| The exotic is central to me. I don't understand why the 'exotic' doesn't have the automatic appeal for everyone that it does for me. In fact, I think it does but it's just not acknowledged. I put that experience first and foremost. | | | | |  | Lucy Dacus' "Home Video" is out now on Matador.
(Ebru Yildiz/Pitch Perfect PR) | | | | | "The exotic is central to me. I don't understand why the 'exotic' doesn't have the automatic appeal for everyone that it does for me. In fact, I think it does but it's just not acknowledged. I put that experience first and foremost." | | | | Dancing in the Dark
"Souls are stubborn. Souls remain." That was one of the final messages delivered Saturday night by the 71-year-old rock and roller chosen by fate and circumstance to reopen Broadway after 15 months of darkness in the center of town, and who did so with a two-hour-plus meditation on his own life but also on memory, loss, ghosts, magic, the indelible power of music and dance, and the strange state of the union in the summer of 2021.
If I had jurisdiction over Broadway, I'm not sure an updated version of the 2017-18 smash SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY, as beautifully written and moving as it is, is what I would have chosen for New York theater's official reopening. It's not particularly representative of what the theater district normally has to offer (except for the main character's penchant for suddenly breaking into song in the middle of a chat), it's aimed at a relatively narrow demographic, and it's even more unaffordable for the average New Yorker than most Broadway shows are. Then again, there's nothing Broadway loves more than a spectacle, and the writer/performer of this particular spectacle has a gift for meeting a moment, and he was not gonna throw away his 41 shots.
To get into the ST. JAMES THEATRE, you had to pass through a small phalanx of anti-vax protesters lined up on both sides of West 44th Street and then stand in a short line to show, not your ticket at first, but your vaccine card. Both parts of this were easy, all things considered. You were handed a ghostly issue of PLAYBILL, the journal of a Broadway that currently has no other shows, and found your seat among nearly 2,000 Bruce fans and assorted A-listers, undistanced and unmasked. You marveled for a few minutes at the very idea, and then cheered a little too long when the house lights went down, until the man you were cheering for told you to "Shut the f*** up." He'd repeat the same admonition a few minutes later. He had things to say and he seemed a little impatient. As you might be, too, if you had gathered nearly 2,000 people to offer "proof of life" in the middle of, well, all of this.
That offer, like much of the show that followed, was familiar to anyone who'd seen "Springsteen on Broadway" before, either onstage or on Netflix. Book-wise, it's largely the same show, with an elision here, an addition there. The heart of the show is still Springsteen's relationship with his parents—his cold, distant father who in many ways he has become, and his warm, vivacious mother, who loved dancing more than anything and who now, 10 years into Alzheimer's, still waits for her son to take her hand and dance to GLENN MILLER one more time. "DANCING IN THE DARK," performed late in the show, resonates anew. So does the catfish dancing on the end of a line in "THE RISING."
There was an added section early on about the Boss's life in the past couple years, in which he seemed most interested in reminding us of his 2020 arrest for driving under the influence of tequila, which led to a case in "Zoom court" pitting "The United States of America vs. Bruce Springsteen" ("The entire nation is aligned against you!"). He played this for laughs. There'd be another encounter between police and civilian to talk about later; that one ended differently.
The revisions in the performance seemed mostly about points of emphasis. A piano version of "TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT," a highlight of the original run during which he rambles at length about his band and, in particular, his late, beloved saxophone player, seemed a little rushed. It carried less weight. He had spent that weight moments earlier on a swampy version of "BORN IN THE USA," its recounting of his country's inhumane treatment of its own soldiers emphasized with 12 guitar strings fretted with a glass slide and a vocal howl that was left unaccompanied for the first verse and chorus—a chorus that, he noted, was the cause of some confusion.
Soon after that, he started swapping out songs from the original run. First "FIRE," a sultry duet with wife PATTI SCIALFA, instead of the dark "BRILLIANT DISGUISE," that allowed her a moment in the spotlight the show hadn't previously allowed, while celebrating love and connection in a more direct way. A hopeful post-Covid moment. And something of a brilliant disguise itself, because Scialfa then walked offstage, leaving her husband to zigzag into a monologue about the darkness of the past year and America's endangered democracy and then, without saying the name GEORGE FLOYD (or any other recent name), deliver an angry performance of "AMERICAN SKIN (41 SHOTS)," a more than 20-year-old song about the New York police killing of AMADOU DIALLO, a 23-year-old immigrant, with an indefensible barrage of 41 bullets. The chorus: "You can get killed just for living in your American skin." It was controversial then; today, it could get lost among two dozen other songs about the same thing. About Black men and women who never got the chance to go to Zoom court and who'll never stand on a Broadway stage.
That was followed by "The Rising," about another horrible loss, but one that brought a country together instead of spitting it in two. Or maybe the two songs were meant as a comparison of two different kind of terrorist threats. Either way, the two songs came back to back for a reason. Springsteen creates setlists with intention.
The night, which used to end with "BORN TO RUN," ended this time with "I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS," a song from Springsteen's current album in which he sings, "Death is not the end / And I'll see you in my dreams." A song for the souls of his departed bandmates. For his friends who never made it home from Vietnam. For his father. For George Floyd and BREONNA TAYLOR and AHMAUD ARBERY. For the invisible masks we still wear after we take the other ones off. Welcome back, Broadway. Welcome back, America.
Etc Etc Etc
Nearly a third of the adults in the US who listen to streaming music services use free versions, and the main reason they do so isn't because of the cost of a subscription, but because they're perfectly happy with what they get for free. That's according to a poll released this morning by the music services company DOWNTOWN MUSIC, and I can think of 11 or 12 companies and organizations off the top of my head that might want to address that at their next board meeting. The poll also found that American consumers are about evenly divided on whether streaming services should pay artists and other creators up to a quarter, up to a half or up to three-quarters of every dollar they make; it isn't clear if they knew what the services are actually paying... A Norwegian company is planning an underground doomsday vault that could preserve digital versions of the world's great recordings for up to 1,000 years, safe from natural disasters, nuclear explosions and, it swears, future changes in file formats. Billboard reports that the GLOBAL MUSIC VAULT is also planning "to make the vault's contents accessible to listeners around the world, when it has the permission of rights holders, and share the revenue this generates with creators." In other words, doomsday SPOTIFY... PRESIDENT BIDEN on Friday signed a bill designating the PULSE nightclub in Orlando, Fla., a national memorial site... JAZMINE SULLIVAN, ANDRA DAY, CARDI B, MEGAN THEE STALLION, H.E.R. and SILK SONIC were among the winners at Sunday's BET AWARDS. A lifetime achievement award was presented to QUEEN LATIFAH.
Rest in Peace
Experimental composer/trumpeter JON HASSELL, inventor of what he called Fourth World music. "Jon's experiment," Brian Eno once wrote, "was to imagine a 'coffee coloured' world—a globalised world constantly integrating and hybridising, where differences were celebrated and dignified—and to try to realise it in music"... Rapper GIFT OF GAB, one half of Blackalicious and the world's foremost practitioner of "Alphabet Aerobics"... Polish American pianist/composer FREDERIC RZEWSKI, best known for his protest theme-and-variation classic "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!"... PETER ZINOVIEFF, a British electronic composer celebrated for the synthesizers he designed for his company EMS (Electronic Music Studios)... Slide guitar maestro ELLEN MCILWAINE, one of the few female guitarists on the blues and rock circuit in the late '60s and early '70s, who found her greatest fame in Canada... Singer JOHNNY SOLINGER, who replaced Sebastian Bach in Skid Row and stuck around for 16 years.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | The Daily Beast |
| | Why Did It Take So Long to Believe Britney Spears? | | by Kevin Fallon | | For so long, even some of Britney's biggest fans were complicit in objectifying her trauma, skeptical that her conservatorship could be that bad. All of that blew up this week. | |  | | Salon |
| | Britney Spears' plight and the outrage of millennial women who've had enough | | by Tabitha Blankenbiller | | The pop star is fighting back against a system that has been trying to tear her down and not allow her to just be. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | RETRO READ: The Debt I Owe to Jon Hassell | | by Brian Eno | | Hassell's Vernal Equinox fascinated me. It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal minimalism. It was a music I felt I'd been waiting for. | |  | | Perfect Sound Forever |
| | RETRO READ: Jon Hassell Interview | | by Jason Gross | | "The exotic is central to me. I don't understand why the 'exotic' doesn't have the automatic appeal for everyone that it does for me." | |  | | Music Industry Blog |
| | How Bandcamp could really fix the music business | | by Mark Mulligan | | One of the great ironies of this era of empowered artists is that the empowerment only extends so far. They can choose whether to work with a label, whether to retain their rights, which distributor to use etc., but the vast majority are beholden to streaming. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Hiatus Kaiyote's Life-Affirming, Genre-Defying Cosmic Soul | | by Marcus J. Moore | | In the six years between the Australian band's albums, its singer and guitarist, Naomi Saalfield, was treated for breast cancer, and recovered. | |  | | Billboard |
| | Norwegian Firm Creating Doomsday Vault For Music Recordings | | by Richard Smirke | | A Norwegian company is planning to create a doomsday vault to preserve the world's most important music recordings for at least 1,000 years. | |  | | Level |
| | Sorry Usher, T-Pain Isn't Responsible for Ruining Pop Music | | by Scott Woods | | Don't blame it on the A-a-a-a-a-auto-Tune. | |  | | BuzzFeed News |
| | How Doja Cat Keeps Dodging Cancellation | | by Joseph Longo | | The consistently viral pop star has bucked controversy thanks to a prolific career, including a new infectious album, "Planet Her." | |  | | Slate |
| | Antifa Defeats Mumford & Sons | | by Ben Mathis-Lilley | | A quitting-the-band story for our time. | | | | | The Guardian |
| | Hipgnosis's back-catalogue spending pays off in pandemic | | by Mark Sweney | | The firm's strength in old songs has seen revenues up by two-thirds after streaming saw a huge boost in lockdown. | | | | Billboard |
| | Can Touring Artists Require Road Crews To Get Vaccinated? | | by Steve Knopper | | As touring returns and artists seek fully vaccinated crews, questions remain. | |  | | Variety |
| | How Isaac Hayes' 'Shaft' Reinvented the Game for Film Music | | by Jon Burlingame | | Fifty years ago this month, Isaac Hayes changed the course of movie music with his score for "Shaft." Not only did Hayes, 29 at the time, become the first Black man to win a music Oscar for his title song, but the success of his soundtrack album assured that every Black action-adventure film for the next several years would be scored by a major artist of color. | | | | The New York Times |
| | 'Summer of Soul' Review: In 1969 Harlem, a Music Festival Stuns | | by Wesley Morris | | Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in a documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival from Questlove. | |  | | The Washington Post |
| | Ellen McIlwaine, fiery slide guitarist and blues singer, dies at 75 | | by Harrison Smith | | She came to prominence in the late 1960s, performing with Jimi Hendrix in Greenwich Village and forming what was then a rare woman-led rock band, only to strike out on her own after she realized her bandmates "expected me to do the laundry after we finished onstage," | |  | | The Illusion of More |
| | Has the Moment Finally Arrived for Fairness to Music Performers? | | by David Newhoff | | Unlike the rest of the developed world, American radio broadcasters are unique in that they pay nothing in performers' royalties when they play music on their stations. Although this has been true since radio began in the U.S., many Americans are surprised to learn that this is the case and, according to polling, believe it's unfair. | |  | | NPR |
| | L'Rain's Latest Album 'Fatigue' Explores The Power Of Change | | by Lulu Garcia-Navarro | | NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks to musician and singer L'Rain about her latest album "Fatigue." | |  | | Wax Poetics |
| | The Continental Baths was a DJ incubator for Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles | | by Dan Gentile | | Electric relaxation. | |  | | WNYC |
| | The Vanishing of Harry Pace: Episode 3 | | by Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee | | We follow Harry's grandkids and great grandkids as they grapple with his legacy in their own lives. | |  | | Passion of the Weiss |
| | One Day the Music Goes Away | | by Will Hagle | | Will Hagle ponders the fleeting shelf-life of digital music and the impermanence of a life lived online. | | | | | 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 | | |  |
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