| Time is the final currency. What do you do with the time you have left? |
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| David Crosby singing with the Byrds at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, Calif., June 17, 1967. |
| (Sulfiati Magnuson/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Time is the final currency. What do you do with the time you have left?”
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- David Crosby, 1941 – 2023
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| rantnrave:// |
I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here
The 2019 DAVID CROSBY documentary REMEMBER BY NAME opens on a brief anecdote that introduces us to some of the major themes in the life of our complicated, difficult, lovable but not always likable rock and roll antihero. He’s hanging around with a “cute” and “very popular” German hooker. He’s wasted out of his skull, having taken “everything we had and anything anybody else had.” And he’s in the bathroom of a Chicago club, in the process of being smacked back to life by a saxophone solo being played by JOHN COLTRANE, who has just kicked the bathroom door open while still soloing and “I never heard anybody be more intense with music than that, in my life, in that little bathroom.” I don’t remember if Coltrane is invoked anywhere else in the movie, but that solo lives on as subtext for a life that’s been completely, utterly consumed by the power and possibility of music, often at the expense of everything else, and that has refused to obey anyone else’s traditional notions of how that music should go.
Crosby, who died Wednesday, having using up all nine of his lives and then some, was neither the primary singer nor main songwriter of the BYRDS, and his weren't the CROSBY, STILLS & NASH (& YOUNG) songs that became classic-rock mega-classics. But he may have been the soul of both groups, icons of two successive classic-rock decades. He was the superhumanly gifted harmony singer whose voice was the Super Glue of both groups, and he was the persistent free spirit who helped push both out of their comfort zones, often to the music’s benefit (he’s been credited with introducing the Byrds to the music of both Coltrane and RAVI SHANKAR, and he nudged NEIL YOUNG toward the political rage that produced one of the era’s great protest songs, “OHIO”) and also often to the detriment of friendships. Both groups ended badly. He was an early conspiracy theorist. As the documentary, shot when Crosby was nearing 80, ends, he’s no longer talking to any of his former bandmates.
But he wrote or co-wrote “EIGHT MILES HIGH” and “ALMOST CUT MY HAIR” and “WOODEN SHIPS” and “DÉJÀ VU” and he was the soul that made so many other sings sparkle. BOB DYLAN, in CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE, called him “an architect of harmony.” And he lived the life you kind of sort of thought everyone was living. He claims to have been one of the first, if not the first, musician of note to move to Laurel Canyon. He had the best drugs. He had a boat. He had wanderlust. He had Southern California cool. One of his first songs for the Byrds, “What’s Happening?!?!,” “introduced a Crosbyesque motif: posing qustions that had no answer,” JIM FARBER wrote in his New York Times obit. DENNIS HOPPER’s character in EASY RIDER is widely believed to be based, at least in part, on him.
He also had more than his share of tragedy, which led to more than his share of harder drugs, and deep depression, and lost relationships, and lost decades. Crosby’s near-death experiences are the stuff of awful legend. Why is he still alive? “No idea, man,” he tells CAMERON CROWE, his interviewer in “Remember My Name.” But he is. His first solo album, 1971’s IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME, a spacey album made with members of the GRATEFUL DEAD and other Bay Area musicians during a period of near-paralyzing grief, was lambasted by critics in its day but slowly grew a cult following. It’s now considered a folk-rock classic. He eventually found true love with JAN DANCE, whom he married in 1987 (after spending nearly a year in prison in Texas). And he found a new creative gear late in life, recording a string of five very good solo albums starting with 2014’s CROZ. Later, he added feisty Twitter personality to his resume. Heaven is “overrated...cloudy,” he tweeted Wednesday, the day he died.
The next day brought public notes from former bandmates. “I know people tend to focus on how volatile our relationship has been at times,” GRAHAM NASH wrote on his socials, “but what has always mattered to David and me more than anything was the pure joy of the music we created together... and the deep friendship we shared over all these many long years.”
“He was without question a giant of a musician, and his harmonic sensibilities were nothing short of genius,” STEPHEN STILLS said. And maybe more important: “I was happy to be at peace with him.” And, it goes without saying, in harmony.
It’s Friday
And that means new music from Bronx rapper ICE SPICE, who had a breakout 2022 with the singles “Munch (Feelin' U)” and “Bikini Bottom,” and today surprise-drops her debut EP?... And Eurovision sensations MÅNESKIN, who are either knockoffs of rock knockoffs or enthusiastic pop lightweights having the time of their lives (why not both?)... And JOHN CALE, who drops his 17th solo album seven weeks short of his 81st birthday, with help from guests Weyes Blood, Laurel Halo and Animal Collective.
Plus new music from Trippie Redd, Oddisee, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mac DeMarco (instrumentals), Hardy, Lukas Graham, Kali Malone, Sebastian Rochford & Kit Downes, Mette Henriette, Rian Treanor & Ocen James, DJ Hanzel (AKA Dillon Francis), Got the Beat (released earlier this week), the C.I.A. (feat. Ty Segall), Låpsley, Ladytron, Ava Max, Brainiac (prev. unreleased demos), the Bad Ends (feat. original REM drummer Bill Berry), Katatonia, We Are Scientists, Guided by Voices, J.T. IV (unreleased recordings by '80s and '90s punk outsider), Slug, New Found Glory, Skull Practitioners, Dave Rowntree (Blur drummer's solo debut) and Palette Knife.
Tunedance
Music movies of note playing at SUNDANCE over the next week and a half: LISA CORTES’ LITTLE RICHARD documentary, I AM EVERYTHING... ANTON CORBIJN’s SQUARING THE CIRCLE, which tells the story of the iconic graphic design studio HIPGNOSIS... ALEJANDRA VASQUEZ and SAM OSBORN’s GOING VARSITY IN MARIACHI, about the competitive mariachi team at Edinburg North High School in South Texas... An INDIGO GIRLS doc, IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL, directed by ALEXANDRIA BOMBACH... And all five episodes of THOM ZIMNY and OREN MOVERMA’s WILLIE NELSON & FAMILY docuseries... All of these except “It’s Only Life After All” will be available for online screening during the fest.
Reconsider Z
And finally today, speaking of self-loathing, hard-to-live-with, literate LA singer/songwriters who palled around with JACKSON BROWNE, burned dozens of bridges and inspired cult-like devotion from other singer/songwriters, this is an open letter to the ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME NOMINATING COMMITTEE, which is expected to announce this year’s nominees in the coming weeks:
The letter Z.
As in ZEVON. You’ve never so much as nominated the man who wrote “DESPERADOS UNDER THE EAVES,” “JESUS MENTIONED,” “BOOM BOOM MANCINI" and “KEEP ME IN YOUR HEART,” who rocked harder than every one of his peers, and who all of them would vote for if you’d give them the chance. It’s time you do. Or, as Zevon sang in his version of “KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR,” which he recorded for the album he made when he knew he was dying: “Open up, open up, open up, open up, open up for me.” Also, FWIW, Dylan covered more Zevon songs than Zevon covered Dylan songs.
Clarification
In Thursday’s newsletter, I wrote about a French government study that found up to 3 percent of music streams in that country involve fraud, and I quoted Music Business Worldwide’s calculation that that could have meant as much as $17.4 million in annual lost revenue for artists, and a much greater amount if extrapolated to global fraudulent activity. But I neglected to note that’s the fraud streaming companies actually knew about, and whose perpetrators therefore didn’t get any of that money. (The study’s authors do note, however, they’re “certain” the issue “goes beyond what is detected.”) Apologies for the under-reporting.
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Tidal |
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| I’m a Noted Music Critic. Can A.I. Do My Job? |
| By Simon Reynolds |
| ChatGPT has professionals in a range of industries justifiably nervous. Should music writers -- those concert-addicted, record-hoarding gatekeepers of good taste -- be worried too? |
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Rolling Stone |
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| How boygenius Became the World’s Most Exciting Supergroup |
| By Angie Martoccio |
| On their own, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are three accomplished singer-songwriters. Together, they’re a one-of-a-kind band powered by friendship, sick books, and sicker songs. |
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Appetite for Distraction |
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| Blockchain fundamentals & alternative models to funding with Dan Fowler |
| By Yash Bagal, Maarten Walraven and Dan Fowler |
| Yash Bagal and Maarten Walraven talk to Dan Fowler about the history and potential of blockchain tools for music. They touch on everything from metadata to licensing, and from the artist-as-platform to supply-side disruption. |
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The New York Times |
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| Ticketmaster Under the Magnifying Glass |
| By Jon Caramanica and Ben Sisario |
| The concert giant has long been the target of consumer complaints and artists’ ire. Recent incidents involving Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny have renewed focus on problems in the live marketplace. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Laughing” |
| David Crosby |
| From "If I Could Only Remember My Name." |
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| Video of the day |
| “David Crosby: Remember My Name” |
| A.J. Eaton |
| A.J. Eaton's 2019 documentary (with interviews by producer Cameron Crowe) traces a turbulent career and finds a rock and roller, in his twilight years, refusing to go gentle into that good night. |
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| “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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