| I've gotten plenty of ridicule, and I expect to get more. In fact, I'm looking forward to it. | | | | |  | Fotos y recuerdos: An undated photo of Selena, who would have turned 50 today.
(Barbara Laing/The Life Images Collection/Getty Images) | | | | | "I've gotten plenty of ridicule, and I expect to get more. In fact, I'm looking forward to it." | | | | My My, Hey Hey
If you scan the new releases section at your local record store today, assuming you have a local record store and assuming you're the kind of person who still does that even in a pandemic, you might be led to believe that rock and roll isn't dead, or even sick, and I'm here to report that your local record store, with its new albums by GRETA VAN FLEET and the ARMED and SHARON VAN ETTEN and the OFFSPRING and PAUL MCCARTNEY and, hell, CANNIBAL CORPSE, would be telling you the god's honest truth. Rock and roll is not in fact dead, despite what you might have heard, despite what I myself might frequently imply with my curatorial and editorial choices, despite what the Greta Van Fleet reviews will probably say, despite what the pandemically bored MICK JAGGER and DAVE GROHL tried their best to prove earlier this week. Music isn't a thing that dies. It ebbs and flows, it remakes and remodels, it changes, it changes again, it gets forgotten, it becomes nostalgia, it gets rediscovered, it drops in and out of the cultural conversation, it gets absorbed and appropriated and assimilated into other media, other arts, other genres. Rock becomes part of jazz, or part of pop, or maybe someone scrambles the chords of "SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT" and rock simply becomes part of rock again. It may not be the center of musical gravity anymore, but its floats around that center like specks of metallic dust.
There's a song (possibly more than one song) on the new Greta Van Fleet album in which the three brothers (plus unrelated drummer) from small-town Michigan double down so hard on their LED ZEPPELIN fetishism—from a chorus that sounds like it's winding on down the road to an acoustic guitar breakdown to an epic wah-wah guitar buildup to the singer left largely alone as the song ends—that you might assume they're trolling you, and maybe they are. And/or maybe they're just so in love with their father's classic rock vinyls that they don't care what you might assume. And they might be getting better at this. They might have become one with that metallic dust. The Armed is an equal and opposite group of true believers, a sprawling collective of rockpunkmetalcore kids from a much bigger town in Michigan, which on its third album, ULTRAPOP (fantastic title), "floods the senses with equal parts hardcore intensity and giddy pop immediacy, sounding something like new wave powered by a jet engine," to quote JEFF TERICH, writing in Bandcamp. Also: "It's fun." (MARK LANEGAN and QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE guitarist TROY VAN LEEUWEN lend a hand.) And then there's SHARON VAN ETTEN. Eleven years after releasing her epic second album, EPIC, she essentially appropriates herself on EPIC TEN, a year-behind-schedule 10th anniversary rerelease with a companion disc in which the likes of FIONA APPLE, COURTNEY BARNETT and IDLES cover the entire album, with a careful attention to detail and possibility as if to say: Indie rock, it isn't dead either. And in fact it is not. Not this week.
Friday I'm in Rock
The other rock on today's release agenda includes LET THE BAD TIMES ROLL from the OFFSPRING, self-described "outcasts among the other outcasts" who, four decades in, have reached never-say-die territory... PAUL MCCARTNEY, as remixed and covered by PHOEBE BRIDGERS, ST. VINCENT, ANDERSON .PAAK and others... An album of unreleased music from DUFF MCKAGAN's pre-GUNS N' ROSES band, the LIVING, aka "Seattle's great lost band"... And have I mentioned CANNIBAL CORPSE, "the MOTÖRHEAD of death metal—naturally reliable, ever in the zone, still louder and heavier than any of the bands who followed them"?
Also this week, ERIC CHURCH releases HEART, the first part of his three-album HEART & SOUL project, all written and recorded during a four-week retreat in North Carolina just before the pandemic. SOUL comes out next Friday, and it will be preceded a few days earlier with the fan-club-only collection [AMPERSAND]... And new music from CONWAY THE MACHINE, LONDON GRAMMAR, FITZ (minus his Tantrums), KENNY MASON, BRONZE NAZARETH & RECOGNIZE ALI, AJ TRACEY, BIG SCARR, GOTHAM (Talib Kweli & Diamond D), ANDY STOTT, SON LUX, NICK HAKIM & ROY NATHANSON, LALO CRUZ, ANDRY KIDDOS, FREDA PAYNE (jazz duets), NORAH JONES (live album), GOO GOO DOLLS, CORY HANSON, FRED AGAIN, JEREMIAH FRAITES (of the Lumineers), IMELDA MAY, ESCAPE THE FATE, LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT, TWO FEET, SPENCER KRUG, SAINT RAYMOND, NEBU KINIZA, YELAWOLF & DJ PAUL and the SLIME LANGUAGE 2 comp from YOUNG THUG's YSL RECORDS.
And this single from the soundtrack to TV's GODFATHER OF HARLEM that features the late DMX—his first posthumous track—along with SWIZZ BEATZ and FRENCH MONTANA... And finally, if you use the meditation app HEADSPACE, you might have noticed a new 45-minute instrumental track from ARCADE FIRE. Meditation rock.
Awards Season
BAD BUNNY won five LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS Thursday night including Artist and Album of the Year. KAROL G and NICKI MINAJ, whose "TUSA" was named Song of the Year, won three awards each at the ceremony in Sunrise, Fla.... It's country's turn Sunday night, with KEITH URBAN and MICKEY GUYTON hosting the second ACM AWARDS ceremony in seven months from three venues in Nashville (8 pm ET on CBS and Paramount+). Borrowing a social distancing strategy from the GRAMMYS, nominees will be in the room only for the categories in which they're competing. After each winner is announced, one group of nominees will be ushered out and a new group will be ushered in.
Rest in Peace
POCO singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist RUSTY YOUNG.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
|
| | |  | | Pollstar |
| | How 1995's Macintosh NY Music Fest 'Livestreamed' 25 Years Ahead Of Its Time | | by Andy Gensler | | Long before iPhones, WiFi, social media or Zoom consumed our daily lives, there was just a couple of forward-thinking New York City club owners and promoters looking to replace revenue created by the collapse of the New Music Seminar the year before. | |  | | Quartz |
| | The world's biggest music companies are scrambling to sign African artists | | by Carlos Mureithi | | A young population, top musical talent, and more streaming opportunities mean Africa's music business is booming. | | | rave:// The best music podcast, period | | |  | | The Washington Post |
| | Tyler Mahan created the 'War and Peace' of country music podcasts. Surrender to it. | | by Geoff Edgers | | 'Cocaine & Rhinestones' is finally launching its second season, with a host who's as unconventional as ever. | |  | | VICE |
| | Brain Chips and Biometrics: The Future of How We'll Consume Music | | by Danny Wright | | Inside music tech's battle for your brain, your ears, and your emotions. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Did the Music Industry Change? A Race 'Report Card' Is on the Way. | | by Ben Sisario | | The Black Music Action Coalition, a group of managers, lawyers and others, was created last summer with a mission to hold the business to account. In June, it will report on the progress so far. | |  | | Financial Times |
| | How streaming is changing the music business | | by Don Newkirk | | How do you make money in the music industry? Streaming platforms like Spotify now dominate. But social media apps like TikTok and Instagram are also changing the playing field. | |  | | InsideHook |
| | From Courtney Barnett to Neil Young: The Wild, Wonderful World of Internet Music Archives | | by Bonnie Stiernberg | | Live music went away for a year, but these artists helped ease the pain. | |  | | Variety |
| | Congresspeople Call for SBA to Fix Broken 'Save Our Stages' Aid Website 'As Soon As Possible' | | by Jem Aswad | | The problem has caused no small amount of additional difficulty the venues and theaters that have been hanging by a thread waiting for relief and now have to find a way to hang on even longer. | |  | | Vulture |
| | The Philharmonic's First Concert Back Brought Me Panic and Solace | | by Justin Davidson | | When it finally came time to file into a concert hall and sit down before a few dozen tuning musicians, it was like rediscovering a strange, forgotten rite. | |  | | CBS This Morning |
| | Country singer Mickey Guyton on co-hosting ACM Awards, reflections on her trailblazing journey | | by Gayle King | | Mickey Guyton earned her first Grammy nomination in November for the song "Black Like Me" and became the first Black female solo artist to be nominated for a Grammy in a country category. She'll make history again on Sunday as co-host of the Academy of Country Music Awards, alongside fellow country star Keith Urban. | | | | | VICE |
| | Can DJs on Twitch Replace Clubs? It Depends on Who's Paying | | by Will Caiger-Smith | | The live-streaming platform has become a lifeline for DJs during the pandemic. Does Twitch care enough to make it last? | | | rave:// As long as they have a choice, there's no downside for Swift fans here | | |  | | The Guardian |
| | 'I made my peace': fans divided over Taylor Swift's re-recording project | | by Katie Goh | | By minting new versions of her albums amid an industry dispute, Swift has moved on from the originals. Can fans with profound connections to them do the same? | |  | | The Nelson George Mixtape |
| | My Strange Relationship with Prince | | by Nelson George | | With the anniversary of his death upcoming I look back at our interactions at the beginning of his career and mine. | |  | | DJ Mag |
| | The rise of street-hop, Lagos' evolving dance sound | | by Makua Adimora | | Street-hop is a sound from Lagos, Nigeria that mutates as it moves between different neighbourhoods; creating new beats, themes and dance crazes as it goes. As it breaks into the Nigerian pop culture mainstream, despite controversy, DJ Mag speaks to some of street-hop's key artists, like DJ Kaywise, Rexxie and Sarz, to find out how it's evolved and where it's going. | |  | | Afropop Worldwide |
| | RETRO MUST LISTEN: Punk in Africa | | by Sam Backer | | When you think punk, a few locations tend to come to mind-New York, London, LA. But Durban? Jo'Burg? South Africa? In this program, we are taking a trip to a time and a place where punk had a very different meaning, exploring the music and the legacy of the mixed race bands that challenged apartheid. | |  | | The Trichordist |
| | The Metadata Hot Potato: The MLC Enters the Jerry McGuire Reality | | by Chris Castle | | Here it is: The day that the MLC is required to send out their first round of statements and payments. The deadline they gave themselves when they wrote their law. | | | | The New York Times |
| | Dawn Richard Will Find a Way to Be Heard | | by Jeremy Gordon | | After finding fame in the girl group Danity Kane, the singer-songwriter has navigated the music industry on her own. Her new album is steeped in the energy and defiance of New Orleans. | |  | | Stuff |
| | How Bizarre: 25 years on and OMC's legacy is as vibrant as ever | | by David Skipwith | | "The fact a young boy from South Auckland could go and take on the world allowed us to have that belief that we could do it as well." | |  | | KQED |
| | In the Bay Area's LGBTQ+ Square Dancing Scene, You're 'Instantly Welcome' | | by Britta Shoot | | This gently geeky social activity proves the motto, "Square dancing is friendship set to music." | |  | | The Bitter Southerner |
| | Love in the Minor Key | | by Elizabeth Johnson | | This is the story of how a broken banjo helped fix a broken heart. | | | |  | | | Music of the day | | "All Futures" | | The Armed | | From "Ultrapop," out today on Sargent House. |  | | YouTube |
| |
|
From "Ultrapop," out today on Sargent House. | | | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "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?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
| | | |
| | |
| |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment