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If 10 men can write 23% of the top hits across seven years, so can 10 women.
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Back that sax up: The Sun Ra Arkestra's Danny Thompson in Amsterdam, April 15, 1984.
(Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images)
Thursday - March 12, 2020 Thu - 03/12/20
rantnrave:// You've probably received a steady drip of emails over the past few days from clubs, theaters, museums and any number of other places you patronize explaining what they're doing about the coronavirus. More cleaning and disinfecting than usual. Staff taking extra precautions. Likely canceling or postponing some events where traveling is involved; possibly canceling a lot of events. Most of us will make our own choices from there. Employees, from door people to sound people to cleaning people to bartenders, may not have much choice. Keep them in your thoughts, and in your plans. Give all those places, and all those employees, the benefit of the doubt. If an event is moved or canceled or, maybe most inconveniently of all, it actually takes place, accept the decision and go with the flow. Your inconvenience, my inconvenience, are not the biggest concern right now. Venues owe you cleanliness, honesty and every safety measure they can reasonably offer. They owe you nothing else. (I have mixed feelings about whether they owe you your money back at this exact moment. Airlines should refund your ticket price immediately, no questions asked. The punk club around the corner? Maybe give it a little leeway. SXSW and ULTRA? I confess I don't have a take on that. We're in uncharted territory. I mean, they probably do, eventually. But right now, I don't know, maybe not. Live music companies are taking a beating, along with everyone else, and some are fighting for their lives.) The NBA, meanwhile, has put its entire season on hiatus, after one basketball player tested positive for the virus. An extreme measure and quite possibly the right one. If the hiatus lasts for the rest of the season, it will cost every team in the league seven or eight home games, which, financially speaking, is the equivalent of a venue or promoter losing seven or eight arena concerts. Which is huge. Playoff teams could be giving up twice as many games. But when public health is at stake, what else should matter? If it has to be done, if it should be done, it *can* be done. Assume it will... Writing about anything else seems weird at the moment, but if our spirits could use one thing, it's art. We can share that whether we're quarantining ourselves or not, and we should. (HIPGNOSIS' MERCK MERCURIADIS on the market implications of this particular spiritual need: "Songs are one of the very few precious assets that have little or no correlation to the wider stock market. If you are having the time of your life you are celebrating with music; equally, if you are experiencing challenges, you are escaping with music. Great songs are always being consumed." I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.) Right now, BRANDY CLARK's luxurious-sounding throwback country is hitting me hard, and not just because of the political resonance of the one with RANDY NEWMAN that starts "We're either all the way left or all the way right / The only time we meet in the middle is to fight / The rich get richer, the less get a little more broke." JHENÉ AIKO's deceptively silky R&B, too ("I'm triggered when I see your face / Triggered when I hear your name / Triggered, I am not OK"). This SONNY ROLLINS jam from 1966 (with JIMMY GARRISON and ELVIN JONES) has been playing on repeat for a few weeks here, lifting my soul every time. Consume that... And, yes, do some physical consuming, too, if you can... RIP BRYAN DILWORTH.
- Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator
i only had a corona
Rolling Stone
‘Everything Is in Chaos’: The Concert Business Stands to Lose Billions From Coronavirus
by Samantha Hissong and Ethan Millman
Covid-19 has upended both SXSW and Coachella, but more disruptions are on the way as the live music industry scrambles to change course.
Pitchfork
What Happens When a Music Festival Is Canceled Due to Coronavirus?
by Marc Hogan
As festivals like Coachella and SXSW are canceled or postponed due to COVID-19, fans, artists, and organizers face complicated financial repercussions.
BBC News
BTS and EXO: The soft power roots of K-pop
by Christine Ro
The wave of South Korean pop culture around the world hasn’t happened by accident - it was a deliberate government plan. And it has even reached North Korea.
Music Business Worldwide
Tencent Music isn’t actually a Chinese company. Why should the global music business care?
by Cherie Hu
Why the company's Cayman Islands setup should be closely scrutinized by music's biggest companies.
Variety
How the Music Industry Can Do Better for Female Songwriters and Producers
by Molly Neuman
If 10 men can write 23% of the top hits across seven years, so can 10 women.
Stereogum
Code Orange’s Heel Turn
by Ian Cohen
Pittsburgh's punishingly heavy lightning rods on new album 'Underneath.'
Detroit Metro Times
Marisa Dabice of Mannequin Pussy won’t let punk rock die on her watch
by Jerilyn Jordan
Asking Marisa Dabice if there's anything she'd like to get off her chest is like tossing a full gas can into a volcano - a slow and deliberate explosion bright beneath the surface.
Fast Company
The 10 most innovative music companies of 2020
BTS’s secret weapon, Billie Eilish’s merch machine, and more novel ways in which the music industry is reinventing itself.
Variety
‘High Fidelity’ Gets So Many Things Right -- Did It Get the Music Wrong?
by Jem Aswad
Even with the miraculous Second Coming of vinyl, the prospects for a successful reboot of the record-store drama " High Fidelity " seemed grim. Twenty years after the John Cusack film, nearly 25 after Nick Hornby's novel, the shrines to vinyl depicted in the book and movie are virtually extinct.
BBC News
Coronavirus: The boy behind the Wash Your Lyrics site
William Gibson, 17, says he wanted to give the public more options than just singing Happy Birthday.
five cent deposit
DJ Mag
How much of UK dance music history is real?
by Matt Anniss
Every era of British dance music has its myths and over-simplified narratives - hell, even little known local scenes have urban legends.
Disgraceland
Disgraceland: Guns N’ Roses (Part 1)
by Jake Brennan
Brawling with David Bowie, juvenile delinquency, dealing dope and two dead at Donington.
Complex
Managing Artists Can Be a Chess Match But Ebonie Ward’s a Grandmaster
by Chris Kerr
Music manager Ebonie Ward shares how taking a risk helped her become the rep for Atlanta’s biggest artists, including Future, Gunna, Turbo, Wheezy & Freebandz.
Touré Show
Dame Dash--I Am The Man
by Touré and Dame Dash
Dame Dash is an entrepreneur as done by a street brawler. He’s a hustler, he’s brilliant, he’s a bully, he’s a wild man. He’s Harlem through and through. With me he opens up about the worst thing that’s ever happened to him and how it helped him become a truly liberated person and what it’s like to deal with diabetes and what makes him really sad and his time with Aaliyah.
Vulture
Close the Theaters. Close the Opera. Close the Concert Halls. Now
by Justin Davidson
Yes, it will be brutal to the performing-arts economy. It’s also necessary.
Penny Fractions
A Tale of Two Music Co-ops
by David Turner
The platform (be it Resonate, Spotify, YouTube, etc.) is not where I think the power ultimately lies within the current record industry. Rather, it rests, as it always has, in the labor of musicians.
The Guardian
‘I never got to thank him’: fans mourn a generation of rappers dying young
by Dean Van Nguyen
Rap’s young stars connect with their audience on a deep emotional level -- so it’s especially devastating when they die, as those fans explain.
Trapital
What Megan Thee Stallion’s Lawsuit Won’t Solve
by Dan Runcie
Both Megan Thee Stallion and Carl Crawford would have benefited from increased transparency that the industry needs.
Los Angeles Times
Burt Bacharach, 91, would love to collaborate with Billie Eilish. Who says no?
by Randy Lewis
Legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach just signed a new publishing deal.
Audiophile Review
I Can't Believe I Just Spent $150 on Compact Discs
by Jerry Del Colliano
Jerry Del Colliano gets the physical media experience again.
MUSIC OF THE DAY
YouTube
"Virus"
Björk
From "Biophilia" (2011).
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