Most of the people complaining are motherf***ers who don’t vote! When I go to Recording Academy events, I’m the only one there with tattoos on my neck. I’m trying to get my friends to vote. Everybody acts like they don’t give a f*** about the Grammys — until the Grammys come around.” | | | | | Thundercat at the Governors Ball Music Festival, New York, June 2016. (Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Most of the people complaining are motherf***ers who don’t vote! When I go to Recording Academy events, I’m the only one there with tattoos on my neck. I’m trying to get my friends to vote. Everybody acts like they don’t give a f*** about the Grammys — until the Grammys come around.””
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| | rantnrave:// Last week, the OBSERVER published a satirical "Letter of Apology From BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN" for not doing enough to stop DONALD TRUMP. I'm unclear if writer TIM SOMMER was chastising the Boss for actually not doing sufficient political groundwork or if he was slyly making fun of liberals for looking to rock stars for electoral salvation. Or both. Or neither. Satire is sometimes harder to read than it is to write. Anyway, Springsteen's name was in the headline in 28-point bold Times type. Sommer's name was beneath it in 9-point, non-bold Helvetica. If you missed the byline, you're not stupid. The page was practically designed to make sure you would. (If you made it through the story's 38 paragraphs, you also would have seen the signoff: "Not actually Bruce." And you would have been among the tiny percentage of readers that gets that far in any online article.) If you missed the humor in the piece, it's because it isn't there. And if you missed the satire, as some readers did, it may be because a) it's a believable epistle, and b) the Observer has a well-earned reputation for serious journalism and criticism. It has trained its readers to be trusting. Sommer's piece exploits that trust and subverts it. There's a reason we don't link to parody and satire on REDEF, not even on APRIL FOOLS' DAY. Satire requires context—an understanding not only of the subject, but also the voice of the satirist. Spring it on trusting and unsuspecting readers and/or remove it from the context by turning it into a link, and you're now in the business of actively fooling people, regardless of what you think your intentions are. There are enough sites trying to trick all of us; no one needs the mainstream media to add to that confusion—or to double down on it, a week later, with this self-congratulatory essay in which the Observer blames its own readers for missing the point. As if it had written "BORN IN THE USA" and we had missed the message. "It's fascinating," JUSTIN JOFFE writes in the new piece, "how so few in this country have any capacity for satire, and it's a little bit troubling, too." I assume he's referring to someone like me, but maybe in a super-satirical double-cross he's actually talking about his own paper. Or maybe there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me... CMJ's college-radio charts have gone missing... SPOTIFY adding 1,000 jobs (thank you, artists and songwriters everywhere) and moving US headquarters to 4 World Trade Center. This may be of interest to you if you're thinking of buying the company... KESHA v. DR. LUKE, continuing... ADELE "can sing, sing" whereas BEYONCÉ is just "very beautiful to look at," according to DO WE REALLY HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN?... RIP STUART MCLEAN and E-DUBBLE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Billboard |
| From Vietnam to Donald Trump: Country's history with politics is more nuanced than you think. | | |
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 | DJBooth |
| Feminists can't abandon hip-hop, and we’re not here to be your fetish. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| In the event that Spotify does not IPO, it either needs to raise more capital until it can get to profitability (which could be 3+ years away) or it needs someone to meet its $8 billion asking price. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Building a legacy of hoops, hip-hop and hope in Chicago. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Ahead of Metallica’s first U.S. tour in nearly a decade, Lars Ulrich talks about four decades with the band, staying healthy on the road, and playing to a half-million rabid fans in Moscow. | | |
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 | MTV News |
| Google and Sony want to change the way artists think about artificial intelligence. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| Watch a documentary about the rapper who went from an upbringing surrounded by violence and drug addiction to curating art shows and working with Frank Ocean. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| It’s a pattern too blatant, too in your face to ignore. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Her victory lay in refusing to make herself palatable for white viewers. | | |
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 | Thump |
| Art history tells us show don't tell. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The poet August Kleinzahler considers some recent studies on LSD's effect on music listening and remains ... unconvinced. | | |
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 | Drowned In Sound |
| What’s really being mourned is the loss of youth itself. | | |
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 | The Conversation |
| Construction should have stopped once the roofs were erected. Any citizen could then have walked up to the terraced amphitheatre, sat down and gazed back at the country from this shrine to the nation. | | |
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| Billboard |
| "Most of the people complaining are motherf***ers who don’t vote!” says Terrace Martin, a 2017 nominee (for best R&B album) and a Grammy voter. “When I go to Recording Academy events, I’m the only one there with tattoos on my neck. I’m trying to get my friends to vote. Everybody acts like they don’t give a f*** about the Grammys — until the Grammys come around.” | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Who benefited most from Sunday’s 59th Grammy Awards telecast? | | |
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 | Slate |
| The prolific songwriter and musician talks about the journey to his band’s 11th album. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| MC on seeing the world, insulting the Commander-in-Chief and how he fits into hip-hop's rich history of social critique. | | |
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 | Heavy Blog Is Heavy |
| Known internationally for his work with Shearwater, Smog/Bill Callahan, the Angels of Light, Swans, and Devendra Banhart, Thor Harris is also a legendary craftsman whose woodworking skills are apparent in the handcrafted percussive instruments he employs -- Monofonus Press. | | |
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| Dazed Digital |
| ‘It was the time for me to write an album, I was emotionally ready’ - ‘Process’, Sampha's debut soul-pop full-length, is a spellbinding journey through heartache. | | |
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 | Bandcamp Daily |
| For the last five years, Dan Peck has been melding doom’s slow-crawling bludgeoning with elements of jazz, minimalism and noise. | | |
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 | Soundcloud |
| | | | | | From "Drunk," out Feb. 24 on Brainfeeder. |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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