| I didn't study music, and I don't read music; I sing by feeling. |
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| Gal Costa circa 1969. |
| (Manchete/Archive Photos/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“I didn't study music, and I don't read music; I sing by feeling.”
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- Gal Costa, 1945 – 2022
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| rantnrave:// |
Yesterday’s Wine
Every once in a long while a live performance on TV can stop the hearts of everyone who’s watching, and I have a feeling PATTY LOVELESS and CHRIS and MORGANE STAPLETON’s devastating six-minute rendition of DARRELL SCOTT’s “YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE HARLAN ALIVE” on Wednesday’s CMA AWARDS, which they performed as a tribute to victims of this summer’s Kentucky floods, was one of those moments. Loveless, a ‘90s star who was on her own at the beginning and end of a dark ballad about a place “where the sun comes up about 10 in the morning [and] goes down about 3 in the day,” may well have stopped Stapleton’s heart, too. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of the clips ABC and the CMA shared right away on YOUTUBE—hopefully they’ll get to that today—but it was the emotional center of an awards show that dwelled, uncharacteristically, on country’s past for long stretches of both music and talking. Maybe that was the inevitable result of a show produced shortly after LORETTA LYNN’s death and just days after ALABAMA co-founder JEFF COOK left us, too, and that had already made plans to honor grizzled grandfather-to-be ALAN JACKSON with a lifetime achievement award. Maybe it was a timely, conscious nod to country’s rural precincts from a big-city show generally produced with big-city glitz. Maybe it’s just that the ‘90s are back. Whatever the reason, if you’re a pop-averse country fan who isn’t sure HANK done it this way, this CMAs, which kept circling back to Kentucky and other distant locales, was for you.
There were hits too, of course. This is still Nashville and this is still a network TV show. LUKE COMBS is still your Entertainer of the Year, and Nashville’s new darling, LAINEY WILSON (whose performance of the murder ballad/revenge song “WAIT IN THE TRUCK” with HARDY was another current-but-also-retro highlight), appears set to be your Female Vocalist of the Year for the foreseeable future. And no one got a louder, more enthusiastic reception than Nashville’s reigning pop star with a troubled recent past, MORGAN WALLEN, who struck out on the two big awards he was up for but would have won if it was up to the crowd inside BRIDGESTONE ARENA. The cheering for Wallen, who also performed his single “YOU PROOF,” might, in fact, have been a little too much, as if they were cheering for something more than just a run of very good country-pop hits. As if they’re sick of being told they’re *not* supposed to cheer for him and now they’re going to cheer extra. As if they want to let him, and us, know they’re there for him and have always been there for him—even when, not to put too fine a point on it, they shouldn’t have been. It *is* OK that he’s back. Everyone deserves their second (or third) chance. But it isn’t OK what he did in the recent past, and if some people are cheering for that, maybe the problem isn’t him anymore. Maybe the problem is some of them. Maybe the reckoning we were all promised hasn’t yet come.
Rest in Peace
GAL COSTA, a Brazilian national treasure and one of the leading voices of the country’s revolutionary Tropicália movement. Though she was active for a half-century and was continually in search of new sounds and new collaborators—“I like changes,” she told an interviewer in 2020—Costa will forever be associated with the late ‘60s psychedelic explosion she ignited with a coterie of fellow travelers including Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethânia. Despite her international renown, she didn’t perform in the United States until 1985 (at Carnegie Hall) and the collaborative album that started it all was largely unheard here for another decade and a half after that. “I am not planning to conquer the United States market,” she told the New York Times in advance of that first show. “I am a Brazilian singer, and I am kind of lazy about leaving Brazil.” She was lazy about quite literally nothing else... Scottish folk singer and composer ELIZABETH STEWART, who played a crucial role in preserving and spreading the music and traditions of the Scottish Travellers... Boomtown Rats guitarist GARRY ROBERTS.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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DJ Mag |
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iHeartRadio |
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| Questlove Supreme: Bruce Springsteen |
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Pollstar |
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| Louis Messina 50th Anniversary Special: The Pollstar Interview |
| By Ray Waddell |
| A promoter in the old-school mold, Louis Messina - Louie to most - has been many things over the course of 50 years in the live entertainment industry, reinventing himself many times to meet the challenges presented by the evolution of the concert industry. |
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| what we're into |
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| Video of the day |
| “Tropicália” |
| Marcelo Machado |
| Marcelo Machado's 2012 documentary on the Tropicália movement in Brazil in the late '60s features footage of Gal Costa and several of her contemporaries. Streaming on Pluto TV and Vudu. |
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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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