You turn your back on yourself when you allow every closed door to stop you from moving on to the next one. Sometimes we choose to stand at a closed door and hope that it will somehow open, although that may defy logic and although we may know deep down that no goodness will come from it. We wait. We choose to wait. We choose to have hope, and we're always scared that the door will open the second we walk away. We claim ownership over what we do not have and fear losing it, although it really never was ours. | | | | Stevie Ray Vaughan performing at San Francisco's Warfield Theater. November, 1984.
(Clayton Call/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “You turn your back on yourself when you allow every closed door to stop you from moving on to the next one. Sometimes we choose to stand at a closed door and hope that it will somehow open, although that may defy logic and although we may know deep down that no goodness will come from it. We wait. We choose to wait. We choose to have hope, and we're always scared that the door will open the second we walk away. We claim ownership over what we do not have and fear losing it, although it really never was ours.”
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| | rantnrave:// When I was a child, my mother told me to always ask "why?" when I didn't understand something. It was a directive she slightly regretted towards the end of her life. Early on, she took me to museums and films. We read newspapers and discussed articles, watched the same TV shows and debated afterward, sparking in me an endless curiosity that was only satiated by the emergence of the internet - a place I could search and browse endlessly, learn at my own pace and enter into discussions about ideas. These moments with my mother, and others like them, inspired me to create REDEF. The company is largely known for MediaREDEF, this newsletter which I created over 12 years ago. The rantnrave and the curation. Each day I put every ounce of energy, emotion, and passion I have into it. But the real gem of REDEF is MusicREDEF. Started by my longtime colleague MATTY KARAS. He's created an interest remix of music + tech + biz + culture. He is our first and only music curator. He started the publication with me and gets what we are trying to do even more than I do. He is better. For something that has been described as the world's universal language, music speaks in an extraordinary number of tongues: from guitarists raging against the machine to DJs raging on the machine; from violinists honoring the majesty of MOZART to cellists scraping their bows in metal bands; from inner-city country singers to suburban rappers... One of the joys, and maybe even obligations, of being a music fan is tracing all those voices back to the communities and souls from which they spring. When PUBLIC ENEMY's CHUCK D called hip-hop the black CNN, he wasn't merely stating a sociopolitical fact; he was reminding listeners of the lives and the layers behind every song and inviting us to explore them and learn about them. That's part of MusicREDEF's mission: finding the stories wherever the music takes us, and the music wherever the stories take us... Whether it's destined for the front page of a streaming media app or the dollar bin in a dusty record store, music is also shaped, and continually re-shaped, by business and technology. At MusicREDEF, we celebrate that context and explore the connections – across borders, across cultures, across generations, across dark rooms -- that breathe life into the music we love. It is THE daily must-read music publication for fans, musicians, and executives. Subscribe here... REDEF ORIGINALS founder MATT BALL has written some fantastic pieces about the music business. Sixteen years after the music industry's peak, revenues have returned to growth. But the core problems of streaming service profitability and minuscule artist royalties persist. There is cause for optimism, but transformation is needed. Enter, SPOTIFY RECORDS and APPLE MUSIC GROUPS? He explores this in "16 Years Late, $13B Short, but Optimistic: Where Growth Will Take the Music Biz"... Back in 2015, Matt wrote what I still think is one of the best overviews about what happened to the music business. Music may have been the first media format to be upended by digital, but more than 15 years later, it was the only one still fixated on what was, not what could be. If the industry hoped to restore growth, both labels and artists needed to confront the changes brought about by the likes of ITUNES and SPOTIFY. Only then could a path forward be charted. He explored in "Less Money, Mo' Music & Lots of Problems: A Look at the Music Biz"... Happy Birthday to MARK LARKIN, AMANDA KRENTZMAN, JEFF DOSSETT, JEFFREY JAMES LINDSAY, STACEY SANNER, and JOHN CABRAL. Belated to ZANDER LURIE, CRAIG HUNEGS, BRIAN CELLER, MICHAEL MADNICK, and CORY TREFFILETTI. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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| Experts tackle the phenomenon of angry men, trolls, racists and misogynists who hover around the video game industry. | | |
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| Last week, as America's top national security experts convened in Aspen, a strangely inquisitive Uber driver showed up, too--and caused a minor freak-out. Was the mystery woman some kind of covert agent--or simply a figment of these hyper-paranoid times? | | |
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| Michiko Kakutani is interested in how the distinction between fact and fiction has blurred -- and how this makes us all complicit. | | |
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| The small satellite network, which keeps global computer systems from freaking out, is shockingly vulnerable to all kinds of interference. | | |
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| The air conditioner is broken, and all Vicente Prieto Borrego can do is wait. Borrego knows what’s at stake: Thousands of magnetic tapes, records, cassettes and CDs recorded by EGREM, the Cuban music label founded in 1964. The archive should be kept at exactly 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s impossible with an air conditioner whose filter is clogged by dust. | | |
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| Opportunity Zones, created by Trump's tax law, are meant to help the heartland thrive and make the country more equal--but can they pull it off? | | |
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| One of the greatest magazine stories of the past generation, republished in Slate. | | |
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| Chelsea G. Summers considers the ways in which outwardly ‘progressive’ men like former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman use kink as a cover for abuse. | | |
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| Social media has allowed self-proclaimed ‘AI influencers’ who do nothing more than paraphrase Elon Musk to cash in on this hype with low-quality, pieces. The result is dangerous. | | |
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| In a brutally honest note about his departure, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos calls on his colleagues “to intentionally not collect data where possible” and listen to people when they say a feature is “creepy.” | | |
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| The opioid lawsuits keep coming—hundreds of them—filed by states, cities, counties, Native American tribes and labor unions. While the human tragedy of Americans addicted to these painkillers has been growing for years, the resulting legal drama is just starting. | | |
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| Streaming has upturned music’s status quo - and labels are looking farther afield for truly fresh talent. | | |
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| You wouldn’t know it from the tired decor at TGI Fridays today, but this family restaurant has a sexy past. It was once a game-changing singles bar, which arrived on the cusp of the sexual revolution. We go back to the 60s and 70s to experience the original Fridays, and find out how it has changed the way we meet, date and marry. | | |
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| Reckoning with the internet he helped create. | | |
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| Boots Riley's absurdist comedy about labor organizing is a road map for progressive movement building. | | |
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| The world thought it had fought the HIV virus to a stalemate--but its strategy was flawed in ways that are only now becoming clear. | | |
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| The designer behind the Instant Pot--and its new successor, the $200 Max--talks about easing the anxiety of American chefs. | | |
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| Desiree Akhavan's new film, based on Emily Danforth's 2012 young adult novel, centers on a high school girl who's sent to a Christian conversion center after she's caught kissing her girlfriend. | | |
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| Perhaps no American metropolitan area has received more accolades for its smart city initiatives than San Diego. The city of 1.4 million people (more than 3 million if you count the surrounding areas) has garnered countless awards and was even the subject of a 2015 National Geographic documentary about the city's efforts-the only American city to be so featured at the time. | | |
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| How the calculus of ’80s television programming lives on into the present day--and why the Disney Channel always seems to cancel shows after 65 episodes. | | |
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| | | | | Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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