The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 6

EARLY ED. Show 1 Spanish are back with a bang Spain's back at the Benson Hedges International Fireworks Competition tonight hoping to make it three times lucky. Pirotechnica Caballer, a 100-year-old firm located near Valencia, first came to La Ronde in 1S86 and won it all the gold Jupiter. Last year they shared the Bronze with the Ampleman team from Canada. Vicente Caballer Ramirez, manager of the Spanish entry, said yesterday that 3,500 fireworks will explode during the half-hour show, which starts at 10 p.m.

And he likes it here: "Montrealers appreciate the fine points." Larry King signs pact with CNN Talk show host Larry King has signed a new five-year contract to remain with CNN for what may be a record-breaking agreement for cable, reportedly about $8 million. Rock fans fined for cheering BEIJING A dozen Chinese fans were fined for jumping out of their seats and cheering loudly at a rock concert by a Soviet pop singer, the Legal Daily reported. Last month's concert by Stars singer Natalia, known as the Soviet Madonna, was interrupted several times because of disputes between overexcited fans and security forces, the newspaper said. Saul wins Italian literary prize ROME Canadian writer John Ralston Saul has become the first foreigner to win Italy's leading literary award, sharing honors with Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. La Ronde unveils greatest rock roster Strong blend of Quebec, international acts MARK LEPAGE GAZETTE ROCK CRITIC 4' Saul, a native of Ottawa who began his writing career in Calgary, won in the fiction category of the Premio Litterario Internazionale Citta di Modena, for his adventure novel The Paradise Eater.

It was. published in Canada by Random House in 1988 and released in Italian a month ago, titled Para opening act Brian Kennedy. Guitar extraterrestrial Joe Satriani surfs in July 18. Satriani is the man who taught metal guru Steve Vai his finger-tricks. Canadian white blues-slinger Colin James opens this night of fret genuflection.

Melodicist Bruce Hornsby and his band the Range are the concert coup of the year thus far, July 19, doubltess an expensive one for promoter Donald K. Donald. Fresh from scaling the charts as the co-writer of Don Henley's End of the Innocence single, Hornsby is a star who rarely plays venues this small any more. Saskatchewan's Northern Pikes open. A triumph in Paris Johnny Clegg and Savuka, South Africa's most famous emissaries of mbaqan-ga or Township Jive, are in July 24.

Quebec heart-throb Roch Voisine returns from triumph in Paris to play La Ronde July 25. Luba is in July 26 and francophone pop darlings Les B. B. thrill the teens Aug. 7.

Longtime Montreal favorite Santana is slated for Aug. 9, sure to be a love-in for fans who remember the group's Forum shows way back in the '70s. Gowan gobbles in as the last scheduled show, Aug. 16, but it doesn't end there. Other imminent additions are The Stranglers, Juno winner Alannah Myles and dance music belter Taylor Dayne.

Tickets are reasonably priced. The Box and Gowan will cost $19.50 each, while tickets for Marillion, Road Warriors, Vega, Satriani, Clegg and Les B. B. are tiered at $21.50 and $19.50. Hornsby and Voisine cost $22.50 and $19.50 each.

The most expensive show is "Escape From New York," still a bargain at $23.50 and 1 9.50 for four acts. Interestingly, the top ticket to Les B.B. is more expensive than that for Luba, Gowan and The Box, an indication of how quickly the Quebec group's star has risen. All tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at all Ticketron outlets.

Bruce Hornsby, Suzanne Vega, John-. ny Clegg, Quebecers Roch Voisine and Les B. B. and punk veterans The Ra-mones are some of the rock luminaries making the 1990 La Ronde Summer Concert Series Montreal's brightest and most entertaining ever. This year's lineup of outdoor rock concerts at La Ronde's floating stage boasts international names from rock's past and present, cheek-by-jowl with several of Quebec's most prominent acts.

The La Ronde series had degenerated into a graveyard for fading Canuck rockers and disco mavens over the last two years, but this lineup promises to be a season-long blowout with at the risk of letting the cliches fly something to please everyone. Pop idiosyncrats The Box opens the series on June 27, drawing the gig on the strength of their new Pleasure and the Pain album. English progressive rockers Marillion, a Montreal favorite, invoke carpet crawlers under the stars June 29. Our own power-poppers Paradox open. Grizzled vets A perverse mind was behind the "Escape From New York" four-band show set for July 4.

The Ramones, Deborah Harry, Tom Tom Club and Jerry Harrison will play This Is Your Life with new wave and punk on American Independence Day. Fans still weeping over the recent B-52's cancellation can console themselves with this pogo down memory lane. The next night, July 5, the grizzled vets of Ten Years After, Nazareth and Blackfoot rumble their aged bones into La Ronde under the guise of the Road Warriors. Suzanne Vega made her name with the stirring child-abuse ballad Luka, but fans of the introspective singer know her as New York's female answer to Leonard Cohen. Vega performs July 10 with vrf iff --V' "jmirmhwmmt nff frtllrwniiMwmmim- tt-i GAZETTE, DAVE SIDAWAY Rickie Lee Jones at Theatre St.

Denis last night. Lyle Lovett outshines scat-cat Rickie Lee Jones MARK LEPAGE GAZETTE ROCK CRITIC mo Spezzato. The novel is about a Canadian who lived in Bangkok for 20 years. Andreotti won in the non-fiction category. Carne socked with $250 fine CINCINNATI Actress Judy Carne, who delivered the slapstick straight line "Sock it to me" on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, pleaded guilty to a contempt of court charge and was fined $250.

A prescription forgery charge was dismissed in the court action Monday. Feldman pleads innocent LOS ANGELES Actor Corey Feldman pleaded innocent to four felony counts of possession and transportation of heroin and cocaine. Feldman, 18, entered his plea Monday before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who set a pretrial hearing for July 9. He remains free on $5,000 bail. Cable-channel policy under study EDMONTON The federal broadcast regulator has undertaken a wide-ranging review of its 15-year-old policy governing cable TV community channels.

Keith Spicer, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, made the announcement yesterday while in Edmonton for the annual meeting of the Canadian Cable Television Association. He called community cable channels "the mirror in which Canadian communities see themselves." A key proposal for change is the establishment of a minimum level of funding for community programming. Cable TV companies with more than 2,000 subscribers would be required to spend at least 5 per cent of their revenues from basic service fees on production and staffing of community programming. Funding currently ranges from 1.2 per cent to 19 per cent of basic service revenues, but the proposed minumum reflects the industry average, the commission said in a news release. Lyle Lovett and His Large Band and Rickie Lee Jones at Theatre St.

Denis last night. I 4v A 3M 'Ik I.I I 1 iJiimmimmlmmii Mif- I in miHiiriir in im I Johnny Clegg (left) is here July 24; Deborah Harry, July Bruce Hornsby, July 19. Popular music routinely finds ways to quash the oddballs, eccentrics and outlaws who provide its flavor. Last night's double bill of Lyle Lovett and Rickie Lee Jones offered at least one reason why that is a bad idea. It was a bill made just on the outskirts of heaven for fans of music with charisma, but only the first artist lived up to and exceeded expectations: Lyle Lovett and his Large Band scaled heights of big-band jazz and country no performer could have followed.

Even with her wounded romanticism weeping over the piano keys, scat-cat Jones's performance was a neurotic anticlimax, especially after Lovett's musical vision came through clear as cut diamonds. Lovett's band was indeed Large and stunningly versatile as the seven-piece outfit slid through its letter-perfect jazz intra. Lovett eased out, pencil thin in a sharkskin suit, one hand in pocket, looking like an intellectual lost somewhere between Waco and the bright lights of New York City. The band was a marvel of jazz and country minutiae, elevating the marvellous details of Lovett's songwriting to pristine heights. If there was an argument, it was with a set that was almost too perfect: with Lovett limited to 50 minutes, there was no time to stretch out on songs from the albums Pontiac and Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, songs that begged to go on forever.

Ah, well, settle for perfection. Black and Blue was bruising and beautiful, If I Had A Boat was odd and endearing. The ineffable Nobody Knows Me, introduced as "a cheatin' song about food," came as close to poetry as country music gets, and that's very close indeed. No expense was spared. The size of the band, with its sterling horn section, a pianist who played between the notes, and a guitarist and drummer who could have played anything, was evidence of Lovett's commitment to greatness.

Lyle's vocal foil Francine Reed was further evidence. The black jazz singer from Phoenix torched the house with an overwhelming take on a '20s jazz number called Wild Women Never Get the Blues. That Lovett so selflessly gave his stage to an artist of this calibre was a marvellous gesture. Rickie Lee Jones is no longer the forced boho of Chuck E's In Love, but her self-absorbtion continues through the vulnerable musings of Flying Cowboys, her latest album. Unfortunately, pretension and indulgent vocalese wasted whatever emotional moments Jones wanted to share last night.

She cut the figure, alright, toying with her hat in front of the twilight-at-the-barrio stage motif, but the show was fraught with tension. Fans were kept waiting in the lobby between songs, apparently because Jones's artistic temperament was too fragile to tolerate their intrusion. They didn't miss much. A drawn-out take on The Horses had its charm, but Jones remains unconvinced that her voice is imperfect at best. Her personal exorcism featured an L.A.

band that seemed pallid after Lovett's, and her overwrought singing grew boring with repeated exposure. Box-office record for Broadway NEW YORK Broadway set a box-office record for the third consecutive year, selling $283 million in tickets during the 1989-90 season. The figure was up 8 per cent from the previous season when sales totalled $262 million, the League of American Theatres and Producers said yesterday. Attendance climbed to 8.03 million during the season that ended Sunday, from 7.97 million the previous season but lower than the 8.14 million tickets sold two years ago. Lutein, li L-i Ik.

Suzanne Vega plays July 10; Joe Satriani (centre), July 18; Roch Voisine, July 25. Henry star Kenneth Branagh dons role of a team piayer IAN BAILEY CANADIAN PRESS IK winning an honorary Oscar for acting, directing and producing. "In Chicago, where the film had done particularly well, I had the first experience of being stopped and recognized almost constantly," Branagh said. Branagh remains a creature of the stage but it will have to wait until after he directs his next project, a film called Dead Again, for Paramount Pictures. "Because Henry has battle scenes.

1 kept being sent things about the Vietnam War American Marine stories," Branagh said with a sarcastic grin. "What happened was that a very good script arrived, a wonderful thriller." "That's King Lear in L.A," he said, then nodded to a half-full goblet. "That's us in Tokyo." "I hope that's us in Toronto," he said, pointing to a full pitcher of water. The company tested the Shakespearean waters with such productions as Twelfth Night and As You Like It. But Henry the film was a bonanza.

Branagh didn't win an Oscar, but took home the D. W. Griffith Award for Best Director and the Best Director Award from the New York Critics Circle. I le was hailed as the 1 990s incarnation of Olivier. The late actor had adapted Henry in a 1944 film, the news conference as Branagh, 29, fielded questions from reporters.

Branagh affects modesty but producer David Parfitt, who met the press along with Branagh's wife, Emma Thompson, who plays Lear's Fool, is more pragmatic. "We look upon Kenneth as the public face of the Renaissance," he said. Toronto is the last stop on a yearlong tout that's taken the 3-year-old company co-created by Branagh and Parfitt to Los Angeles, Tokyo, Europe and Chicago. The last show is June 19. Asked earlier what Canadian audiences can expect to see, Branagh gestured to an empty goblet.

the 0 word: Olivier, as in the legendary Laurence with whom the Belfast-born performer has been compared. "It's nonsense really," the dapper blond actor, who played Henry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, told a news conference yesterday. "It starts to wear off when people come to see these plays because I'm not playing King Lear," he said, praising company member Richard Briers as Shakespeare's doomed monarch. Branagh plays Edgar in Lear and Peter Quince in the Dream. Briers, who played Bardolph in the Henry I-' film, sat quietly during TORONTO Kenneth Bran-agh's film adaptation of Henry did wonderful things for his career but has tested his modesty.

He wants to be seen as one actor among many in his London-based Renaissance Theatre Company, which presents King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream in repertory starting today at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. But people especially reporters want to talk about his Oscar nominations as actor and director for his sweeping 1989 version of Shakespeare's Henry as well as mm fair' Kenneth Branagh Oscar nomination lor Henry.