| I was being managed by Elton John right before [my single] 'Everything is Embarrassing.' It definitely helped to have Elton [by my side] because everyone in my label was scared of him. |
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| Water and music: Sky Ferreira at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer, London, June 16, 2022. |
| (Lorne Thomson/Redferns/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“I was being managed by Elton John right before [my single] 'Everything is Embarrassing.' It definitely helped to have Elton [by my side] because everyone in my label was scared of him.”
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- Sky Ferreira
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| rantnrave:// |
Mixed Signals
TRAVIS SCOTT’s first major show since last year’s crowd-crush tragedy at ASTROWORLD is scheduled for next month at London’s O2 ARENA and it sold out in a hurry, which might tell us something about the health of live music in pandemic summer #3 and inflation summer #2 and/or something about the pop music audience’s willingness to embrace a performer who hasn’t done the best job of publicly processing that tragedy and is still facing an arena’s worth of lawsuits for his role in it. Or it might not. DAY N VEGAS, the Las Vegas fest featuring Scott, J. COLE and SZA that would have been his first major US appearance since Astroworld, was canceled Friday for what was officially attributed to “logistics, timing and production issues” but which according to nearly all accounts was actually a case of underwhelming ticket sales. Left hand up, right hand down. In Pollstar, meanwhile, my friend ANDY GENSLER reports on the live industry’s independent sector, which is simultaneously seeing drastically improved demand and “a hydra-headed beast of challenges [that] includes rampant inflation, labor and supply chain shortages and uneven consumer confidence as the recovery from this most brutal epoch continues.” Which is all to say, we know, for now, what we know. And we don’t know what we don’t.
Guilt (Remix)
In the wake of R. KELLY’s 30-year prison sentence (with another trial still to come), Andscape’s JUSTIN TINSLEY calls out the fans who found ways to overlook “the heinousness of his deviancy” for years, while Vice’s GITA JACKSON has some questions for the non-fans who helped sustain his popularity with memes and novelty remixes, “giving the works of a now-convicted sex trafficker cultural cachet for far longer than was reasonable.” NELSON GEORGE shines an unflattering spotlight on the music itself, reconsidering Kelly as an extremely talented singer and songwriter who blew up traditional barriers between euphemistic lyrics and explicit ones, between “classic soul” and “straight trash.” Kelly, says George, “used his vocal and melodic gifts to bring his own brand of demented misogyny to black radio.”
There are kinder critiques to be made of the music of a church-bred R&B figure whose music spoke to some of our best impulses as well as some of our worst ones during a transitional period for pop and R&B. But there’s no defending the man himself, and the world will forever owe a debt to journalists JIM DEROGATIS and DREAM HAMPTON, who did the difficult, thankless work law enforcement wasn’t yet ready to do. DeRogatis was the tireless citizen investigator. hampton was the television storyteller who made Kelly’s victims, finally, impossible to ignore.
But there’s plenty of time left for other victims to be ignored if we don’t remain vigilant. “Rampant abuse” continues in the music industry and elsewhere, hampton tells the LA Times’ LORRAINE ALI. “We’re absolutely in the blowback phase of #MeToo,” says hampton, who couldn’t get anyone from Kelly’s label to go on the record for her 2019 series, SURVIVING R. KELLY. “People,” she says, “have decided that they’re sick of hearing these stories of the suffering.”
Etc Etc Etc
The US COPYRIGHT ROYALTY BOARD affirmed its decision to raise the mechanical royalty rates streaming services pay to songwriters and publishers from 10.5% to 15.1%, largely (but not completely) rejecting a long-running appeal from the digital services. “A long and rancorous rate-setting process is now finished,” Music Ally’s STUART DREDGE reports, “which means all parties concerned can... focus properly on the NEXT long and rancorous rate-setting process,” covering mechanical rates from 2023–2027... DOMINO RECORDINGS says its out-of-court agreement to pay FOUR TET a 50% licensing royalty for streaming instead of the 18% sales royalty it had been paying him doesn’t set a precedent for other artists and other contracts. But why not? It sets “a moral precedent,” DAVID MARTIN of the UK’s FEATURED ARTISTS COALITION tells Billboard. “I hope other artists will be paying a lot of attention to their contracts now and picking up the phone to their labels”... Five months after pulling their music from SPOTIFY in solidarity with their old bandmate NEIL YOUNG’s protest against Covid-19 misinformation, CROSBY, STILLS & NASH are back on the service. They say they’ll donate at least a month’s worth of streaming revenues to Covid-19 charities. All one dollar and 57 cents of it, presumably.
Rest in Peace
Iconoclastic classical music scholar RICHARD TARUSKIN, whose works included the six-volume "Oxford History of Western Music.” The New Yorker’s Alex Ross recently called him “the most important living writer on classical music, either in academia or in journalism”... Breakdancer and choreographer BRUNO FALCON, better known as POP N' TACO, who appeared in several Michael Jackson projects, including the “Smooth Criminal” video, as well as Janet Jackson and Chaka Khan videos and the 1984 movie “Breakin’”... TOMMY MORGAN, who played harmonica on the scores of hundreds of movies and TV shows in a Hollywood career that stretched over more than half a century, as well as on several classic pop songs including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”... Graphic artist ARNOLD SKOLNICK, who designed the iconic bird-on-a-guitar poster for the original Woodstock... ANDREW LABARRE, former guitarist for Oakland metal bands Impaled and Ghoul... Guitarist TRISTAN GOODALL of Australian roots act the Audreys... South African jazz radio presenter ERIC ALAN, founder of the Cape Town-based All Jazz Radio (AJR)... Musicologist and flutist JANE BOWERS, who co-edited the groundbreaking "Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950."
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Longreads |
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| The Women Who Built Grunge |
| By Lisa Whittington-Hill |
| Bands like L7 and Heavens to Betsy were instrumental to the birth of the grunge scene, but for decades were treated like novelties and sex objects. Thirty years later, it’s time to re-assess their legacy. |
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Trapital |
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| How Pusha T Positioned Himself for Longevity |
| By Herbert Lui |
| Consistently pursuing creativity and quality over commerce and fame has been a consistent theme for Push in his career. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s one of the many reasons why he has outlasted most of his peers from the coke rap era. |
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Rolling Stone |
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| Inside a Superfan’s Secret Friendship With Eddie Van Halen |
| By Blair R. Fischer |
| Over the last five years of his life, the rock icon had a clandestine correspondence with a former music journalist, spilling gossip, gripes, hopes, fears - and revealing himself like never before. |
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BBC News |
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| The United States' first interracial love song |
| By Diane Bernard |
| Today we take them for granted, but in the 1960s interracial duets were almost unheard of. Diane Bernard explores the forgotten story of Billy Vera and Judy Clay's taboo-busting "Storybook Children." |
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Pollstar |
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| I Did It My Way: 2022 Survey Of Live Music’s Indie Sector |
| By Sarah Pittman |
| As part of our Special Independents issue, Pollstar reached out to several indie pros to get their take on the state of the business, surveying folks from the venue, agency/management and festival worlds. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Plan B (live at Glastonbury 2022)” |
| Megan Thee Stallion |
| "Still can't believe I used to f*** with ya / Poppin' Plan B's 'cause I ain't plan to be stuck with ya." |
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| Video of the day |
| “Beauty” |
| Andrew Dosunmu/Netflix |
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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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