The Rolling Stones, I didn’t relate to them because I thought they were just derivative of black blues. I do remember once I was in the supermarket up in Hudson, New York, and they were playing Top 40 records. I heard this song and thought, Who’s that guy? His playing struck a chord in me. Then I said, 'Wait a minute, that’s me!' It was my playing on one of those Rolling Stones records. | | | | Sonny Rollins at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, May 2, 1998.
(Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The Rolling Stones, I didn’t relate to them because I thought they were just derivative of black blues. I do remember once I was in the supermarket up in Hudson, New York, and they were playing Top 40 records. I heard this song and thought, Who’s that guy? His playing struck a chord in me. Then I said, 'Wait a minute, that’s me!' It was my playing on one of those Rolling Stones records.”
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| | rantnrave:// Laissez les bons temps rouler!... Prediction from PITCHFORK's reviews editor: Pop bands shall be selling their turntables and buying guitars. Or, perhaps, selling their digital apps and buying analog synths. The editor, JEREMY D. LARSON, put it this way in interview for TODD L. BURNS' excellent MUSIC JOURNALISM INSIDER newsletter: "As the market becomes saturated with songs-as-content and A.I. being able to compose entire pieces without a human even touching it, I think our relationship to music will shift toward extracting it from digital spaces." That's a weirdly Wall-Street-analyst way of putting it (invest in live-band R&B futures!), but also a reasonable assessment of pop's current direction (or one of its directions anyway). Within 10 minutes of closing my Music Journalism Insider email Monday morning, I came across two stories on the buzzy Chicago band BEACH BUNNY, whose particular extracted-from-digital approach leans toward what you might call bubblegummy emo (RIYL: CHARLY BLISS, BEST COAST, KATY PERRY) and which became an overnight TIKTOK sensation last year through no apparent effort of its own. The NEW YORKER's CARRIE BATTAN writes about how Beach Bunny's direct lyrics and short, catchy bursts of melody are tailor-made for TikTok, while PAPER's ELI ENIS talks to singer/songwriter LILI TRIFILIO, who appreciates how the app's users have engaged with her music while making clear she doesn't want to be the frontperson of a "TikTok band." "Music that blows up through social media, those bands sometimes get categorized in a certain way," Trifilio says. "Which I'm trying to avoid." Which seems the smart way to go. But she's taken a look nonetheless. Which means, based on my own 20-minute investigation, she's seen an endless scroll of teens playing her song "PROM QUEEN" on ukulele, guitar or piano, or giving a "Prom Queen" guitar tutorial, or playing all the parts in a ska arrangement of the song, or lip-syncing their way through 20- or 30-second videos that reflect the song's body-positivity message. A throwback to the days of music videos and unplugged instruments. Be still my MTV heart. And most of them with no apparent throwback intention. Just kids taking as much delight in the simple pleasure of working out pop songs on ukulele or guitar or piano as in expressing themselves with vertical videos aimed at 15 minutes (or seconds) or viral stardom but also aimed at the more basic human need of expressing something. Analog art in the digital space of the moment... DAVID MARCHESE's NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE interview with SONNY ROLLINS is as smart and insightful as music Q&As get. Q: "Is your relationship with silence different these days?" A: "I used to look at TV a lot. Then I realized, this is very negative. Images and lies and bad for your eyes: I made sure that mantra got in my head, and I stopped looking at TV. I do listen to the radio. I’m trying to get away from that. Silence to me is meditative. To get into that silent space is a huge thing"... LIVE NATION and RYMAN HOSPITALITY (parent company of the RYMAN AUDITORIUM and the GRAND OLD OPRY) are among the music stocks that took a hit Monday in a coronavirus-inspired stock market sell-off... An investigation of PLACIDO DOMINGO by the AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS, which represents opera performers, found a "clear pattern of sexual misconduct and abuse of power," the ASSOCIATED PRESS reports. A second investigation, by LA OPERA, is under way. "I accept full responsibility for my actions, and I have grown from this experience," Domingo said in a prepared statement... Prog-rock hits of 2019... RIP BOB COBERT. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The New York Times |
| “Music is not on the same level as trying to understand life.” | | |
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 | Muse by Clio |
| It was designed in part to promote an album of music from Jared Gutstadt and Jason "Poo Bear" Boyd—but ended up being a remarkable piece of storytelling in its own right, counting T Bone Burnett, Dennis Quaid, Rosanna Arquette and Bob Dylan among its collaborators. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The confessional indie-rock band captures the mood of social media, where the misery and humiliation of youth are molded into bite-size pieces of comic relief. | | |
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 | Paper |
| Lili Trifilio talks "Prom Queen," accidental viral fame, and where she's going from here. | | |
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 | The MIT Press Reader |
| Artist Michael Rakowitz charts the historical context and aftermath of a concert -- at the Ramallah Cultural Palace in Palestine -- that never happened. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| Some great names in music have slept, eaten and performed in the old farm house. The greatest stories are often written by the most inconspicuous characters. The story of Glastonbury, for instance, may have been a completely different one, had it not been for a young girl from Liverpool, who rang Michael and the late Jean Eavis’ farm in 1988 to inquire about the dates of next year's festival. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| Acronyms are flexible little phrases. Just ask the good people at World Taekwondo. The Seoul-based martial arts organization was founded in 1973 after a schism within the taekwondo community related to the Cold War. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Dig a little deeper into Indian startup Flutin, and there are some interesting lessons on how the music industry might find new ways to make a lot more money from streaming platforms in the future. | | |
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 | The Music Network |
| At least half a dozen record labels and publicists confirmed to TMN they are working on launching TikTok campaigns later this year. | | |
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 | VICE |
| VICE spoke to the creator of the "I'd Rather Be Listening to 'Smooth'" shirt for the 20th anniversary of Santana's Grammy sweep. | | |
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 | The Recoup |
| Publicist and tour manager Alan Leeds had a ringside seat as James Brown and his band navigated a land beginning to heal yet still torn by racial divide. His new memoir, "There Was A Time: James Brown, The Chitlin’ Circuit, and Me," documents this transitional era of American history. Read an excerpt. | | |
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 | MTV News |
| Not much is known about the mythic creative behind rookie group ATEEZ - until now. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Complex spent an evening in the studio with Young Nudy for a conversation about his new project 'Anyways.' | | |
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 | Variety |
| Country Radio Seminar sure seemed bullish on women, for a format recently characterized as female-unfriendly. Is the turnaround real? | | |
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 | The Creative Independent |
| Musician and producer Dan Snaith on fighting against complacency, finding comfort in certain kinds of familiarity, and making music simply because the process makes you happy | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The conductor and composer talk Beethoven, Brexit and bunking off sports day ahead of a new Barbican/LSO season that will celebrate Adès’s 50th birthday. | | |
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 | Complete Music Update |
| It's the sixth in our series of special editions of Setlist looking at some of our favourite music industry legal battles of all time. CMU's Andy Malt and Chris Cooke discuss the period in music history where the major labels attempted to curb illegal file-sharing by suing individual music fans. | | |
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 | Washed Up Emo |
| Today, we welcome a legend. Guy Picciotto from Rites of Spring and Fugazi. You may also know him from Happy Go Licky or One Last Wish. Insert another obscure band to tweet at me later. | | |
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| Pollstar |
| It’s hard to find a better example of the modern direct-to-fan, bottom-up artist development than Yung Gravy, who barely out of college now has more than 100 headline shows under his belt, 1 million-plus Instagram followers and his upcoming co-headline tour with Dillon Francis is sponsored by video sharing social network TikTok. | | |
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 | The Future of What |
| Touring has quickly become one of the most effective ways for bands and artists to earn money in the streaming era, despite the fact that getting around is more expensive than it’s ever been. Thankfully, some new technologies have made planning and booking a tour easier than ever. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | With Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, from "East Broadway Run Down" (1966), the last album Rollins would make before a six-year break from recording. |
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