MUSICREDEF PICKS
Giving Back, Merck Mercuriadis Spending Spree, Last Festival on Earth, Jazz Funerals, Hayley Williams...
Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator April 28, 2020
QUOTABLES!
quote of the day
All that most people need from their figureheads, clownish and otherwise, is the level of concern that ICP imparts on the first song of its quarantine playlist. 'Watch your step, take it easy / You can't replace what you mean to me,' goes the chorus of the song 'Be Safe.' 'Without you, tell me where the f*** I'd be.'
music
rant n' rave
rantnrave://

Every night at 7pm, New Yorkers salute health care workers with cheering and music. Here in Los Angeles, it happens at 8pm, and the cacophony of horns, homemade percussion and yelling serves as both a daily reminder and a daily catharsis. It's my favorite music of the day, and the only live music I've heard in person in the past six weeks. Thank you, anonymous neighbors. And here, if I may, is a 6am MusicREDEF cheer for the musicians doing everything they can to pitch in in a time of medical and economic need... "MASK OFF" rapper FUTURE's foundation, FreeWishes, launched a "Mask On" campaign in March with the goal of sewing 20,000 medical-grade asks for health care workers. As of a week ago, they had made more than 100,000... BRAD PAISLEY and his wife, actress KIMBERLY WILLIAMS-PAISLEY, didn't create their free grocery store, THE STORE, for the pandemic; it had been under construction for a year and happened to open in March. Good intentions, great timing. It's open three days a week to provide food to unemployed and low-income Nashville residents, and delivering groceries to seniors two days a week. Also, it has a free mechanical horse ride... BEYONCÉ BeyGood foundation has pledged $6 million, in partnership with TWITTER founder JACK DORSEY, to mental health wellness organizations... TOP DAWG ENTERTAINMENT founder ANTHONY GRIFFITH is covering a month's rent for more than 300 seniors in housing developments in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood... BIRDMAN is doing the same for residents in need in Uptown New Orleans... POST MALONE played 75 minutes worth of NIRVANA songs while wearing a dress and raised $500,000 for coronavirus relief. And he earned the respect of KRIST NOVOSELIC and COURTNEY LOVE... SONY/ATV donated $500,000 to organizations representing struggling songwriters... DR. DRE and JIMMY IOVINE donated 145,000 free meals—and funded Covid-19 tests—for residents of Dre's hometown, Compton... WILLIE NELSON turned down a fan's gift of masks made of his signature red bandanas and instead offered to autograph them and auction them off—to fund the manufacturing of many more masks... MADONNA's RAY OF LIGHT FOUNDATION teamed up with the REFORM ALLIANCE to donate 100,000 masks to prisoners... DAVID GUETTA unfortunately attracted an army of non-social-distancing fans with his DJ set on a Miami balcony, but he raised $700,000 for the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION in the process... The INSANE CLOWN POSSE is, and I quote the ATLANTIC, "modeling ideal pandemic leadership" for the JUGGALO community, which is something we could use more of, and which the music community seems to be doing a pretty good job of. Thank you... AMOEBA MUSIC's iconic Los Angeles location on Sunset Boulevard has closed for good—"we are devastated but we simply have no choice," co-owner JIM HENDERSON said—but the store is still planning to reopen a few blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard in the fall... LIVE NATION CEO MICHAEL RAPINO says, via Twitter, the company had no idea until Monday morning that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund had purchased a 5.7% stake in the company, on the open market, for about $500 million. Same time everyone else learned. Live Nation's newest headache could be what BILLBOARD calls "a more passive play for the entertainment business" by a country that has been rightly shunned by the business... Vintage typewriter drum machine... A JEOPARDY question for the ages... RIP TROY SNEED and SCOTT TAYLOR.

Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator

April 28, 2020