How can we regard this invasion of vulgarity in music other than as a national calamity, in so far as the mental attainments of the nation are concerned? This cheap, trashy stuff could not elevate even the most degraded minds, nor could it possibly urge any one to greater effort in the acquisition of culture in any phase. | | | | O decibel. O judge. Laurie Anderson at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY, Oct 13, 1989.
(Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “How can we regard this invasion of vulgarity in music other than as a national calamity, in so far as the mental attainments of the nation are concerned? This cheap, trashy stuff could not elevate even the most degraded minds, nor could it possibly urge any one to greater effort in the acquisition of culture in any phase.”
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| | rantnrave:// To cancel or not to cancel MICHAEL JACKSON? Person to person, human to human, I'm in no position to tell you. It's none of my business what you do or don't do when "P.Y.T." or "IN THE CLOSET" shows up on your car radio or plays in the background at the department store where you're shopping for socks. I don't know you. I don't know what those songs and others meant to you 10 or 20 years ago, and you may not yet know what those songs mean to you now. I don't pretend to think there's an automatic, universal, correct answer. I'm sure there isn't. I know only this: If you're not iin some way thinking about what might have changed over the course of 10 or 20 years, if you're not considering what your response to the music means today, if you're not puzzling through what it means to move your body to "BILLIE JEAN" as you are, in fact, moving your body to "Billie Jean," whether voluntarily or involuntarily, you may be doing yourself, and the culture, a disservice. Which is to say, I'm no position to tell you your answer. But person to person, human to human, I like to think I'm in some position to suggest the question. I love this essay by NPR MUSIC's ANN POWERS, who assigned herself to listen to Jackson's entire catalog after watching DAN REED's documentary LEAVING NEVERLAND, "noting what thoughts arise while encountering these overwhelmingly familiar songs, what feelings I can't resist and which I immediately want to suppress." An important read about the private act of listening to music in a connected world... One of every 13 tourists who traveled to South Korea in 2017 was there because of BTS. This astonishing stat about the economic and cultural power of K-pop's biggest act is from a 2018 research report, which resurfaces in this piece about a unique "ticking clock" challenge that BTS and the country's other boy bands face: Eventually everyone in the band has to enlist in the military... Two big obstacles for promoters of the endangered WOODSTOCK 50 festival, besides the lack of evidence that there's any demand for such an event: the promoters' hubris, and the regulations New York State introduced decades ago largely in response to the original Woodstock... Very mildly spoilery GAME OF THRONES music meme of the day (several people did some version of this because how could they not?)... One band I've seen at a gig/concert and six lies: DR. TEETH & THE ELECTRIC MAYHEM, the WYLD STALLYNS, STILLWATER, SEXUAL CHOCOLATE, JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS, OTIS DAY & THE KNIGHTS, STEEL DRAGON... RIP SUSAN BESCHTA, HELLABANDZ and CHRIS ALBERTSON. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Bloomberg |
| They’re seeking a better deal after they missed the rise of the social video platform and sold music rights for a flat fee. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| The allegations against Michael Jackson in the documentary "Leaving Neverland" make listening to his songs a struggle, one that resists the comfort those songs once provided. | | |
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 | Literary Hub |
| "Here, try it on!" the punk poetess Patti Smith urged me. Together with the photographer Dennis Morris and her guitarist Lenny Kaye, we were sifting the racks of a Japanese store, unusual for the times, in West London's Notting Hill Gate. (Excerpted from "Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot," by Vivien Goldman.) | | |
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 | Refinery29 |
| The group's path to even more success seems unending, but an inevitable challenge that many outside the South Korean music industry don't know looms ahead. | | |
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 | In These Times |
| While waving signs and walking a picket-line is standard practice for striking workers, performing world-class music isn’t. But for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—one of the most renowned orchestras in the world—it was only natural to host free concerts during their longest strike ever. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Steamless record presses and carbon offset projects help counteract a process that seems almost antithetical to green living. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| The Brooklyn pop-rockers counter darkness by going even brighter on "Young Enough." | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Taylor Swift is capable of many things. She can spell the word "awesome." She can make her fans watch the NFL Draft. And, for the better part of a decade, she's been effortlessly able to turn her album-leading singles into chart-toppers. That changed this week. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| The creative processes of Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, and Lorde, revealed. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| TikTok dances. Nine Inch Nails. Billy Ray Cyrus. How an unknown Atlanta artist and a Dutch bedroom producer joined forces online to make a record-breaking, chart-topping smash. | | |
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 | 5 Magazine |
| The collapse of PledgeMusic has left no one looking good, but Benji Rogers is the only one doing any talking. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| New York-based Downtown Music Holdings sent shockwaves across the global music business in March when it acquired CD Baby owner AVL Digital Group. Industry sources estimated that the deal was in the vicinity of $200 million and included AVL’s entire portfolio of businesses (CD Baby, AdRev, DashGo and Soundrop). | | |
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 | Genius |
| Tyler, The Creator, Frank Ocean, & Earl Sweatshirt have come a long way from the LA collective’s early days. | | |
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 | WGBH News |
| Nine-year-old Ronan Mattin was so swept away by the music that he loudly exclaimed -- for the packed auditorium to hear -- "Wow!" | | |
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 | Billboard |
| In the mid-‘90s, Desmond Child was having a hard time convincing people that the future of recorded music lay in a single hard disk. | | |
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 | Audiophile Review |
| Mark Smotroff supports "edjumacation" for the aspirant music enthusiast. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The group started in 1990, went on hiatus in 2009 and was an influential force in between, blending genres and moods. With a fresh set of reissues, it’s returning to the road. | | |
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| NPR Music |
| The Eurovision Song Contest starts next week in Tel Aviv. A cultural collective in Gaza is calling for a boycott of the competition; Israel has responded with PR videos and a "BDS" website of its own. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Actor-musician David Hanbury’s surreal alter ego started as a ‘Grey Gardens’–meets–Eddie Van Halen comedy act. Now, guitar heroes like Metallica’s Kirk Hammett are taking notice. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| He adored Dusty, drove Cilla to exhaustion and had so many hits he lost count. Now, the 90-year-old says it’s time to get political. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Young Enough," out now on Barsuk. |
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