POP/ROCKCinco de Mayo Plea: The family of...

POP/ROCK

Cinco de Mayo Plea: The family of slain tejano singer Selena will hold a press conference in Corpus Christi, Tex., today to announce an anti-violence public service campaign that will incorporate national TV and radio spots in both English and Spanish, as well as print ads and billboards in South Texas and other areas with heavy Latino populations. “The impact of Selena’s loss should result in a consciousness of making it a better, safer place to live,” the family said in a statement. “(We) ask, in Selena’s memory, for America to stop the violence.” The campaign is being run by San Antonio advertising firm Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar and Associates, which volunteered its services and has already received national commitments to run the PSAs by Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo.

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Pop Chart: Rapper-actor-producer Ice Cube came close to hitting the trifecta this week. Not only did his movie, “Friday,” open in the No. 2 spot in the weekend’s box office, but the movie’s album soundtrack came in No. 1 on the nation’s pop chart, selling more than 121,000 copies to dethrone last week’s champion, Live’s “Throwing Copper.” The first single off the “Friday” soundtrack, meanwhile, Dr. Dre’s “Keep Their Heads Ringin’,” produced by Ice Cube, ranks No. 9 on the nation’s pop singles chart.

JAZZ

‘Feeling Good’: Jazz great Lionel Hampton left a New York hospital Thursday, five weeks after suffering a stroke and less than two weeks before a scheduled gig in Georgia. “Feeling good,” the 87-year-old vibraphonist told reporters outside Mount Sinai Hospital, where he climbed out of a wheelchair to perform a little dance. He was admitted to the hospital on March 30 after suffering the stroke and has been recuperating and undergoing physical therapy ever since. Hampton said he would return to his Manhattan home to practice for his first post-hospitalization show, which is scheduled for May 16 in Marietta, Ga.

TV/RADIO

Fences Mended: Talk-show hosts Jay Leno and Dennis Miller--longtime best friends who had stopped speaking three years ago during the much-publicized late-night “Booking Wars”--have buried the hatchet. The comedians, who reconciled their differences just in time for the important May ratings sweeps, will guest on each other’s talk shows, starting tonight with Leno’s appearance on HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live,” then followed next Wednesday by Miller’s sitting in on Leno’s “Tonight Show.” According to a Leno spokesman, the two made up last week, and Leno’s guest spot on Miller’s show became available earlier this week when scheduled guest Roseanne canceled due to illness (her publicist said that the actress, who is seven months pregnant, is simply exhausted and “doesn’t want to expose the baby to any kind of risk”). Miller’s “Tonight Show” appearance will be his first on the NBC program since 1988, when Leno was a guest host for Johnny Carson.

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The Broadcasters’ Viewpoint: The National Assn. of Broadcasters have registered a sharp attack on the PBS-National Public Radio joint report to Congress advocating a trust fund that would include revenue from commercial broadcasters. Their idea of “self sufficiency,” the NAB said, “seems to be ‘Let’s take it from someone else.’ ” The commercial broadcasters’ organization also asserted that the proposed trust fund “would produce a gold-plated public broadcasting system any Hollywood studio or entertainment conglomerate would envy.” Establishment of any trust fund would require congressional action. Although the federally funded Corp. for Public Broadcasting has also called for a trust fund, it left it up to Congress to decide funding sources.

ART

Auction Results: The New York auction season got off to a lackluster start this week when contemporary art sales at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s failed to meet the houses’ pre-sale estimates. At Sotheby’s on Tuesday night, David Smith’s “Three Circles and Planes” sold for just shy of its $2-million low estimate, the top sale in the evening’s total $13-million take, well below an advance estimate of between $15.8 million to $24.5 million. At Christie’s on Wednesday, meanwhile, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Kiss II” brought the night’s top price, going for just over its $2.5-million low estimate. Christie’s rang up a total of $11.3 million in sales, also dipping below its pre-sale estimate of between $13.3 million to $17.5 million. A high point, however, was Claes Oldenburg’s “Coffee Cup,” from the estate of local art dealer Betty Asher, which went for $77,300, more than double its low estimate of $35,000. Both houses hold their big-ticket Impressionist and Modern art sales next week.

STAGE

Pasadena Playhouse Slate: Pasadena Playhouse has scheduled “The Sisters,” an updated version of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” by Richard Alfieri, as the next season opener (July 16-Aug. 20), followed by a revival of the Sheldon Epps revue “Blues in the Night” (Sept. 16-Oct. 22) and a still-to-be-titled comedy with music by Bill Castellino (Nov. 12-Dec. 17). The playhouse board is in the midst of an intricate re-organization of the theater’s management structure but has asked chief programmer Lars Hansen to continue.