It’s a little bit late for us to do a ballad. | | | | Alicia Bognanno fronting Bully at SXSW, Austin, Texas, March 12, 2018.
(Mike Jordan/Getty Images) | | | | | | “It’s a little bit late for us to do a ballad.”
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| | rantnrave:// It's not as dire a situation as medications not showing up on time or hundreds of baby chicks dying in transit, but you can add record stores to the victims of the US Postal Service slowdown. During a summer when mail order sales are the only thing keeping a lot of stores in business, owners are complaining about shipping times that have doubled or tripled and customers who are on edge waiting for that SOUNDGARDEN box set to show up. "It was already s*** [because of Covid-19], and somehow managed to get worse, which is impressive," BRANDON BOGAJEWICZ, owner of mail order company VINYL MOON, told BILLBOARD (paywall). Postmaster General LOUIS DEJOY promised this week to reverse the cutbacks that had become a national scandal, but the music merchants, like many others across the country, remain skeptical. Artists, of course, are victims, too. The CDs and vinyl records in those packages currently crawling through the US mail have a much better profit margin than their streaming counterparts, and they carry a lot more weight toward Billboard chart positions, for whatever that's worth (it's worth a lot to some artists). We vote for our favorite artists through the mail, in a way; at least, we've always had that option. BEN GIBBARD, who's performed several livestreams from home during the pandemic, used his latest one to dedicate a song from his celebrated side project the POSTAL SERVICE to that other Postal Service. The band owes its name to the fact that Gibbard and bandmate JIMMY TAMBORELLO made their only album, 2003's GIVE UP, by sending tracks to each other through the mail (a perfectly safe way to record an album despite what certain politicians might say). And then, as the album was turning into a major indie-pop hit, the mail delivery agency sent a cease-and-desist letter to the band, which resulted, eventually, in a friendly agreement under which the band got to keep the name and the band and the USPS did some cross-promotion, and, unbeknownst to either side at the time, 17 years later the band would do its part to try to save the beleaguered service... Music law brain teaser #1: If a collector buys some old reel-to-reel tapes from a guy who used to work in recording studio that's long ago out of business, and one of them turns out to contain multitrack studio recordings of a '90s rock band of some renown, does the band have a legal claim on the actual tapes?... Music law brain teaser #2: If you co-write a song that not a lot of people hear, and then your co-writer uses exactly one line from that song in another song that many millions of people hear, do you have a legal right to a songwriting credit for that second song? Lengthy discussions and partial answers in the story mix below, or the possum kingdom below, if you will... Shoutout BILLIE EILISH's pit bull, my new favorite Democrat, who emerged from beneath the pop star's keyboard around 2:40 into this performance of "MY FUTURE" Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention. It was a perfect convention song, by the way, and a really nice performance... THIRD MAN RECORDS is auctioning guitars, amps, pedals and various personal items (chandeliers, anyone?) from the label's and owner JACK WHITE's own collections... RIP DJ SHAY, RON "RONTROSE" HEATHMAN, TODD NANCE and KIMBERLY KENNEDY. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| The pandemic has quieted the music industry, but a handful of Los Angeles-based tech startups are poised to keep up the melody - providing musicians everything from socially-distanced collaborative recording to back-office accounting - and bring new energy and innovation to an industry in need. | | |
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| There's Bandcamp, beloved by artists. There's Spotify, very well-liked by listeners. And then there's that big question mark. The artist Damon Krukowski takes a look. | | |
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| Let’s talk about the 99-cent songs, post-Napster jitters, and corporate in-fighting. | | |
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| Being a popstar who doesn't look like most popstars is a tough gig. From Avril Lavigne to Billie Eilish, Marianne Eloise explores media perception of music's "alt-girls". | | |
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| Jamaican artists are being overlooked by mainstream American culture. Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, and others demand respect for dancehall in a Complex interview. | | |
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| It depends who’s selling. As some artists release records that feel like footnotes to bigger businesses, others double down on their value. | | |
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| Music distributor AWAL says that "hundreds" of its artists now earn more than $100k a year from streaming, and dozens earn more than $1m. | | |
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| About eight months ago, Nick Metzger put up an ad describing some items he was looking to buy: "Reel-to-reel players, tapes and other vintage hi-fi gear," he remembers, though he doesn't recall whether it was on Craig’s List or OfferUp. | | |
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| Agustin Gurza of UCLA's Frontera Collection has been studying stickers affixed to old 78 rpm records. It has allowed him to uncover a history of Mexican American music in the United States. | | |
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| Carnival of Sins drove 25 hours to play at One-Eyed Jack’s during the biker rally that attracted 460,000. They didn’t get paid-and now the bar is dealing with COVID exposure. | | |
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| They warmed up for most of the important touring bands coming through Detroit in the early 1980s — the Gun Club, Killing Joke, the Stranglers, Iggy Pop, Bauhaus, U2, and the Birthday Party. But although post-punk band L-Seven never gained much recognition beyond Detroit, they were hugely inspirational to fellow musicians within the city's small, but active underground hardcore and punk scenes. | | |
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| Rap music creates cult heroes. It always has, and it always will. That's inherent in the way rap music works. The rappers who get famous are, by and large, people who came from massively disadvantaged backgrounds, who had to overcome every conceivable odd to find fame. | | |
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| It's not often that a songwriter is accused of ripping off one of their own songs. But Grammy winning artist Lizzo is accused of just that. The case of Jefferson v. Raisen has brought the issue to the forefront, in a battle over who are the writers of the Grammy winning hit “Truth Hurts.” | | |
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| Venues and event creators in Nashville have banded together to encourage Americans to wear a mask and take safety precautions to help slow the spread of COVID-19 through a new campaign. | | |
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| Most live music venues remain shuttered nearly six months after pandemic closures. The nightlife industry as a whole has been hit hard, and many North Texas music venues face an uncertain future -- that is, unless they have a kitchen. | | |
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| Austin songwriter Mobley recruited musicians to collaborate on an album in quarantine. It feels like a snapshot of a music scene seeking a new way forward. | | |
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| The fee-sharing model purports to compensate both DJs and producers, defying a long-criticized industry standard. | | |
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| Faced with police brutality, rising infection rates, and a negligent government, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro have had to turn inwards for support. | | |
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| Our "How to Listen" series celebrates to George Lewis, a vital force expressing the Black experience in music and exploring the power of improvisation. | | |
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| "It’s a little bit late for us to do ballads. Rock is what we do best" | | |
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| | | | | | | From "Sugaregg," out Friday on Sub Pop. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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