| Jazz taught me how to see and hear music. A lot of the jazz records my mother used to play were instrumental, but you’d see and hear exactly what the band wanted you to see and hear, in terms of the mood they were trying to present, how they wanted you to listen to it. That allowed me to listen to beats and figure out what exactly they called for lyrically. |
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| Don't sweat the traffic: Eric B. (right) and Rakim on New York's 14th Street circa 1989. |
| (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Jazz taught me how to see and hear music. A lot of the jazz records my mother used to play were instrumental, but you’d see and hear exactly what the band wanted you to see and hear, in terms of the mood they were trying to present, how they wanted you to listen to it. That allowed me to listen to beats and figure out what exactly they called for lyrically.”
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- Rakim
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| rantnrave:// |
A Good Year for the Roses
It was last May, early in season two of TYLER MAHAN COE's COCAINE & RHINESTONES podcast, whose 18 episodes and nearly 40 hours constitute a sprawling and heartbreaking biography of one of my favorite singers, GEORGE JONES, that I learned the difference between how ice was harvested in ancient China and Persia, how and why ice cream finally reached the masses in Paris nearly 2,000 years later, and why iced tea became a thing in the US in the early 1900s. George Jones' name didn't come up in that episode's two hours, and it would be another nine months, until this week, before I understood why I'd been given all that information about ice. Coe has made it clear he understands not everyone was going to make it to this week. Some listeners were sure he'd been trolling them with his 20- or 30-minute prologues into the history of ice, or pinball, or pianos, or jousting, or bullfighting, or bootlegging, or the French monarchy, some of which he quickly connected to the bigger story but most of which he didn't. He wasn't trolling, of course. He was playing a very long game while telling an epic story about the history of country music and one of its greatest practitioners, and mental illness, and how harmonies work (and sometimes don't), how the music business works (and sometimes doesn't), how histories unfold in strange and unpredictable ways and how our lives start long before we're born and continue long after we're gone. This may be the greatest country music biography ever produced in any medium. The writing is lush, novelistic and exacting. Here's Coe on a teenage George Jones, who had grown up imitating his favorite singers, finally discovering his own voice: "He broke down every part of his vocal pathway and experimented with each, learning how to load his lungs, then restrict and direct airflow into somersaults of notes, how to smoothly move the sound between the resonating chambers of his chest and throat and skull, how to bite down on certain syllables to half-hum a lyric into clenched teeth."
The 18 episodes are covered wall to wall in music by Jones, his predecessors and contemporaries, and in a life's worth of stories, not all easy to listen to. Jones' life was filled with sadness and darkness, and he did some terrible things when he wasn't in a studio producing one of the great bodies of work of the 20th century. Sometimes Coe, who overenunciates every "t," sounds like he's yelling at his listeners, which I think is because he thinks it's really important that we hear every detail. There are a lot of details. Jones dies in the 17th episode, and in the finale, the 18th, Coe ends the story by going back to a beginning that you may not have noticed, until now, he'd left out. As he does, what you thought was trivia about ice and pinball and moonshine suddenly, magically, snaps into its rightful place. It's masterful storytelling. The finale starts with one final diversion—a half-hour-long lecture on the history of the symbolism of roses. After these 10 months and 40-ish hours, Coe seems to be suggesting, he wants to give you the roses while you, and he, live. And, it goes without saying, they'll connect to the story ahead, as well as the one behind.
Etc Etc Etc
Speaking of podcasts, KENDRICK LAMAR appears in one that launches on SPOTIFY today, diving deep into his album TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY. The five-part series is part of Spotify's THE BIG HIT SHOW podcast hosted by ALEX PAPPADEMAS... Lamar's SUPER BOWL stagemate SNOOP DOGG showed up on Clubhouse Tuesdasy to announce that DEATH ROW RECORDS, which he now owns, will be an NFT label. "Just like we broke the industry when we was the first independent to be major"—and no I don’t know what that means—"I want to be the first major in the metaverse," Snoop said. He's selling an NFT version of his own new album, B.O.D.R. (BACC ON DEATH ROW), for $5,000 each and has reportedly sold about 9,000 of them in five days, a number that, with all due respect, strikes me as badly in need of an audit... COACHELLA and STAGECOACH, which are two months away, have dropped all vaccine, masking and testing requirements (um, OK) but only Stagecoach, the country one, publicly announced it, and I'm dying to know the political and demographic calculus behind that comms strategy... New York State is offering $1,000/month for 18 months, no strings attached, for up to 2,400 artists who can show they have a financial need. The state, which has also set aside 300 jobs for artists at $65,000/year, is accepting applications for both programs.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Cocaine & Rhinestones |
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| Glenn |
| By Tyler Mahan Coe |
| CR032/PH18: The end of one story is just the beginning of another. |
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GQ |
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| Tupac Was Always Political |
| By Paul Thompson |
| The new art exhibit “Tupac Shakur: Wake Me When I’m Free” makes it clear he didn’t drop his lifelong ideological convictions after becoming a gangsta rapper. |
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DJ Mag |
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| Dance Yrself Green: can clubbing generate renewable energy? |
| By Sophie Lou Wilson |
| Emerging technology, BODYHEAT, promises to make clubs more carbon neutral. Sophie Lou Wilson speaks to those behind it, the first club to trial it (SWG3 Glasgow), and others about how it works, as well as its potential and limits. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Morgan Wallen Is Not on an Apology Tour |
| By Kelefa Sanneh |
| You could chart the rise of Morgan Wallen, the first major country star of the twenty-twenties, by keeping track of all the apologies he has issued over the past year and a half. |
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The Daily Beast |
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| How John Lurie Made the Most Calming Show on TV |
| By Nick Schager |
| The enigmatic musician, artist, and actor discusses the second season of his acclaimed HBO series “Painting with John,” and why success can never come too late (or can it?). |
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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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