| Look. I am a sex god. But I am not a rock star. When people call me a legend, I say, 'Don’t call me that, I'm not a legend.' I don't pretend to be one. I want to be just a normal human being. |
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| Meat Loaf on the "Bat Out of Hell" tour, September 1978. |
| (Michael Putland/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Look. I am a sex god. But I am not a rock star. When people call me a legend, I say, 'Don’t call me that, I'm not a legend.' I don't pretend to be one. I want to be just a normal human being.”
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- Meat Loaf, 1947 – 2022
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| rantnrave:// |
The End of Time
News broke early this morning that MEAT LOAF has rounded third base for the final time and headed home forever. I'll have more to say on Monday about a great rock and roll singer who put the bomb in bombast and the rizz in RIZZUTO and carved an oversized lane for himself that no one else has ever figured out how to access and no one else should ever try. For now, I'll leave you with this righteous protest that the man born MARVIN LEE ADAY in 1947 delivered to a Rolling Stone reporter in 2018: “You know, your magazine started this thing where we stole everything for BAT OUT OF HELL from SPRINGSTEEN and it was nothing but a rehash of BORN TO RUN. I’m saying to myself, ‘Where does Springsteen have a "TWO OUT OF THREE"? Where does he have a "PARADISE"?’" Nowhere, dear reader. The answer is nowhere. Rest in peace, sir.
What Doesn’t Happen in Vegas
ADELE has postponed the three-month Las Vegas residency that was scheduled to begin tonight at CEASARS PALACE, telling fans via Twitter video Thursday that her crew has been decimated by Covid and "I'm so sorry but my show ain't ready." The residency, ironically, was believed to be her way of supporting her new album, 30, without having to tour through the pandemic. "I think it's not a good idea to tell people one day out," a fan who was already in Las Vegas told USA Today. Others were more forgiving, with another fan telling the paper, "We have the flexibility to pay for another trip, so we will be there." HARRY STYLES, meanwhile, canceled an Australian tour that had previously been postponed from 2020 to 2022, and the co-owner of a Branson, Mo., theater told a congressional committee that "sagging consumer confidence is causing national no-show rates as high as 50 percent" at live events. Everybody, that is, is canceling on everybody else. Another reminder that it's the woods themselves, and no one else, who will let us know when we're out of the woods. If you're going to be strolling through the woods in the meantime, please mask up.
It's Friday
And NBA YOUNGBOY has released what Rap-Up dryly calls his "first project... since... last month," the mixtape COLORS, which is somewhere around his 20th or 22nd solo project in seven years, depending who you ask. Seven of them have gone top 10 in Billboard and four have hit #1. The New Yorker's Sheldon Pearce says he's "one of the most extreme cases of a recent developing phenomenon: invisible music stardom"... LITTLE GREEN HOUSE is the debut full-length from ANXIOUS, a buzzy Connecticut emo band whose songs, Stereogum's Chris DeVille says, "stack up hooks upon hooks until they spill over into euphoria." Guitarist Dante Melucci, one of the group's principal songwriters, has melodic instincts rooted, in part, in the Death Cab for Cutie and Fountains of Wayne records his dad—who, full disclosure, was my boss for a couple years—used to play for him. "I turn to dust," DeVille writes, "upon learning this adult musician discovered Death Cab *through his father*," but, hey, that's why they call it dad rock, isn't it?... PAPER ROUTE EMPIRE PRESENTS: LONG LIVE DOLPH features artists from the late Young Dolph's label, including his cousin KEY GLOCK, paying tribute to the Memphis rapper, who was murdered in November... J-pop star HIKARU UTADA's BAD MODE (released earlier in the week) features collaborations with Floating Points, A.G. Cook and Skrillex... CHRISTINA AGUILERA's Spanish-language EP, LA FUERZA, is part one of an album she plans to release in three parts in 2022. She hasn't released a Spanish-language album since "Mi Reflejo" in 2000.
Also today: New music from TANYA TAGAQ, PEDRO THE LION (surprise; released Thursday), NLE CHOPPA, IANN DIOR, RICH BRIAN, VADO, YEARS & YEARS, WALKER HAYES, KEB' MO', JOHN MELLENCAMP, JANIS IAN (her final album, she says), AOIFE O'DONOVAN, YOUNG T & BUGSEY, CHE NOIR, BORIS, ARTSICK, KIDS ON A CRIME SPREE, BEACH HOUSE, JAKE XERXES FUSSELL, JANA HORN, TAMMY ROGERS & THOMM JUTZ MILES KANE, PALACE, AURORA, YARD ACT, BILLY TALENT, VRSTY, DANIELIA COTTON, TINSLEY ELLIS, MICHAEL ROTHER & VITTORIA MACCABRUNI, EIKO ISHIBASHI, the OGJB QUARTET (Oliver Lake, Graham Hayes, Joe Fonda and Barry Altschul), LUDOVICO EINAUDI, ROBERT STILLMAN and LOGAN LYNN.
Rest in Peace
Brazilian samba star and activist ELZA SOARES... Canadian singer/songwriter/producer R. DEAN TAYLOR, who had some success as a songwriter for Motown in the 1960s and one major hit, "Indiana Wants Me," as an artist on Motown's rock subsidiary, Rare Earth Records, in 1970... BADAL ROY, tabla player known for his work with Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and John McLaughlin. He's the second percussionist from Davis' 1970s band to die this month, following James Mtume... TOM SMITH, experimental/noise musician/producer best known as co-founder of the collective To Live and Shave in L.A.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The Common Reader |
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| How Beethoven Would Rage at the AI That Dares Finish Him Off |
| By Jeannette Cooperman |
| “How dare you?” he would thunder, stalking onstage, knocking down a few music stands along the way. The calm, self-congratulatory performance of his Symphony No. 10, finished this fall with the help of AI, would halt in jangled discord. |
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Vulture |
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| ‘It Was Always All Pedro’ |
| By Craig Jenkins |
| David Bazan had to reckon with Pedro the Lion - but really, himself - to arrive at the band’s future. |
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The New York Times |
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| The Morgan Wallen Conundrum |
| By Jon Caramanica |
| The country superstar had the biggest album of 2021 despite being captured on video using a racial slur. Is he on a redemption tour, or just on tour? |
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| i think he's gonna make it |
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theLAnd |
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| In Party We Trust |
| By Lina Abascal |
| In this excerpt from hew new book, "Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor," Lina Abascal tells the story of how the music spread through the Los Angeles area in the late ’00s via a network of local parties and promoters that included an important, and often ignored, Latino component. |
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VICE |
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| What the Free Britney Movement Did Next |
| By Jordan Page |
| Armed with an extensive knowledge of the US legal system, Britney fans are turning their attention to other conservatorship abuse cases. |
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WTF with Marc Maron |
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| WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 1298 -- John Mellencamp |
| By Marc Maron and John Mellencamp |
| John Mellencamp considers his whole career to be a total fluke. Maybe that’s because he never planned for anything in his life and just let the chips fall where they may. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “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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