| 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 |
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| Valerie June at the Stagecoach Festival, Indio, Calif., April 30, 2023. |
| (Presley Ann/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“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”
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- Gordon Lightfoot, 1938 – 2023
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| 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.
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Rolling Stone |
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| 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. |
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CBC News |
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| 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. |
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Slate |
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| 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. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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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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