I feel like [breaking up] made us stronger and closer. I feel like we sing together better now, and we write together more. A lot of our love is funnelled into the music, which is maybe the form it was always meant to have. | | | | Pharoah Sanders, who turns 80 today, in the Hague, Netherlands, July 14, 1996.
(Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “I feel like [breaking up] made us stronger and closer. I feel like we sing together better now, and we write together more. A lot of our love is funnelled into the music, which is maybe the form it was always meant to have.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// I collect death. Sorry to be dark today. But I mean in my job, where I've made it my business over the years to take note of every musician or music industry figure who passes, sometimes with a simple "RIP" at the end of this newsletter, sometimes with a personal remembrance. Everyone deserves to be seen off. Everyone who touches others with art deserves to be remembered. I have readers who, like my parents with the Boston Globe, have told me they start every day with the obits. And I've collected more death this year than I've ever collected before. It's mid-October and I've recorded just shy of 500 notable music-industry passings in 2020. In all of 2019, I noted 433. The year before, around 250. Partly, I'm sure, I'm getting better at this—that's a weird way to put it, I know. Partly, of course, there's the cruelty of Covid-19. But even that horrific virus—PLEASE WEAR MASKS, everybody, in honor of the late JOHN PRINE, or ADAM SCHLESINGER, or ELLIS MARSALIS—isn't enough to account for the extraordinary amount of loss in an obscene year that has also claimed, among many, many others, EDDIE VAN HALEN, LITTLE RICHARD, BILL WITHERS, POP SMOKE, NEIL PEART, MCCOY TYNER, KENNY ROGERS, HELEN REDDY, JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE and ANDRE HARRELL. Medical experts talk about the effects of Covid not just in terms of the lives it has directly claimed, but also the excess deaths caused by the cascading effects of life in a pandemic. Is this a year, an outlier year, hopefully, of excess music deaths? A year of karma? Is it just dark everywhere right now? RIP, again, to everyone we've lost this year. Wear masks, seriously, everyone who's still here. This week marks a seven-month anniversary for many of us. I'm praying for light, and for fewer reasons to say goodbye ahead... Just over a week ago, LORENZO MOLINA RUIZ, trumpeter for the country-rock band the MAVERICKS, and a friend were assaulted in a sports bar in Nashville because, Ruiz says, they were speaking Spanish. Now comes word that a week before that, in New York, Japanese jazz pianist TADATAKA UNNO was severely beaten in a subway station by a group of people who, he told CNN, called him a "Chinese mother***er." He's recovering from surgery and unsure if he'll ever be able to perform again. Sending hugs and thoughts of harmony to both of them... PHAROAH SANDERS turns 80 today and he's celebrating with virtual concert, recorded three weeks ago at the Los Angeles club ZEBULON with fellow tenor saxophonist AZAR LAWRENCE. It's a ticketed event, starting at 7pm in various time zones... BTS has the top two songs in the BILLBOARD HOT 100, the first artist to do so since guess which group did so for four weeks in 2009. But in China, the K-pop group is losing not only fans, but endorsements... MILEY CYRUS, KESHA, PHOEBE BRIDGERS and others perform in honor of the late JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG... An opera for LOVECRAFT COUNTRY. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | The New Yorker | | In her folk-rock songwriting and in interactions with her Big Thief bandmates, the musician’s raw openness creates strange and thrilling effects. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Massive concert rallies are out, but as election looms, Cardi B, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Madonna and Billie Eilish urge their fans to vote for Joe Biden. | | | |  | Variety | | K-pop supergroup BTS has risen to become one of the world's most popular musical acts, but just three days before its company Big Hit Entertainment 's big IPO, it was hit with an unexpected stumbling block in the Chinese market: a single sentence about world history that has sent brands fleeing. | | | |  | Money 4 Nothing | | It’s mid-October, and by our calculations, musicians are STILL not getting paid. Live music has been off since March, and a major lobbying group is trying to #SaveOurStages. But does saving venues also mean a bailout for musicians? In the continued quest for artist revenue, Saxon and Sam explore some less obvious options. Could the platform OnlyFans hold the answer? | | | |  | Please Kill Me | | A new biography of Malcolm McLaren by Paul Gorman got musician Gary Lucas thinking about one part of McLaren's life that is often overlooked in all the stories: his Jewish roots. | | | | | Variety | | Steven Victor's Victor Victor Worldwide label had a very strong summer, dropping Pop Smoke 's "For the Night" on July 3 and seeing it climb its way to sales of 2 million song adjusted units, according to Alpha Data. It’s a “bittersweet” success. | | | |  | The Nation | | How an encounter with a creative writing teacher changed the LA rapper’s life. | | | |  | Fast Company | | Ricky Martin explains how he went from COVID-19 anxiety to creating his new company, Martin Music Labs, with its proprietary sonic experience Orbital Audio. | | | |  | The Boston Globe | | Launched from a Somerville apartment by three 'hippies' in 1970, one of the most influential labels in roots music reaches a milestone. | | | |  | Stereogum | | Is beabadoobee a rock artist or a pop artist? The distinction doesn't really matter, but 20-year-old Beatrice Laus, aka Bea Kristi, blurs the genre barrier in fascinating ways, to the point of nostalgic mirage. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | Drumming sensation Nandi Bushell, 10, has already started prepping for the next round in her viral drum battle with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. | | | | | The New Yorker | | A voice for working-class women and an icon for all kinds of women, Parton has maintained her star power throughout life phases and political cycles. | | | |  | Pollstar | | While comedians and solo artists – notably the “Loop Daddy” Marc Rebillet, the shirtless wonder Bert Kreischer and this week’s cover subject, comedian Iliza Shlesinger -- have done extended drive-in tour legs, it’s been less common – and more difficult – to make the full band or musician drive-in show work. Until now, that is. | | | |  | Music X Corona | | An exclusive preview of a "Minecraft" venue based on a closed down Berlin night club called Griessmuehle. | | | |  | The Conversation | | Toy pianos typically have a range of 12-36 keys, roughly one quarter the range of a full piano. But they are used by composers and music makers to write everything from concertos to pop songs. | | | |  | MEL Magazine | | What the big-mouthed rock god’s scat gibberish can teach us about showmanship, sex, America and life itself. | | | |  | Mixmag | | Michelle Kim talks to Yaeji about community, collaboration, self-discovery on the dancefloor -- and how a trip back to Korea sparked a creative rebirth. | | | |  | The Guardian | | While many welcome the government’s Covid rescue package, concerns remain. | | | |  | WTF with Marc Maron | | Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne was in Los Angeles and decided to stop by the garage for a rare pandemic-era in-person chat with Marc. It's been a long time since Wayne and Marc hung out last. Since then both dealt with deaths of people close to them and they talk about how processing those losses gave them perspective on what we’re all living through. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | With William Henderson on piano, Alex Blake on bass and Hamid Drake on drums. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
