The only time I feel like a prisoner is when I think too much and can’t sleep from just having so many things on my mind. You know, stuff like ‘I could do this, I could do that. I could work with this band. When am I gonna do this show or that show?’ There’s so many things. There’s women. Do I have to eat? I wish I didn’t have to eat. | | | | Prince at Wembley Arena, London, August 1986.
(Michael Putland/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The only time I feel like a prisoner is when I think too much and can’t sleep from just having so many things on my mind. You know, stuff like ‘I could do this, I could do that. I could work with this band. When am I gonna do this show or that show?’ There’s so many things. There’s women. Do I have to eat? I wish I didn’t have to eat.”
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| | rantnrave:// He left us four years ago today and sometimes it still snows in April and the guitar he tossed up to the heavens after playing the greatest solo in television history has still never come down and I'm still somehow coming across songs I could swear I've never heard before and I've still never been able to process any of this and maybe I never will. The first time I was aware of him was when I heard the title song from "1999," which means the first voice I ever heard on a PRINCE record was LISA COLEMAN's and the second voice I ever heard on a Prince record was DEZ DICKERSON's and the third voice I ever heard on a Prince record was the man whose name was on the album cover informing me that the sky was all purple. It was some time before I knew which of the three voices was his; as far as I knew, it could have been any of them. I love that even when he was playing pretty much everything by himself, he was still working as part of a band. It was a great band and he was a hell of a bandleader, notoriously tough but also generous. He had an ego the size of that purple sky and a heart that was bigger. And though his public image suggested he didn't quite live on the same earthly sphere as the rest of us, he did. His vision was remarkably clear. He sang often of destruction—it was there in that first song I heard—and despair, and just as often of redemption. And sometimes of butterscotch clouds and tangerines. He was spiritual and very much grounded and we could use him right now... Also, I lied up there in the first sentence. That guitar did come down. His guitar tech caught it and gave it OPRAH WINFREY, who gave it back. Everything, even that, was a collaboration. You were listening to him but he was listening to you. I like to think he still is... GARY CLARK JR., BECK, USHER, the FOO FIGHTERS and SUSANNA HOFFS & CHRIS MARTIN are among the performers paying tribute in LET'S GO CRAZY: THE GRAMMY SALUTE TO PRINCE, which airs at 9pm ET tonight on CBS... Speaking of Prince and guitars... MusicSETS: "Remembering Prince: The Musician and the Music." "Remembering Prince: The Man"... With its entire staff furloughed and its only business coming via mail order ("It represents probably, at the most, 10% of our [usual] business in Hollywood," co-founder MARC WEINSTEIN says), AMOEBA MUSIC has launched a GOFUNDME in the hopes of raising $400,000. The West Coast chain is still covering health insurance for its staff of nearly 400, as is the East Coast chain NEWBURY COMICS, which has also furloughed its entire staff while shuttering its stores and its warehouse. But Newbury's DUNCAN BROWNE says the chain is in decent financial shape and is making plans for eventually reopening. In the digital retail space, meanwhile, BANDCAMP will once again waive its fees for everything sold on the site May 1, meaning 100 percent of revenues that day go to artists and labels. The last time Bandcamp waived its fees, on March 20, the site registered an astonishing $4.3 million in sales through 800,000 transactions—nearly 20 times the volume of a normal day on Bandcamp... Gamesmanship: TRAVIS SCOTT will premiere his next single during a performance experience that will happen five times between Thursday and Saturday in FORTNITE. And 100 GECS is raising money for FEEDING AMERICA, a nationwide network of food banks, with a festival in MINECRAFT on Saturday that will also feature CHARLI XCX and several other artists... RIP PAUL ALADE and HORACIO FONTOVA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Star Tribune |
| An oral history compiled by the Star Tribune staff in 2004, when the man behind the "Minneapolis sound" was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. | | |
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 | Variety |
| With a staff of close to 400 furloughed, high rents on a current location and big costs to move to the new one, the physical media mecca is asking for help — even as Marc Weinstein explains how the vinyl boom kept them going this long. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| Are you? Captured together on a rare real world meeting, meet the controversial pop-metal duo living their best lives online. | | |
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 | Bloomberg Businessweek |
| Covid-19 has left an estimated multibillion-dollar hole in the ticket sales that account for most of performers’ income. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| With stockpiles of T-shirts and no shows where they can sell them, bands are using their DIY instincts to help flatten the curve. | | |
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 | A.V. Music |
| Our writer went into the desert on the even of a pandemic to meet the superfans of America's most positive band, and to figure out why he stopped loving them. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| Shut the f*** up! Do I have your attention? This is one of many reasons "STFU!" was a perfect lead single. Right there in the title, Rina Sawayama reels you in, gives you a taste of her attitude, piques your interest. It gets much more startling once you actually hear the music. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Awards show organizers seemed unsure of how to respond when Billboard reached out to them late last week for comment on what contingency plans they're drawing up in the event that large gatherings are not allowed for the next year. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publishers' Association, on Liberty Media, iHeart and the US consent decrees. | | |
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 | Harper's Magazine |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| How to get your money back from America’s biggest live-entertainment companies, as COVID-19 continues to keep music lovers out of venues and away from gatherings. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The musician’s ferociously individual new album is the culmination of a long and steady rejection of formal recording processes. | | |
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 | Guitar World |
| Executive VP of Fender Product Justin Norvell reveals what spec changes we can expect, and the fate of its Summer NAMM releases. | | |
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| Billboard |
| How Is ‘American Idol’ Going to Go Live During the Pandemic? The Producers Say They Have a Plan For That | | |
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| Music Business Worldwide |
| Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie discusses the prospects for physical music amid COVID-19 lockdown. | | |
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 | Partners |
| Having a twin is already a special kind of relationship-how does it work when your twin is also your creative collaborator and business partner? For their entire lives, Tegan and Sara have been learning how to co-exist in a way that’s inextricably linked but still allows them to define themselves as individuals. | | |
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 | Innovating Music |
| This week on the Innovating Music Podcast, we discuss innovation in public policy with Shain Shapiro, the founder and CEO of Sound Diplomacy, which works with a wide range of clientele from city councils to property developers and more, in order to help music in cities thrive. We discuss music communities in cities as ecosystems and how public policy can support and protect them. | | |
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 | Splice Today |
| One of the great bodies of work in American art. | | |
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 | gal-dem |
| When she was born, singer-songwriter Lizzie Emeh's parents were told she wouldn't walk, talk or sit up. But, she's turned into a successful musician. | | |
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 | Slate |
| I got a text from Prince’s assistant. That’s how things go in the Prince universe: You get a pre‑message saying that a phone message is coming later. But this time, the message said something different. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | "If you ever lose someone dear to you / Never say the words they're gone / They'll come back, yeah." |
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