I would say the main activity that I've been concerned with all these years is, 'How do I get out of the way of myself?' What do I need to do to get out of the way, let it happen, let things be just the way they are? | | | | Jazz bass innovator Gary Peacock in San Francisco circa 1983.
(Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I would say the main activity that I've been concerned with all these years is, 'How do I get out of the way of myself?' What do I need to do to get out of the way, let it happen, let things be just the way they are?”
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| | rantnrave:// Two stories that crossed the transom on my first day back to work after a festival-free summer officially began fading into an uncertain fall: The promoter behind the READING AND LEEDS FESTIVALS told a UK parliament committee that festivals can return, presumably next summer, with no social distancing as long as everyone who shows up is methodically tested for Covid-19. "You can’t have festivals with social distancing," MELVIN BENN told the committee. "You mass test." And a study of the STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY, which took place last month in South Dakota with hundreds of thousands of noses defiantly thumbed at the very idea of social distancing, calculated that it was directly responsible for 250,000 new cases of Covid-19 across the US in the weeks that followed—about one-fifth of all cases in the country. These two stories need to have a little talk with each other. If a vaccine miraculously arrives this winter and actually works, the conversation will have been moot and we can all turn our amps to eleven and celebrate in deliriously close proximity to each other. But for now, all such conversations will presume otherwise. There's plenty of reason to be at least a little skeptical of the numbers in the Sturgis study, which was conducted by economists, not epidemiologists, and relied on modeling and extrapolation to connect all those cases back to that 10-day event in a state in a country with woefully inadequate contact tracing. But even if it's off by, say, 100,000 cases, that's still a hell of a lot of disease for a week and a half of music and partying to be (ir)responsible for. There's also plenty of reason to be skeptical that testing tens of thousands of people a day before they show up for a long weekend of music and partying in close quarters without masks is going to magically stop the spread of a highly contagious disease that arrives suddenly, without warning and often without any symptoms. That skepticism is based on pretty much everything that's happened everywhere in the past half year, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally included. The world has proved itself, over and over, not ready to go back to normal. The solution isn't to go back to normal anyway. No matter how much it hurts not to... DJs, you can still say no to unsafe gigs... Artists, you can still play gigs that *are* safe and they can be glorious and cathartic... TYLER MEASOM and PATRICK WALDROP's documentary I WANT MY MTV finally made its way to A&E Tuesday, a year and a half after its TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL premiere (it's now available on demand). Measom and Waldrop do a nice job of capturing the delirium of MTV's early days and a nicer job, halfway through its two hours, of spotlighting the channel's late and awkward embrace of Black music. The doc dwells on VJ MARK GOODMAN's infamous 1983 interview with DAVID BOWIE, which Bowie ended by asking Goodman why MTV didn't play Black music. Bowie then watches Goodman try to rocksplain his way through the rest of the conversation, the rocker letting the VJ corkscrew his foot further and further into his mouth, occasionally challenging him with followup questions and occasionally breaking into an "its fun to watch you squirm" smile that should be its own emoji. (Goodman is appropriately regretful today.) And then MICHAEL JACKSON gets his revenge on behalf of all of Black music, first by sending MTV his "BILLIE JEAN" video when it was expecting "BEAT IT" (which had EDDIE VAN HALEN! and therefore was rock!), and then by making the network bankroll his not inexpensive "THRILLER" video. MTV didn't actually pay for videos. God forbid. Instead, MTV boss BOB PITTMAN says, the network worked out a deal with Jackson's management to shoot a documentary about the making of "Thriller"—"but embedded in the budget of the documentary was the budget for 'Thriller.'" Funny/happy ending: Everybody wins... My old MTV colleague BILL FLANAGAN wrote the doc JIMMY CARTER: ROCK & ROLL PRESIDENT, which bows tonight on CNN. MARY WHARTON, who has plenty of MTV/VH1 credits of her own, directed, and BOB DYLAN and WILLIE NELSON are among the providers of the rock and the roll. (Flanagan also has a new novel, FIFTY IN REVERSE, about a 65-year-old man getting a chance to relive his 1970s teenage years)... 8TRACKS are back. The platform, not the format... RIP jazz bass virtuoso GARY PEACOCK, SILVER APPLES co-founder SIMEON COXE, WILLIAM PURSELL, BRUCE WILLIAMSON and BRYAN LEE. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Adam Neely |
| Music theorist is kinda racist. Debate me, Ben Shapiro’s MUSIC THEORIST father who went to music school. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The entire concert industry is struggling as the Covid-19 shutdown continues. But a genre rooted in live performance and in-the-moment dynamics is in particular peril. | | |
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 | Interview Magazine |
| Just one year after her last studio release the singer opens up to Jack Antonoff, the main collaborator on her sixth album "Chemtrails Over the Country Club," which is out this month. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Guyton, one of the few Black artists on a major country label, is having a breakout year with two brutally honest songs. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| A new study finding the rally responsible for a quarter million new COVID-19 cases was deemed “plausible” by a virologist and epidemiologist who spoke to The Daily Beast. | | |
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 | Music Week |
| "You can’t have festivals with social distancing. You mass test," Festival Republic managing director Melvin Benn told a UK Parliament committee Tuesday. | | |
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 | theLAnd |
| L.A.’s chief visionary says handshakes are a thing of the past, and a meeting with aliens is in our future. | | |
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 | Tidal |
| The jazz immortal on baseball, Bird, Coltrane, his ceaseless spiritual journey and an explosive upcoming archival release from 1967. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| MelodyVR’s £52m purchase of the infamous disruptor turned heads, but investors are liking what they see (and hear). | | |
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 | Clash Magazine |
| The New Yorkian and the Bristolean linked up for a decidedly geeky natter about oscillators, Hendrix and er, oscillators. | | |
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 | Dazed Digital |
| @UKRaveComments is the Twitter account putting the purest part of the internet in one place. | | |
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 | The Next Web |
| The service shut down last year, but it was revived by new owners this year, and they’re looking to bring it to prominence again. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Painted by some as a boomer relic just years ago, the guitar is seeing a revival that may just extend past the stress-purchase quarantine bounce. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| The past few years have seen a cycle of tragic rapper's death followed by record labels surging in profits -- something feels fishy. | | |
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 | More Fire |
| I’m tired of cringing at misogynistic lyrics, so I know women are. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| He helped galvanise the US civil rights movement, and today sparks intense debate about cultural dominance and the musical canon. In his 250th anniversary year can we listen to Beethoven and what he represents with fresh ears? | | |
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 | Austin 360 |
| The money didn't come, or it wasn't enough. And now, many in Austin's music scene feel like they've been left to fend for themselves as the coronavirus pandemic continues. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| Maybe it was the iced tea, even though it wasn’t spiked. It was, however, brought in a cooler with sandwiches, juice packs and other unhealthy snacks alongside camping chairs and flashlights crammed into a minivan along with a family of five (rock and roll!). | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Now that the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, which aired on Aug. 30, are in the rearview, the big question is how the upcoming Grammy Awards, set for Jan. 31, will be similar -- and how they'll be different. Here are 18 ways the Grammys will and won't look like the VMAs. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| A first look at Frank Gehry's Colburn School concert halls and plaza, which are key to making Grand Avenue in DTLA the nation’s premier arts district. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Silver Apples" (1968). RIP Simeon Coxe. |
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