All that most people need from their figureheads, clownish and otherwise, is the level of concern that ICP imparts on the first song of its quarantine playlist. 'Watch your step, take it easy / You can't replace what you mean to me,' goes the chorus of the song 'Be Safe.' 'Without you, tell me where the f*** I'd be.' | | | | Masked musicians perform at Mariachi Plaza in Los Angeles while asking city officials for economic support, April 15, 2020.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “All that most people need from their figureheads, clownish and otherwise, is the level of concern that ICP imparts on the first song of its quarantine playlist. 'Watch your step, take it easy / You can't replace what you mean to me,' goes the chorus of the song 'Be Safe.' 'Without you, tell me where the f*** I'd be.'”
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| | rantnrave:// Every night at 7pm, New Yorkers salute health care workers with cheering and music. Here in Los Angeles, it happens at 8pm, and the cacophony of horns, homemade percussion and yelling serves as both a daily reminder and a daily catharsis. It's my favorite music of the day, and the only live music I've heard in person in the past six weeks. Thank you, anonymous neighbors. And here, if I may, is a 6am MusicREDEF cheer for the musicians doing everything they can to pitch in in a time of medical and economic need... "MASK OFF" rapper FUTURE's foundation, FreeWishes, launched a "Mask On" campaign in March with the goal of sewing 20,000 medical-grade asks for health care workers. As of a week ago, they had made more than 100,000... BRAD PAISLEY and his wife, actress KIMBERLY WILLIAMS-PAISLEY, didn't create their free grocery store, THE STORE, for the pandemic; it had been under construction for a year and happened to open in March. Good intentions, great timing. It's open three days a week to provide food to unemployed and low-income Nashville residents, and delivering groceries to seniors two days a week. Also, it has a free mechanical horse ride... BEYONCÉ BeyGood foundation has pledged $6 million, in partnership with TWITTER founder JACK DORSEY, to mental health wellness organizations... TOP DAWG ENTERTAINMENT founder ANTHONY GRIFFITH is covering a month's rent for more than 300 seniors in housing developments in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood... BIRDMAN is doing the same for residents in need in Uptown New Orleans... POST MALONE played 75 minutes worth of NIRVANA songs while wearing a dress and raised $500,000 for coronavirus relief. And he earned the respect of KRIST NOVOSELIC and COURTNEY LOVE... SONY/ATV donated $500,000 to organizations representing struggling songwriters... DR. DRE and JIMMY IOVINE donated 145,000 free meals—and funded Covid-19 tests—for residents of Dre's hometown, Compton... WILLIE NELSON turned down a fan's gift of masks made of his signature red bandanas and instead offered to autograph them and auction them off—to fund the manufacturing of many more masks... MADONNA's RAY OF LIGHT FOUNDATION teamed up with the REFORM ALLIANCE to donate 100,000 masks to prisoners... DAVID GUETTA unfortunately attracted an army of non-social-distancing fans with his DJ set on a Miami balcony, but he raised $700,000 for the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION in the process... The INSANE CLOWN POSSE is, and I quote the ATLANTIC, "modeling ideal pandemic leadership" for the JUGGALO community, which is something we could use more of, and which the music community seems to be doing a pretty good job of. Thank you... AMOEBA MUSIC's iconic Los Angeles location on Sunset Boulevard has closed for good—"we are devastated but we simply have no choice," co-owner JIM HENDERSON said—but the store is still planning to reopen a few blocks away on Hollywood Boulevard in the fall... LIVE NATION CEO MICHAEL RAPINO says, via Twitter, the company had no idea until Monday morning that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund had purchased a 5.7% stake in the company, on the open market, for about $500 million. Same time everyone else learned. Live Nation's newest headache could be what BILLBOARD calls "a more passive play for the entertainment business" by a country that has been rightly shunned by the business... Vintage typewriter drum machine... A JEOPARDY question for the ages... RIP TROY SNEED and SCOTT TAYLOR. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Hipgnosis CEO joins the MBW Podcast to talk deals, ambitions... and industry controversy. | | |
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 | GQ |
| As life continues in lockdown, a wild ecosystem of celebrity has flourished on our phones. | | |
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 | USA TODAY |
| Famed New Orleans jazz figure Ellis Marsalis Jr. was buried this month, but there wasn't a traditional procession, nor a proper "celebration of life." | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| With concerts cancelled and album releases amiss, musicians with mental health issues are struggling with the stress and uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Watch our new documentary about the dozens of festival-goers forced to quarantine on a beach in Panama. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Big Machine's raiding of Swift's archives seems particularly unsavory amid her ongoing public battle with her former label. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| By releasing 'Petals For Armor' in three parts, the Paramore frontwoman has found an unexpected model for putting out her long-anticipated solo music. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF)'s $500 million purchase of a 5.7% stake in Live Nation on the open market Monday (April 27) could indicate a more passive play for the entertainment business since the country has been largely shunned over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| “Joi’s recorded performances embodied all the funkiness my little soul had been waiting for.” | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Meryl Streep, Audra McDonald, and Christine Baranski stole the show. But Stephen Sondheim’s online 90th birthday celebration also underscored his genius, and the power of theater. | | |
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 | The Independent |
| It has become emblematic of the band, and in some ways has taken on a life of its own. Joobin Bekhrad spoke to the designer of the famous tongue and lips to find out how it came to be, and how it almost led to a David and Goliath legal case. | | |
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 | Variety |
| "I'm just shocked - I'm still in awe and on a high," Teddy Riley says from his home in Las Vegas, two days after his Verzuz battle with legendary songwriter and producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds shut down Instagram. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| This future suit wants to make it safe to go to live events again. Could this be the answer to the return of the crowd? | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Bluebird Cafe president and GM Erika Wollam Nichols talks about the future of the Music City landmark. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| After an initial lockdown lull, streaming levels are - on the surface - beginning to normalise. Underlying the macro-level normalisation, 'lockdown listening' is in fact resulting in dramatic shifts in listening behaviour, from using the commute time for activities other than listening to music, through using smart devices to listen at home to spending more time on YouTube. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The widely beloved D.J., producer and booster championed the sounds of his hometown and served as a trusted tastemaker, in Michigan and around the globe. | | |
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 | Ars Technica |
| Baking at 130°F is the sweet spot to reverse "sticky shed syndrome." | | |
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 | The Song Sommelier |
| I spent some of 2008/09 in a major label that had been acquired by, of all things, a private equity firm. I won’t go into it here but if you did want a detailed account of such an odd (and ultimately disastrous) marriage and the shenanigans therein, may I point you to one of the best business stories you might read, by my friend and writer Eamon Forde: "Selling The Pig, The Final Days Of EMI." | | |
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 | Slate |
| Like getting to Carnegie Hall, it involves a lot of practice. | | |
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| Los Angeles Times |
| Bill Gardner's "Rhapsody in Black" show has been a staple of L.A. radio since the early 1980s, airing classic R&B. But its future is in peril due to the coronavirus. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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