors Fund's performance.
It’s just not a musical beat; it’s a heartbeat,” co-director David O said of the Actors Fund's performance. (The Actors Fund)
Invitations went out far and wide. Practically everyone said yes to participating, including many in the original Broadway cast: Fierstein, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Matthew Morrison, Kerry Butler, Laura Bell Bundy, Clarke Thorell, Linda Hart. Many who played parts in the national tour, or later on Broadway, came aboard as well. And from the 2007 film version, Nikki Blonsky, Elijah Kelley and director Adam Shankman were among those who signed on. (John Travolta — the film’s Edna Turnblad — does not perform in the five-minute video but is thanked in the credits.)

​In some sections of the song, dancers executing the same move ring the screen as if they are kinetic embroidery. The geometric patterns change rapidly, depending on the number of singers or musicians. The beat is indeed unstoppable.

While specific singing parts were doled out, the performers were given a lot of latitude. “I posted two minutes [on social media] of Marty Short being joyfully insane,” Shaiman said. “It was so moving to see so many of my friends in it.” Much praise was directed at editor Rice for turning whimsical videos into a seamless production number. “A lot of the energy,” she said, “is a testament to the song itself.”

The video has generated more than 550,000 views on YouTube alone. And for the Actors Fund, a priceless amount of visibility. “If there’s a good thing about quarantining and the pandemic,” Roston observed, “it is that there is this generosity of spirit. I don’t think in our wildest dreams we thought we’d end up with 150 people — and Marc Shaiman.”

Reposted by Washington Post: Click here

Aquaria entered Drag Race a fully-formed fashion enigma. The drag daughter of season four winner Sharon Needles, she’d already carved a towering reputation in her native New York, attracting the eyes of Lady Bunny and club legend Susanne Bartsch — who also helped give RuPaul his big break in the 1980s.

Since winning season 10 (at the frankly ridiculous age of 21), Aquaria has achieved what only a handful of other queens have previously managed, becoming a true darling of the fashion world. She’s modelled for Moschino, MAC and Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, and along with season seven winner Violet Chachki, was the first drag queen to attend the prestigious Met Gala in 2019.

Despite being under lockdown, Aquaria says she’s managing to fulfil her queer fashion fantasies at home.

“You just gotta sprinkle in the queerness everywhere, wherever you can,” she tells PinkNews.

“It’s always nice to put a metaphorical pep in your step by dressing up a little every once in a while. I do these Zoom parties and it’s nice to even just get on there and put on a funky hat, something like that. But then there have been times where I’m like: ‘Oh, I should actually try to put on pants that don’t stretch.'”

When ‘normal life’ resumes, Aquaria hopes to return return to her busy schedule of world tours and Las Vegas gigs, peppered with fashion weeks and magazine shoots. It’s a life she’s always thought was inevitable, in a way.

“I’ve always felt that drag and fashion have gone hand in hand,” she says.

She is careful to credit those who have paved the way for her – “Violet, Raja, even RuPaul”.

“A lot of my inspiration comes from that ‘Supermodel of the World’ aura, and the embodiment of that.

“Maybe a little bit of my success there stems from my naivety – or my delusion! – that they belong together. Throughout history they’ve definitely separated themselves quite a bit — if 10 or 15 years ago you were talking about drag fashion you’d be talking about some frumpy, corny sequinned dress with fishnets, it would be a much more unsophisticated view.

“But I’ve always seen drag as belonging on the runway, and I’ve always seen fashion in drag performers – even if they are in that corny sequinned dress. They stem from the same concepts and it’s all about creating a new image. Even fashion deals with gender and the norms that are presented to the world. And I hope that my success here will do the same and open the door for the next little fashion queen.”

That next little fashion queen will, more than likely, be season 12’s Gigi Goode, who has stunned audiences with her meticulously-crafted looks week in, week out.

Speaking before Friday’s virtual finale, which will see either Gigi, Jaida Essence Hall or Crystal Methyd join the winners’ league, Aquaria says she’s excited to see what comes next.

“It’s definitely been very uplifting and inspiring to see lots of really positive energy coming from this season. Especially from queens like Heidi N Closet who’ve brought a little bit of sunshine into the world. I think that’s very special.

“I think it goes without saying I feel very terrible for the kind of hand they’ve been dealt in all sorts of ways, but it’s pretty clear that it’d take a lot to bring this season down.”

She is, of course, referring to the double-whammy of Drag Race’s Sherry Pie controversy — which at the start of the season prompted producers to take the unprecedented step of disqualifying a contestant after the show had been recorded — and the way in which lockdown has impacted not only the season finale, but also the queens’ nascent careers.

“It’s all been uphill from the COVIDs and the Pies and whatnot,” she says. Given how well the producers have minimised the damage that could have followed, she feels that the biggest upset for the queens has turned out to be them being robbed of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“I feel like it’s doing them a disservice, to not have the insane butterflies and fears and intimidation factor of doing it on the big stage, with an audience in front of RuPaul,” she explains.

“It’s definitely not the most ideal situation, but it might turn out to be something a whole lot more entertaining than you might expect. Who would have expected Sasha Velour to have that massive moment at her finale? You never know until you try it. Maybe digital is just the way to go. I hope not. But maybe it is.”

She jokes: “You might be going through Drag Race, but you ain’t gonna be a Drag Race girl until you experience that!”

When the time comes, Aquaria says she’s looking forward to welcoming the season 12 girls into the fold proper.

“Some of the most fun experiences – and some of the least fun experiences – of my Drag Race journey was all the traveling, being in the club working and doing meet and greets until 4am, when you have to be on a flight in two hours.

“That’s the struggle, the fun, the excitement, the exhilaration that you don’t really get to experience lip syncing from your house.”

While the season 12 queens have been robbed of this – albeit, hopefully only temporarily – Aquaria is heartened to see the support fans and her fellow alumni are giving them from afar.

“I know people will take the time and put a lot of emphasis and effort into giving these girls what they deserve. They won’t be yesterday’s news when All Stars 5 starts, people will still be really interested in meeting and supporting them and helping them grow, because they didn’t get to have this year to catapult them into this industry as much as they should and could. “

On the topic of All Stars, I can’t resist asking Aquaria whether she’d join in for the fabled winners season, should it ever materialise.

Mysteriously, she says she’d never say never – but admits the current circumstances might help.
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“They could have me come back to work in the art department, or lighting or something – I’ll be the ‘five minute warning’ Untucked guy, just please give me something to do right now!”

Aquaria has teamed up with Motorola Razr #flipyourlook challenge, inspiring fans to create looks with old and/or unworn garments and accessories.

For every post tagged with #flipyourlook and @motorolaUS, $50 will be donated to Ali Forney’s COVID-19 relief fund – a cause close to Aquaria’s own heart which supports affected LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness in New York at this already stressful time. Aquaria will also be selecting a lucky winner to receive a new Razr phone.

Reposted from Pink News: Click here
For Aquaria Booking information contact:
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At a time where nothing seems certain, legendary drag queen Lady Bunny’s ignorance is our bliss.

“Oh, I’ve never seen it,” says Bunny, when the RuPaul Netflix vehicle “AJ and the Queen” came up as a topic during our interview.

Lack of first-hand knowledge didn’t stop the NYC-based DJ, actress, singer/songwriter, upcoming comedy special star, and creator of Wigstock from skewering “AJ” mercilessly, while co-hosting two recent Voss Events-presented digital drag benefits that raised funds for queens out of work because of COVID-19.

“Listen,” says Bunny, “I make jokes about ‘Drag Race,’ and I don’t watch that either. Honey, I don’t watch anything… I know Miss Vanjie said, ‘Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie, Miss Vanjie’ on her way out, in a way that was odd, but I don’t really know what else happened in that episode, or why she was eliminated, or why she said that.”

Bunny, whose television has not been hooked up for 10 months, admits, “Whenever you see me make a joke about pop culture, that is based on what I see other people talking about.” To compensate for this lack of firsthand information, “I will run it by friends who are more keyed into that kind of thing.”

With no boob tube at home and no burning desire to binge online (her flirtation with Netflix didn’t last past the free trial period), Bunny says she’s been spending her COVID-19 isolation period “trying to catch up on things I said I didn’t have time for before the quarantine, like filing taxes; and exercising, and dieting, so I don’t have that excuse, ‘Oh, I have to run here or run there.’ ”

Bunny is also devoting some of her spare time to long-planned personal projects, including a book she’s penning in partnership with her mother, and an autobiography. (“Just my life, before I forget it,” she says.)

And in a moment in time when there’s never been more spare time to sit around the house, hit a few keystrokes, press a button, and share your opinion on anything, everything, and often, nothing, with the world. That’s part of why Bunny says she’s “trying to stay off of social media a bit more, because I was hitting it hard during the first few months of COVID-19. But now, things seem to have turned sour, and it’s disconcerting.”

Known to those who follow her online as a steadfast supporter of Bernie Sanders (Bianca Del Rio often referred to Sanders as her “boyfriend” during the two Voss Events digital drag benefits they co-hosted), Bunny cited the trigger topics of social distancing and mask-wearing as among her reasons for dialing back on the sheer volume of postings and tweets. (She remains a presence on Facebook and Twitter—but these days, she’s just as likely to be writing about work from fellow artists as she is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“I realize people are scared, and I realize people are broke,” she says, of the COVID-19 tensions. “But I don’t understand the desire to lash out at people that aren’t observing the precautions that they decide to observe. It’s almost like they’re trying to prove they’re a better Democrat, because they dip their vegetables in Clorox water, and they wear masks everywhere. It’s just, like, I don’t understand what it is about a frightening, deadly pandemic that makes people want to scold others. If I walk down to the [NYC West Side] piers, as I do, almost every day, and I see people who don’t have masks on, and they’re coughing? Well then, I walk away from them. I don’t yell at them… At the end of the day, we are responsible for our own self-preservation. I mean, if someone who weighs 90 pounds and has a syringe sticking out of each eye tells me he wants to screw me without a condom, well, that situation may arise—but it’s up to me to say, ‘No,’ to protect myself.”

Asked how COVID-19 has impacted her creative output, Bunny noted, “All of my work involves dance floors and audiences—and we’re not gonna have either of those for many, many months. So basically, my paychecks have stopped, but my bills have not. So I’m in the same position that, you know, most drag queens or club employees are in.”

With little hope of audiences flocking to her bread and butter public gathering places any time soon, Bunny turned to what she does best: Parody songs, groovy dance segments, sketches, satire, insult humor, and raunchy jokes.

That brings us to the June 5 VossEvents.com debut of her downloadable ($9.99) comedy special, “C#ntagias,” in which, press materials note, “Demented drag diva Lady Bunny shamelessly interrupts your isolation in an attempt to give what may be your last laugh before the apocalypse.”

COVID-19-themed humor is front and center. Along with four signature sky-high wigs and 12 costume changes over the course of the 35-minute show, the press release further promises “brand new song parodies from artists as varied as Lizzo, Justin Bieber, and Madonna.” Gender-blending provocateur Christeene christeenemusic.com duets with Bunny on a pandemically updated version of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is,” and Bunny will perform her timely parody of the RuPaul song, “Sissy That Walk.”

Currently available via Bunny’s YouTube channel, the video for “Sissy That Cough” finds our quarantined gal noting:

"If I forget to use Lysol
I’ll end up in the hospital
I’m climbing up my fucking walls."

Those walls aren’t a problem, at least not in the video, which sees Bunny singing and dancing around an empty white space that is occasionally populated by, right on cue when the lyric comes in, bats she’s worried will:

"Fly, fly, fly,
Uh-oh
From Wuhan Chi, Chi, Chi."

Bunny claims sole responsibility for crafting the lyrics to “Cough”—but overall writing credit for “C#ntagias” is shared with Beryl Mendelbaum, the Facebook drag persona of Bruce Jope, described by Bunny as “a fascinating character who hung out with everyone from Divine to Holly Woodlawn to Cher, back in the day.”

There’s a reason for that. Long before the character of Beryl burst onto the scene, Jope and his late partner, Francis Toohey founded the magazine Hit Parade (1978-1983, first based in Boston, then NYC). It chronicled, with gusto, the sort of culture and mind frame that drew people like RuPaul and Lady Bunny to NYC.

Mendelbaum, says Bunny, brings to their past collaborations (including stage shows “Clowns Syndrome” and “Trans-Jester!) an ability “to write as an older, Jewish retiree kleptomaniac, which is her online [Facebook] character. And I thought, if she can write in the voice of someone who she is not, maybe she can write for me, a potty-mouthed, southern, over-the-hill showgirl!”

Skits also play a part in “C#ntagias.” One of them, notes, Bunny, “was inspired by three emails I got claiming they had activated my computer’s camera when I was on a porn site, and I needed to send them $2,000 via Bitcoin or they were going to send this footage to all of my email contacts. So I started writing a reply, not that I even thought they were a real person, because I’m not the biggest porn fan, and so I came up with some stuff that was pretty funny. I sent it off to Beryl and we finished off the skit… She has a way of either pulling back or taking things in a different direction if I become too preachy, too vulgar, too whatever. She’s kind of like half writer, half director.”

For more information on Lady Bunny’s comedy special, available for digital download as of June 5, visit vossevents.com/digital. For Bunny and Beryl, see ladybunny.net and @BERYLMENDELBAUMFANS, respectively.

Reposted from the Washington Blade: Click here

For Booking Information contact:
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PH 212-268-0404
[email protected]
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A new trailer shows it’s going to be an all in the family affair on Thursday as the boys from both editions Queer Eye will square off to raise funds for charity in an episode of Family Feud. Host Steve Harvey will emcee the battle with current stars facing off against original castmates on May 31 at 8:00 p.m.

The whole original squad is on deck with Carson Kressley, Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, and Jai Rodriguez all playing to benefit The Trevor Project (which bagged at least $40,000 from RuPaul's Drag Race-related projects alone in the past two months). The Netflix Queer Eye crew does include a change to it though: Bobby Berk will be joined by Jonathan Van Ness, Antoni Porowski, Tan France, and Wesley Hamilton (who replaces Kamaro Brown). The current cast will be playing to benefit GLSEN.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy debuted 15 years ago and featured a group of gay men giving much-needed makeovers to some seriously fashion-challenged straight men. The series initially ran for five seasons on Bravo, and was relaunched in 2018 on Netflix.
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For those who can't get enough Feuding, Kressley will return to the show on June 14 as a part of RuPaul's team to face off against representatives from The Bold Type.

Reposted from Out Magazine - Click Here

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When actress and musician Laura Bell Bundy woke up on March 12, she had a fierce headache, immediately attributing it to a hangover after a night of drinking at an event. But she didn’t have a hangover — she had coronavirus.

Before the virus hit, Bundy had been working on a women’s history sketch comedy pilot for Freeform and the television show “Perfect Harmony.” Her theater career — which she had developed on Broadway through “Legally Blonde The Musical,” “Wicked” and “Hairspray” — was put off indefinitely due to the shutdown, and now, she had symptoms of the COVID-19 virus.

To cure her headache, Bundy immediately took Tylenol and it subsided, so she attended her weekly acupuncture session. Her doctor took her pulse and said it was “floating.” She sent Bundy home with viral support herbs that the doctor and his partner had been developing since December. The next day, Bundy had a sore throat and chills. Three days later, she had tightness in her chest, signaling that it might be time to consult another doctor.

Season Six singer-songwriters have
7 Grammys
More than 30 Top Ten Hits
7 Music Hall of Fame Inductions
15 Grammy Nominations
and More!

On this season of "Songs from the center", you'll see some of the finest "unknown" artists you'll want to get to know better, including Spectrum Talent Agency's client Alfa, The show is hosted by singer-songwriter Eric Gnezda, is a national 13-episode series distributed through American Public Television. Season six is premiering coast-to-coast in May, 2020. Check local listings for airings in your area. SongsAtTheCenter.tv

 SpNEW YORK (WABC) -- This year's NYC Pride March may have been canceled but Channel 7 is still proud to partner with NYC Pride for a new kind of celebration.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride March held in 1970. It may be a different type of celebration due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the tradition of commemorating the LGBTQIA+ movement will continue.

​In this unique year, NYC Pride is committed to saluting front-line workers alongside several leaders in the community being honored as Grand Marshals: Dan Levy, The Ali Forney Center, Yanzi Peng, and Victoria Cruz. The special will feature performances by Janelle Monáe, Deborah Cox, Billy Porter, Luisa Sonza, and more. Expect to see appearances by Wilson Cruz, Miss Richfield 1981, Margaret Cho, and others. WABC's Ken Rosato and Lauren Glassberg will host the special joined by special guest co-host, Spectrum Talent Agency'client Carson Kressley, along with Sam Champion and Kemberly Richardson.

For Booking Information Contact:
Spectrum Talent Agency, Inc
PH 212-268-0404
​www.spectrumtalentagency.com