Sometimes I wonder why I'm being called an icon, because I really don't think of myself that way. I'm a professional musician and I work with very professional people. It's how we get through life
Open in browser
Tuesday May 02, 2023
REDEF
Valerie June at the Stagecoach Festival, Indio, Calif., April 30, 2023.
(Presley Ann/Getty Images)
quote of the day
Sometimes I wonder why I'm being called an icon, because I really don't think of myself that way. I'm a professional musician and I work with very professional people. It's how we get through life
- Gordon Lightfoot, 1938 – 2023
rantnrave://
Sundown

Canadian singer/songwriter GORDON LIGHTFOOT was a master of concision who could, when he was sufficiently moved by his own melancholy and despair, give you an album’s worth of mood and melody in a single two-line, four-bar verse (“I can see her lyin' back in her satin dress / In a room where you do what you don't confess”) and then pay off the melody with an equally pithy four-bar chorus, which he might repeat a second time, with harmonies, because that’s what choruses sometimes do, but it won’t have been necessary. That second go-round of that “SUNDOWN” chorus is basically a folk singer’s victory lap, a bit of musical braggadocio from a man otherwise well known across his native land for his humble, downhome demeanor. The verse of this one, inspired by a highway sign and a bad affair, took seven bars, the expected eighth bar seemingly omitted as if to let us know the writer won’t need that long to show how shattered he is. He could do in seven what lesser shattered songwriters could only do in eight. His rich, understated baritone always drove the point home, just so.

The Canadian icon, who died Monday night, could of course go longer when he had to or the sake of a story, maybe about the sinking of a ship or the building of a railroad, or if the melody was so rich it needed to be heard a few more times. Like the divinely downcast “IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND,” whose chorus was seemingly lifted by MICHAEL MASSER, the composer of “THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL,” a hit for GEORGE BENSON in the 1970s and WHITNEY HOUSTON a decade later. Lightfoot sued Masser after hearing Houston’s version and they settled out of court, with Lightfoot saying he had no ill will toward Houston. Lightfoot got a pop cover of his own song courtesy of the house supergroup STARS ON 54, who turned it into a minor dance-pop hit.

His fan club included BOB DYLAN, who said, “I can’t think of any Gordon Lightfoot song I don’t like,” and Canadian Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU, who mourned him on Twitter as an artist who “captured our country’s spirit in his music—and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape.”

RIP.

YouTube, Ultra

Turns out you can make a decent FRANK OCEAN concert film out of nothing but YOUTUBE, TIKTOK and TWITTER clips. Not surprisingly, you may also find yourself on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters from COACHELLA promoter AEG, as well as music copyright claims. But professional film editor and Ocean fan BRIAN KINNES, who stitched together about 150 clips of Ocean’s much-debated Coachella set, tells Variety he will “continue to upload it in places that [Ocean’s] legal team will not be able to find,” adding “I don’t know if I should tell that to a reporter... but it deserves to exist online.” Kinnes says the Coachella performance was a “high-wire act” and “performance art, and claims a fair-use right to his project. The magazine reports that “a prominent Los Angeles-based intellectual property lawyer says AEG’s claims against Kinnes are shaky, but so is Kinnes’ defense.”

Etc Etc Etc (Day-O)

How the late HARRY BELAFONTE taught BONO to search for higher ground and humbled DAVID SIMON... New Jersey’s BAMBOOZLE FEST implodes... Billboard’s 2023 Latin Women in Music Executives... Magical mystery musicians... I listened to nine hours of MAC DEMARCO and I deserved what I got... The song “BLACK SABBATH” by the band Black Sabbath from the album “Black Sabbath,” and other metal trifectas... Overheard on the Hollywood picket line (OK, it was a NY Times op-ed): “The last thing we need is for film and television to become like the music industry, another creative field disrupted by the internet and tech money, where the middle class has been hollowed out while risk has been pushed from the companies onto the artists themselves.”

Rest in Peace

Guitarist/singer TIM BACHMAN, one of three Canadian brothers who founded the classic rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive along with bassist/singer Fred Turner. He left after two albums and rejoined the band in the 1980s. His brother Robbie, the band’s founding drummer, died in January... Jazz, pop and Broadway composer/arranger DON SEBESKY.

- Matty Karas, curator
the order of time
Vulture
AI Singers Are Unnervingly Good and Already Ubiquitous
By Lane Brown
The software that cloned Drake and the Weeknd’s voices is easy to use--and impossible to shut down.
Rolling Stone
You Are Grimes Now: Inside Music’s Weird AI Future
By Brian Hiatt
Grimes is allowing anyone and everyone to use AI models of her voice--and she’ll split royalties with you, 50/50. Her manager, Daouda Leonard, tells us why they think they’ve found the future of music.
Billboard
How Sen. Klobuchar’s Bill to Clamp Down on Ticketmaster’s Deals Could Backfire
By Dave Brooks
By barring the use of long-term contracts, the legislation risks the unintended consequence of negatively affecting both venues and fans.
CBC News
RETRO WATCH: Gordon Lightfoot on crafting his greatest hits
By Ian Hanomansing, Gordon Lightfoot and CBC News: The National
Canadian music legend Gordon Lightfoot talks to Ian Hanomansing about his music, his legacy and some of the darker parts of his personal life during his five decades in the music business.
Adam Neely
Did Ed Sheeran ACTUALLY Plagiarize Marvin Gaye?
By Adam Neely
So...is there any actual merit to the Ed Sheeran/Marvin Gaye lawsuit? Can you own genre?
The Daily Beast
Ed Sheeran: My Inspiration Was Van Morrison, Not Marvin Gaye
By Pilar Melendez
The singer returned to the stand with his guitar on Monday to try to prove to the jury that he didn’t crib from “Let’s Get It On.”
Andscape
‘Dear Mama’ is Tupac and Afeni Shakur’s beautiful, tragic opus
By Justin Tinsley
The FX docuseries details the tell true story behind the mother and son.
Billboard
How Peezy Went ‘Against the Grain’ & Achieved a Top 10 Rap Hit
By Neena Rouhani
The Detroit underground mainstay achieved his own commercial success with “2 Million Up” and hopes to help a new class of rising artists do the same.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Bamboozle Music Festival in Atlantic City canceled. Organizers fail to meet permit deadline.
By Mike Newall
Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, and Motionless in White were set to perform next weekend, but the festival had been plagued by controversy from the start.
Texas Monthly
Willie Nelson Threw a Ninetieth Birthday Party, and Everyone Came
By Peter Blackstock
Snoop Dogg, the Chicks, Keith Richards, George Strait, and many more came together for a two-day birthday party.
the moon and stars
Salon
Bring me to life: Evanescence helped me find my trans voice
By Stacy Jane Grover
The album "Fallen" released 20 years ago. Each track named a chasm in my life and paved a path out of it.
NPR
How Mya Byrne paved her long, winding road to country music with grit and sparkle
By Jewly Hight
Mya Byrne loved country music since her childhood in New Jersey. But it took years of searching and traveling to lead to the place where she could make her new album, "Rhinestone Tomboy."
Leveling Up
BandLab: Can the Creation Platform Experiment Become More Social?
By Jimmy Stone
How BandLab is aiming to make music creation, collaboration, and community easier.
Slate
Should We All Be Pirating More?
By Rachelle Hampton and Sarah Marshall
Contrary to popular belief, nothing on the internet lasts forever.
SPIN
Kurtis Blow Reflects on The First Hip-Hop Record to Go Gold: 1980’s ‘The Breaks’
By Kyle Eustice
“That became my mission—trying to be the best entertainer and make people happy.”
The Conversation
South Africa's hidden jazz history is being restored album by album
By Gwen Ansell
For writer and film-maker Calum MacNaughton of Cape Town-based Sharp-Flat Music, it's vital work.
The Independent
‘The Queen wore earplugs’: Royal pop concerts have always been weird
By Katie Rosseinsky
As Katy Perry and Take That prepare to perform during Charles’s coronation weekend, Katie Rosseinsky salutes the chaotic and confusing tradition of incredibly divergent celebrities coming together to sing for royalty.
The New York Times
Abdul Wadud’s Cosmic Cello Music Gets Another Moment in the Sun
By Hank Shteamer
For decades, “By Myself,” the cellist’s defining statement made in 1977, was out of print. Before his 2022 death, he finalized plans for its first-ever re-pressing.
Slate
An Opera Singer’s Meticulous Pre-Show Routine
By June Thomas, Isaac Butler and Ryan Speedo Green
Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green explains how he prepares for the role of boxer Emile Griffith in "Champion" at the Met Opera.
what we're into
Music of the day
“Sundown ('The Midnight Special,' 1974)”
Gordon Lightfoot
Music | Media
SUBSCRIBE
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?’”
Jason Hirschhorn
CEO & Chief Curator
HOME | ABOUT | SETS | PRESS
Redef Group Inc.
LA - NY - Everywhere
Copyright ©2021
UNSUBSCRIBE or MANAGE MY SUBSCRIPTION