What I want from music is someone to speak to me with this knowledge of everything that’s going on... There’s a way artists can talk about whatever they need to and have it resonate with what’s going on in the world. | | | | Slaves drummer Isaac Holman preparing for the next Summer Olympics, Manchester, Nov. 30, 2017.
(Visionhaus/Corbis/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “What I want from music is someone to speak to me with this knowledge of everything that’s going on... There’s a way artists can talk about whatever they need to and have it resonate with what’s going on in the world.”
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| | rantnrave:// Come on RADIOHEAD, lay off LANA DEL REY. Yes, the verses of her "GET FREE" sound strikingly like "CREEP," with a similar (but not the same) melody winding its way over the same quirky cycle of four chords, transposed up a minor third. Not unlike the way the entirety of "Creep" sounds strikingly like the verses of the HOLLIES' '70s pop classic "THE AIR THAT I BREATHE," transposed down a major third. ALBERT HAMMOND and MIKE HAZLEWOOD, who wrote that one (Hammond recorded it first), sued Radiohead all those years ago and walked away with songwriting credits and a cut of the royalties. And now—well, to be fair, we're not quite sure what's going on now, except that according to reporting that's based entirely on a Del Rey tweet from Sunday and some comments she made onstage that night, Radiohead is either suing her, threatening to sue her, talking about suing her, or something. We do know this, from Del Rey: Radiohead "want 100% of the publishing—I offered up to 40 over the last few months but they will only accept 100. Their lawyers have been relentless, so we will deal with it in court." Radiohead hasn't said a word in public. It's not clear exactly who is, or would be, doing the suing. But do you need to do this, guys (or guys' lawyers)? One hundred percent? Of a song that borrows some chords that you borrowed from someone else for a couple verses? And which then morphs into a girl-group heaven of a chorus that has nothing to do with the air that any rock creep has ever breathed, at least not these particular rock creeps (OK, disclaimer: I love Radiohead and the Hollies and Albert Hammond)? But which maybe cribs notes here, there and everywhere from some other pop group that's either too unaware or too smart or too generous to sue for its share? Because to some extent, obviously, that's how all pop songs work. And this particular pop song (written, at least for now, by Del Rey, RICK NOWELS and KIERON MENZIES) is a particularly good example of making something new out of something old. A worthwhile contribution to pop literature. Get on the phone, get your 25 percent or whatever, 40 percent, sure, and move on and let Lana Del Rey move on, too, and let more pop songs with more minor fourth chords be written and recorded and celebrated for what they are rather than for what they sound like... What the legal experts say... KANYE WEST at the DEF POETRY JAM in 2003... Nothing to hear here, just four full-length demo tapes KURT COBAIN gave his friend JOHN PURKEY starting in 1988... No gimmicks, no shoutout to the president who was watching the game (but who apparently left at halftime), no props except for his knee-length winter coat and some upstage flash pots, and seemingly mixing live rap with lip-syncing, KENDRICK LAMAR simply did Kendrick Lamar for 8 or 9 minutes at halftime of college football's championship game Monday night. While also appearing to chew gum the entire time. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Wired UK |
| Deep in Amish country, Tait Towers designs live sets for the world's biggest music acts. Its aim? To make rock stars’ visions come alive. | | |
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 | Consequence of Sound |
| A track-by-track primer on the ins and outs of the forthcoming public offering. | | |
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 | NewMusicBox |
| In July 2016, I received a call from Monadnock Media asking if I’d be interested in scoring one of their short films intended for the soon-to-be-opened Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Monadnock’s style was about the closest marriage between music and picture I’d encountered in over two decades of film composing. | | |
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 | Cocaine & Rhinestones |
| Some people think we have all these “authenticity tests” in country music. We don’t. There’s only one test. Wynonna passed it. Then, everyone thought she’d cheated. The answers lie somewhere in her past. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| The singer-songwriter moved from Nova Scotia to Texas sight unseen. Her new music is just as bold. | | |
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 | Huck Magazine |
| Crissi Vassilakis is living the dream. Between DJing around the world and putting on club nights to showcase her favourite artists, she runs her own independent label: a home for talent so forward-thinking they defy genre. This is how she does it. | | |
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 | The Trichordist |
| Artists Rights advocate Blake Morgan (#IRespectMusic) published a story in the Huffington Post this morning critical of Spotify. The story was rapidly gaining traction when it was suddenly deleted and Morgan received an email from the Huffington Post. Here's the piece in its entirety. | | |
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 | TrackRecord |
| At the 2018 Golden Globes Awards on Sunday night (Jan 7), attendees wore black as an expression of solidarity with the #MeToo movement and as a sign of protest against sexual misconduct and abuse in the entertainment industry. | | |
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 | Hypebeast |
| Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Pump and others are leaving drugs in 2017. | | |
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 | Village Voice |
| Lip-synching deserves a bad rap when it is used to cover up a new artist’s inability. But more often, lip-synching is used to guarantee a good performance, not to disguise failure. | | |
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 | Tube Filter |
| Spotify’s decision to go public is only the latest, potentially biggest illustration of the hot market for online audio, music and voice-activated services. It also may transform how some companies go public. | | |
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 | Pigeons & Planes |
| For a while, "SoundCloud rap" described a very specific moment in music history, but the term no longer makes sense. Here's why. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| At the West End première, there was knowing laughter when King George cautioned the newly independent colonies, “Oceans rise. Empires fall.” | | |
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 | Vice |
| We talk about the punk musician's transformation from music industry anti-hero to media darling on 'The VICE Guide to Right Now Podcast.' | | |
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 | Billboard |
| As the Jan. 12 deadline for Oscar nominations voting approaches, expect songs from socially conscious-oriented films and entries from past winners to dominate the best original song category. This year, 70 tunes are in consideration, down from 91 songs last year. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The original score for the 1979 film was never used because the director, Francis Ford Coppola, had a falling out with the composer, David Shire. The lost music is being released for the first time. | | |
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 | KCRW |
| We kick off 2018’s live performance calendar with one of our favorite singer-songwriters - Brandi Carlile. She’s here to play new songs in advance of the February release date for her album "By The Way, I Forgive You." | | |
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 | Variety |
| More than 20 prominent music organizations representing U.S. music publishers, record labels, songwriters, composers, artists and performance rights organizations today formally announced their united support for key pieces of pending music legislation, in a joint press release issued by the National Music Publishers' Association. | | |
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 | Boing Boing |
| Get ready to go down a rabbit hole of musique concrète documentaries, of which this one from 1979 was by far the most informative. | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| Decaying tapes and a true American eccentric. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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