| When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life. |
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Blue notes: Christone "Kingfish" Ingram at Webster Hall, New York, Nov. 3, 2021.
(Al Pereira/Getty Images)
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“When I’m singing blues, I’m singing life.”
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Preparedness
If you're packed into a small space within a large crowd where people are touching both of your shoulders, you're in a dangerously overcrowded space. Get out if you can. Don't think about it. Just leave.
But if it's so crowded that you can't leave, or even move, and the crowd starts pushing you around as if in a wave, don't fight it. Go with the wave.
Lessons from a crowd behavior expert that are relevant for obvious reasons right now. Notes for staying safe—and alive. Anyone going to a festival should know them as surely as Californians know what to do in an earthquake and Kansans and Nebraskans know how to prepare for a tornado. Write them down and put them in your wallet, or in your backpack, which by the way you should never leave on the ground in one of those crowded spaces. Write that down, too.
There'll be investigations into last weekend's tragic events at ASTROWORLD, and a slew of lawsuits. There'll be days and months of reckoning for TRAVIS SCOTT, LIVE NATION and other participants and organizers. There'll be calls to end festival seating that, rightly or wrongly, won't be heeded. We'll find out more about what went wrong and why—what corners were cut, what protocols were overlooked, what dumb protocols were tried, what warnings were ignored, what basic mistakes were made. We'll read more accounts of what it was like to be in the middle of an unfolding disaster that seemed to be spreading under its own power, like this incredible account from photographer DANIEL CAVAZOS who had access to the photo pit and other spaces that allowed him some separation from the general-admission crowd, and who still felt abject fear and was deeply scarred by what he saw. He was still hearing the screams well into the night, long after he'd left. Read his story.
And we'll hopefully learn to do much better next time. Plenty of lessons are already here for the taking. Crowds don't surge spontaneously, even if it feels like they do. It takes time to build and there will always be signs that a surge is developing if event officials know what to look for, and if they have people in place to actually look for them, crowd science professor G. KEITH STILL tells the Telegraph. Having security staff trained and in properly positioned is crucial. Not blaming the crowd itself is crucial, too, Still says: "When you use the word 'panic' or 'stampede' you immediately look at the crowd as being at fault rather than the causality: 'How did we let the crowd into this situation in the first place?'"
Crowd management consultant STEVEN ALLEN tells the Telegraph he's been in a position to stop shows when conditions look like they might get out of hand: "Boom, the full house lights go up. It gets everyone's attention immediately. The sound is killed other than that of the performing microphone. He or she is instructing the crowd based on what you are telling them." Promoters: Write that down and put it in *your* wallet.
At NPR, crowd behavior scientist MEHDI MOUSSAÏD shares "8 tips to follow if you're trapped in a crushing crowd," and it's a must-read for anyone with a festival, or any festival-seating situation, in their future. His are the tips that include getting the hell out of there the minute it starts feeling wrong. "[People are] like, 'Oh, I don't feel good, but the concert is nice, so I'm going to just keep pushing and go towards the concert.' No, don't do that. If you feel bad, it means that really it's dangerous. Just move away and keep yourself safe." There's a lot more great info in here, some intuitive, some not so much, like not pushing back when the crowd starts moving you involuntarily. "It's not going to be comfortable, you're not going to like it, but it's the best way to behave in this situation. Don't add pressure in the system."
STEVE ADELMAN is a laywer and vice president of the EVENT SAFETY ALLIANCE, which publishes crowd management standards for event organizers. He asks the questions that investigators no doubt will be asking Astroworld officials and that they hopefully asked themselves before the festival started. "I don't care how many total guards or guest services people were on property, or whether no call-no shows caused there to be fewer staff than intended," Adelman writes. "How many security people were near the stage where the occupant load apparently rose too high? Crowd density is hard to see in the dark unless one is close by. The issue is what staffing was in that area." He has lots more questions.
It will be important to hold Astroworld officials to account for what happened. It may be even more important to hold future festival organizers accountable before they open their gates.
Etc Etc Etc
Congrats to our friend ANTHONY SALEH, who, as the world now knows, is KENDRICK LAMAR's new manager. Anthony is Nas' longtime manager, a prolific seed investor and an all-around good human. Kendrick is going to release his fifth album, his followup to the Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN, um, soon?... Session musicians are headed toward an $8 million settlement in a class-action suit against the AMERICAN FEDERATION OF MUSICIANS and SAG-AFTRA, whom the class action accuses of improperly taking a 3% cut of streaming radio royalties meant for them. The unions, which once called the suit "frivolous," will also lower that administrative fee under the proposed settlement... LUKE BRYAN hosts the CMA AWARDS, which are attempting to return to "some kind of normal," at 8pm tonight on ABC. ERIC CHURCH and CHRIS STAPLETON lead the pack of nominees, who won't be masked but will be required to have been tested with 24 hours of showtime; "One or two" nominees have chosen to skip the ceremony rather than get tested, the Country Music Association's SARAH TRAHERN told the Tennessean, which is weird AF but will provide a good opportunity for a drinking game or betting pool as you figure out who's there and who isn't... PHIL COLLINS x MICHAEL JACKSON holy hell this is fantastic... A British collector is staging an exhibit of the Worst Album Covers in the World and yeah some of these are pretty terrible/great; shoutout TRICK DADDY.
Rest in Peace
Producer RICK JARRARD, best known for Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow," Harry Nilsson's first two albums and José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad"... German electro artist DAS MUSTER... "Quantum Leap" actor DEAN STOCKWELL, who had a long association with Neil Young. Stockwell's unproduced screenplay "After the Gold Rush" was the inspiration for Young's classic album of the same title. He later co-wrote and co-directed Young's film "Human Highway" and designed the cover for his album "American Stars 'n Bars."
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Medium |
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| Astroworld 2021 |
| by Daniel Cavazos |
| I was at Astroworld on November 5th, 2021 on assignment to cover the festival for a national outlet. Having never been to the festival, I was excited about covering the marquee event for the first time. Below is my story of how Friday began and evolved into one of the most horrifying moments in my life. |
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CNN |
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| Here's what the operations plan for the Astroworld Festival included and didn't include |
| by Rosa Flores and Anna-Maja Rappard |
| A detailed operations plan for the Astroworld music festival in Houston didn't include a specific contingency for a surging crowd incident despite three people being trampled and hospitalized at the same festival in 2019. |
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WIRED |
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| Video Games Inspire a Generation of Classical Music Fans |
| by Mat Ombler |
| Game soundtracks are making waves in the classical community, and a new generation of composers and aficionados are starting to pay attention. |
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I Care If You Listen |
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| Classical Music’s Data-Driven Race Reckoning (And What’s Holding us Back) |
| by Mansi Shah |
| The importance of improving data literacy, collection, and implementation in our efforts to diversify classical music. |
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Billboard |
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| Session Musicians Win Greenlight for $8M Royalty Fee Settlement With AFM, SAG-AFTRA |
| by Bill Donahue |
| Session musicians have won tentative approval of a settlement to resolve a class action that accused AFM and SAG-AFTRA of charging an improper “service fee” on royalty payments. |
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The New York Times |
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| How the Mosh Pit and ‘Raging’ Came to Hip-Hop |
| by Jon Caramanica and Roger Gengo |
| The tragedy at Travis Scott’s Astroworld turned attention to how rap festival performances are increasingly oriented toward the rowdy. |
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NPR |
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| 8 tips to follow if you're trapped in a crushing crowd |
| by Bill Chappell |
| An expert on crowd dynamics shares his advice on how to survive a crush of people. Two tips: don't put a backpack on the ground - and protect your ribs, so you can breathe. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| Looking back at SoCal's first ska boom: Vespas, the O.N. Klub and Laurence Fishburne |
| by Randall Roberts |
| A flurry of new books and podcasts cast at eye and ear back to Southern California's 1980s ska boom and its locus, the O.N. Klub in Silver Lake. |
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Variety |
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| Meet Måneskin: The Italian Band That Defied the Odds and Brought Rock Back to the U.S. |
| by Jessica Shalvoy |
| It may seem like the not atypical modern-day music success story: band goes viral; band gets signed; band finds mainstream success. But Måneskin's journey is far from ordinary. |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| Should Kenny G Make a Record with a Software Reconstruction of Stan Getz? |
| by Ted Gioia |
| Kenny G is drawing on “very advanced modern technology” to release a duet with legendary saxophonist Stan Getz, who died in 1991. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| The Ubiquity Paradox: do far more of this but also do a lot less of that |
| by Eamonn Forde |
| Acts are expected to be using heavy artillery in some marketing contexts while simultaneously holding down a ceasefire in other marketing contexts. I term this The Ubiquity Paradox. |
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The New York Times |
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| The Future Is Big. So Courtney Barnett Still Sings About Small Things |
| by Brodie Lancaster |
| This Australian musician’s third album, “Things Take Time, Take Time,” rolls in a breakup, therapy and the pandemic as well as death and other certainties. |
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Gawker |
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| Siouxsie and the Banshees and Me |
| by Nicholas Russell |
| The new old music that saved me from a rut. |
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God Is In The TV |
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| The vinyl issue: Delays, costs, pandemic, booked up pressing plants, and Brexit |
| by Bill Cummings |
| As well as block booking by majors, there are more factors at play that have made releasing a record on vinyl increasingly difficult, delayed and costly for independent artists and labels. We have spoken to a range of passionate people who run labels to find out more about the factors and challenges they face. |
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DJ Mag |
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| These electronic musicians are breaking down the boundaries of contemporary classical music |
| by Luke Cartledge |
| As dance music culture recovers from the pandemic, artists like Klein, Clark and Afrodeutsche are opening up new frontiers for themselves. |
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Consequence |
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| How Thom Bell Created a Sound for a City, a Record Label, and for Generations of Fans |
| by Marcus Shorter |
| Thom Bell discusses 50 years of Philadelphia International Records. |
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Waiting for Impact |
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| Waiting for Impact: Here We Go |
| by Dave Holmes |
| We have made contact with Sudden Impact. Aaron Kane, the group’s lead singer, tells us how they came together, how they got Michael Bivins’ attention, and where things began to go wrong. Plus, Dave shares war stories with an old MTV colleague about having a normal life one day, and a TV show the next. |
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Cocaine & Rhinestones |
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| Being Together: The George Jones & Tammy Wynette Story |
| by Tyler Mahan Coe |
| CR025/PH11: Though they were married for little more than five years, the legacies of George Jones and Tammy Wynette are forever inseparable. This is partly due to their unprecedented success creating music “based on the true story” of a romance between two artists, to such a degree that decades later millions of fans still believe George and Tammy never stopped being in love. |
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From Rockstar Games' Red Dead Online: Blood Money.
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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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