Architect Gehry to design stage for singer Mariza

Los Angeles – Architect Frank Gehry will design a set for a performance by Portuguese fado singer Mariza later this year.

Gehry, renowned for his stunning and daring urban visions, has agreed to create a taverna-inspired stage for Mariza’s performance in October at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The melding of the two arts Gehry promises will make for a very special evening in the building he conceived.

“I want this set to enhance and support her,” Gehry, 78, said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not going to be a Frank Gehry set. You won’t recognize it.”

Gehry said he met Mariza several years ago in Lisbon and was enamored by fado, Portuguese folk music that often has mournful lyrics. The music genre began in working-class neighborhoods and was performed in tavernas where people sat at tables singing and drinking wine.

CBS News making push to be competitive in the morning

New York – CBS News is looking to make its perennially last-place morning program more competitive in the ratings by abandoning the format that allows stations to air mostly local news between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m.

The new format and other “significant changes” on “The Early Show,” will debut Jan. 1, CBS News President Sean McManus said.

NBC’S “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” both feature national news and segments for most of their program, and two five-minute inserts for local news during the 7 a.m. hour. For most of the country that watches “The Early Show,” the format is the same.

But that relationship is flipped at 43 stations covering 20 percent of the CBS audience. Two brief national inserts air during the 7 a.m. hour with “The Early Show” only being seen for an hour at 8 a.m.

“The Early Show” is a distant third in the ratings, as all CBS morning news shows have been for decades. But the network senses vulnerability in its rivals. “The Early Show” ratings this year are up 1 percent, while “Today” is down 8 percent and “GMA” down 3 percent in the same period, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Country singer’s tour bus catches fire on way to Opry

Nashville, Tenn. – You can’t blame country singer Gene Watson if he’s a little superstitious about Friday the 13th.

Watson, 63, and his Farewell Party band were on their way from Houston to perform on the Grand Ole Opry when their bus caught fire just outside of Nashville. The blaze ignited from a broken axle shaft spewing grease.

A mechanic before he had his first hit with “Love in the Hot Afternoon,” the Palestine, Texas, native quickly went to work trying to extinguish the fire.

“We used everything we had on the bus to douse the flames, from sodas to water bottles,” he said in a release from his publicist. “The firemen arriving on the scene still gave it a good shot, too.”

No one was harmed, though Watson did singe his hair.