Some people will have recovered equipment, but will they recover their will to create? | | | | Concerts in the before times: Jack Harlow in Louisville, Ky., Nov. 30, 2019.
(Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “Some people will have recovered equipment, but will they recover their will to create?”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Six months. Half a year. Two-hundred-sixty-two-thousand-eight-hundred minutes, if I've got my RENT math correct: 525,600 minutes worth of daylights, sunsets, midnights and cups of coffee divided by two. That's how long it's been since I began my voluntary quarantine on Monday, March 16. So long I can't even tell you what the last live concert I saw was (though I can tell you about the last one that floored me, which was harpist BRANDEE YOUNGER and double bassist DEZRON DOUGLAS, performing in early January in Brooklyn with a soft, radiant fierceness that I wanted to be the soundtrack for my 2020, before I knew what 2020 was going to be. It still kind of works). I've been stricter in my quarantine than the average curator as far as I can tell, but not a whole lot stricter than the industry I cover, which has been as serious about shutting down as any other, not entirely by choice. Recording an album while quarantined is no longer a novelty; it's more like a genre now. One such album spent the last six weeks atop the BILLBOARD albums chart and may well find itself in contention for Album of the Year at next year's GRAMMYS. Concerts happen in FORTNITE and albums are created in TWITCH, and no one raises an eyebrow. DJs and clubs exist entirely within INSTAGRAM and ZOOM. Stadiums and arenas are out; cars and pods are in. Get in a time machine, go back 262,800 minutes and see if any of the past few sentences make sense. I'm not even sure any of this makes sense now. But I'm thankful every minute of every day for the amazing work artists and their teams and the startups and services around them have done to keep producing a variety of musical experiences, some of them kind of groundbreaking, through all of this. That's it. That's the only message here. Well, that and you still need to wear a mask, and it still needs to cover both your mouth and your nose. Please... SPOTIFY is adding all those virtual concerts to its "On Tour" listings, which makes sense since that's pretty much what on tour now means. The streaming service is working in partnership with SONGKICK... Livestreams by bands like IDLES and KAISER CHIEFS are helping keep ABBEY ROAD in business, says the studio (paywall), which reopened this summer after a three-month shutdown. There's social distancing within, of course, and after an orchestral session, "it might take five people three hours to clean" before the next session can begin, studio manager FIONA GILLOTT tells Rolling Stone... A $6 plastic crown worn by the NOTORIOUS B.I.G. sold for nearly $600,000 at a SOTHEBY's hip-hop auction, but I'm a little more fascinated—my profession and all—at the complete set of issues of the SOURCE magazine that went for $32,760... "Artists have built up the value of every platform and now they’re on the outside looking in again. Music is not the core business of these platforms—for the most part they are advertising businesses, or subscription-based" is a slightly odd thing to say if your name is TIM WESTERGREN, but he has a new startup that he says is part of the solution... LADY A countersues LADY A, which could save all sorts of time and legal fees by changing its name to A LADY... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, who learned more from a three-minute record than he ever did in school, tells first-year students at BOSTON COLLEGE they can do the reverse in this lovely speech and Q&A session that covers life experience, religion, bad record contracts and other weighty subjects...DJs LIZA RICHARDSON, MARIO COTTO and MATHIEU SCHREYER and MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC producer MARY CHELLAMY are among 24 staffers who have accepted buyouts at financially struggling SoCal public radio powerhouse KCRW... WARNER MUSIC GROUP adds HIPHOPDX to its portfolio... The ACM AWARDS, featuring performances from three iconic Nashville venues, partly live and partly pre-recorded, air at 8pm ET tonight on CBS and CBS ALL ACCESS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | | | | | six months in a leaky boat | |  | WQXR | | Our relationship to recorded sound has changed a lot. So has the way we listeners interact with the artists we're most devoted to. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | How the unlikely star became a phenomenon hidden in pop-cultural plain sight, influencing a generation of groundbreaking artists. | | | |  | The Guardian | | Lebanon’s club scene was perhaps the most vibrant in the Middle East, but the explosion that rocked its capital last month has silenced it. We spoke to promoters and DJs picking up the pieces. | | | |  | Vulture | | Dating back to the genesis of rap culture. | | | | | Vulture | | The real story of hip-hop begins years before the landmark event that birthed it. | | | |  | The Tennessean | | The organization was founded in 1964 as the Country and Western Music Academy. It sought to promote the country music made in the Western states, in contrast to the sounds made in Nashville. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | The Pandora founder says his new startup will give musicians the tools to earn money, allied to a music-specific promotional strategy to help artists build their audiences. Music Ally spoke to Westergren about Sessions and his thoughts on the current state of streaming. | | | |  | Vox | | How Beethoven’s 5th Symphony put the classism in classical music. | | | |  | Mae Mai | | As I'm working on this bibliography of white supremacy and colonialism in classical music, I've come to a few things that has helped me understand the logic of exclusion of colored bodies in the field. | | | |  | Messy Nessy Chic | | What do house cats, Euro pop, and the ingenious tax savvy have in common? Owe Sandström, that's who. As the flamenco-dancing-zoologist-designer behind the costumes of ABBA, Sandström certainly played his part in helping the Swedish supergroup reach fame in the 1970s - where they have remained ever since. | | | | | | | six months out of every year | |  | Billboard | | Billboard's International Editor, Alexei Barrionuevo, discusses Billboard's two new global charts with the team that led their development. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | IMPEL CEO Sarah Williams recaps her first year and half at the organization. | | | |  | Crack Magazine | | The Colombian sound artist and former geotechnical engineer’s interests lie beyond the physical world. | | | |  | Please Kill Me | | The release of Hal Willner’s final recorded project, "Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T.Rex," got Gary Lippman thinking about his friend and ‘master alchemist.’ | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | BTS fans were trending Tuesday as Black fans shared selfies and the whole hive buzzed about "Blueberry Eyes," BTS rapper Suga's new single with MAX. | | | |  | NPR | | Run by a South Korean woman, the Cosmos Karaoke Bar in Namie, Japan, is a haven for residents who've come back to live in a town that was evacuated and fell into decay after the 2011 nuclear disaster. | | | |  | Soundfly | | In this brand new video from Soundfly, we explore the history of synthesized sound from the 19th century to the present, with many stops in between. | | | |  | Micro-Chop | | How Ivan 'Doc' Rodriguez, Ice-T, DJ Paul, Juicy J, Mannie Fresh, and countless others took the iconic composer and director's score from coast to coast. | | | |  | Bandcamp Daily | | Long maligned (and marketed) as “starter” models, short scale guitars and basses actually have some special characteristics, which we learn about from musicians who use and love them. | | | |  | First Floor | | a.k.a. The music press lacks the tools (and the skillset) to tackle the chaos of 2020. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Brandee Younger with Ravi Coltrane, Dezron Douglas and Allan Mednard | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
