I would rather find the next question than find the answer: That’s just the way I am. I mean, I don’t really believe in answers. A solution should lead to the next question. | | | | George Michael at Wham's farewell concert at Wembley Stadium, 32 years ago today.
(PA Images/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I would rather find the next question than find the answer: That’s just the way I am. I mean, I don’t really believe in answers. A solution should lead to the next question.”
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| | rantnrave:// "My father was a managerial genius... But what I really wanted was a dad." Almost everything you need to know about JOE JACKSON, who died Wednesday in Las Vegas, is contained in that heartbreaking assessment by his most famous child. He had a few famous children. He discovered them (playing with the guitar he had tried to hide from them), nurtured them, pushed them. He beat them, abused them, frightened them. He fought for them. He went into debt for them. He wanted a better life for them and, not coincidentally, for himself. He forgot to raise them. "He was the chief motivator in Michael's life, for good or bad," according to MICHAEL JACKSON biographer DAVID RITZ. Michael alternately complained about his father, pitied him, defended him and, in the end, left him out of his will. Would you take this tradeoff: superhuman talent, developed and refined to the point of almost impossible grace, in exchange for all that emotional wreckage? Or is that an inhumane way of looking at it? "Watch the footage of Michael performing 'BILLIE JEAN' at the MOTOWN 25th-anniversary concert in 1983," the GUARDIAN's ALEXIS PETRIDIS writes. "It seems almost insulting to the level of talent on display to suggest that it required physical and psychological abuse to bring it out." Calling him "one of the most monstrous fathers in pop," as Petridis does, seems reductionist, ignoring his own poverty, the rough-and-tumble circumstances he helped lift his family out of, the sacrifices he made for them. And yet he did monstrous things. Calling him a managerial genius seems reductionist, too, ignoring the astonishing hand of talent he was dealt. And yet he discovered that talent, believed in it, and knocked down door after door that got in its way. He was, perhaps, a bad man who did good things, or the reverse, or both. He definitely made his mark on 20th century music. And if you offered me a million lifetimes, I wouldn't want him as a dad in any of them... Jury orders JIMMY IOVINE and DR. DRE to pay $25 million to their former BEATS business partner, STEVEN LAMAR... Judge tells PRINCE's heirs they can't renege on a deal with TIDAL... The median income for a professional musician in the US is $35,000, but only $21,000 of it comes from music, a survey finds. And musicians face more harassment and discrimination than non-musicians do... On the other hand, musicians can do this: KHRUANGBIN live on KEXP... How to build an amp, from scratch, that has that '59 sound. What drugs are required (it isn't just acid) to make ACID RAP How to rile up a prison audience for the recording of a classic live album. And more first-hand stories: MusicSET: "Enter the Chambers of Sound: Album Oral Histories Vol. 3"... 7-INCHES FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD is a 2017 fundraising box set featuring music by ST. VINCENT, MITSKI, CHVRCHES, FOO FIGHTERS, MARY LATTIMORE and many more and now is a really good time to buy it. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Washington Post |
| In the digital age, rap fame requires more than a hit song. Today's rising stars are expected to win fans in every corner of the Internet—through photos on Instagram, songs on SoundCloud, videos on YouTube and live performances on the road. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| How two exiled Sufi musicians returned to make traditional music in postwar Kabul, Afghanistan. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Joe Jackson, the controversial patriarch of one of the most famous singing family acts of all time, who used a firm hand to steer the careers of his superstar children, has died. He was 89. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Ever since its primitive beginnings as "song plugging," radio promotion at record labels has been a virtual boy's club, a haven for hucksters and quasi-thugs who, in the Wild West days of the music business depicted in Fredric Dannen's 1991 book "Hit Men," famously plied programmers with payola, drugs and worse in exchange for airplay. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Matt Pincus, SONGS Music Publishing founder, on the music business - and its future. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| How to build an amp that has that '59 sound from scratch. What drugs are required (it isn't just acid) to make "Acid Rap." How to rile up a prison audience for the recording of a classic live album. And more first-hand stories from the musicians, engineers and producers who turned inspired ideas into analog (or digital) reality. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Kanye returned to chopping his beats by hand this year, and much of the source material came from two very specific record labels. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| With her debut album "Yellow Girl" expected before the year is out, the conundrum lies in whether this cosign from divisive ‘free-thinker’ West can propel her forward as it did for a string of soon-to-be household names or whether it will serve as the poisoned chalice that it’s proven to be for a number of once-burgeoning artists. | | |
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 | Please Kill Me |
| Johnny Ace died at 25, allegedly during a game of Russian Roulette. The legend of his death not only obscures his talent but is built upon a misreading of what really happened backstage that Christmas night in 1954. | | |
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 | Library of Congress |
| As Europeans colonized North America, beginning with the Spanish and French in the 1500s and the British and Dutch in the early 1600s, colonists brought their cultural entertainments along with them. | | |
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 | Trench |
| More and more artists are rewriting the script and strengthening the foundation of UK black music with quality albums in 2018. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| The relationship between food and flexis peaked in the 1970s and '80s, with flexis on the back of cereal boxes, a series of Burger King discs released via kids meals, and the ante-upping McDonald’s “Menu Song” campaign. Eighty million flexis! That makes the “Menu Song” the most widely distributed record of the decade, besting "Thriller" by a cool 14 million. | | |
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 | BBC |
| How one schoolgirl juggles school, dancing, playing musical instruments and DJing. | | |
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 | Ebony |
| As a longtime R. Kelly fan, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been making excuses for the Chicago crooner’s alleged behavior. Here's how his ex-wife finally got me to see the light. | | |
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 | The Calvert Journal |
| Musician Viktor Tsoi was a figure emblematic of rebellion during the dying years of the Soviet Union. But Kirill Serebrennikov’s biopic "Leto" is less an exploration of fiery protest and more a meditation on innocence, teenage love and songs around the campfire | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The guitar wizard returns to front-man status to tour the politically tinged album “The Prodigal Son.” | | |
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 | Toronto Star |
| It is a rare piece of music — any kind of music — that can bolster good as well as evil intentions. One classical work in particular has an uncanny, seductive power to become exactly what its fans want it to be. | | |
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 | Drowned In Sound |
| My Bloody Valentine played a new song and threatened to tear the roof off Southbank in the process. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| The former Pantera drummer may be gone, but he left an indelible mark on metal's culture and attitude. | | |
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 | Complex |
| He's been an innovator in hip-hop, basketball, and sneaker culture. Now it's finally time for Bobbito Garcia to tell his own story. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "7-Inches for Planned Parenthood." |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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