| Girls'll run up to us and say, 'Oh, you know, we started a band because of you,' and that's probably the best feeling in the world. |
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Happy Halloween from LCD Soundsystem's Pat Mahoney. Austin, Texas, Oct. 31, 2017.
(Rick Kern/WireImage/Getty Images)
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“Girls'll run up to us and say, 'Oh, you know, we started a band because of you,' and that's probably the best feeling in the world.”
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Hello Cleveland
Saturday night in Cleveland, the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME will welcome a strange, wonderful and unusually large class of 12 artists—two of them female solo artists, one of them an all-woman band, two of them rappers, one of them KRAFTWERK, all big breakthroughs for an institution long in need of big breakthroughs—and one godfather. It's the best class of plaques that's been added in a long time—not because it's a relatively diverse class, which it is, but because casting a diverse net allowed the Hall's gatekeepers to actually find better, more worthwhile artists. For the first time ever, they managed to *not* overlook the solo careers of CAROLE KING and TINA TURNER. For example. Funny how that works.
Here were my thoughts in May when the class was announced, which remains exactly how I feel today. There's an awful lot to celebrate and there's room to do better.
And one more note, since this is one of the things Hall watchers tend to argue about and/or be befuddled about. Some artists, e.g. the GO-GO'S and JAY-Z, were elected by the Hall's voting membership of 1,000 or so artists, execs and writers. Some, including LL COOL J, whom the voters rejected for the millionth or so time, were added afterward by a special committee that cited them for Musical Excellence. Others, like GIL SCOTT-HERON, got the nod from another special committee in charge of Early Influences. The 13th inductee, CLARENCE AVANT, who has spent his life exerting immense influence and love behind the scenes, is the recipient of the AHMET ERTEGUN Award. Four different paths to the same destination. But now that they're reached that destination, the paths no longer matter. Jay-Z's and LL Cool J's and Gil Scott-Heron's plaques will look the same to anyone visiting the museum. They're all Hall of Famers. No asterisks.
Oh, and one future request, if I may: These four women.
MusicSET: "The Rock Hall of Fame Opens Its Doors a Little Wider."
It's Friday
And in honor of RRHOF induction weekend, we'll lead with the rock: The WAR ON DRUGS, who'll be eligible for the Hall in 2033, continue their exploration of the 21st century possibilities of 1970s and '80s rock on I DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, their first album since bandleader Adam Granduciel became a dad—to a boy named Bruce, named for a certain '70s and '80s rock and roller you may have heard of. This song could have been named Bruce, too. Or, say, Tom... Proggy metal vets MASTODON (eligible: 2027), who've allowed some more conventional, commercial even, rock influences to creep through the studio doors in recent years, go for broke on the double album HUSHED AND GRIM. But the grief that's marked recent Mastodon albums seems to have been doubled, too, on an album inspired by the 2018 death of the band's manager, Nick John. "It feels like someone has to die for us to make an album," guitarist Brent Hinds told Kerrang! "I hate this feeling"... PROJECTOR is the debut album by GEESE (eligible: 2046), the next next-big-thing indie-rock buzz band of New York City teenagers with music-biz parents, which sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't but almost always gets you a feature in the New York Times before your first album is in stores. Parting quote: "When we made this album, we were just 17. We’re 19 now. We’re changing, fast"... ED SHEERAN (eligible: 2036) is obviously more on the pop side of the pop/rock slash, but he's an old-school player who can bring it with an old-school band and he titles his increasingly "autobiographical" albums with math symbols that would make an old-school prog-rocker proud... BAT FANGS (eligible: 2043) are a North Carolina duo consisting of singer/guitarist Betsy Wright of Ex Hex and drummer Laura King of Speed Stick, and they are, without a doubt, having more fun than every other band in this paragraph.
Also: British jazz tuba innovator THEON CROSS' second album as a bandleader... A compilation of freestyles and unreleased tracks from MEGAN THEE STALLION... A surprise EP from BIG SEAN & HIT-BOY... The soundtrack to the Netflix Western THE HARDER THEY FALL, featuring LAURYN HILL, KOFFEE, KID CUDI and JAY-Z, who's a co-producer of the movie... And albums from NICKI NICOLE, TORI AMOS, MARY LATTIMORE, MICK JENKINS, CURREN$Y & HARRY FRAUD, UNOTHEACTIVIST, TEC, GUAYNAA, ARTIFACTS TRIO, NICHOLAS PAYTON, DAVE MEDER, PATRICK SHIROISHI, BLACK VEIL BRIDES, JERRY CANTRELL (first solo album in 19 years), BAD WOLVES, KAYO DOT, MARISSA NADLER, EMILY ROBINSON, HAYES CARLL, ELVIE SHANE, CHRISSY, LOTIC, ERIS DREW, QRION, NAMASENDA, KATY B, SAM EVIAN, LILY KONIGSBERG, RICHARD ASHCROFT (acoustic versions of Verve and solo songs), JOSH FREESE, NAYTRONIX (Nate Brenner of Tune-Yards), BILLY BRAGG, JOE BONAMASSA, BRANDY ZDAN, LUNAR VACATION... And BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND's KEYBOARD FANTASIES REIMAGINED, featuring songs from his cult classic 1986 album remixed by BON IVER, ARCA, JULIA HOLTER and others... (And, full disclosure y'all, LIMP BIZKIT says its first album in 10 years is coming Sunday.)
Etc Etc Etc
The GRAND OLE OPRY will celebrate its 5000th Saturday night broadcast this weekend with six decades' worth of performers. "But then," as Variety's CHRIS WILLMAN notes, "the Opry does that every week." The Opry's first broadcast was Nov. 28, 1925... You can't spell "decimation" without a D, M, C and A. A great read from Rolling Stone's JON BLISTEIN on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and "the decimation of the financial value of a song"... The spreadsheet of PRINCE recordings... CARL PALMER, the only surviving member of EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER, is planning an ELP tour with "something better than a hologram"—old film clips.
Rest in Peace
1970s one-hit wonder ROBIN MCNAMARA, who starred in "Hair" on Broadway before bubblegumming his way onto the pop charts with "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me."
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| i can't live without my radio |
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Variety |
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| Right Place, Right Time: How SBK Records’ 30 Months of Existence Launched 30 Years of Music Industry Leadership |
| by Roy Trakin |
| Charles Koppelman, Martin Bandier, Daniel Glass, Pete Ganbarg, Arma Andon remember the good old days at the record label that brought us Vanilla Ice, Wilson-Phillips, Technotronic, Jesus Jones and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. |
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Kerrang! |
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| How collective grief shaped Mastodon’s most grandiose, gut-wrenching album ever |
| by Sam Law |
| The passing of band manager and close friend Nick John in September 2018 was a deep wound for Mastodon. As astonishing double-album "Hushed & Grim" looms, the Atlanta metal masters explain how they’ve processed that pain into an epic reckoning on life and death, grief and the great hereafter. |
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Bloomberg |
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| A Nigerian Singer Released the Biggest Hit in African History |
| by Lucas Shaw |
| In early September, Nigerian singer-songwriter CKay received a text message with a link to TikTok. Some of the app’s users had started recording a dance routine set to his song, “Love, Nwantiti,” which is about toxic relationships. CKay didn’t think much of it. |
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REDEF |
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| REDEF MusicSET: The Rock Hall of Fame Opens Its Doors a Little Wider |
| by Matty Karas |
| The extra-large class of 2021 inductees is led by Tina Turner, Jay-Z, Carole King, the Go-Go's, Todd Rundgren, Foo Fighters, LL Cool J and Kraftwerk, as the Rock Hall makes more room for women and hip-hop. |
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Billboard |
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| Billboard's 50 Best Song Interpolations of the 21st Century |
| by Christine Werthman, Kristin Robinson, Gil Kaufman... |
| Some of them are head-smackingly obvious, and some of them you might not have even spotted until this very list; all of them serve as new links strengthening the chains connecting pop's past, present and future. |
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Variety |
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| It’s Been Grand: Opry Prepares to Celebrate 5,000 Saturday Night Broadcasts From Nashville This Weekend |
| by Chris Willman |
| "I grew up remembering when a sitcom would celebrate 100 episodes, and they'd wheel out the cake," says Dan Rogers. For the Grand Ole Opry, which he serves as executive producer, they're gonna need a bigger bakery. |
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Colossus |
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| Universal Music Group: The Gatekeepers of Music |
| by Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Arman Gokgol-Kline |
| Arman Gokgol-Kline is a partner and investor at Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb. We cover the ways music was sold historically, assess streaming's impact on the industry, and dive into UMG's place in the ecosystem. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates: ‘A complex balancing act between the past and the future’ |
| by Eamonn Forde |
| A failure to bring in new fans could mean that the business of the estate will start to shrink and the act’s legacy could go into terminal decline – essentially meaning a second death for the artist. Extracted from "Leaving The Building: The Lucrative Afterlife of Music Estates," by Eamonn Forde. |
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The Undefeated |
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| A poet and a protester, Gil Scott-Heron captured his time -- and ours |
| by David Dennis Jr. |
| One of the premier voices of the Black Power movement is being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. |
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GQ |
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| How Bionic Gloves Gave a Maestro Pianist His Hands Back |
| by Gabriella Paiella |
| A lifetime of brutal injuries and misfortune robbed the world-renowned pianist João Carlos Martins of the ability to play his instrument. And then along came an eccentric designer and his bionic gloves. |
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Pitchfork |
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| How Pop Music Came to Embrace Grotesque and Gory Aesthetics |
| by Madison Bloom |
| From the “Thriller” and “Bad Romance” videos to the Weeknd’s After Hours bloodlust, we look at how horrific imagery became thoroughly normal among pop stars. |
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Music Tectonics |
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| Music Tectonics: Fear, Music, and the Brain -- What Makes Music Scary with Caitlyn Trevor PhD |
| by Tristra Newyear Yeager and Caitlyn Trevor |
| Music and tech have long played their own ghoulish roles in making Halloween especially terrifying. In this week’s spooky episode, Caitlyn Trevor PhD joins host Tristra Newyear Yeager to explore what makes music scary and how our brains process fear. |
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Pollstar |
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| Jimmy Jam On Clarence Avant, 2021 Rock Hall Ahmet Ertegun Award Honoree |
| by Andy Gensler |
| "When we’re fortunate enough to receive awards, we thank God first and we thank Clarence Avant second because he is our God on earth. His importance to us can’t be overstated." |
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The Guardian |
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| ‘I have chaos in my head all the time’: Holly Humberstone, pop’s pandemic breakout star |
| by Laura Snapes |
| After releasing her introspective debut EP last year, the 21-year-old emerged from lockdown with millions of listeners and a major label deal. Can she protect the intimacy behind her success? |
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Texas Monthly |
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| Keep Austin Spoon |
| by Jason Cohen |
| Basically, "Lucifer on the Sofa" is gonna be your favorite Spoon record since your last favorite Spoon record, and that's no small thing in a catalog with so many high points, and ones of such depth and consistency. |
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Afropop Worldwide |
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| The Nyege Nyege Villa: East African Hub of the Electronic Music Underground |
| by Basile Koechlin |
| Is the world's best electronic music festival in Uganda? In only a few years, Nyege Nyege has become one of the hottest artistic hubs in East Africa, birthing two music labels that propelled local scenes across the globe, such as Ugandan acholitronix or Tanzanian singeli. |
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Egyptian Streets |
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| Rachid Taha’s Song ‘Ya Rayah’: A Voice for Immigrants |
| by Mirna Abdulaal |
| Immigrants do not just travel with their bodies, but also with their hearts, minds and spirits. Everyday, it feels like they are trying to reach out to hold on to something real - to hold onto a piece of land that is not fictional or imaginary, but grounds them and pulls them into the vibrations of life. |
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The Seattle Times |
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| Seattle hip-hop is on a hot streak. Can it finally get the national respect it deserves? |
| by Michael Rietmulder |
| There's a template bloggers at national music outlets often deploy when writing about rappers from Seattle. It starts off noticing our Upper Left geography, maybe something about our rock pedigree and, with a Macklemore caveat, mentions that the region isn't really known for hip-hop, but hey, this person's actually pretty good! |
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Bloomberg |
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| Hip-Hop Record Label 300 to Seek $400 Million in Sale |
| by Lucas Shaw |
| 300 Entertainment, the record label of Megan Thee Stallion and Young Thug, is exploring a sale, according to two people familiar with the process. |
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JazzWax |
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| Ginny Mancini (1924-2021) |
| by Marc Myers |
| Ginny Mancini, the wife of the late composer-arranger Henry Mancini, a polished singer who was one of the original Mel-Tones, and an elegant and graceful woman who was as down to earth as she was charming, died on October 25. She was 97. |
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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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