| Rock and roll is Black. Rock and roll is white. |
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| Fishbone's Angelo Moore at Pinkpop, Landgraaf, Netherlands, May 15, 1989. |
| (Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
Today's Top Hitmakers
A variety of superstar names are being thrown around, in music Twitter's equivalent of fantasy football, as potential allies who might be moved to follow NEIL and JONI (and a handful of others, like NILS) out SPOTIFY's door as the podcast protests continue. The suggestions/predictions are almost entirely hypothetical, but missing from most of the conversations are the hypothetical names who could actually break Spotify if they walked. Meaning not a handful of classic rockers or legacy pop stars, but the voices behind the 100 songs on these two playlists. Most of them are the exact kinds of younger artists who probably don't have the leverage with their labels to pull their catalogs even if they wanted to. But imagine if they did. Imagine GUNNA, RODDY RICCH, GLASS ANIMALS and GAYLE saying goodbye. Imagine those tracks suddenly grayed out on those playlists. That would be Spotfiy's worst nightmare, no?
Never Tomorrow
Meanwhile, here's what's going on with music's middle class, the road warriors who are making a few bucks but only a few bucks on Spotify, who rely on touring for a significant part of their income and who are having a hard if not impossible time doing that right now because of the pandemic that happens to be at the heart of the Spotify outcry.
The LA Times' AUGUST BROWN chats with BEST COAST principals BETHANY COSENTINO and BOBB BRUNO and their agent, manager and road manager about the decision to cancel their tour for the 2020 album ALWAYS TOMORROW for a third time. The math is sobering and heartbreaking. On a 20-show tour of midsize clubs, says SAM HUNT, the LA band's agent at PARADIGM, "the profit margin can be as little as two or three shows." Which is to say, if either of the two bandmembers test positive for Covid and has to quarantine for five days, then boom, the tour starts going into debt.
The band is already likely to come up short on merch sales since every Covid no-show is one less potential t-shirt buyer. And "even though we’ve done it for 12 years, we can’t afford to call a guy to fill in on drums and pay to put someone up in a hotel," Cosentino says.
So they're staying home. "I felt really bad for our touring band, our tour manager, the front-of-house engineer," the singer-guitarist says. And then there's this: "Venue availabilities are tight for the rest of 2022," manager JORDAN KURLAND tells Brown. "Bus companies are sold out until October. If you rent gear, it’s really crowded."
Which means, obviously, other bands *are* touring right now and/or planning tours for later this year. It's doable and it's being done. But it's a difficult decision and that’s the math, and the fact that some bands can make it work doesn't mean every band, even one that's been at it with a good deal of success for 12 years, can do it. And it's going to be that much harder now to make up those dates.
(You can help! Get vaxxed if you haven’t yet. Wear your mask. Buy things at BANDCAMP and wherever else you can buy things.)
Dot Dot Dot
A lot of people have been waiting on DAN CHARNAS' J DILLA tome, DILLA TIME, which is out today from MCD BOOKS... Also today: The penultimate episode of TYLER MAHAN COE's 18-episode, nearly-40-hour, encyclopedic exploration of the life of GEORGE JONES, aka season 2 of his COCAINE & RHINESTONES podcast... DAVID MARCHESE's Q&A with EDDIE VEDDER for the New York Times Magazine is an unusually thoughtful conversation about the nature of success, activism and grief, among other topics. There's a great bit within about Vedder and BONO discussing their very different views on ambition and achievement. PEARL JAM's dream, according to Vedder, was to be "a group that toured and recorded," and having achieved that, the band basically wanted to stay right there. Suffice it to say, Bono dreamed differently. "He was frustrated with me," Vedder says... GOMEZ's TOM GRAY, founder of the #BROKENRECORD campaign, is the new chair of the IVORS ACADEMY.
Rest in Peace
Virtuoso Chicago blues drummer SAM LAY, who played with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and backed Bob Dylan when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. "Flawless musicianship and unsurpassed timing," Dylan once said. "I made fun of his hair," Lay said of Dylan. "I told him it reminded me of the Muddy Waters song ‘I Found a Bird Nest on the Ground'"... NORMA WATERSON, who with her family group, the Watersons, was at the center of the '60s British folk revival, and who in later years found acclaim in another family band, Waterson–Carthy, with her husband, Martin Carthy, and daughter, Eliza Carthy. She was "one of the defining voices of English traditional music," Billy Bragg said. She was in her late 50s when she released her first solo album, and it was nominated for the MERCURY PRIZE.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Above The API |
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| On Neil Young, Spotify, and Netflix |
| By Dave Edwards |
| An in-depth look at Spotify's podcast controversy, Netflix Q4 earnings troubles, and the ways in which the turbulence both companies are experiencing is deeply intertwined. |
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Trapital |
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| Spotify’s Quest to Own Your Ear |
| By Dan Runcie and Evan Armstrong |
| In a market with multiple credible alternatives, what force is keeping Spotify on top? Our thesis is simple: Spotify wins because it has what matters most—attention. |
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Complex |
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| Babyface Ray’s Moment Is Now |
| By Jessica McKinney |
| "Face" isn't just a win for Babyface Ray—it’s an album that continues the hot streak of Detroit rap. |
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Billboard |
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| The Changing World of A&R |
| By Dan Rys |
| As record labels continue to evolve, A&R has changed, too. Eight executives break down how. |
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| the reality of my surroundings |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| How to Abandon a Music Career |
| By Ted Gioia |
| A guide to the one career move you won't learn about in music school. |
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Chicago Sun-Times |
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| Legendary drummer Sam Lay dead at 86 |
| By Maureen O'Donnell |
| Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, he also played with blues legends Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf as well as with Bob Dylan. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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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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