This is a dark age, but Low End was always light, a respite and sanctuary, a lit spliff and a safe haven from the sanctimony and greed, the corporate sponsorships and the clout. Nothing can ever be really pure, but it came close for a very long time. | | | | Exit sign at the Airliner, longtime home of Los Angeles club night Low End Theory.
(PYMCA/Universal Images Group/Getty Images) | | | | | | “This is a dark age, but Low End was always light, a respite and sanctuary, a lit spliff and a safe haven from the sanctimony and greed, the corporate sponsorships and the clout. Nothing can ever be really pure, but it came close for a very long time.”
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| | rantnrave:// Funny, innit, how everyone [ed. note: not actually "everyone"] wants the GRAMMY AWARDS to pay more attention to noncommercial, nonzeitgeist music, and everyone [ed. note: nope, not necessary here] also wants the OSCARS to pay more attention to blockbuster, zeitgeist films? Can everyone be right about both things? The Oscars have relented, announcing a new award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film, which sounds like a bad idea on its face, with predictably unpredictable consequences, but we can reserve judgment until we see how it plays out (and if the MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY follows up by changing the name of Best Picture to Outstanding Achievement in Unpopular Film). Should the Grammys do the opposite? Add a category for Boutique Album of the Year? Or Real Instrument [ed. note: hahaha] Album of the Year? Or Public Radio Album of the Year? The short, obvious answer is of course not, because the Grammys already have 825 categories [ed. note: exaggerating, slightly], a couple of dozen of which, and I'm no longer exaggerating, already are Boutique Album of the Year awards. The more pertinent answer, for me, is that what gives both awards shows their meaning and value is that STURGILL SIMPSON, DRAKE and BEYONCÉ can be heard, and considered, side by side, as peers, as artists equally worthy of hearing, and that BLACK PANTHER can be read from the same envelope as IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK and BLACKKKLANSMAN, equal and not separate. That as musicmakers, music fans, filmmakers and filmgoers, we are equally open to a wide variety of artistic expression, artistic process and artistic budgets; a story is still a story, a song still a song. I'd love to see CARDI B and KACEY MUSGRAVES and JANELLE MONÁE and KAMASI WASHINGTON and SOCCER MOMMY all nominated, in one top category, and then I won't care who wins, because at that point everybody will have won. Consider that my MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE... PASSION OF THE WEISS' JEFF WEISS offers a beautiful eulogy for LOW END THEORY, which ended a 12-year-run Wednesday night at the AIRLINER bar in Los Angeles. Low End Theory was at the center of so much that mattered in LA music—and, either directly or indirectly, much that mattered in electronic, hip-hop and pop music everywhere. It was also a refuge, "the club that could be your life," as Weiss puts it. The mood and the attendance both headed south in the past year, after one of LET's resident DJs, GASLAMP KILLER, was accused of rape. (He denies it and is suing his accuser.) His partners dropped him—"you believe the woman," co-founder KEVIN "DADDY KEV" MOO told the LA TIMES—but the incident appears to have left the Low End Theory community deeply divided. A sacred spot had been left a little less sacred. A musical temple that will not be easy to replace, and will be deeply missed... Sing for the year: This is the most Boston story ever... RIP LORRIE COLLINS, BRADLEY DAYMOND and GLEN ROVEN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| How Canadian is Justin Bieber? His hometown’s “Steps to Stardom” exhibit provides some answers. | | |
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| D’Angelo, Questlove, James Poyser and J Dilla hunkered down in Greenwich Village and created a sound that won Grammys and united genres. (Adapetd from “Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century,” by Nate Chinen.) | | |
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| Founded in 2006, at its peak in the early ‘10s the Low End Theory was the destination for globetrotting music fans convinced that this little club night was reframing electronic music culture. And then, at the height of the #MeToo movement, everything changed. | | |
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| This is a dark age, but Low End was always light, a respite and sanctuary, a lit spliff and a safe haven from the sanctimony and greed, the corporate sponsorships and the clout. Nothing can ever be really pure, but it came close for a very long time. | | |
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| Electronic music wouldn't be the same without them. | | |
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| Playing the new “After Hours” update to “Grand Theft Auto Online,” wherein the Black Madonna, Dixon, and more DJ your virtual club | | |
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| The four-piece lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious, but they’ve been largely written out of cultural history. | | |
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| It was only natural for brands to eventually find their way into music. | | |
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| Owner Nuntida Sirisombatwattana also holds down a 9 to 5 at an alderman's office. | | |
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| You meet a new person. Everything about them is perfect. Then they pick you up in their car and they're rocking out to a Nickelback CD. What do you do? You may very well dump them, finds Nick Levine. | | |
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| Growing up I can vividly remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch the VH1 Top 25 Music Video Countdown. While most kids watched cartoons, I anxiously waited to see which of my favorite songs were climbing the charts, which artists were on the rise, and if any of my predictions were going to be confirmed or not. | | |
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| For the last seven years, inmates have stocked the libraries of their personal MP3 players with $2 downloads. Come January, they’ll be forced to hand it all over because the Florida Department of Corrections signed a new deal with a competing company. | | |
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| You're not imagining it: tons of country songs mention smartphones in the lyrics. "The phone is a part of your body at this point," says one songwriter. "It's going to be a lyric in a lot of songs." | | |
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| Big Freedia is a damn icon, and it should not have taken a Drake music video to make that clear. We break down her wealth of accomplishments here. | | |
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| A promising start and a worthwhile idea, the new Know Your Worth app is a tool for rights holders (songwriters, music publishers and the like) to get a sense of their catalog's potential market value. | | |
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| Matt Johnson explains how planning not to plan can sometimes be the best plan. | | |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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