When people say, 'Stay in your lane, you're a musician, so you should only talk about music,' what do you think songs are written about? | | | | Ezra Collective's Femi Koleoso at the Jazz Re:freshed showcase at SXSW, March 14, 2018.
(Jason Bollenbacher/Getty Images) | | | | | | “When people say, 'Stay in your lane, you're a musician, so you should only talk about music,' what do you think songs are written about?”
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| | rantnrave:// I love, and have always loved, that I can turn on a pop station like LA's 97.1 AMP RADIO and hear KENDRICK LAMAR, ZEDD, MAREN MORRIS, SHAWN MENDES, CAMILA CABELLO and KHALID back to back to back as if this mashed-up mix of white, black, Latino, male, female, etc., all belonged on the same frequency on the same speaker in the same room, as if life was a rainbow connected by dance rhythms. Which they do, and which it is. Those artists and plenty of others, who have less in common with one another than you might think, can share a playlist on pop or top-40 radio—or whatever you want to call it—because unlike most commercial formats, pop is guided less by a corporation's notion of what it thinks its ideal demographic wants to listen to and more by what's actually popular. It's the closest thing we have to democracy on the commercial dial. And it's beautiful. I'm thinking about this because over the weekend I watched ELLEN GOLDFARB's WLIR documentary DARE TO BE DIFFERENT on SHOWTIME. It's a dry, run-of-the-mill hagiography of a pioneering new-wave/new-music radio station that meant a lot to a lot of people, including fans, bizzers and artists from DURAN DURAN to U2 and beyond. It was an important, exciting and deeply flawed station. If you didn't know WLIR in NEW YORK, maybe you knew WHFS in DC or KROQ in LA or WHTG in NJ or any one of a number of imitators. They all had the same thrilling sense of punk possibility and new-wave adventure, along with the limited field of vision that's de rigueur in conventional radio programming. It's a snow-white documentary. Save for a tangent on WLIR's Punky Reggae Party show—which itself was relegated to the tangent of Sunday night specialty programing back in the day—there's hardly a black face to be seen anywhere in it. Which is probably fitting because WLIR and the stations it influenced tended to play artists like TALKING HEADS, the CLASH and DURAN DURAN, all heavily influenced by black art, but not their black contemporaries (or forebears). A station that played new wave and hip-hop and rock and funk and disco would have been revolutionary in the 1980s, and wouldn't have been hard to imagine if someone at one of those stations had allowed themselves the imagination. Pop stations today routinely play all or most of that within any given hour. (It's argued, plausibly, in the doc that WLIR's playlist played a crucial role in shaping MTV—another outlet that famously had a difficult time making space for black voices at first.) Black voices weren't completely ignored at WLIR. When someone from the station claims, "We played PRINCE before anybody else," your credulousness is stretched to the point of breaking (Prince had R&B hits before the "Dare to be Different" version of WLIR existed) until you realize that what's meant is "before any other white commercial station." There's literally no other way to understand the comment, which is dismissive of Prince's earliest fans and boosters and of the very idea that black and white art could share shelf space on the airwaves. At another point, ERIC BLOOM of LONG ISLAND's BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, a WLIR staple before the station switched formats from "rock" to "different," laments, "They played our kind of music, and then they didn't." But why not? Why couldn't Blue Öyster Cult share a frequency with the REPLACEMENTS (who were probably BÖC fans)? Besides that same lack of cross-cultural imagination, there's no reason at all... Where MARCH MADNESS theme songs come from... RIP ANTICON's BRENDON WHITNEY (aka ALIAS), CAVE IN's CALEB SCOFIELD and country songwriting great KENNY O'DELL. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Eight years after the Live Nation and Ticketmaster merger, the giant company’s power has drawn complaints from competitors and scrutiny from regulators. | | |
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| The Chicago-bred, Memphis-based artist responsible for some of dance music’s immortal anthems returns with his first album in nearly 25 years-bridging the gaps between the many vibes he’s conjured. | | |
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| Spotify’s CFO pushed for this week’s direct listing, which could change life for Wall Street and for big tech startups. | | |
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| A dispute between early backer Shakil Khan and his sibling highlights the new public scrutiny that Spotify now faces as a soon-to-be public company. | | |
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| About 40 patrons settled in for an Easter eve concert at Bluebird Cafe Saturday night. Prolific country songwriter Craig Wiseman topped the bill, but it was an unannounced appearance from Taylor Swift that stole the show. | | |
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| Growing up queer in the Midwest, listening to country music felt like standing outside a party I wasn’t invited to — until I heard Kacey Musgraves. | | |
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| With 20-minute sets, you get to enjoy music without risking exhaustion. Every performance will either leave you wanting more—if it’s a quality performance—or will be a momentary torture, leaving you just enough time to grab a beer or visit the merch stand whilst ignoring whatever avant-garbage is happening. | | |
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| A new documentary explores the role of Long Island's WLIR in introducing new-wave music to American audiences. | | |
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| The past seven months have been a roller coaster. Even as a kid, whenever things were going on that were hard for me to deal with, I would always turn to art. It’s been cathartic — one of the things that’s helped me navigate what has happened. | | |
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| 64 years of producing festivals from Newport to New Orleans and far beyond. | | |
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| According to WBR chairman Tom Corson, "anything that shows promise is being snatched up. We're definitely in the middle of a very competitive and expensive moment here with hip-hop acts." | | |
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| The "1-800" rapper is experiencing an unlikely burst of fame after his latest album debuted at no. 1. So why does he still seem not quite … interesting? | | |
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| On Tuesday, the streaming music giant will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Its path ahead, however, is far from clear. | | |
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| I want to be solution-oriented here because I don’t want SoundCloud to die. But these people are really trying my patience, so I’m going to come in hot here with a radical suggestion for you, SoundCloud – are you ready? | | |
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| To celebrate the resurrection of Christ, NBC continued its annual TV musical tradition with "Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert," a spirited staging that involved lots of guitar shreds, geometric coats, and glitter. Sinning is shiny! | | |
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| From Roxanne Shante to The Lady of Rage, female rappers have rarely gotten their due. | | |
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| A candid, impassioned interview about CHVRCHES's new album, politics, Time’s Up and why “the women are f***ing pissed.” | | |
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| Electronic Frontier Foundation |
| For the first time in six years, Congress is considering serious changes to copyright law. As you might imagine, those changes are a mixed bag for the public. | | |
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| On the first episode of Nuts and Bolts, host Jessica Sligter speaks to Jenny Hval. | | |
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| "If it's falsehood that motivated the people, then sometimes you get the back end," Wu-Tang Clan mastermind says of convicted "Pharma bro.” | | |
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| | | | | | | From the "My Dear Melancholy" EP. |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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