The power? Of the DJ? It’s to motivate the crowd, man. It’s to have the insight to motivate the crowd. To have the crowd at your fingertips. To control the crowd. That’s the best f***in’ power, man. | | | | Mary Lou Williams reflects at the piano, New York, 1943.
(Gjon Mili/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | | | “The power? Of the DJ? It’s to motivate the crowd, man. It’s to have the insight to motivate the crowd. To have the crowd at your fingertips. To control the crowd. That’s the best f***in’ power, man.”
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| | rantnrave:// OLYMPIC ice skating music, weekend one: BEYONCÉ, "DESPACITO," RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, NINO ROTA, JEFF BUCKLEY, ROLLING STONES, CELINE DION, COLDPLAY. What label has the rights to the soundtrack album? The world's best skater used CHOPIN on the way to a team silver medal, but psyched herself up by listening to K-pop boy band EXO beforehand. "I feel more confident because of them," she said. Yes, I'm watching people skate, sled, ski and snowboard halfway around the world this week. I assume you are, too. If only the cross-country skiers and biathletes were allowed to glide to music, too. I would imagine a lot of Norwegian death metal. Maybe that's why they're not allowed. My favorite music moment was the first time I saw a snowboarder take off his helmet at the end of a run to reveal he was wearing earbuds. Turns out a lot of them blast music inside those helmets while they're competing for medals. Gives new meaning to the idea of a gold record... The Korean folk song "ARIRANG," which provided one of the emotional highlights of the opening ceremony of the Games, suggests beauty can be found even in moments of great sorrow. The magnificent Icelandic composer JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON explored that duality in various ways over the course of career that also obliterated any distinction between modern classical and film music (and between strings and electronics), and that ended way too soon with his death Friday at age 48. Whether scoring DENIS VILLENEUVE's films SICARIO (icy and industrial) and ARRIVAL (curiously human) or recording album-length minimalist suites about coal miners or obsolete computer technology, Jóhannsson was a fearless storyteller, unafraid to peer into darkness and equally unafraid to reach through it. He leaves behind several film scores still to come in 2018, and an unheard, unfinished score to "BLADE RUNNER 2049"; he was replaced during production by HANS ZIMMER and BENJAMIN WALLFISCH. He also leaves behind this wonderful quote on the relationship between picture and score: "It's important that the music does not repeat what is being communicated by the images—then you run the risk of saying the same thing twice." His work suggests he understood that even when he wasn't composing to picture. RIP... Some artists are saying no to amateur IPHONE photographers and videographers at their shows. KENDRICK LAMAR is saying no to the pros... PAUL MCCARTNEY shops for a practice amp in BROOKLYN... RIP also TROY BLAKELY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Even the band’s Guy Picciotto at first didn’t understand what an experimental theater group wanted with recordings of Fugazi stage banter. | | |
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| There’s a world of rappers who make tracks about World War II, attack the EU, and endorse marches organized by white nationalists. They're big in Poland, where a new fight over the Holocaust shows how history has become a weapon. | | |
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| Best known for his film scores, Jóhannsson’s earlier electronic and classical work confronted existential horror. | | |
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| Data drawn from Spotify listeners reveal that we are all teenagers in love. | | |
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| If you can’t afford (or choose not to pay for) a subscription service, each time you play a song, your stream counts less towards the charts than plays from users who subscribed to those same services. So, same song, same stream, different paid experience, different value in chart calculation. | | |
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| Best Buy might have dumped it and we're all addicted to Spotify, but the truth about the format's health is complex. | | |
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| One wonders if the recording industry is behaving a bit like the concert industry, pushing prices ever higher just to see what the market will bear. | | |
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| How the 18-year-old Indonesian viral rap star once known as Rich Chigga is upending hip-hop. | | |
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| The third internet generation for music is here. | | |
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| Just three miles from the Mandalay Bay, the gun industry gathered for its biggest show of the year. The Daily Beast takes you inside. | | |
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| Three more people have accused country music publicist Kirt Webster of sexually harassing employees, putting the number of people who have spoken out at over two dozen. But saying #MeToo has changed little for victims in Nashville. | | |
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| A court case between Margaret Osborn and Claudio Palmieri, former band mates in electo-punk group Crystal Castles, is playing out in L.A. | | |
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| We chant it with locked arms and closed eyes, at campfires, in protest lines and from the pews at church, but the truth is, many of us have no clue what the lyrics mean or exactly where they come from. | | |
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| Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz never fail to mesmerize. Watch the twin sisters perform a four-song set at the Tiny Desk. | | |
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| I don't mean in terms of their actual careers. They had the same arc as their peers: gradual rise, phenomenal commercial success, gradual decline. But what happened to their reputation? | | |
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| Los Angeles Review Of Books |
| The music gender conversation just got loud. But it is not inclusive enough. Gender parity is also about gender diversity. | | |
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| The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gets clowned on more than most institutions, and with good reason. But its induction ceremony is one of the few award shows that’s actually pretty fun and watched by almost no one (a shame.) | | |
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| Resale sites must show more transparency according to new AdWords guidelines. | | |
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| My conversation with Jóhannsson focused on his role in "The Theory of Everything," his inspirations for its music, and what it means to be a composer of film music. | | |
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| David Byrne’s first solo album post-Talking Heads helped me come to terms with the languages I lost growing up as a mixed-race kid. | | |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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