| The game was boring until I came around. |
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 | | Soy el tóxico: Regional Mexican stars Grupo Firme on the main stage at Coachella, April 15, 2022. | | (Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images) | | |
| quote of the day |
| "The game was boring until I came around." | | - DJ Kay Slay, 1966 – 2022 | |
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| rantnrave:// |
Desert Storm
Is it just me and my social feeds, or was the world paying a little more attention this weekend to a concert in the Southern California desert than it usually does? Because it seemed—whether they were there in Indio, skipping among the three live feeds on YouTube or just checking in occasionally on Twitter—the entire music and pop culture world was wired in, as if everyone had been waiting through three long years to see what HARRY STYLES would do or which South Korean girl group would reunite or whether JUSTIN BIEBER would show up with DANIEL CAESAR or what 100 GECS would sound like with a live drummer (JOSH FREESE) or just to reassure themselves that MEGAN THEE STALLION and DOJA CAT would be there when they needed them. Anyway, here's the LA Times' full running report on the three days of COACHELLA weekend one, courtesy SUZY EXPOSITO and MIKAEL WOOD, and here's Rolling Stone's ETHAN MILLMAN and TOMÁS MIER on day one and day two. Spoiler: You might not have known that what you were really waiting for was the chance to see a buff 68-year-old DANNY ELFMAN lead a goth orchestra through music from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and THE SIMPSONS but, by all accounts across all formats, you were.
(My main interaction was via those YouTube feeds, and it was hard not to notice that, besides the ORVILLE PECK fans wearing Orville Peck masks, masks in general were extremely rare sights, which seemed not the best idea. Just because we want to be there already doesn't mean we *are* there already. Be safe, music people. But kudos to Orville Peck's drummer, who was wearing what looked like a heavy Western long-sleeve shirt buttoned all the way up and a bolo tie on a Sunday afternoon when lots of other people were wearing shorts or similar summer attire and complaining about the heat. Entertainment professionalism. Respect. Also to RUN THE JEWELS, who brought no frills, no production to speak of, and rocked full-on, start to finish. Two days earlier, for what it's worth, ANITTA came with million dollar production and guests [SAWEETIE, SNOOP DOGG] and was equally great.)
Plus Also Too
Nice package from Billboard on the rise of what some music execs have taken to calling "shallow catalog," meaning music from the past few years by artists who are still active, which is largely driving the current growth of catalog music in general. JOURNEY, the BEATLES and MICHAEL JACKSON are still getting their flowers but they're getting crushed in the streaming market by XXXTENTACION. And Drake, the mag reports, "may stream more than all of the recordings released before 1980 combined"... I love this video graphic showing music revenues by medium through the years (h/t DAN RUNCIE) and, though I lived through it and bought a few myself, I remain flabbergasted that there was a moment when ringtones had nearly 10 percent of the recorded music market... SPOTIFY says 20.9 percent of the songs that hit the top 200 of the service's global songs chart in in 2021 were from outside North America and Europe. The figure was just 9.5 percent in 2017... A Coachella Seder: "I snuck a shank bone into Coachella," music marketer NATE AUERBACH told Variety. "Most people sneak... other things."
Rest in Peace
Specialty Records founder ART RUPE, who died Friday at the age of 104, was revered as one of the great indie label pioneers of the 1940s and '50s. His label, which he set up to release what were then known as "race records," brought the world the music of Lloyd Price, Guitar Slim, the Swan Silvertones and, most famously, Sam Cooke (via his gospel band, the Soul Stirrers) and Little Richard. The histories of rock, R&B and gospel can't be told without him. Nor can the history of artist exploitation. Rupe was renowned for the care he put into the label's recordings—"Specialty was a little like the Blue Note label in jazz," musician and music history Billy Vera told the New York Times—but also for taking 100 percent of the publishing of the songs his artists recorded and paying them pennies in royalties compared to what white artists at the time were earning. I bring this up not to demean the recently deceased, but because it would be a disservice to the industry he helped build not to tell the full story. Some 75 years later, the recording industry is still trying to apologize for practices like these. Rupe had a sharp ear for what young Americans wanted to hear, to a point. He let Sam Cooke walk away, along with his own right-hand man Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, because he couldn't stand the secular records they were trying to make—the ones that would turn Cooke into a pop star at his next label, Keen. (Cooke, perhaps not coincidentally, formed his own publishing company soon after leaving Specialty.) When Little Richard called from England a few years later to try to get Rupe to sign a certain quartet of young Englishmen he was sharing a bill with, Rupe told him, "Richard, I am not interested in anybody but you."
RIP also: Graffiti writer turned mixtape DJ KAY SLAY, an essential figure in New York hip-hop, who succumbed after a lengthy battle with Covid-19... Nigerian highlife saxophonist/singer ORLANDO JULIUS... Actor RIO HACKFORD, who owned the New Orleans rock clubs One Eyed Jacks and El Matador.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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 | | Los Angeles Times |
| | Live updates from Coachella 2022 | | By Suzy Exposito and Mikael Wood | | The Times' Mikael Wood and Suzy Exposito report live from the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. | | |
 | | The Ringer |
| | Size Matters: Inside the Politics of Festival Posters | | By Ben Lindbergh | | Joyner Lucas's Lollapalooza meltdown is just the latest manifestation of one of the touchiest subjects in the concert industry: how big the name is on the flyer. To get to the heart of the matter, we spoke to some experts about all things font size. | | |
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 | | 5 Magazine |
| | Jacked: How Demuir Beat the Beat Thieves | | By Terry Matthew | | What do you do when your music's been stolen? When Toronto house music producer Demuir found out someone had plagiarized his tracks, he got mad. Then he fought back. | | |
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 | | The New York Times |
| | RETRO READ: DJ Kay Slay: Hip-Hop's One-Man Ministry of Insults | | By Lola Ogunnaike | | Profile of DJ Kay Slay, also known as The Drama King, whose mix tapes and underground recordings, sold on street corners and in specialty shops and now distributed free, have influenced all important hip-hop performers. | | |
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 | | 12tone |
| | Why Does Metal Have To Be So Loud? | | Many genres can be enjoyed perfectly fine at a nice, comfortably quiet level, but metal resists that, and metalheads reject those efforts. So what's going on? Why does metal only work when it's loud as hell? | | |
 | | Trapital |
| | The Future Of Music Business With Economist Will Page | | By Dan Runcie and Will Page | | Scottish economist Will Page believes the music industry is transitioning from a "herbivore market" to a "carnivore" one. In other words, future growth will not come from brand-new customers — it'll come from the streaming services eating into each other's market share. | | |
 | | Tidal |
| | Cécile McLorin Salvant: Further Still | | By Martin Johnson | | By going deeper into her own life and art, the best jazz singer of her generation is creating a bold new archetype, free from genre. | | |
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| what we're into |
|  | | Video of the day | | "Songs for Drella" | | Ed Lachman | | Director Ed Lachman's film of Lou Reed and John Cale performing their "Songs for Drella" album at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1990, a film that was long believed to have been lost. Screening now at https://mubi.com. | | |
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| Music | Media | | | | | | 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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