I have a favorite moment. The moment is when I finish the song. It's the biggest moment of all. Yesterday it didn't exist on this planet. Today it does. | | | | | MJ place setting. (Andree Kröger) | | | | | | “I have a favorite moment. The moment is when I finish the song. It's the biggest moment of all. Yesterday it didn't exist on this planet. Today it does.”
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| | rantnrave:// ROD TEMPERTON lived his life outside the spotlight, largely by design, but also by happenstance. He wrote several delicious funk and soul hits for HEATWAVE in the late 1970s but quit the band at the peak of its fame because he didn't feel like playing live anymore. He went on to became a top-shelf songwriter, with some of the most enduring copyrights of the 1980s but also with the unique achievement of having written the two songs on MICHAEL JACKSON's THRILLER that no one remembers. He was the guy in QUINCY JONES' inner circle that you only knew about because you read the small print in the album credits. Later in life, while continuing to work, he earned the nickname "MR. INVISIBLE" along with headlines like "Have you seen Rod Temperton?" By all indications, he didn't want to be seen. The reason people bothered to ask, of course, is that TEMPERTON, who died last week—fittingly, his death went unreported for several days—also wrote the title song of JACKSON's two greatest albums, including a little ditty called "THRILLER." And "ROCK WITH YOU." And this. And this. And this. And so many other tracks that helped define the sound of '80s pop. He was, as THE GUARDIAN worded it, "the effortless orchestrator of the perfect pop illusion." His lyrics were simple odes to dance and romance, more functional than poetic; he said he hated writing them. His melodies, beats and arrangements were indelible, often transcendent, odes to dance and romance. The stuff of perfect pop. "It just came straight out of him," Quincy Jones said Wednesday, "as if it were second nature." Any songwriter will tell you it's never as easy as that. But the best of them, including Temperton, make it sound like it is. RIP... A great BBC RADIO 2 documentary on Temperton from a decade ago... "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" in VR... An augmented-reality synthesizer... THE DECEMBERISTS crowdfund a board game... LAVA RECORDS CEO JASON FLOM fights for the wrongfully convicted. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The songwriter, who went from a Cleethorpes bedsit to writing Thriller for Michael Jackson, combined meticulous craft with a wide-eyed escapism which made his music irresistible. | | |
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| In an excerpt from Tim Lawrence's new book, "Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor, 1980-83," we hear how David Mancuso's The Loft became the most influential party of the 1970s. | | |
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| Chance The Rapper, Iron Maiden, Mumford & Sons, Pixies and more are getting louder and louder about what they see as the scourge of secondary ticketing. | | |
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| Bruce Springsteen goes deep on the revelations in his new memoir 'Born to Run' - from his childhood trauma to the future of E Street. | | |
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| The statistics say it all: ‘This Girl’ is a No. 1 or Top 10 hit in Argentina, Austria, Scotland, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, Italy, and the UK, and much of the rest of the world, with over 133 million streams (and counting) on Spotify and a music video that boasts 124 million YouTube views. | | |
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| This album breathes the emotive qualities of life, all of its intricacies, and allows the space for us to come to our own understanding in much the same way Vernon has. | | |
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| Every spring, the entire Coachella Valley turns into one big after-party. | | |
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| Green Day discuss Billie's sobriety, their new album "Revolution Radio," filming the "Good Riddance" video, writing "Bang Bang," and perform "Welcome to Paradise," "Holiday," Boulevard of Broken Dreams," and more. | | |
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| Paul Gambaccini profiles the British-born keyboard player and songwriter Rod Temperton, who enjoyed big disco-era success as part of Heatwave before writing hits for American R&B/pop stars like Donna Summer, George Benson, Aretha Franklin, James Ingram, Patti Austin, Herbie Hancock and, most lucratively, Michael Jackson. | | |
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| Jason Flom leads a double life. In one, he discovers artists like Katy Perry and Lorde. In the other, he helps free people from prison. | | |
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| Streaming services have changed the way superstars put out music, but fans are getting left in the cold. Will this new reality last? | | |
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| The singer’s anti-body-shaming crusade has gone to impolite places. | | |
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| ‘No Man’s Sky’ sound designer Paul Weir’s rule-based music writes itself-literally. | | |
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| From N-Trance's "Set You Free" to Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone," these soldiers guarded and unleashed positivity. But where are they now? | | |
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| Music supervision is one of those coveted jobs by individuals who are passionate about music and who sense they can match songs with images. Driving in a car listening to the right soundtrack is sometimes no different from being in a movie theater. | | |
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| Héloïse Letissier, the French singer-songwriter whose tour brings her to Terminal 5, created the fluid Christine “to feel good” in her own skin. | | |
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| Cash rules everything around me. And you. | | |
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| Deep Purple and Blue Oyster Cult are two of heavy metal’s most legendary, influential bands, but does anybody realize it? In 2016, they’re often reduced to the “the band with the song every beginner guitarist can play” and “the band with the cowbell song.” Here’s a look at their often-silenced legacies. | | |
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| 21 Savage, ManMan Savage, Lotto Savage and D Savage 3900 are all connected through one word. Find out how the term savage links them together and what it means to each rapper. | | |
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| © Copyright 2016, The REDEF Group |
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