jason hirschhorn's @MusicREDEF: 04/04/2023 - Seymour Was a Punk Rocker, Remembering Ryuichi Sakamoto, Big Tech v. Music, Shuffle Mode, Spatial Audio...

The first step in any teen-age ambition is to fake the persona you wish to become; the next is believing it yourself. Open in browser Tuesday April 04, 2023 Seymour and Linda Stein (3rd and 4th from right) with the Ramones and Iggy Pop at CBGB, New York, April 1976. (Roberta Bayley/Redferns/Getty Images) quote of the day "The first step in any teen-age ambition is to fake the persona you wish to become; the next is believing it yourself." - Seymour Stein, 1942 – 2023 rantnrave:// Seymour Was a Punk Rocker He signed one of the 20th century's greatest rock bands immediately upon hearing them for the first time in a rehearsal room—they did 17 or 18 songs in 20 minutes and he had a 103-degree fever—and then, six years later, inked one of the century's defining pop stars hours after hearing a single song on a Walkman in his room at Lenox Hill Hospital—he had a heart condition and she said, "Just tell me what I have to do to get a f***ing record deal in this town"—and if that's all you knew about SEYMOUR STEIN, if all Seymour Stein had ever done was deliver the RAMONES and MADONNA to the masses, you could be confident about these two things: He had two of the greatest ears in the history of the record business, and the rest of his body sometimes struggled to keep up. But those ears led that body around the world for the better part of Seymour Stein's glorious 80 years on this earth, more than three-quarters of which he spent in the music business. Like the time he read a short blurb about DEPECHE MODE, a band he'd never heard of, in a British music weekly early one New York morning and decided to get on a Concorde to London that day so he could see the band that night. He sighed them, too, of course. Or the time he flew in the opposite direction, Paris to Memphis, to see the REPLACEMENTS, who he'd already signed, at their PLEASED TO MEET ME album release party. "He was wearing a tuxedo jacket with little Playboy bunnies all embossed over it," JIM DICKINSON told Replacements biographer BOB MEHR. "I don't think he'd been asleep in a week. The first words out of his mouth where 'Where's the coke?'" He was brash, brilliant and benevolent (with maybe a small asterisk next to "benevolent"), and as rock and roll as many of the artists he signed (and/or licensed), which also included, for example, TALKING HEADS (who he offered a deal the day after seeing them fill in for a missing opening band at CBGB; they made him wait 11 months before saying yes), RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS, the DEAD BOYS, the PRETENDERS, PLASTIC BERTRAND, ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, the CURE, the SMITHS, ICE-T, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, REGINA SPEKTOR and countless others. He never waited around for anything. He got his first two jobs in the biz when he was in his teens—first at KING RECORDS, where he met SYD NATHAN, who became his first mentor and told his father, "Seymour's got shellac in his veins," and next at BILLBOARD, where he played a role in the birth of the HOT 100 singles chart in 1958, when he was 16. He was said to know the words, chart positions and everything else there was to know about pretty much every song ever and was unafraid to sing them, his own musical talents notwithstanding. He's often said to be one of the last of the great record men, a compliment that reflects the unfortunate fact that in his glory days most of them were in fact men while also being unarguably true. "Intense -Wickedly Funny-a little bit Crazy And Deeply intuitive," Madonna wrote on her Instagram Monday. All qualities that the job requires, along with this: "Seymour's taste in music was always a couple of years ahead of everybody else," GARY KURFIRST, the late Talking Heads manager once said. His style was act now, worry about the consequences and the money later. And if some of the moves won't quite pan out numbers-wise, well, the world still got to hear the Ramones. And Madonna. That one panned out. RIP, and condolences to MANDY. Magic Man The career of the great Japanese composer RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ranged from the pioneering techno of the Yellow Magic Orchestra to his orchestral scores for films by the likes of Bernardo Bertolucci and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, with stops in between for pop songs, cross-cultural fusions, classical pieces, ambient soundscapes, ringtones, videogame music and acting. "The big theme of him is curiosity," his collaborator Carsten Nicolai once said. "When the Tower Records shops still existed," Sakamoto told Film Score Monthly in 2010, "I had a lot of complaints from the people at the shops, because they didn't know which CD should go to which box." And if he liked the food in your restaurant but not your music, he might just take over the music supervision. Rest in Peace Also RAY SHULMAN, bassist/violinist for 1970s British prog-rock band Gentle Giant. Shulman founded the band (and its predecessor, Simon Dupree & the Big Sound) with his brothers Derek and Phil, and was one of its principal composers... MICHAEL LEON, a longtime label exec at A&M, Arista, SBK and EMI, and a key player in the early years of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation... Up-and-coming Houston rapper BTB SAVAGE, murdered in an apparently targeted drive-by shooting... FRED LIVINGSTON JR., a fan who was killed when the roof of the Apollo Theater in Belvidere, Ill., collapsed during a Morbid Angel show Friday night. The band directed fans to a GoFundMe page for their "brother in metal." Etc Etc Etc TANYA TUCKER, PATTY LOVELESS and songwriter BOB MCDILL have been voted into the COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME... (Seymour Stein, by the way, was one of the founders of the ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME. Hint hint nudge nudge)... Weeks after an awkward interaction with judge KATY PERRY, who she accused of "mom-shaming" her for being a mother of three, AMERICAN IDOL contestant SARA BETH LIEBE wowed the judges with her performance of the POLICE's "ROXANNE" and then walked off the show—saying she'd rather return to her children rather than go on with the competition... LAINEY WILSON, JELLY ROLL and KANE & KATELYN BROWN were the top winners at the CMT MUSIC AWARDS... GLASTONBURY gets a permanent reprieve... BILLBOARD's top music lawyers. - Matty Karas, curator rocket to russia CBC News BIG Music: Is the music industry being reshaped for the better or worse by tech companies? One tap and you can hear any song in the world, but who benefits? CBC News' BIG MUSIC looks at how Spotify, Ticketmaster, LiveNation, and Tik Tok are changing the very nature of music. The Verge The mixed-up history of the shuffle button By Natalie Weiner How one button redefined our relationship to music. Pitchfork Ryuichi Sakamoto's Borderless Brilliance By Simon Reynolds Paying tribute to the visionary Yellow Magic Orchestra member and Oscar-winning composer, who died last month at 71 from cancer. Pollstar The Last Record Man: Seymour Stein, 1943-2023 By Roy Trakin Although contemporaries like Clive Davis, Berry Gordy, Chris Blackwell, Richard Gottehrer and Herb Alpert & Jerry Moss are still very much alive, the death of Seymour Stein at the age of 80 feels like the end of an era. WNYC Studios RETRO LISTEN: Seymour Stein On Signing Madonna By John Schaefer In 1983, Sire Records put out a debut album by a little known club dancer and singer. Digiday How Sonos plans to market spatial audio speakers to the masses By Marty Swant How do you get someone to buy something they haven't heard yet? Sound Field Why Have So Many Countries Adopted Drill Rap? By Arthur 'LA' Buckner and Linda Diaz Drill music started in Chicago over a decade ago and has since spread to cities across the world. From London to New York City, we explore how this influential genre has inspired and shaped the rap scene in different corners of the globe. Complex Hip-Hop Media Power Ranking The Complex Hip-Hop Media Power Ranking reflects which personalities have the most power in hip-hop media, from Joe Budden to Angie Martinez to Elliott Wilson. Kotaku 'Fortnite' Is The Future Of Music Streaming By Nadine Smith Epic has been taken music licensing to new levels to fill out Fortnite's radio stations. The New York Times RETRO READ: Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own By Ben Ratliff How Ryuichi Sakamoto assembled the soundtrack for Kajitsu, in Murray Hill, and what it says about the sounds we hear (or should) while we eat. blank generation Variety Songwriters Have Been Waiting Five Years for $373 Million in Royalties: Here's What You Can Do to Help By Songwriters of North America, Black Music Action Coalition and Music Artists Coalition There is over a quarter billion dollars of mechanical-royalty income related to songs that were streamed between 2018 and 2022 that has not been paid — and there is no guidance on when it will. Los Angeles Times The supergroup Boygenius are happiest making sad music together By Amos Barshad 'It's just a bottomless well of love and emotion,' says Phoebe Bridgers of being in a band with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. Billboard 'GREAT F***IN' IDEA!': How Florida Georgia Line & Nelly's 'Cruise' Teamup Made (Controversial) History By Natalie Weiner 10 years ago, the team-up reinvigorated a hit and broke genre boundaries and chart records, pointing the way to both the "bro-country" takeover and to historical imbalances still lingering in... Bloomberg Will Taylor Swift or Beyoncé Have the First $1 Billion Tour? By Lucas Shaw Ed Sheeran and Elton John have the biggest tours on record. Here's why Beyoncé and Taylor Swift could beat them. Rolling Stone UK What can artists learn from Robert Smith's Ticketmaster crusade? By Joe Goggins The Cure frontman has shown that artists have agency when it comes to protecting fans from extortionate pricing. Music Ally Utopia Music sells Sentric to Believe -- but what happens next? By Stuart Dredge Distributor Believe is buying publishing-tech firm Sentric from Utopia Music, in what has been a tough time for the latter company.. The New Yorker A New York Doll Gets the Scorsese Treatment By Naomi Fry When the director of "Goodfellas" decided to make "Personality Crisis," a documentary about David Johansen and his alter ego, Buster Poindexter, he wanted it to be a family affair. Please Kill Me RETRO READ: 'Shellac in His Veins': An Interview With Seymour Stein By Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain As the co-founder (with Richard Gottehrer) of Sire Records in 1966, Seymour Stein reshaped the direction of popular music with his signing and tireless support of acts like the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Pretenders, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Replacements and Madonna. NPR An ode to playlists, the perfect kind of sonic diary By Teresa Xie Listening to old playlists triggers more complicated emotions than looking at old journals; instead of reading stories told from my perspective, I'm hearing music for what it was and always has been. The New York Times Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter Reveals Himself: As a Composer By Zachary Woolfe After more than two decades at the forefront of electronic dance music (while in a robot-style helmet), the French artist is releasing "Mythologies," a score for traditional symphony orchestra. The Creative Independent RETRO READ: Ryuichi Sakamoto on how your work changes as you get older By Brandon Stosuy and Ryuichi Sakamoto Musician Ryuichi Sakamoto discusses the factors that influenced the making of his first new record in nearly a decade, how your creative inclinations change over time, and the ways in which geography can influence what you make. Pitchfork Sunday Review: Warren Zevon's 'Warren Zevon' By Andy Cush Today, we revisit Warren Zevon's 1976 breakthrough, an unforgettable collection of rock songs as short stories set in a seedy, mythological American West. what we're into Music of the day "Riot in Lagos" Ryuichi Sakamoto From "B-2 Unit" (1980). Video of the day "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda" Stephen Nomura Schible Music | Media SUBSCRIBE 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?'" Jason Hirschhorn CEO & Chief Curator HOME | ABOUT | SETS | PRESS Redef Group Inc. LA - NY - Everywhere Copyright ©2021 UNSUBSCRIBE or MANAGE MY SUBSCRIPTION