More bands should be independent. It involves more work but you make more money. Therefore, you can work more on your music, too. | | Sheer Mag's Tina Halladay at FYF Fest, Los Angeles, Aug. 27, 2016. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | “More bands should be independent. It involves more work but you make more money. Therefore, you can work more on your music, too.” |
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| rantnrave:// Can a major rock band book a show in TEL AVIV without causing an international incident? Should it book such a show? A) No. B) Unresolved. The cultural boycott of ISRAEL turns 12 years old this month, and this summer's proxies for a debate that's a little older than that are RADIOHEAD, which plays PARK HAYARKON on July 19, and ROGER WATERS, a simpatico classic rocker who says he would be a lot more simpatico if THOM YORKE and company would cancel the gig. Which they're not going to do. They're more likely to raise a middle finger or two. Two notes, both in the interest of peace and justice: Boycotting ISRAEL over its official policies and tactics does not automatically make you anti-semitic. And playing a show in Tel Aviv does not automatically make you anti-Palestinian. This is a complex issue and there's room for debate. I'll leave it at that. And this. MusicSET: "PRO/CON: Radiohead, Roger Waters and the State of Playing Israel"... What's wrong with streaming, chapter two thousand: Most of the ABOVE THE LAW catalog is missing, including 1993's platinum BLACK MAFIA LIFE and 1994's gold UNCLE SAM'S CURSE. H/T hip-hop historian MICHAEL NAMIKAS for the missing-album info and shout-out SHAWN SETARO for his timely look at a producer and group who may have found G-funk nirvana before DR. DRE did... Music publicist in the news: ROB GOLDSTONE... Pop star in the news: EMIN AGALAROV... How to use pirate technology to make a UK radio station play a 40-year-old masturbation ditty. Repeatedly... How to use an ax to get a MASSACHUSETTS radio station to play INSANE CLOWN POSSE's "MY AXE." (Please do not do this. As for the previous thing, I have no strong opinion either way.) | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| It was the number one song in the country for six weeks in 1979, and it certainly left an impression. "My Sharona" by The Knack was an ode to a raven-haired teenager with a wonderfully unique name, Sharona Alperin, and a great, catchy pop tune fueled by a lot of angst and longing. | |
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Can a major rock band book a show in Tel Aviv without causing an international incident? Should it book such a show? The decade-plus debate over the cultural boycott of Israel rages on in summer 2017 with two rock giants as its proxies. | |
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'Beautiful Thugger Girls,' 'Thot Breaker,' and 'HNDRXX' are the summer sounds we need. | |
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“Alexa, please play the 'Moana' soundtrack.” That’s how my five-year-old daughter makes music play in our house (and yes, she says please). Alexa then replies, “Now playing the soundtrack to the motion picture 'Moana' by various artists on Spotify.” | |
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How late-70s and early-80s electronic pop from Kraftwerk, Devo, and Young Marble Giants warned us of our post-human future. | |
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The saga of the Wu-Tang Clan's "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" album, which unfolded in 2015, seemed both too good to be true and too good to ignore. | |
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Rob Goldstone, co-founder of New York-based PR company Oui 2 Entertainment, is no stranger to publicity, but this time he's in the headlines himself. He arranged the June 2016 meeting between Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr. | |
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A couple weeks ago, I received a text from my friend Mickey Melchiondo, asking if I’d be interested in putting together an oral history for the 20th anniversary of Ween’s album "The Mollusk." Of course, I gladly accepted. Mickey is perhaps better known as Dean Ween, and in the band, he’s abetted by partner Aaron Freeman, aka Gene Ween. | |
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A free, interactive web portal features more than 6,000 recordings from that music collector’s archives. But there are questions the project still must answer. | |
| The rapper and fashion designer has always forged his own path, and in the wake of speculation about his sexuality after ‘Scum F*** Flower Boy’ leaked, he’s laser-focused on everything but the haters. | |
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A working musician explores the bewildering array of digital currencies promising to fix the music industry. | |
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Musician Christian Scott discusses the complicated cultural tropes surrounding jazz, how respecting your history and trying to innovate are not opposing ideals, and why you need to understand the rules in order to throw them out and make your own. | |
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"It's a major blemish on who I am as a man,” the hip-hop mogul says in the four-part series. | |
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The "Menace II Society" director’s newest project, the four-part HBO documentary about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s partnership, finds him encountering ghosts of his rap past. | |
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On record with Jay Boberg and David Millman. | |
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The internet radio pioneer hasn’t turned a profit in 17 years. | |
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The true focus of 4:44 lies in politics, not romance. | |
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The impeding deal sets into motion succession questions at the world’s largest music publisher, run by 76-year-old power broker Martin Bandier. | |
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Bootleg pop explicitly remixes history, looks for connections and relationships. It invites you to ask critical questions (it also invites you to dance to them). What do Gary Numan and Adina Howard have in common? What don’t they? What do the Sugababes covering a bootleg add to it? | |
| | | | From "Need to Feel Your Love," out Friday on Wilsuns RC. |
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