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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame welcomes new members

NEW YORK - With nimble dance steps, blistering guitar and a trio of 1980s-era hits, Prince extended his purple reign to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday.

Detroit rocker Bob Seger, California singer-songwriter Jackson Browne and ex-Beatle George Harrison also joined the hall at its annual induction ceremony, along with ZZ Top, Traffic and the Dells.

Dressed in a white suit Prince brought the normally staid crowd to its feet with some vintage funk-rock. He played three of his hits: Let's Go Crazy, Sign O' the Times and Kiss.

Seger burst from regional to national fame with the hits Night Moves, Old Time Rock & Roll and Like a Rock.

Browne co-wrote Take it Easy for the Eagles, then was successful on his own with Doctor My Eyes, The Pretender and Running on Empty'

Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, two fellow members of the Traveling Wilburys, were on hand to salute Harrison, who died in 2001. The guitarist joins John Lennon and Paul McCartney as Beatles also honored by the Rock Hall as solo artists.

Hirsute blues-rockers ZZ Top were an early MTV staple with the boogie hits, Legs and Sharp-Dressed Man.

Traffic featured teen prodigy organist Steve Winwood, who later went on to solo success. The pastoral, jazzy Traffic had hits with Glad and Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.

The Dells, a vocal harmony quintet that hit with Oh What a Night in 1955, were the inspiration for the film The Five Heartbeats.

Highlights of the awards ceremony will be shown on VH1 on Sunday.

If you can believe most of the critics, Tim Robbins' new play focusing on embedded journalists is a lot of bull - and not of the Durham variety, reports www.editorandpublisher.com

The satiric Embedded opened at the Public Theater in New York on Sunday night and has drawn scathing reviews across the ideological spectrum. The New York Times observed that even audience members sympathetic with Robbins' political views "will quite possibly go from nodding in agreement to simply nodding off. ... It is hard to avoid the sensation that everything said here has been said before, in some cases many years before."

And that was one of the kinder reviews. The New York Daily News called it "slapdash" and "adolescent." The Associated Press said it should have been called "Embalmed," and added, "finding genuine wit in Embedded is as difficult as finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

One favorable review came from the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., which declared: "Performed with energy and confidence by a capable cast of fresh faces. Embedded never ceases to make keen-witted mockery of what Robbins aptly terms a prime-time war."

LOS ANGELES - Justin Timberlake is out, and Cedric the Entertainer is in as the new co-host of ABC's Motown 45 special.

Cedric, the co-star of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, will emcee the show with singer Lionel Richie.

Among the artists slated to perform in the tribute to Motown Records are the Commodores, the Four Tops, Macy Gray, Gladys Knight, the Temptations and original Supremes Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong.

Timberlake dropped out of the show because of a conflict with filming his first movie, Edison, as a young journalist who discovers an elite team of corrupt police.

The special will tape at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on April 4 and is tentatively set to air sometime in May.

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