I've long had a complicated relationship with touring, and the pandemic has made it only more difficult. I always knew what life on the road was costing me. But I didn't fully appreciate what it gave me until suddenly, it was gone. | | | | Gunna in Atlanta, Dec. 22, 2019.
(Prince Williams/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I've long had a complicated relationship with touring, and the pandemic has made it only more difficult. I always knew what life on the road was costing me. But I didn't fully appreciate what it gave me until suddenly, it was gone.”
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| | rantnrave:// Before he moved to Minneapolis, GEORGE FLOYD spent most of his life in Houston, where for a time he was known as BIG FLOYD. That was the name he rapped under in the 1990s, when he was affiliated with one of Houston's most celebrated hip-hop crews—DJ SCREW's SCREWED UP CLICK. Floyd can be heard rapping on several of DJ Screw's influential chopped-and-screwed mixtapes, and he was a member of the group PRESIDENTIAL PLAYAS, which released BLOCK PARTY: THE ALBUM in 2000. He was also a star high school athlete. By my count, he's the seventh hip-hop artist to die violently so far in 2020 and the third in the past week, along with Toronto rapper HOUDINI and Brooklyn rapper KJ BALLA. There are, of course, additional horrifying circumstances in Floyd's death that you don't need me to explain, and a nationwide call for justice. CHANCE THE RAPPER, MEEK MILL and ICE CUBE are among the rappers who have expressed their outrage. Fellow Houstonian TRAVIS SCOTT used his Instagram story Wednesday to link to one of Floyd's DJ Screw collaborations. A life worth remembering, and honoring, in this year of unspeakable loss... COACHELLA is still officially scheduled to happen in October, but GOLDENVOICE is asking the festival's artists if they'd play in 2021 instead and some have already said yes, BLOOMBERG's LUCAS SHAW reports. It's not clear which artists have been asked. This year's headliners were to be Travis Scott, FRANK OCEAN and RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, whose 2020 reunion tour has already been pushed back to summer 2021... A weekly residency. Of full-album shows. From home, via livestream. Ticketed at $15 per show. A grand slam of pandemic performance possibilities, raising money for her band and crew, but also for indie promoters around the country "who have been so warm and hospitable to me over the years but are now facing a huge strain on their business." Thumbs up, WAXAHATCHEE... GUY OSEARY is stepping down from the top job at his powerful management collective MAVERICK while continuing on as MADONNA's and U2's manager. The move will have "not much" of an impact on the LIVE NATION-owned company, VARIETY suggests, while freeing Oseary for a variety of outside projects... The "Appears On" module has disappeared from SPOTIFY artist pages, TWITTER and YOUR EDM told me Wednesday morning, which seemed odd because there it was on a number of artist pages on my desktop app. But then I updated the app and, poof, it was indeed gone. This is the module where you can easily find an artist's remixes, collaborations, session work, etc. (Credited features continue to show up under the Singles and EPs heading.) Taking it away, assuming it was done on purpose, is an anti-discovery, user-unfriendly head-scratcher, so here's hoping it was an innocent mistake and will be back the next time I update. Or am I missing something?... RIP KEN PEDERSEN, a longtime CAPITOL and VIRGIN executive who was instrumental in the development of the US version of NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC!, and JOHN MACURDY, who performed more than 1,000 times at the METROPOLITAN OPERA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | The Atlantic |
| I didn’t fully appreciate what life on the road gave me until suddenly it was gone. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Without tours or stores, indies like Fire Talk and Merge are finding creative ways to forge ahead. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| The organizers of the Coachella music festival are asking artists lined up for the annual event to play in 2021 instead, according to people familiar with the matter, the clearest sign yet that this year’s show will be canceled. | | |
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 | MEL Magazine |
| The ‘All the Things She Said’ generation is now grown up, sparking a cultural shift in their anti-gay nation. Does it matter that t.A.T.u. were never the real deal? | | |
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 | Chicago Reader |
| Chicago video-game composers talk about how they found their way into this strange and difficult business. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| Trap music is, in a lot of ways, about numbness. Much of the time, the rappers from the dominant Atlanta rap strain are talking about their past lives in the trenches and the traumas that they've endured and inflicted. There's a calloused, wizened seen-in-all quality to a lot of this music, good and bad. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Today’s bleakest, funniest folk rocker took her time working on her second solo album. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| A new documentary follows the brave women who came forward to accuse hip-hop icon Russell Simmons of sexual abuse--and raises the question of whose stories we choose to center. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| An indie music club in Bushwick now lives in "Minecraft." | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Jazz musician Reggie Workman played with John Coltrane, won a Guggenheim at 82, and can’t wait to get back to rehearsal. | | |
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 | Musonomics |
| Most artists make most of their income from touring. We want and need live music, but even as some states and venues begin to reopen, what will it take for masses of fans to return? We unpack a groundbreaking new study from Music Canada. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| US consumer surveys from MusicWatch shows that measuring music's popularity goes far beyond the Spotify charts. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Whether major or independent, music labels are keen to talk to any startup who can help them find new ways to deliver music and build audiences. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The punk scene in Washington, D.C., (and its surrounding suburbs) figured out what happened after hardcore. What happened after that was out of its hands. | | |
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 | NME |
| The fruitful friendship gave us two classic, soon-to-be-reissued albums, 'The Idiot' and 'Lust For Life', which still inspire bands such as Shame. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman spent years touring America in an orchestra of gifted players who mimed to CDs. She relives their bizarre performances - and her eventual collapse. | | |
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 | Indy Week |
| M Is We bandleader Michael Wood's Carrboro-based tape label has two new post-punk releases, including its first foray into vinyl. | | |
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 | Penny Fractions |
| Last December, Music Business Worldwide asked: ‘Who’s the Biggest Publisher in the World?’ The inquiry was sparked by Sony’s $2.3 billion acquisition of EMI Music Publishing in 2018 and note the contrast: the Jackson Estate and the Mubadala Investment Company. The former is the estate of a once-in-a-generation pop star; the latter is an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund with total assets worth over $300 billion. | | |
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 | Ludwig van Toronto |
| With government-ordered COVID-19 pandemic restrictions beginning to lift, the burning question for the performing arts sector is: will audiences come back? | | |
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 | Tablet Magazine |
| Hope I get old before I die. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | DJ Screw & Big Floyd ft. Chris Ward & AD |
| | RIP George Floyd aka Big Floyd. |
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