| As a touring musician, I don't think anyone anticipated the new reality that awaited us. | |  |  | | In the before times, when money grew on artist's clothes: Santigold in Long Beach, Calif., Sept. 29, 2018. | | (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "As a touring musician, I don't think anyone anticipated the new reality that awaited us." | | - Santigold | |
| | rantnrave:// | Breaking
Apologies for the late send today. Server issues. A reminder that our platforms our unstable things that sometimes cough, sputter and break. Or maybe they just need a day off.
This long, thoughtful note from SANTIGOLD, announcing the cancellation of her "Holified" tour, which was scheduled to begin in two weeks in Atlanta, crystallizes what's been on a lot of people's minds—and vans and tour buses—in music's allegedly post-pandemic landscape. A landscape of too many tours and not enough venues or crew or even fans. Skyrocketing prices for seemingly everything. People still getting sick. "All of that," Santigold wrote, "on top of the already-tapped mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional resources of just having made it through the past few years. Some of us are finding ourselves simply unable to make it work."
To wit:
The Guardian's LAURA SNAPES on artists from JUSTIN BIEBER and SHAWN MENDES to WET LEG and DISCLOSURE having a hard time making it work mentally, and having the courage to say so: "This week, Arlo Parks became the latest, cancelling a run of US shows and explaining how the relentless grind of the past 18 months had left her 'exhausted and dangerously low.'"
Billboard's STEVE KNOPPER on the still very present risk of Covid-19: "It's terrifying going into a tour," Cigarettes After Sex manager ED HARRIS tells him. There's the virus itself and there's the economic damage it can leave behind, especially in a landscape where insurance coverage for Covid cancellations is hard to find. (Also not always available: Insurance coverage for hurricanes and other storms.) If you're RINGO STARR's ALL-STARR BAND and two of your guitarists test positive, at least there's room backstage and in the hotel to isolate. If you're Cigarettes After Sex, maybe not.
LUMINEERS tour manager SARA FULL on the roadie shortage: "It's more work and more pressure and less rest time for all of our touring crews. Doing a stretch as long as we did, by the end of it you could just see that people were a little weary of dealing with labor issues every day."
AROOJ AFTAB on the math: "Touring has been amazing. We headlined a ton, had massive turnouts and have proven ourselves in all the markets. Yet still, running 10s of thousands in debt from the tour and I'm being told that it's 'normal'. Why is this normal. This should not be normalized."
Aftab is continuing with her tour. Santigold is not. The personal math will differ from artist to artist, tour to tour, human to human.
"I want to tell you that for me it has taken a toll - through anxiety, insomnia, fatigue, vertigo, chronic pain, and missing crucial time with my children," Santigold wrote. "It feels like I've been hanging on, trying to make it to the ever-distant finish line, but my vehicle's been falling apart the whole time... And here I am thinking, 'Should I just hold the doors up and run?' And my little heart that has been working way beyond its limits, my whole body in fact and my soul too, are screaming at me 'NO muthaf****a! Pull.The F***. Over!'"
Rest in Peace
Watching JOE BUSSARD listen to one of his 15,000 78 RPM records "is a spiritually rousing experience," Amanda Petrusich wrote in "Do Not Sell at Any Price," her 2014 book about the 78 collector underground. "He often appears incapable of physically restraining himself, as if the melody were a call to arms, an incitement it would be immoral if not impossible to ignore: he had to move." This is as beautiful a description of a record collector as I've read because it cuts to the very core: If you're not deeply moved by the music embedded on the discs you've amassed (on floor-to-ceiling shelves, arranged in an order no one but you will ever be able to discern), if you're not in fact called by them, why are you doing this? And if you are, how can you not? You could, and should, apply this to almost any endeavor in the music business. Bussard, one of the world's foremost collectors of early 20th century American music, died Monday, age 86, leaving behind those records and a legacy of musical preservation. He loved playing his shellac discs for fellow enthusiasts. He played them on radio shows he hosted, and helped reissue some of his rarest sides on CD. He started his own 78 label, Fonotone, after everyone else had stopped, to produce new recordings of old-time music, including the first-ever recordings of guitarist John Fahey. He kept looking for more. His collection, Joe Heim wrote in the Washington Post earlier this year, "is his life's work. It is his life."
Also: SUE MINGUS, who spent the last 40 years of her life zealously protecting, promoting and expanding the legacy of her late husband, Charles Mingus... Los Angeles rapper KEE RICHES, at least the 22nd rapper murdered in the US in 2022. Inspired by the Nipsey Hussle, the 23-year-old was known for giving back to his community... RICHIE GALLO, a longtime sales exec for A&M, Universal and Rhino.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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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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