| I don't like a lot of fast pickin', loud music. That ain't music. That's a lot of fast notes. Showin' off—that's all it is! If I'm there with people like that, I gets up and go. I says, 'Let's go. Take me to my car.' |
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| John Lee Hooker circa 1970. |
| (Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“I don't like a lot of fast pickin', loud music. That ain't music. That's a lot of fast notes. Showin' off—that's all it is! If I'm there with people like that, I gets up and go. I says, 'Let's go. Take me to my car.'”
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- John Lee Hooker
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| rantnrave:// |
Stream(ing) of Consciousness
Four comments from two essays on the kinds of things consumers might want from streaming services and record manufacturers: 1. "If I do a search for 'new jazz' on the platform, all I get are recordings with the words new and jazz in their titles." (Read that again. And again. Seriously.) 2. "It is interesting that there aren’t really 'design options' for [streaming] users. Listeners have very little choice in picking a streaming design that better serves their needs. Paraphrasing an old line, you can have SPOTIFY in any color you want, as long as it is black and green. (Or white and pink at APPLE MUSIC I guess)." (Though I'll allow that some people may consider "not having JOE ROGAN" to be a tangible design option.) 3. "The music industry could get rich by developing a next generation vinyl format. Let’s call if Super-Vinyl. It would have all of the advantages of the current physical products, but with better audio quality, durability, etc. Maybe it even comes with some digital or NFT twist. Let your imagination run wild." (NFTs! How can you say no?). 4. "Advanced search." (Read that again.) There's plenty more to pick through between TED GIOIA on what he learned when he tried getting back into vinyl (with a streaming stop along the way) and G.C. STEIN on the strange homogeneity of streaming services, especially if you, for example, run one of these enterprises, in which case, hey, you may well agree... Speaking of which: This is a simple and nice addition to the BANDCAMP app... Also: Imagine if Spotify and other services had the exact licensing deals they currently have with record companies but the record companies didn't actually send them any music and the digital services instead had to rely on third-party companies who would crowd-source the music and send them the results. That's literally the arrangement most of the services have with publishers for song lyrics, which is why this happens. Pitchfork reports that Apple Music does it differently than its competitors, and kudos to Apple for that, but there's a much more elegant and simple solution that you or I or really anyone could explain to the services and the publishers if they would only ask (or, like, re-read this item).
Ramrod
Residents of Ottawa have been trolling Canada's trucker protesters by blasting GRANT MCDONALD's "RAM RANCH," which Rolling Stone describes as "a 2012 porno-metal classic" about gay cowboys, over their communication channels. Buzzfeed's PAUL MCLEOD describes exactly how this is going, and it's—actually, I don't have an adjective to describe this. "Oh my god," to quote McLeod, probably covers it best. In New Zealand, similar protests have been met with police blasting a loop that includes "BABY SHARK," "LET IT GO," BARRY MANILOW's "MANDY" and an "out-of-tune recorder rendition" of "MY HEART WILL GO ON" at them. In both cases, the protesters are responding by hurling TWISTED SISTER back at their tormentors. No one has explained why either side thinks the other side hates pop music, though I confess I don't have a lot of experience in localized psychological warfare.
Ivan Reitman, A&R
RAY PARKER JR. on how the late director IVAN REITMAN pulled the GHOSTBUSTERS theme song out of him: "In the beginning, they only wanted 20 seconds over the library scene, where the girl comes in and the books are flying around, so I wrote that... Ivan called me up and said, 'I like what you’re doing with that, can it be longer? Can you make it a record' I was like, 'You wanna make a *record* out of that?'" (Not mentioned, for what it's worth: HUEY LEWIS).
Rest in Peace
KING LOUIE BANKSTON, a prolific rock and roll singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who lived in New Orleans, Memphis and Portland and was in bands including the Exploding Hearts, the Royal Pendletons and Bad Times... "BIG" JOHN HARTE, head of security for Kiss and Iron Maiden... Jazz, blues and pop drummer CLIFTON "FOU FOU" EDDIE, who played with Patti LaBelle and the Dells and portrayed drummers in the films "Whiplash" and "La La Land"... South African DJ and rapper CITI LYTS, murdered in Soweto Monday morning... CHRISTINA YUNA LEE, a producer at the digital music marketplace Splice, murdered in New York Sunday morning.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| I Return to Vinyl After 34 Years |
| By Ted Gioia |
| But I now see firsthand how the music industry is fumbling this huge opportunity to revitalize its business. |
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Streaming Machinery |
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| Music Streaming: Shapes and Futures |
| By G.C. Stein |
| Listeners have very little choice in picking a streaming design that best serves their needs. Paraphrasing an old line, you can have Spotify in any color you want, as long as it is black and green. (Or white and pink at Apple Music I guess). |
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Trapital |
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| How Snoop Dogg Maximized His Super Bowl Moment |
| By Dan Runcie |
| In most recent catalog deals, the legacy artist sells to a music investment firm or a record label. The artist takes the check, and then the company reaps the future rewards. But in Snoop's acquisition of Death Row Records, the artist who helped make that catalog will buy it outright. That’s special. |
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Complex |
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| The Problem With NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ War on Drill Rap |
| By Andre Gee |
| Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams fired his first salvo in the ongoing war on drill music in the city. The former NYPD officer told a group of reporters that his son, a Roc Nation employee, showed him some drill videos and "it was alarming." |
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NPR Music |
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| Raveena's galactic journey back down to Earth |
| By Leila Fadel and Milton Guevara |
| On her new album, "Asha's Awakening," the artist Raveena sends her protagonist on a thousand-year intergalactic journey of discovery, all in order to better understand her own place on Earth. |
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Complex |
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| The Halftime Show Was Historic, But Complicated |
| By Andre Gee |
| It was an unforgettable 15 minutes that deserves to be celebrated, but many things are true at once. The performance didn’t make us forget the controversy that the performers are embroiled in, and it doesn’t absolve the NFL of its awful, discriminatory practices toward players and coaches. |
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The Illusion of More |
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| Talking with Helienne Lindvall Because Streaming is Still Broken |
| By David Newhoff |
| Neil Young pulls his music from Spotify to protest the content on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, and Nash follow suit. Meanwhile, the economic model for music streaming is still broken. Why don’t legacy artists who can command so much attention use that power to advocate for fair compensation for the next generation of artists? |
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Technomaterialism |
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| Black dance music without Black people: a data analysis |
| We have collected data which shows that overall the representation of Black artists on event lineups has not improved, and that for some countries (such as Spain and France), the percentage of Black artists booked per event lineups has even decreased. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Bottle Up and Go” |
| John Lee Hooker |
| 13-bar blues, except for the last verse, which is 12-1/2. He was an American original who could bend and stretch song form like nobody else. |
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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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