| Our music charts are still kind of segregated because our country is still kind of segregated. |
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Sarah Shook & the Disarmers in Nashville, Sept. 15, 2019.
(Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
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“Our music charts are still kind of segregated because our country is still kind of segregated.”
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Those Bloodshot Eyes
The demise of long-running Chicago indie label BLOODSHOT RECORDS came to what appears to be an unceremonious conclusion Tuesday, with the label announcing its office is "permanently closed" and ROB MILLER, the last remaining co-founder, writing a farewell note saying he's out and it's "time for this phase of Bloodshot Records to come to an end." While the label said it's still filling orders "for the time being" and Miller's note left open the possibility there might actually be a next phase, two and a half years of stories about sexual harassment, mismanagement, artists jumping ship and co-founders at war with each other have left little reason to believe it would matter. Let the brand die. "F***" NAN WARSHAW," tweeted one former Bloodshot artist, SARAH SHOOK, referring to the other longtime co-founder and co-owner, while asking "what in the f*** is going on with our masters." Another ex-Bloodshot star, LYDIA LOVELESS, responded to Shook's tweet with 27 clapping-hands emojis.
Warshaw was cast as the central villain in a series of implosions that began in 2019 with a New York Times report accusing RYAN ADAMS—whose first solo album Bloodshot had released two decades earlier—of a long pattern of abusive relationships. Shortly afterward, Loveless accused Warshaw's domestic partner, MARK PANICK, of sexually harassing her for several years, and the label of "allowing" the harassment to happen. Both she and Rob Miller said they had warned Warshaw about Panick. That led to Warshaw exiting Bloodshot, followed by an audit of the label's finances that reportedly showed it had underpaid its artists by half a million dollars over the years. The falling out between the two co-founders (a third, ERIC BABCOCK, had left Bloodshot in its early years) was fast and severe. This deeply reported December 2020 piece by MARK GUARINO for Chicago Reader is probably the best account of how it all went down.
Bloodshot, which tagged its style early on as "insurgent country," was an essential player in the alt-country/Americana/country-rock world, putting out records by multiple generations of artists from the WACO BROTHERS and NEKO CASE to Shook (who now records for THIRTY TIGERS with her band, the Disarmers) and Loveless, whose last album came out on her own label. It was one of those labels that, at its best, you could almost blindly trust. If you lived somewhere on the alt side of country, you could go to almost any random Bloodshot showcase or buy almost any random Bloodshot record and there was a good chance you were going to like it. That kind of trust is hard to build and increasingly rare. But the problems that brought Bloodshot down aren't nearly rare enough, as the last few years of #MeToo reporting has made clear. It can happen at giant, multinational major labels and it can happen at cool, local indies. The lessons of the Bloodshot story are tragically simple and obvious. And not enough people have learned them.
Selling Out
Is this some kind of warning buried within Variety's interview with KOBALT founder WILLARD AHDRITZ and CEO LAURENT HUBERT about their $1.1 billion sale, to KKR, of their publishing investment portfolio featuring copyrights from the likes of the WEEKND, LORDE, MAX MARTIN and JAM & LEWIS: Asked why they're selling when everyone else seems to be buying, Ahdritz says: "I believe music is a good asset class to be in, but the decision was made by investors in the fund. They had invested over the years and they had their return targets and their timing and they wanted to sell now, given the proposals they saw and how they looked at returns." What, you might ask, do those investors know that everyone else might want to know? Kobalt, it should be noted, says it will continue buying publishing catalogs, but going forward it will do so as part of its main business rather than through a separate investment fund.
Etc Etc Etc
The 2022 GRAMMYS will be the first major awards show with an inclusion rider... TOM MORELLO launches a New York Times newsletter today... Singer/songwriter AMY SHARK and singer/rapper GENESIS OWUSU lead the slate of nominees for Australia's ARIA AWARDS.
Rest in Peace
“And you are aware, of course, that ‘rhinoceros’ does not rhyme with 'of courseros,'" said the well-known film musical star to the screenwriter, who also happened to be the composer/lyricist of all the film's songs. “It does,” retorted the latter, “if you pronounce it ‘of cos-eros.’" In addition to "Doctor Dolittle," the great LESLIE BRICUSSE was the composer and/or lyricist behind four decades of film and stage musicals including "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," "Victor/Victoria," "Jekyll & Hyde" and "Stop the World – I Want to Get Off." He also wrote the lyrics to the classic James Bond themes "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice," and if you needed someone to score your film or write the book for your musical, he sometimes did that, too... Coloratura soprano EDITA GRUBEROVA, a longtime star of the Vienna State Opera... Italian jazz guitarist FRANCO CERRI.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Chicago Reader |
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| RETRO READ: Will Bloodshot Records stay in the saddle? |
| by Mark Guarino |
| Internal strife, unpaid royalties, and the looming possibility of a sale have forced the venerable Chicago indie label to a crossroads. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| The major labels are taking a beating in the UK. Will they end up turning their back? |
| by Tim Ingham |
| A run of major-bashing moves have been made by political quarters in the UK. Will there be unintended consequences? |
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The New Yorker |
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| Marian Anderson's Bone-Chilling Rendition of "Crucifixion" |
| by Alex Ross |
| Her performances of the Black spiritual in the nineteen-thirties caused American and European audiences to fall silent in awe. |
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Variety |
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| Kobalt Bosses Willard Ahdritz and Laurent Hubert Talk Today’s Billion-Dollar Catalog Deal, and What’s Next |
| by Jem Aswad |
| Kobalt's second giant catalog sale in less than a year made headlines Tuesday morning when the company announced that KKR, together with its co-investor, Dundee Partners, purchased the KMR Music Royalties II portfolio for a whopping $1.1 billion - even more than the billion the company was said to be seeking. |
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Broken Record |
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| Broken Record: Amythyst Kiah |
| by Bruce Headlam and Amythyst Kiah |
| Amythyst Kiah performs two songs and talks to Bruce Headlam about what it was like for a black teenager to come out as gay in a white Christian southern town. She also explains how learning of the West African roots of Bluegrass helped reaffirm her place in Americana music. |
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VICE |
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| 'I Heard Before I Saw': How Record Collecting Became My Family Tradition |
| by Jesse Bernard |
| My dad was a reggae head and my mum loved soul, and I inherited their love of Black music. |
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The New York Times |
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| Introducing Tom Morello’s Newsletter |
| by Jane Coaston and Kathleen Kingsbury |
| The Rage Against the Machine guitarist contemplates poetry, protest and the power of unions. |
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The Seattle Times |
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| Foo Fighters’ Hall of Fame journey began with 2 friends in a Seattle studio |
| by Michael Rietmulder |
| It all started with two guys in a Shoreline studio 27 years ago this week. |
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Music x |
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| 3 levels of DAO involvement for musicians (and those who love music) |
| by Bas Grasmayer |
| The internet is entering a new era of community. |
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DJ Mag |
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| Kevin Saunderson: the E-Dancer returns |
| by Bruce Tantum |
| Techno would not exist as it does today without Kevin Saunderson. Some of the Detroit techno architect's most revolutionary work has been released under the E-Dancer banner, and this month sees the release of 'Re:Generate', a collection of classic E-Dancer tunes remixed by a world-spanning array of producers. |
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Variety |
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| Netflix’s In-House Music Maven Is a Former Pop Star |
| by Lily Moayeri |
| Colleen Fitzpatrick has a knack for knowing what you need to hear at any point in time, and she knows how to put it in front of you. Much of the music on Netflix's series passed through her hands - or ears. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| The name’s bonds. Music bonds. |
| by Tim Ingham |
| How the genius of Bowie bonds is making a comeback, 14 years after they went away. |
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Billboard |
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| Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo & More Are Spinning Vinyl Delays All the Way to No. 1 |
| by Lyndsey Havens |
| Growing demand for vinyl, along with manufacturing delays, is boosting albums by Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and more back up the charts months after release. |
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The New York Times |
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| PinkPantheress’s Slivers of Dance-Pop Play With Memory Like a Toy |
| by Jon Caramanica |
| The British singer and producer’s debut release, “To Hell With It,” is full of familiar samples, rendered hazily. |
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Vulture |
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| The Escapist Male Fantasy of the James Bond Theme Song |
| by Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan |
| Exploring the superspy’s musical underpinnings as the Daniel Craig era draws to a close. |
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NBC News |
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| Eric Clapton's Covid vaccine conspiracies mark a sad final act |
| by Jeff Slate |
| Bigotry and ignorance, in the age of the internet, have a way of catching up with you. And Clapton’s racism and conspiracy theories can no longer be ignored. |
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Stereogum |
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| Album Of The Week: Maxo Kream Weight Of The World |
| by Tom Breihan |
| On "Mama's Purse," one of the last songs on his new album Weight Of The World, the Houston rapper Maxo Kream starts out flossy. He doesn't remain that way for long. The "Mama's Purse" beat is lush and warm and opulent; it's the kind of track that plenty of rappers would use to brag about material things. |
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Please Kill Me |
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| John Peel And The Weird World Of Dandelion Records |
| by Jim Allen |
| The legendary BBJ DC John Peel is rightly recalled for championing new, obscure and overlooked musical artists. He is less well known for his quixotic attempt to reshape the music industry from within by starting his own record label. |
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Audacy |
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| Breaking Waves: Seattle, Ep. 1: Here We Are Now, Entertain Us |
| by Ryan Castle |
| Episode two of "Breaking Waves: Seattle" begins with the release of what Charles Cross has labeled “the purest statement” of the grunge movement—the seminal Temple of the Dog album, created in memory of the late Andrew Wood.At The Same Time, Pearl Jam Was Formed, Nirvana Was Gathering Strength And Soundgarden Was Refining Their Iconic Metal-Influenced Sound. Then, In The Fall Of ‘91, The Seattle Scene Produced Three Of The Most Influential Rock Albums Of All Time: Pearl Jam’s “Ten,”... |
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| Music of the day |
| "Wine Lips" |
| Lydia Loveless |
| From "Somewhere Else" (Bloodshot, 2014) |
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YouTube |
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From "Somewhere Else" (Bloodshot, 2014)
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Fan-made documentary featuring original artist interviews and performance footage scavenged from the internet.
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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