Music gives people hope. The justification for [emergency relief for venues] is the same as for keeping art in schools and funding the NEA. | | | | The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle at ACL Live, Austin, July 14, 2017.
(Gary Miller/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Music gives people hope. The justification for [emergency relief for venues] is the same as for keeping art in schools and funding the NEA.”
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| | rantnrave:// Monday, November 16. For me, this is eight months to the day. Eight months of no clubs, no theaters, no arenas (OK, a lot more than eight months of no arenas; I don’t particularly like arenas). Eight months here in LA. But also eight months in Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, in Washington, in Nashville in Raleigh, in Miami, in Nashville, in Dallas, in Phoenix, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco. (And in cities across so many other countries, obviously.) Eight months of silence. We’ve all made our accommodations and most of us, I believe, have found ways to bring back the noise in our own ways. There are still, of course, concerts in various forms: livestreams, drive-in shows, impromptu street parties, socially distanced indoor experiments, and a few too many other promoted in defiance of the virus. There are records. But for most live-music spaces, there is little besides a long wait for governmental assistance that hasn’t come and proposals for private assistance that (paywall) may or may not work (and, I should add, an association, NIVA, formed earlier this year, that's been fighting fiercely for its members). There are musicians and crews and club and theater employees whose stories, no matter where they are—the TROUBADOUR in LA, the VAN BUREN in Phoenix, the WICKED WITCH in Raleigh, OTTOBAR in Baltimore, etc etc etc—are remarkably similar. And which need to be heard, and shared. MusicSET: "Not Enjoying the Silence: Venues in the Age of Covid"... This Austin recording studio has figured out a way to weather the pandemic. One rule: After every session, the singer’s microphone is quarantined for 60 days. "If it’s a really good vocal," the co-owner of the BUBBLE tells Spin, "God knows what’s happening to that microphone"... Not so fortunate is GUITAR CENTER, which says it's likely to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy... TOWER RECORDS has returned as a not-very-well designed online merchandiser of vinyl, cassettes and merch, complete with a revived PULSE! magazine, if you can call a random blog written by one person Pulse! magazine, which I'll leave to your discretion... In normal years they move bands. Now they're offering to move your family (h/t JASON ROTH)... If you don't subscribe to Rolling Stone, this lengthy conversation between TAYLOR SWIFT or PAUL MCCARTNEY is a good reason to do so. Paul, we learn, was "the guy in the BEATLES that would write to journalists and say: 'We are a semiprofessional rock combo, and I’d think you’d like [us]. We’ve written over 100 songs (which was a lie), my friend John and I.'" Also, he was going to invite her to play "SHAKE IT OFF" with him at GLASTONBURY this past summer... SHYNE, the one-time BAD BOY rapper who spent nine years in prison after a shooting inside a New York club, was elected last week to the House of Representatives in his native Belize... RIP DOUG SUPERNAW, WALTER C. MILLER, DES O’CONNOR, DAVID ELLIOTT, BEN KOUIJZER and KELLY CORRIGAN. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| From New York to Baltimore to Nashville to Dallas to San Francisco and everywhere in between, indie music venues are fighting for their lives, lobbying for government help and being as creative as they can in the meantime. Here are state-of-the-scene reports from cities across America. | | |
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| Olia Ougrik’s path forward after the terror attack at the Bataclan. | | |
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| The exclusive new audio-chat app Clubhouse is a hit with music executives, especially in hip-hop. Will it be able to keep the VIPs tuning in once the velvet rope lifts? | | |
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| The biggest music industry opportunity is not licensing music. It is monetising fandom. | | |
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| Afrobeats musicians and music audiences around the world are immensely indebted to Fela Kuti for the enormous sacrifices he made to lay the solid foundations on which the genre stands. | | |
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| Two weeks ago, Drakeo the Ruler was staring down the possibility of 25 to life despite being previously acquitted of murder charges related to a 2016 killing. Today, he’s a free man. In his first interview since his release, the South L.A. rapper discusses his case, how prosecutors weaponized his lyrics against him, and his plans for his music. | | |
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| Singer-songwriters Isbell and Shires were dumbfounded that Wednesday's CMA Awards didn't honor John Prine or Billie Joe Shaver, or promote mask-wearing. "This was kind of the final straw for us," Isbell says. | | |
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| Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 and the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers explains the 'Justice at Spotify' campaign. | | |
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| The rules that used to govern mankind seem bent and broken. As such, let’s talk about Christmas. | | |
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| Relentless Records boss says children’s song has given label flexibility to support acts such as Headie One. | | |
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| The Austin music scene is still thriving in The Bubble, an independent recording studio with a vision for the future. | | |
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| In a year when it's largely been impossible to see live music, a major source of discovering new artists has been eliminated. But music finds a way and plenty of acts have emerged over the last 12 months. | | |
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| In an appreciation, Ehrlich writes that his Grammys collaborator for nearly 30 years "wrote the book" on awards-show direction... a book that happened to include a few choice four-letter words. | | |
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| The men's bathing pond in London's Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music's legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation. | | |
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| Spotify has announced it’s cutting royalties in exchange for an algorithm boost. It’s the latest in a series of moves damaging an industry already on its knees. | | |
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| A new wave of renegades are ripping up the Nashville rulebook and redefining roots music for a new, conscious generation. Alli Patton speaks to two of its stars, Margo Price and Brent Cobb. | | |
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| Under its new artistic director, the cross-cultural music organization will start a project devoted to the transcontinental railroad. | | |
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| The crash has happened, the music industry has gone down with the Dow, and there’s no sign of anyone reviving it. I therefore approached this year with low expectations. I was wrong. | | |
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| Guitar Center Inc., the largest musical instrument retailer in the U.S., said it expected to file for bankruptcy after reaching an agreement to restructure its debt. | | |
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| One King Down/Most Precious Blood/Take Life vocalist Rob Fusco discusses the craft of lyric writing and execution with a variety of his extreme music contemporaries from Napalm Death, Lamb of God, Lingua Ignota and more. | | |
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| | | | | | | Haunting. Stunning. From "Getting Into Knives," out now on Merge. |
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