We sell an extraordinary amount of records on Bandcamp Friday. It’s enough for me to pay for a month’s worth of groceries. It keeps lights on in my house. | | | | The future creators of #1 (right) and #4 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at Hitsville USA, Detroit, 1965.
(Gilles Petard/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “We sell an extraordinary amount of records on Bandcamp Friday. It’s enough for me to pay for a month’s worth of groceries. It keeps lights on in my house.”
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| | rantnrave:// Every generation gets the ROLLING STONE top 500 list that some previous generation deserved. The one published Tuesday morning, with the stated aim of blowing up the magazine's previous attempts at canonizing pop albums, is something of a mea culpa for lists published in 2003 and 2012 that, more or less, failed to acknowledge the existence of hip-hop as a cultural force, or the idea that women might make serious music, or the value of any music that had been recorded in the previous 15 or 20 years. Booming lists for a certain kind of boomer, they were. White men accounted for nine of the top 10 records on both (the second, to be fair, was meant as a revision of the first, but skimped on the revising). They also—and this is personal, but not just to me I suspect—ranked PRINCE as a canonical also-ran. For the 2020 version, the magazine polled a curated group of artists, music executives and critics and, voila, it has discovered hip-hop, found talented women, embraced Prince and come to the startling conclusion that essential, canonical music has been recorded in the past 20 years, by artists like KENDRICK LAMAR, BEYONCÉ, DRAKE and TAYLOR SWIFT. Notwithstanding the newer names, and your quibbles on any particular older ones, this would have been a good list to hand to curious teenagers in 1993 or 2003. Here you go, millennials, Happy belated birthday. Canonizing any art form has always been hard (though being able to ignore two-thirds of the population at any given time probably made it easier for a long time), and it's especially difficult in this post-canonical era. Canons are widely understood to be subjective and their purpose has never been less clear. Who makes them, who are they for, and why? What's the motivating point of view? What's still missing? MARVIN GAYE's WHAT'S GOING ON has been elevated to greatest album ever made and LAURYN HILL's THE MISEDUCATION OF... has shot into the top 10, but what does that mean, who needs to know and who cares? Do curriculums change? Do radio and streaming playlists change? Do shopping lists change? Is it safe to make SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (a lowly #24) disappear for a while? Will KANYE WEST's appearance at #17 (MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY, three slots above RADIOHEAD's highest entry and four above BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN's; you can take it for granted Kanye thinks that's way too low) help him in his effort to renegotiate the label deals of every artist in the known universe? Or is it simply that a 15-year-old wandering into the forests of SPOTIFY or BANDCAMP has access to a little more information than she had last week, information that might lead her to D'ANGELO's BROWN SUGAR (#183) or ALICE COLTRANE's JOURNEY IN SATCHIDANADA (#446) for the first time? That seems like a useful, valuable public service. Noble even. But is it possible to get her an advance copy of the 2030 list, the requisite revision to the revision?... SXSW hasn't completely written off real, in-person gatherings for next March—"it's pretty hard to tell," CEO ROLAND SWENSON tells the AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN—but on Tuesday the fest began laying out its plans for virtual version of is 2021 conferences. And while SXSW will begin accepting film fest submissions next month, bands and artists need not—and cannot—apply for the music fest. SXSW is curating the music programming on its own, "with priority given to showcase presenters and artists who were scheduled for the [canceled] 2020 event"... BTS fans flood public radio—with donations... DOLLY and REBA mix it up on the latter's new podcast... The people who listen to "PEOPLE WHO DIED"... Spotify's $100 million headache... RIP ROY HEAD and TOMMY DEVITO. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better. | | |
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| With artist-friendly Bandcamp Fridays and initiatives that benefit progressive causes, the online music platform has become beloved beyond its indie roots. | | |
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| The platform is filled with search-optimized spammers, and there’s no end in sight | | |
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| As the pandemic persists, the question of whether the once-growing festival would return next year, and in what form, has lingered. | | |
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| What makes hip hop un-coverable? Why don't rappers ever cover other rappers? | | |
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| How did jazz legend Viola Smith wind up in a law-breaking Christian quilting commune in an Orange County suburb? | | |
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| The day after the K-pop group performed a Tiny Desk concert, its fans are sharing screenshots of their donations. | | |
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| Singer Robin Pecknold talks about the challenges of making "Shore" -- and the decision to release it on the autumnal equinox. | | |
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| The following essay was written by Noelle Scaggs from Fitz and the Tantrums. Scaggs has a new initiative, Diversify the Stage, that aims to bring more people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals into the concert industry. | | |
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| In Nirvana's copyright dispute with Marc Jacobs over its smiley-face logo, the band said Kurt Cobain created it. Now, their art director says he did. | | |
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| Last week, Kanye West tweeted about the possibility of creating “a ‘Y combinator’ for the music industry so artist[s] have the power and transparency to to [sic] be in control of our future … no more shady contracts .. no more life long deals.” Many versions of this already exist outside the traditional label model. | | |
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| More Life In two years time, TikTok has become the premier app for content creators. Now, hip-hop songs both old and new are taking over. | | |
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| a.k.a. An interview with The Advent, co-founder of new streaming DJ platform techno-club.net. | | |
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| Considering the live versus studio debate might change how you listen to your favorite artists and albums. | | |
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| As jazz experienced an awakening in the late '60s and early '70s , a record label from Oakland was at the forefront of capturing it. Now, those records are finally returning. | | |
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| David Stewart and Jessica Agombar, the 100% writers behind Dynamite, discuss being at the center of the hurricane. | | |
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| The Moment with Brian Koppelman |
| Bob Mould, legendary Husker Du singer/songwriter on his new album and the world. | | |
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| The British band known for blending politics with personal passion is releasing a new album, “Ultra Mono,” that takes aim at faux patriotism, class inequality and sexism. | | |
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| They rehearsed in a former meat pie factory, drawing on claustrophobic 80s London to make violently anxious music -- but This Heat, finally available to stream, talk about how they wanted to appeal to everyone. | | |
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| Musician Lucinda Williams on juggling everyday life and creative work, collaborating with loved ones, staying positive, and what makes a good protest song. | | |
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| | | | | | | A live medley of the first two songs from "A Seat at the Table," #312 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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