The Nigerian musician was a restless creator who embraced the physicality of drumming and innovated until the end

• Tony Allen’s 10 best tracks
• News report: Afrobeat co-founder Tony Allen dies aged 79

Few musicians can claim to have invented a revolutionary rhythm, but then few are quite like the late Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen. Brian Eno called him “the greatest drummer that ever lived”, citing his style alongside James Brown’s funk breakbeat and the constant pulse of German band Neu! as the “three great beats of the 1970s”. Allen’s swirl of jazz, Yoruba and highlife was unlike anything the world had ever heard: a full-body polyrhythmic workout that would give most drummers sore wrists just thinking of it.

Allen came to prominence in Lagos alongside Fela Kuti. He started drumming in the late 50s while working at a radio station, looking to jazz icons such as Art Blakey and Max Roach for inspiration as he taught himself to play. In 1964 he met Kuti and they spent the next half-decade fine-tuning their fusion of west African party music and American funk and jazz, in the bands Koola Lobitos and, by 1969, Africa ’70. While Kuti, who died in 1997, is more well-known than his musical soulmate, he said that “without Tony Allen there would be no Afrobeat”.

The keyboardist, who has died aged 71 of coronavirus, upended the rules of punk with organ arpeggios and a moustache – and pointed the way to post-punk

Music writer Pete Paphides’ recent memoir, Broken Greek, contains a vivid description of its seven-year-old author encountering the Stranglers for the first time, during a 1977 Top of the Pops appearance. “They landed in the living room while I was totally unsupervised,” he writes, “and scared the shit [out] of me. By now I would have seen images of punk rockers … but they looked like circus entertainers compared to [the Stranglers]. They looked too old to be punk. They looked like the sort of people you pass in the street and your mother puts her arm round you, stares at the pavement and doubles her walking speed … The point at which it all got too much was when the camera cut to Dave Greenfield – who has died from Covid-19 aged 71 – jabbing his keyboard while looking straight ahead with what seemed, beyond doubt, to be the eyes of a murderer, an effect somehow compounded by the army-surplus boiler suit he had decided to wear. Just like that, my list of phobias had got a little longer: worms, biting into mushrooms, insects, the fibreglass King Kong which stood next to a ring road in Birmingham city centre and, now, Dave Greenfield from the Stranglers.”

It’s funny writing, but it’s also very incisive about the Stranglers: in real life Greenfield was, by all accounts, the band’s most approachable and charming member, but otherwise Paphides has it spot-on. The Stranglers complained relentlessly about not being accepted by the punk cognoscenti, but what did they expect? They didn’t look like punks, particularly Greenfield, who defiantly sported that least punk of facial accoutrements, a moustache. They were old, at least by the standards of the day, old enough to have the kind of musical pasts it was wise to keep your mouth shut about in the scorched-earth environment created by the Sex Pistols: Hugh Cornwell had played bass in a band with Richard Thompson, later of Fairport Convention; Greenfield had been in a prog rock band called Rusty Butler.

The Kraftwerk co-founder remained a mystery even after death, but there is no doubting the impact he made with his group’s sublime, visionary music

• News: Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk co-founder, dies aged 73

Florian Schneider’s death came shrouded in a degree of secrecy. Gossip among fans about his health was first provoked at the end of April, when his fellow former Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür posted a sweet photo on social media of him and Schneider together in a bar, without explanation.

It had apparently been taken in 2016 – a decade and a half after Schneider and fellow founder member Ralf Hütter had served Flür with a lawsuit provoked by his autobiography I Was a Robot – and was subsequently deleted from Flür’s Facebook page. Then, a week later, another electronic musician based in Germany, the Manchester-born Mark Reeder, posted a brief eulogy; one commenter claimed that Schneider had died “several days ago”.

(Matador)
Will Toledo’s alt-rockers have emerged out of lo-fi fuzz, but seem unsure of where to turn as they drift toward the mainstream

Anyone wondering how things have changed in the world of lauded US alt-rockers Car Seat Headrest might consider the four years that separate Making a Door Less Open from their last album of new material. Ordinarily there would be nothing unusual about that gap – but in the first four years of Car Seat Headrest’s existence, its mastermind, Will Toledo, released seven albums (one of them a two-hour double), four EPs (one of them as long as an album) and two compilations of outtakes. That’s more than 150 songs and 12 hours of music: a lo-fi spewing forth of ideas that won Toledo a cult following, which then grew exponentially, both in size and rabidity, when he recruited a band and signed to the august US indie label Matador.

(Family Hour/Thirty Tigers)
Sean and Sara Watkins are back and in reflective mood

California’s Sean and Sara Watkins are akin to royalty in American folk circles, firstly as founding members of the hugely successful Nickel Creek, and secondly as hosts of an 18-year residency at LA’s Largo club, where they perform alongside invited guests. Brother Sister draws on both strands of their history. Like its self-titled 2015 predecessor, the album sets aside the pizzazz of Nickel Creek for a down-home approach, but instead of boisterous, star-studded cover versions come five original songs and a minimal musical palette.

Alternating on lead, the pair’s vocals remain a model of sibling harmony, while the interplay between Sean’s intricate guitar picking and Sara’s elegant fiddle is similarly impressive – the breakneck bluegrass instrumental Bella and Ivan is a case in point. Mostly, however, the mood is reflective. Lafayette and Miles of Desert Sand chronicle the search for a better life, and Fake Badge, Real Gun is an artful snipe at Trump – “Throw your tantrums but the truth will be waiting”. Warren Zevon’s forlorn Accidentally Like a Martyr fits in neatly, while Charley Jordan’s ribald Keep It Clean is a gleeful example of a Largo session.

Curtis Jackson was shot nine times before becoming one of the world’s biggest rappers. He discusses growing up, getting rich and the art of the hustle

Curtis Jackson has downsized. The rapper/actor/businessman, better known as 50 Cent, used to live in a palace of a house formerly owned by Mike Tyson. Not any more. He has been in self-isolation for six weeks and is more than happy to make do with a three-bed apartment (on four floors, mind) in New York. He can’t remember when he was last in one place for so long, he says, and is learning about himself. “I’ve become a bit more comfortable with being in my own space. I don’t think being at home is a punishment.”

He bought the Tyson house after his triumphant first album; Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ shifted 12m copies in 2003, making it the bestselling album of the year. It was explosive – growling rap packed with threats, boasts and great songs such as In Da Club and Many Men.

The Welsh nurse-turned-indie rocker is now one of electronic music’s best exponents. She talks proving herself, the NHS and climate-crisis bangers

Kelly Lee Owens is showing me her crumpled bed, pixelated on the screen. It is five weeks into quarantine and this has quickly become the norm: an interview with an artist in their close quarters; ambivalent levels of grooming. Neither of us is wearing makeup, and neither of us care. “You know what I read?” begins the electronic musician, incredulously. “This is bullshit. There’s a [Daily Mail] headline saying that women’s breasts will be sagging because they’re not going to be wearing bras during this lockdown. So what?! Leave me to my saggy breasts.”

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

Ty, who has died aged 47 of coronavirus, was a sharp and witty MC who ably nourished the UK hip-hop scene despite being ignored by the media

• Mercury prize-nominated UK rapper Ty dies of coronavirus

The death of British rapper Ty, aged 47, to complications from coronavirus came as a shock because it had appeared he was on his way to recovery after being moved out of intensive care. And for those of us who grew up with Ty’s voice circling our bedrooms, the shock resonates: this is an artist who touched so many with his humour and sharpness on the mic.

While all eyes were on grime in the early 2000s, Ty was charting a journey to a frontier that had yet to be fully explored. In 2001, he released his debut album, Awkward, on Big Dada, one of the few labels that would give a home to UK hip-hop acts such as Roots Manuva, Juice Aleem and Speech Debelle. It was the year of era-defining US albums such as Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and Nas’s Stillmatic, when the mainstream had gone the way of the shiny suit. But across the Atlantic, Ty ushered in the UK’s own hip-hop golden age, leaning towards the genre’s soul, jazz and funk origins.

From skateboarding to Sunderland, here are the documentaries you suggested to get through live sport’s long shutdown

We recently recommended 12 sports films to watch during lockdown, and asked readers for their favourite documentaries. Here are some of your selections:

Available on Curzon Home Cinema (UK) and Prime Video (US); watch trailer here

Available on Netflix or to rent from YouTube/Google Play/Prime Video

Related: Missing live sport during lockdown? Here are 12 sporting films to watch

Available on Prime Video (free in UK)

Available to buy via Curzon (UK) and Beamafilms; watch the trailer here

Available to rent on Apple/Google Play/YouTube; watch the trailer here

Available via Starz on Prime Video (US) and on DVD; watch trailer here

Available on DVD and online; watch trailer here

Available on ESPN Player; watch the trailer here

Available on Prime Video (UK) and to rent on YouTube. Watch trailer here

Related: The Simpsons: Springfield's greatest sporting moments – quiz

The US women’s team have lost their lawsuit over equal pay but they continue to make progress in the court of public opinion

This isn’t how the fight for equal pay is supposed to end for the US women’s national team.

On Friday a US district court judge rejected the USWNT’s allegations of gender discrimination and ruled in favor of the US Soccer Federation, declaring that the team have not been underpaid.

Related: Joe Biden wades into equal pay dispute between USWNT and US Soccer

In the NFL, weaponizing victimhood hurts black players while favoring white ones

Rare is the NFL draft that provokes second guessing about a kicker. But this year’s edition was no ordinary draft (see: 19, Covid.) And Justin Rohrwasser is no ordinary kicker.

When the New England Patriots selected Rohrwasser in the fifth round to replace the legendary Stephen Gostkowski, it was a shock, especially as the 23-year-old hadn’t been considered an exceptional talent in college. ESPN host Trey Wingo was even forced to admit on live TV that the Worldwide Leader in Sports had no highlights of Rohrwasser’s career.

Related: If athletes like Nick Bosa support Trump they should at least be honest

The Eagles sevens captain has seen the Tokyo Games postponed and USA Rugby go bankrupt. She refuses to let her dream die

Abby Gustaitis, co-captain of the USA sevens team, has not heard the latest news from Tokyo.

Related: Tokyo Olympics in 2021 at risk of cancellation admits Japan's PM

Related: Tom Brady seen training in closed Tampa park during Covid-19 shutdown

Recognize these faces? #DontRushChallenge featuring the #USWNT7s has us ready for a party. pic.twitter.com/wvO6kNkKsi

The Hoover Dam holds back 10 trillion gallons of water. That's enough to cover the state of Connecticut 10 feet deep. How much damage would be done if the dam broke?

Are these just different names for the same beast or are there subtle differences? We talk with the owner of a Bigfoot museum who's had a close encounter.

We make a big deal about modern humans being smarter than Neanderthals, but, really, are we?

Every April, the Lyrid meteor shower fills the sky with shooting stars. Here's how to see them.

A hospital stay can be a stressful experience for anybody, and especially for a child. But a smiling new robot named Robin plays games, tells stories and comforts children in need of a friend.

Satellite data shows just how much air quality has improved during the coronavirus crisis, from China, India, Italy and beyond.

It's been 50 years since the first Earth Day, and while progress has been made in some areas, humanity still has had a major impact on the planet.

Many people think mushrooms have the potential to be environmental game-changers by replacing some plastics, meats and even eating through landfill waste. Could these fungi really help save the planet?

If you think asphalt is what hot tar roads are made of, you'd be wrong. Asphalt is only one ingredient in the recipe that makes up our roads. And it has a very long, very interesting history.

The moon has seen a lot in its 4.5 million years of life, and a detailed new geologic map serves as testament.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and sits on an axial plane tilted at a jaw-dropping 97.7-degree angle. And yes, Uranus does actually stink.

From a kidult superhero movie to a spooky period melodrama, these films will provide entertainment for all the family

Kidult superhero movies are nothing new, but this 2018 animated splinter off the Sony-Spidey combine does something really smart with the money-spinning multiverse concept. In Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey’s version, Spider-Man is reborn across the dimensions – as Gwen, as a private eye, as a pig – and the result is a fruitfully mind-bending recalibration of the entire mythos.

As authors from Chaucer to Hollinghurst have shown, sex reveals our emotions, instincts and morals. The question is not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it’s why write about anything else?

There is a widely held belief, among English-language writers, that sex is impossible to write about well – or at least much harder to write about well than anything else. I once heard a wonderful writer, addressing students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, say that her ideal of a sex scene would be the sentence: “They sat down on the sofa …” followed by white space. This is a prejudice I can’t understand. One of the glories of being a writer in English is that two of our earliest geniuses, Chaucer and Shakespeare, wrote of the sexual body so exuberantly, claiming it for literature and bringing its vocabulary – including all those wonderful four-letter words – into the texture of our literary language. This is a gift not all languages have received; a translator once complained to me that in her language there was only the diction of the doctor’s office or of pornography, neither of which felt native to poetry.

More than this, surely it is absurd to claim that a central activity of human life, a territory of feeling and drama, is off-limits to art. Sex is a uniquely useful tool for a writer, a powerful means not just of revealing character or exploring relationships, but of asking the largest questions about human beings.

The latest in our series of writers recommending hidden films available to stream is a invite to travel back to 1932 for a brutal thriller

Some film tropes get wheeled out so often they create their own furrow. Perhaps that’s why the timeworn premise of “man hunting man” has evolved into its own disreputable but seemingly indestructible mini-genre. This year has already seen the deferred release of scattershot satire The Hunt, a button-pushing thriller from the Blumhouse production line in which snooty US liberals kidnap and stalk blue-collar “deplorables” in a customised paddock sited far from flyover country.

Related: 'My favourite forgotten film' – you recommend your best streaming gems

Shriver’s contentious views on diversity thread through the story of a couple’s strained relationship with exercise

Lionel Shriver’s scabrously funny 15th novel presents a dyspeptic view of people in thrall to exercise. In 2013 Shriver’s own daily regime involved “130 press-ups, 200 side crunches, 500 sit-ups and 3,000 star jumps … The jumps take 32½ minutes, or three every two seconds”. The Motion Of The Body Through Space was written, she recently revealed, after she realised that she may be more dedicated to her exercise than to her writing.

The protagonist, Serenata Terpsichore (“rhymes with chicory”), is a 60-year-old woman from upstate New York with a beguiling voice and ruined knees. The former she puts to lucrative use as a voiceover artist and narrator of audiobooks. The latter are the result of a lifetime’s adherence to the doctrine of working out; in particular the belief that 10-mile runs are the key to longevity and good health.

First there was crowded Bondi, then the deserted beaches, cordoned off with police tape. If you look closely, a whole nation can be read on the sand

A country reveals itself in a crisis. Americans are buying a record number of guns, in the UK Boris Johnson was reluctant to implement a full lockdown because he baulked at the idea of closing the pubs. In Australia, it is our beaches that are the metaphorical hills that we are metaphorically dying on.

Yeah, we want to beat this virus, but we also want to get a swim in.

In the past year Australia’s energy minister has been swept up in two scandals. The past week has brought developments in both. Anne Davies explains what questions he has yet to answer

You can read Lisa Cox’s and Anne Davies’ latest updates on the Jamland grass poisoning here and more on the doctored document saga here.

A selection of archive photographs to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day

The comic essayist on crying over Olive Kitteridge, his love for Richard Yates and the books that make him laugh

The book I am currently reading
Hidden Valley Road. It’s a nonfiction book about a family with 12 children, half of whom turn out to be schizophrenic. In the opening pages the mother sews a live bird’s eyes shut. And she’s one of the few who isn’t mentally ill!

The book that changed my life
Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. A friend read it out aloud to me when we were hitchhiking across America in 1976, and it made me think: “That’s right – books!” After high school I had forgotten about them. As soon as I got a stable address, I secured a library card, and started making up for lost time.

Ugly makeup is imperfect, sloppy, chaotic – and only worn to please the wearer, against social expectations

In 2018, Rosanna Meikle felt like a failure. She was toiling through beauty school, and she hadn’t been able to find much work nor garner much attention for her creations online. She was exhausted from the sameness she saw around her, “a sea of beautiful girls, smoky eyes and plumped lips”, she remembers. “My school was in an expensive area of Auckland, which made me feel so out of place. I couldn’t afford the products or the clothes, my kit wasn’t ‘professional’ enough and neither was my look.”

Related: ‘It makes me feel human’: 11 women share their lockdown beauty regimens

Weekly meat tray giveaways, craft beer deliveries and trivia held over Zoom. As pubs stand empty, those that run them look to the internet

Across Australia, pubs stand empty because of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Some venues have shut entirely, others have pivoted to takeaway businesses, and the majority have had to make changes to their staffing.

While the future of physical pubs remains very uncertain for the coming months, the entertainers, brewers and chefs that rely on pubs for their livelihood are finding ways to recreate pub experiences in patrons’ homes.

Around the 19-minute mark, I noticed something odd; it wasn’t that I felt any less out of breath than normal, but I felt detached

Mindfulness is the last thing I want to practise while running. When I’m really up against a wall (which is to say, after four minutes), the only thing that keeps me going is listening to Maniac and imagining I’m that gorilla in a paddling pool. So I approached this with a closed mind, and discarded a lot of podcasts because they were too woo-hoo, or because you had to listen to them before you run (“no headphones” is a typical mindful runner’s instruction), or because the person had an annoying voice. Finally, I settled on The Milestone Pursuit podcast, by a likable blokey Londoner, Steve Hobbs. He didn’t sound at all spiritual; he sounded like a person who would help you with your bike if your chain came off.

He has one mindful episode that I’ve listened to seven or eight times. Total convert. But full disclosure: I’ve never got to the end. It lasts 36 minutes, and I still don’t run for that long. So it’s partly suspense that keeps me going back.

Is it all moot because of the deadly virus infecting Australia and no I don’t mean the National party ahahaha

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News Corp is campaigning full-bore for the US president, with reports of a Wuhan lab ‘intelligence’ dossier being seeded across its empire

In liberal democracies, the integrity, impartiality and professionalism of intelligence agencies matters. That’s why it is essential that intelligence agencies remain aloof, not only from the political debates of the day, but also from the policy decisions that individual governments may take. The intelligence community’s core task is to provide brutally realistic analysis on the threat environments we face so that governments can then make the best-informed policy decisions possible to preserve our common security.

The failures of the intelligence community before the Iraq war, the gullibility of much of the western media, as well as the cynical manipulation of both by the political class of the day, provide us with a stark reminder of what can go radically wrong. On 8 September 2002 the New York Times published one of this century’s most consequential news articles. The front-page story, supplied by the Bush administration, claimed that Saddam Hussein had stepped up his quest for weapons of mass destruction by acquiring key components for a nuclear weapon. In the UK, the Blair government’s “dodgy dossier” compounded the error. John Howard did the same in Australia. The problem was that it just wasn’t true. These were over-egged stories designed to soften the public up for what would become a disastrous war.

Is Australia flattening the curve? We bring together all the latest Covid-19 confirmed cases, maps, stats and graphs from NSW, Victoria, Queensland, SA, WA, Tasmania, ACT and NT to get a broad picture of the Australian outbreak and track the impact of government response.

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Due to the difference in reporting times between states, territories and the federal government, it can be difficult to get a current picture of how many confirmed cases of coronavirus there are in Australia.

Here, we’ve brought together all the figures in one place, along with comparisons with other countries.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has detailed a gradual opening up of society with the timing the stages to be determined by the states

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• Coronavirus Australia maps and cases: live numbers and statistics

Scott Morrison and the chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, have laid out a three-step plan to reopen Australia after the coronavirus crisis. Morrison said he hoped step three could be achieved in July, but it would be up to each state and territory when they moved from one step to the next.

Below are some of the areas that will be opened up at each stage, according to the plan – and you can see the timeline for easing restrictions in each state here.

The morality brigade loathed the hit teen horror on release but hockey mask-wearing villain Jason Voorhees has been with us ever since

Before production on the teen slasher A Long Night at Camp Blood had even started, before a final draft of the screenplay had even been submitted, thirtysomething writer-producer-director Sean S Cunningham decided to make an audacious statement. Not only would he use an advert in the industry paper Variety to confirm an inarguably ingenious title change but he would also use it to declare that his next film would be the most terrifying ever made, after a decade that saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Last House on the Left (which he also produced), The Exorcist and Halloween.

Related: Final Destination at 20: the bleakest teen horror film ever made?

With more Australian artists being asked to play for free in the lockdown, many are asking if it might do more harm than good

If live music died in mid March, it’s sure been noisy at the funeral. On platforms old and new, live gigs performed at home have streamed from trickle to tidal wave, breaking over the mobile devices of captive audiences. Global gig guide aggregator Bands In Town has added a livestream dropdown, and a new Australian state has been ceded by Eventfinda and tucked alphabetically between Victoria and Western Australia: the state of “Virtual”.

For fans it’s been fun. We’re loving seeing musicians’ pets and plants and enormous fingers fumbling for the flip screen button and, unless we’ve bought a URL ticket, there’s scandalously little to lose by dropping into, and out of, a show.