Tours: Catch Us at the Casbah

Newsweek, January, 2005 by Andrew Romano

More than three decades after banning Western music from Libya, Muammar Kaddafi has agreed to let the casbah rock. And an American band will do the honors. Next week in Tripoli, California's The Heavenly States (Amazon.com sales rank: 160,938) will launch a six-day tour to spread its buoyant, Bush-baiting pop from the Roman ruins at Leptis Magna to the streets of Benghazi. The last Yanks to light up the Libyan stage? USO mainstays Anita Bryant and Les Brown. In 1963. "We're totally into the idea of rattling these cages," says violinist Genevieve Gagon. To get the gigs--including a tsunami relief show at the British Consulate--Gagon and her cohorts spent the last year clearing hurdles: a stonewalling State Department, cagey local bureaucrats and, most alarming, Libya's lack of...

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