We want to meet this moment. | | | | Arca at the Sónar Festival, Barcelona, July 18, 2019. "KiCk i" is out today on XL Recordings.
(David Zorrakino/Europa Press/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “We want to meet this moment.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// There appear to be people who think the band now known as the CHICKS caved in to public pressure in tossing the other half of the name, which the long-running Texas trio originally named for a LITTLE FEAT song went ahead and did Thursday morning without bothering to officially announce it. They just changed the URL of their website and their social media handles (shoutout whoever quickly scooped up at least one of their old ones, assuming that wasn't them, too) and released a single under the new, shortened name. "We want to meet the moment," the homepage of the website now says. There was in fact public pressure, but the Chicks aren't a band that has ever shown much interest in doing what they're told. "March, march to my own drum / Hey hey, I'm an army of one," goes the chorus of the new single, a stripped-down, roots-rocky (or at least as roots-rocky as you can be over a programmed beat) protest song that in two verses covers a convention's worth of left wing causes. Marching to their own drum in the past famously got them banished from country radio; it also allowed them to successfully come back a couple years later, without radio's help, with a single that basically told their detractors to shove it. They changed their name this week not because someone in New York or Los Angeles or Austin told them they have to (it's equally likely someone in Dallas or Tallahassee begged them not to), but because they thought it was the right thing to do and because they wanted to. Defiant Chicks would've worked, too... Question: Can country artists still say they've been "Dixie Chicked"?... The Chicks also changed managers, but not to any of those tracked in this informative interactive report, courtesy ROSTR, that charts the world's biggest music management companies based on such metrics as roster size, SPOTIFY and YOUTUBE reach and a variety of other data points. CORAN CAPSHAW's RED LIGHT MANAGEMENT has the most clients, by far, of any company tracked here (more than four times as many as MAVERICK, which has the second biggest roster) while Maverick, SCOOTER BRAUN's SB PROJECTS and the Latin-focused WALTER KOLM ENTERTAINMENT are the Spotify and YouTube champs... MARC GEIGER is stepping down as global head of music at WME... CASH MUSIC, a long-running nonprofit that provides crucial tools to indie artists, is shutting down in July... NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL has a CBGB Caucus... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from KHRUANGBIN, ARCA, HAIM, G-EAZY, IDK, 6LACK, JESSIE WARE, THROTTLE ELEVATOR MUSIC (feat. KAMASI WASHINGTON), HUM (actually dropped earlier this week, breaking a small corner of the internet), TENILLE TOWNES, CORB LUND, GREY DAZE (new recordings by CHESTER BENNINGTON's pre-LINKIN PARK band using his original vocals), CEELO GREEN, YUNGEEN ACE, NATANAEL CANO, BUJU BANTON (dancehall star's first album in 10 years), NADINE SHAH, PARK HYE JIN, LOUIS THE CHILD, BELL WITCH & AERIAL RUIN (from the linked review: "[It] won't be for everyone. In fact, it's practically not for anyone at all"), POTTERY, RAY LAMONTAGNE, BECCA MANCARI, DERRICK HODGE, BOBBY WATSON, MACEO PARKER, BRIAN MCKNIGHT (his last album of original songs, he says), MAX B, AUGUST ALSINA, BANKROL HAYDEN, DEAD TONGUES, JAMES KRIVCHENIA (second solo album by BIG THIEF drummer), COUNTRY WESTERNS, WILL HOGE, BAD MOVES, GORDI, DIRTY PROJECTORS, MOE. and ART FEYNMAN... RIP MADY MESPLÉ. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | The New York Times | | The Brooklyn rapper was on the verge of an international breakthrough when he was killed in February. Here is the story of his whirlwind final months, told by those who knew him best. | | | |  | The Guardian | | Founder says another cancellation would ‘be curtains’ for festival and has hopes for testing scheme, with daughter Emily saying they will ‘mutate to survive.' | | | |  | The Ringer | | Retracing the legacy of the superproducer, who helped shaped the course of music by stripping away the pieces that didn’t matter. | | | | | The Ringer | | From his early Def Jam work to his revival of Johnny Cash and all the odds and ends in between, we’ve ranked the best (and worst) of the legendary superproducer’s career. | | | |  | Vanity Fair | | The Yes keyboardist defined Spinal Tap-esque excess, until he staked everything on his eccentric dream of an Arthurian rock opera on ice. Now, the tale of his epic spiral and long, slow comeback can finally be told. | | | |  | Dweller | | The following conversation took place before the on-going wave of protests, and in spite of the recent reckoning with anti-Black racism of a lot of white actors in the scene, the challenges and issues mentioned are still very relevant. Although the Dutch scene is the primary focus of this discussion, similar dynamics can be observed all across the world. | | | |  | The Daily Beast | | Alexia Norton Jones, activist and daughter of MLK’s attorney, writes about surviving the predatory hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and why we must believe and fight for Black women. | | | |  | i-D Magazine | | The artist tells i-D about her new brilliant new album, "KiCk i," accompanied by remote portraits by Juergen Teller. | | | | | The New York Times | | The platinum-selling country trio will be known as the Chicks, the latest example of sweeping cultural changes brought on by nationwide protests spotlighting racial inequality. | | | |  | New York Post | | There is a way to safely host an event that will raise money for those in need, help scientists with data, and remind the world of the New York Experience: A benefit concert. | | | |  | ROSTR | | The second edition of ROSTR's report highlighting the artist management companies with the biggest rosters, largest reach & much more. | | | |  | Office Hours | | The Atlanta record label gained traction by staying loyal to one of hip-hop's best markets. | | | |  | Vulture | | The wildly prolific singer-songwriter on her devastating new album "Punisher" and being “the sad girl.” | | | | | The Guardian | | Folk music hasn’t always been as progressive as it might be -- so it’s heartening to see queer-friendly collectives like Bogha-frois and FemFolk flourish. | | | |  | Ludwig van Toronto | | To honour Pride Month, LVT spotlights two illuminating presentations on iconic gay composers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Leonard Bernstein. | | | |  | GQ | | From rare seventies Arabic funk to indie dance hits, the score to the award-winning comedy is rich with gems. | | | |  | Longreads | | Music legends from Tom Waits to Joni Mitchell immediately heard Dylan’s genius in songs like “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,“ but not me. It took me two decades to warm to Bob Dylan. It’s a common story. He’s one of those artists that people say will “grow on you,” or, in more patronizing terms: You’ll understand when you’re older. | | | |  | Complete Music Update | | American music industry campaign groups the Artist Rights Alliance and the Future Of Music Coalition have both called on members of US Congress to investigate the recently circulated memo from Live Nation regarding changes to its artist contracts once the COVID-19 shutdown is over. | | | |  | Billboard | | It's not an understatement to say that Kevin Saunderson has been part of dance music culture since the inception of the scene in the late '70s. At age 17, he attended the hallowed New York venues Paradise Garage and The Loft, where he was not only exposed to the house and disco being spun by future legends such as Larry Levan and David Mancuso, but to the social diversity of the burgeoning genre. | | | |  | Watt | | Not all Spotify playlists are created equally. To begin understanding this, look at them closely. Literally. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | Hypnotizing. From "Mordechai," out today on Dead Oceans. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
