Our first real gig was opening for a bunch of punk bands from the South Bay and Orange County area. We really had to earn our stripes and not have things thrown at us. So we played our pop songs with our four-part harmonies really fast, with a lot of energy and attitude. And we went over really well. | | | | The Bangles performing on German TV, November 1988.
(Bernd Mueller/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Our first real gig was opening for a bunch of punk bands from the South Bay and Orange County area. We really had to earn our stripes and not have things thrown at us. So we played our pop songs with our four-part harmonies really fast, with a lot of energy and attitude. And we went over really well.”
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| | rantnrave:// The rise and fall of LIL NAS X's trap-beat-and-banjo ditty "OLD TOWN ROAD" on the BILLBOARD country chart, where it debuted at #19 last week before being de-listed by the magazine this week, is a perfect American music story for 2019. It starts with a viral hit on TIK TOK and SOUNDCLOUD, cycles through 20 million-plus YOUTUBE views (is that still considered good? I've lost perspective), draws relevant cultural energy from the fashion/style world, and ends, for now, in a case of disputed/rejected/debated cultural and sonic identity. Can a trap artist unilaterally decide his song is a country song? Can the country establishment summarily decide it isn't? Is "Old Town Road" an interloper that Nashville must repel, as the purist blog SAVING COUNTRY MUSIC demands, or part of an "evolution of country music" that Nashville should embrace, as the hip-hop site OKAYPLAYER suggests? Is there room for bipartisan culture in a partisan world? How does a trade magazine mediate these things in an era of user-generated justice? Can a song simultaneously exist in hip-hop and country without destroying the world? If "OLD TOWN ROAD" must go, must SAM HUNT's "BODY LIKE A BACK ROAD" go with it? Whose heritage is? Or was this all just a big mistake? ROLLING STONE's ELIAS LEIGHT on the country hit that country changed its mind about... We take it for granted now, at least I think we do, that biracial bands mixing new-wave rock guitars with ska/reggae toasting, among other things, make perfect sense. Which makes it hard to remember how radical/revolutionary it was when the ENGLISH BEAT arrived at the vanguard of the 2-TONE movement in the late '70s. Cultural and sonic norms were under attack (and it was good). With DAVE WAKELING and RANKING ROGER in front of a hell of a band, the Beat released three perfect albums, and if you assumed the former brought the punk energy and the latter brought the reggae vibes, think again. "Most of the time it’s dead the other way around!," Roger told SPIN magazine in 1985, after he and Wakeling ditched the band and formed GENERAL PUBLIC. "Roger," said Dave, "was a much bigger punk than I ever was." So put your cultural assumptions back in your pocket and pour a drink for Ranking Roger Charlery, who succumbed to cancer Tuesday... The EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT passed sweeping copyright reform Tuesday, including the controversial ARTICLE 13, which is a win for musicians and a loss for SILICON VALLEY. It's also complicated, not-quite-written-in-ink and there are questions. WIRED tackles some of them in this helpful explainer... This is the only take on ALANIS MORISSETTE you need to read this week... The GRAMMY eligibility year will end on Aug. 31 instead of Sept 30 this year, on account of the 2020 Grammys being held earlier than. So hurry up, ADELE... If JUSSIE SMOLLETT did what prosecutors in Chicago still seem to think he did, then he would deserve our contempt, as I've laid out in this space before. But I'm onboard with this legal take on why a trial and prison still would have been the wrong way to go... RIP DJ AMAR. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Pitchfork |
| With an uncompromising vision and the studio hours to back it up, the enigmatic singer is back with a new single--and a promise that her first album in six years will be worth the wait. | | |
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 | Wired |
| Renick Bell is standing in front of his computer at a small table in the middle of the dance floor. The stoic, bespectacled musician types quickly and efficiently, his eyes locked to his computer screen. Around him in a wide circle, the crowd bobs to his music. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| The viral phenomenon blew up so fast radio professionals had to rip it from YouTube to play it on the air, and the music industry is still scrambling to decide what, exactly, to call it. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The definition of what it means to be an independent musician is more complicated than one might think. It comes down to market share, ownership and so much more. | | |
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 | Variety |
| The fallout from Friday's (Mar. 22) premiere of Netflix's few-holds-barred Motley Crue biopic, "The Dirt," began even before the film, which focuses on the quartet's '80s-'90s decade of decadence, was released. | | |
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 | NME |
| Columnist Mark Beaumont thinks Daltrey was talking about the wrong generation. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The National Press Photographers Association, along with the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and others, issued a letter requesting the pop star change her policies. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| The London-based band talks art, the origins of their name, and video games. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| An extensive examination of country music's black origins and lasting impact on black artistry, from the 1920s to 2019. | | |
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 | Trap Lore Ross |
| Vitamin Water was founded in 1996 by Darius Bickle. He came up with the idea after feeling rundown and taking some vitamin C tablets with water. As he was sucking that vitamin C tablet and drinking that water he had a thought that could have come from Atlanta legend Future himself. What if I could enjoy these things at the same damn time? | | |
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 | Wired UK |
| Article 13 of the EU's new copyright directive has sparked huge controversy online, with YouTube campaigning strongly against the proposal. We explain why. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| Nat Turner Rebellion’s never-released "Laugh to Keep From Crying," untouched for nearly 50 years, will arrive via Vinyl Me, Please and Drexel University’s MAD Dragon Records. | | |
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 | Refinery29 |
| Cassadee Pope blew up her whole life while making her second album, "Stages": she ditched her finacé, her label, her manager, and her music publishing deal. | | |
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 | The FADER |
| The photographer spent the last two decades capturing the likes of Drake, Erykah Badu, Mac Miller, and more. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Rave veterans are mingling with newer recruits both on the dancefloor and behind the decks. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| “From the start, the brief wasn’t really a brief. It was just: This is our audience, this is what we’re trying to sell them.” | | |
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 | SPIN |
| General Public's Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling spoke to Spin after the release of their debut album "All the Rage." | | |
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 | Trapital |
| Today's artists want what Master P achieved, but they need to understand why his record label's strategy would be less effective today. | | |
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| Variety |
| Nobody in economics lavished as much loving attention on the field of music as former White House chief economic advisor Alan Krueger, who died March 16 at age 58. | | |
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 | Radical Research |
| As Pythagoras mused, “There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.” So too is there magical energy in the shapely contours of the most mathematical rock music. In this episode of Radical Research, we trace out a heritage of calculus embodied by bands on the acute end of the rock spectrum. | | |
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