It was a timely lesson in racial stereotyping. The young wealthy white entrepreneurs made a monumental hash of planning while a black-run public event, running over six Sundays, smoothly came together with no significant trouble, no arrests and no record of public inconvenience. | | | | Who'll stop the rain? Fifty years ago this weekend in Bethel, N.Y.
(John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection) | | | | | | “It was a timely lesson in racial stereotyping. The young wealthy white entrepreneurs made a monumental hash of planning while a black-run public event, running over six Sundays, smoothly came together with no significant trouble, no arrests and no record of public inconvenience.”
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| | rantnrave:// WOODSTOCK, the original, the one that doesn't have to be identified with a year or a number after it, the one that's still remembered for more or less the right reasons, turns 50 this weekend. You can celebrate in all sorts of little ways, though not the big way that the original festival's never-say-die promoters were hoping. There will be two concerts at or near the site of the original, neither of which you've heard all that much about, one featuring SANTANA, JOHN FOGERTY and RINGO STARR and the other featuring MELVIN SEALS and PINK TALKING FISH. Philadelphia's WXPN is broadcasting and streaming the audio of the entire 1969 fest in real time. There are records and movies and books, too, if you want to stay indoors with your couch and your air conditioning. There's an amazing festival in Cambridgeshire, England, that has nothing to do with any incarnation of Woodstock except in its countercultural spirit and exploratory aesthetic, and which you can get to from anywhere in New York in less time than it would have taken you to get from anywhere in New York to the town of Bethel in 1969. There's no right or wrong way to mark the occasion, no right or wrong way to respond at all, and no reason why simply dancing to your favorite music of 2019 isn't as valid a way to honor the spirit of 1969 as any other you can think of. That might even be the most appropriate way. MusicSET: "Retracing Woodstock's Three Days of Peace and Mud"... SLEATER-KINNEY is celebrating its mere 25th anniversary with today's release of its surprising ninth album, THE CENTER WON'T HOLD, its first with producer ST. VINCENT and last with drummer JANET WEISS. We look back at where the revolutionary '90s rockers came from, where they might be going, and do they still wanna be your JOEY RAMONE? MusicSET: "There's a (New) Riot Grrrl Goin' On: The Evolution of Sleater-Kinney"... SPOTIFY is raising the price of its family plan in Scandanavia, and BLOOMBERG reports that it's "a test to see whether it can raise prices around the world." Record companies have been interested in higher streaming prices for years, for obvious reasons. But they're not the ones who have to pay. Are consumers interested? Is $9.99/month the be-all and end-all of music pricing, or will music services discover that they, like NETFLIX, have gained some flexibility?... You can favorite it, you can play it on repeat, you can add it to a dozen playlists, but as long as you're doing this in the streaming world, you don't own it, and one day it might disappear just like that... It's FRIDAY and that means there's also new music from YOUNG THUG, KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, RED HEARSE, CURREN$Y, SNOOP DOGG, the HOLD STEADY, LILLIE MAE, BLANCK MASS, A$AP FERG, HUNTER HAYES, FRANK TURNER, SHURA, RIDE, OSO OSO, RODNEY CROWELL, EILEN JEWELL, MADISON CUNNINGHAM, BOBBY RUSH, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS, UNIFORM & THE BODY, SNOH ALLEGRA, the MURDER CAPITAL, TAYLOR MCFERRIN, MARIA USBECK, OH SEES, DREW HOLCOMB & THE NEIGHBORS, P-LO, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, HAMMERFALL, LOSCIL, THIRD WORLD, JASON LYTLE and the QUALITY CONTROL comp CONTROL THE STREETS VOL. 2... RIP RICHARD GILLIS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Dear Shawn Corey Carter, First, I would like to tell you personally that I believe you are the greatest rapper who ever lived. I'm sure you've heard this before and I know that it is useless to debate such a subjective topic but it is important to know that, aside from being my favorite rapper, you are also my favorite musician, period. | | |
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| Backlash to Jay-Z's partnership with the NFL, invoking the treatment of Colin Kaepernick, is shortsighted | | |
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| "It's crazy how any baby born after March has not lived in a world where 'Old Town Road' wasn't number 1." | | |
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| Before Afropunk, Nina Simone, Sly Stone, Mahalia Jackson and more graced a Harlem stage in 1969. | | |
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| One day a few years ago, Mauri Tapia, the artist who performs as Los Retros, was riding around Oxnard with his dad. The car stereo was turned up, blasting the stuff his parents typically played around the house, when Tapia had a realization. | | |
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| MBW estimates that Universal, Sony and Warner are now collectively worth just shy of $89bn. | | |
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| NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Patricia Wulf, a mezzo-soprano who says she was uncomfortable with aggressive advances made by revered opera star Plácido Domingo. | | |
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| 'Music is universal. It should be open.' | | |
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| How are albums adapting and changing in the digital world? James Moore is looking for clues as to where the art form might be headed. | | |
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| His early-Eighties band Hellhammer was the laughingstock of the metal underground. Now, nearly 40 years later, the former Celtic Frost leader is enjoying a "mindblowing" resurgence. | | |
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| As with so much else these days, the areas around superstar cities claim an outsized share of the country's largest music festivals. | | |
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| In the 50 years since Woodstock, music festivals have grown DIY, communal events into major moneymakers in a competitive industry. | | |
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| The standard formula we’ve all grown used to-the R&B-friendly rap song packaged to reach mass appeal-is nearly absent from the Hot 100 at the moment. | | |
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| Artists’ revenue streams “look, sound and act really differently from a membership.” | | |
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| On his first album in eight years, named after his brother “Jimmy Lee,” the singer and producer brings his family’s tragedies into his music. | | |
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| The techno legend talks Detroit, the state of the scene and his orchestra work. | | |
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| A crowded music festival market and the changing tastes of younger generations means the Woodstock has lost a lot of its cultural cache and may no longer be so relevant to music fans. | | |
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| Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play and Pandora have filed their appeal of the Copyright Royalty Board's mechanical rate determination. | | |
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| Artists now get the most out of their music with re-released projects, visual albums, and more. But how much is too much? | | |
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| Remembering the radical sounds surrounding one of America’s greatest novelists | | |
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| © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group |
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