I didn’t like the blues because I didn’t like what they were singing about. The blues can bring you down a little. I like to be a little bit up, and as soon as I left Ike, I never sung heavy, heavy rhythm and blues any more... That was the change in my life, to enjoy singing. | | | | Tarriona Ball of Tank & the Bangas at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Oct. 8, 2017.
(Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I didn’t like the blues because I didn’t like what they were singing about. The blues can bring you down a little. I like to be a little bit up, and as soon as I left Ike, I never sung heavy, heavy rhythm and blues any more... That was the change in my life, to enjoy singing.”
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| | rantnrave:// Love this longread on the women in the GRATEFUL DEAD's orbit, including recording engineer BETTY CANTOR-JACKSON and lighting designer CANDACE BRIGHTMAN, which details their immense contributions to the band while shining a diffuse light on the sexism of the classic-rock era. They weren't abuse victims; rather, they were victims of the casual sexism that permeated every level of society and culture, even in the world of blissed-out rock and roll adventurers. Cantor-Jackson: "The only way I could get things done was to ask stupid questions that actually weren't stupid." Brightman (referring to venue crews, not the Dead itself): "They hated having women do anything." Longtime publicist and Dead historian DENNIS MCNALLY (referring to the band itself): "The Grateful Dead were, absolutely, sexist." These were adults working with relatively liberated, open-minded, intelligent men. How could a 15-year-old girl at a random rock show in PITTSBURGH or ATLANTA have any chance? When the #MeToo movement looks back and re-evaluates things that were laughed off, even encouraged, decades ago, this is why. It's not about the specific moments. It's about the culture that created those moments. Also, of course, cheers to these strong, talented women who played such key roles in the music despite all that... Cheers as well to BET.COM, which on Tuesday premiered an online series, BEAUTY & THE BEATS, about women producing and recording hip-hop and pop today. The first episode features SHAKARI "TRAKGIRL" LINDER-BOLES, who got a job at MCDONALD's to save up money for her first drum machine and has gone on produce JHENÉ AIKO, NO I.D. and many others, while listening to "horror stories of producer friends not being credited and not being paid for their tracks." That part, by the way, isn't specifically a female thing. Linder-Boles is the founder of PAY US TODAY, a collective working to increase credit and pay for all creatives... CUPCAKKE's often-hilarious videos are without a doubt NSFW, but if YOUTUBE, which briefly pulled several of them down Tuesday because of sexual content and nudity, thinks they're the most offensive thing on the site, its censors might want to look a little harder. To YouTube's credit, a rep from the site told PITCHFORK, after the videos were restored, "sometimes we make the wrong call." Dear everybody else on the internet: That doesn't look like it would be all that hard to say, does it? Just in case... RIP GREG SILL. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | NPR Music |
| Stories of the women of the Grateful Dead. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| After earning millions from Delicious Vinyl, Dike bought a mansion atop a hill in Echo Park and retreated completely from public life. For the next quarter-century, he led a nearly hermitic existence, surrounded by his collections, taking drugs, reaching out to friends via text message and telephone, cruising down the hill in his VW Beetle to Trader Joe's for supplies and returning home. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| SXSW used to suck, but so did I. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| While aging rock stars attack the standard corporate villains, the nimble FX show sketches an ecosystem of exploitation. | | |
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 | Passion of the Weiss |
| 03 Greedo returns with the excellent ‘The Wolf of Grape Street.’ Rosecrans Vic breaks it down. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Thomas Mapfumo, a leading chimurenga singer whose music championed Zimbabwe’s war for independence, returns to his country after a decade of self-imposed exile. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Industry insiders on why, now more than ever, placement on hit soundtracks like 'Black Panther' is a key step in a rising act's pop breakthrough. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| The acclaimed podcast returns on Spotify to examine hip-hop’s intersection with other areas of society through thoughtful conversations with a range of guests. | | |
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| Noisey |
| A behind the scenes look at the logistics behind booking 2,000 bands-from breakout youngsters like Starcrawler to solo guitar experimentalists like Yonatan Gat to freaky jazz phenoms like Ezra Collective-playing on 100 stages in 6 days. | | |
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 | Stroke 9 |
| As a not-dead-yet member of a still-existing-but-slowly-fading one-hit-wonder, I am often asked at cocktail parties and police line-ups “What was it really like?” Sure there’s shows and tour buses and stuff. But this is the story I like to tell. This is what is was really like. | | |
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 | The Times |
| One of the greatest rock’n’roll voices is the subject of a new musical. Welcome to the incredible world of Tina Turner. | | |
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 | Very Smart Brothas |
| On Friday, March 16, 2018, the good Lord saw fit to release music for the homies through his shepherd, Snoop Dogg. Pun intended. Because shepherd...and dog. You get it? Right. | | |
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 | NME |
| Forget the denim vests and scraggly beards of metal lore - these are the acts opening modern-day mosh-pits, and breaking down barriers in the process. | | |
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 | Variety |
| As the MMA moves closer to a vote in Congress, those of us who have refrained from joining the cheering squad have had time to study its details and likely long-term consequences. The more we’ve looked at it, the more concerned we’ve become. | | |
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| NPR Music |
| Over the last five years, a gradual evolution - characterized by careful and savvy boundary pushing - has taken hold in a genre where innovation always tugs against preservation. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| When exactly did Nashville become "New?" There's no one right answer, of course - but few moments were more pivotal for the city's cultural evolution than that time in 2005, when one of the biggest rock stars in the world decided to make a home in the country music capital. | | |
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 | Lefsetz Letter |
| From his first promoting gig working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Run-DMC to all the years building Def Jam to signing Fetty Wap to his hip-hop label 300, Lyor Cohen has put the music first. In his new role as head of music for YouTube/Google, he dedicates himself to preserving diversity amidst an ever consolidating media landscape. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Chance sits down with Pitchfork contributor Adrienne Samuels Gibbs for an interview at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art | | |
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 | Village Voice |
| The republication of Val Wilmer’s “As Serious as Your Life” from 1977 resonates today. | | |
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 | Broadly |
| Singing at her grandmother's funeral inspired Penelope Shipley to start a business and do the same for other people's families. “The idea has always been to help people," she says. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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