It's about those things that we believe in but we can't see, like dreams, and songs, and souls. They're hanging around here and different songwriters reach up and get 'em. | | | | Charley Pride at the Felt Forum, New York, Nov. 8, 1975.
(Bettmann/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "It's about those things that we believe in but we can't see, like dreams, and songs, and souls. They're hanging around here and different songwriters reach up and get 'em."
| - | Merle Haggard, to Ken Burns, explaining the essence of a country song (or any song, really) | | | | | | | rantnrave:// Like all KEN BURNS series with alluringly generic titles that telegraph the sweeping American histories they aim to tell, COUNTRY MUSIC overlooks a number of important things, leaves a number of others frustratingly incomplete, takes itself too seriously, asks for too much of your time and is one hell of an achievement in both documentary filmmaking and plain ol' American storytelling. Put aside your reservations or any lingering Ken Burns cynicism and watch it. After four (of 16) hours, my reservations aren't erased so much as they are overwhelmed by the sheer power of the craft and the magic of the stories. Of the CARTER FAMILY. And JIMMIE RODGERS. And the MADDOX BROTHERS AND ROSE. And GENE AUTRY. And BOB WILLS. And the birth of radio. And the power of movies. And snake oil salesmen. And the Depression. And gourds and fiddles. And music publishing. And of course the music, which gets plenty of airtime of its own. All or most of this familiar to serious fans and students of country and Americana, but all orchestrated with details that will no doubt surprise you. Like SARA CARTER's epic pursuit, with the help of a Mexican radio station, of her true love, who was not, it turns out, her husband (and fellow country pioneer) A.P. CARTER. I've shed tears and I'm all in. Burns is great at tying together seemingly far-flung cultural threads. His broad themes, including the melting pot of black and white culture that gave birth to country and the racism that has swirled around that marriage from the start, have been discussed in great detail elsewhere. It's a crucial story with resonance right now, and there's a sense that Burns opens a lot of important doors without quite walking through them. Fair. There's also a clear intent to center women's contributions to country's story, which is equally resonant today, and so far so good, more or less. MOTHER MAYBELLE CARTER, who would probably be a member of the HIGHWOMEN and invisible to radio programmers if she were alive today, is deservedly front and center in episode 1, while Rodgers' collaborator ELSIE MCWILLIAMS is mentioned but backgrounded. Episode 2 opens on ROSE MADDOX, though largely through the lens of her brother FRED, which sounds about exactly how it would go for a 2019 version of Rose. Lots of other threads and details made my 2019 eyes widen with a strange familiarity. Burns sets out to demonstrate the importance of northern cities like Chicago and New York in country's development, and yet he can't help but note that when Jimmie Rodgers succumbed to tuberculosis in 1933, "big-city newspapers in the East made only passing reference to Rodgers' death. But in small towns throughout the South and Southwest, it dominated the front pages." We all have our own versions of the truth. Always have. In this case, the South's version was objectively right, the East's objectively wrong. And then there's film syncs. Hollywood provided a lifeline to the music biz during the Depression, with the explosion of cowboy films (franchises, to use the current term of art) creating a demand for cowboy songs. Thank you, Hollywood, for "TUMBLING TUMBLEWEEDS" and the accompanying royalties. Also: Nashville radio giant WSM, home of the GRAND OLE OPRY, existed entirely to sell insurance. It had no other purpose. The more things change, the more they don't. But at least you know PBS isn't doing that. At least I don't think it is. The first four episodes of "Country Music" are available now at PBS.ORG and various PBS apps; for real-time TV viewers, episodes 3 and 4 air tonight and Wednesday and the final four episodes air next Sunday through Wednesday... In the continuing story of it sucks to be in the music media, layoffs at SPIN, STEREOGUM and VIBE... SOFAR SOUNDS is bringing in paid staffers to supplement the volunteer crews at its live shows. The volunteer labor is the subject of a New York State Department of Labor investigation... MADONNA's 17-night (!) run at the BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC opens, belatedly, tonight. The WALL STREET JOURNAL's NEIL SHAH notes (paywall) that her model for her MADAME X tour is much smaller venues than usual and much higher ticket prices (almost twice as high, on average, as her 2015-16 REBEL HEART tour). Promoter ARTHUR FOGEL says 98 percent of the seats for the Brooklyn run were sold as of last week. But of course. Because Madonna doesn't search. She finds. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | | | | | is anybody going to san antone? | |  | Vulture | | It's tough to overstate the historic importance of music in film, what with how audiences had to rely on soundtracks in the not-so-silent, pre-talkie era to fully understand the dramatic tension or madcap hilarity of what they were seeing onscreen. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | A-ha's MTV classic is nearing 1 billion YouTube views and is a cash cow for its creators. But "Take on Me's" origin story is as tricky as its multi-octave chorus. | | | |  | REDEF | | He was the gangly, strange-looking heart of Boston's greatest band (take your arguments somewhere else) and one of the key architects of the bridge between rock's old and new waves. And he had thunder appeal. Obviously. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | "Musically, he's my favourite artist of all time. I know that probably sounds lame, but it's true." | | | |  | Slate | | Ken Burns' epic history of the genre has more than three chords and not enough of the truth. | | | | | Vulture | | Ken Burns is influential enough to have inspired his own bit of cinema grammar, the Ken Burns Effect, which describes a certain way of panning and zooming over a still photo. But there's another kind of Ken Burns Effect, a cycle of emotional and intellectual reactions, that viewers may experience yet again as they watch his latest, the 16-hour, eight-part "Country Music." | | | |  | FLOOD Magazine | | After a two-year writing process, the funkadelic Atlanta hip-hop duo's debut is here in all of its natural glory. | | | |  | Billboard | | "Sofar Crew is a way to make sure that as Sofar continues to grow, we can support that growth," CEO Jim Lucchese tells Billboard. | | | |  | TIFF Talks | | Bruce Springsteen has only performed his 2019 album "Western Stars" once — for a private audience at his farmhouse — and the documentary of the same name captures that experience. | | | |  | The Record | | The Big Bang of hip-hop occurred 40 years ago Monday. "Rapper's Delight," released by Englewood's Sugar Hill Records, came out on Sept. 16, 1979. And so the cosmos began. "It was a very huge song," said Leland Robinson, the only surviving son of Sylvia Robinson, the late Englewood entrepreneur (she died in 2011) who was the pioneer rap mogul -- the "Suge" Knight or Russell Simmons of her day. | | | | | | | wonder could i live there anymore | |  | Vox | | This 13th-century song shows up everywhere. | | | |  | The New York Times | | 'Trapcorridos' - tales of love, bandits, heroes and gangsters - are a sensation in California and Mexico. | | | |  | Appinventiv Official Blog for Mobile App Development | | Find here the Spotify Statistics 2019 to get a better understanding of the app's current position in the media streaming market and future possibilities. | | | |  | The FADER | | Former Austin Chronicle co-founder Louis Black talks his relationship with late singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Giddens shares songs from her latest album, "There is No Other," in an emotional and transfixing performance at the Tiny Desk. | | | |  | MTV News | | In 1995, Tupac Shakur and MTV News correspondent Tabitha Soren took a stroll down the Venice boardwalk for an in-depth conversation about where the rapper has been and where he sees himself going. | | | |  | DJ Tech Tools | | Since the macOS Catalina was announced in June, many DJs have expressed serious concern about potentially losing one of the most commonly used organizational tools: iTunes playlists. iTunes is set to disappear from macOS in 10.15 Catalina ( due to be released next month) and will be released by a new app, simply called Music. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | The pop experimentalist talks about 10 things that informed her new album. | | | |  | Fast Company | | Prepare to have "Misbehaving" stuck in your head for days after you read the story of how Danny McBride, collaborator Edi Patterson, and music supervisor Joey Stephens made it. | | | |  | The Associated Press | | Friends of Albert Nabonibo, a well-known gospel singer in Rwanda who recently came out as a gay man, do not want their names revealed. It is too shameful, one says. Another says he is anguished because his family knows he often used to socialize with Nabonibo. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | From his 1991 solo album "Fireball Zone," co-produced by Nile Rodgers. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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