'Perfect' is a tricky word. Because it's like, 'What the f*** is perfect? And who gets to decide?' Like, they can shove it up their a**. | | | | Thomas Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, in Delft, the Netherlands, Aug. 4, 1990.
(Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “'Perfect' is a tricky word. Because it's like, 'What the f*** is perfect? And who gets to decide?' Like, they can shove it up their a**.”
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| | rantnrave:// As country music goes, so goes the actual country? Prominent headlines posted in the past 24 hours: "Gun control debate enters country music community: 'Is this the kind of world we want to live in?'" And then "LAS VEGAS shooting forces country music industry to talk about gun control." And then "It's Time For Country Music To Change Its Tune On Guns." And there have been lots more. That's one of the tangential, but not inconsequential, results of Sunday's terrifying attack on the ROUTE 91 HARVEST festival. Can a debate that's gone in circles for decades in WASHINGTON actually be had in a productive way in NASHVILLE? Can the country community move a long-paralyzed needle? The BOSTON GLOBE's ANNIE LINSKEY and ASTEAD HERNDON report that adults who've gone to a country concert in the past year are "68 percent more likely than the average person to own a handgun [and] 74 percent more likely to own a rifle," which should not come as a surprise. But country fans don't appear to have a strong political leaning in any direction—31 percent Republican and 22 percent Democrat, per the Globe. My friend (and MusicREDEF contributor) COURTNEY E. SMITH notes that the country audience comprises one third of the US adult population, "from rural Americans into suburbs and urban areas." Which is to say, the Nashville community can speak, with emotional resonance, to a large cross-section of the country. But what would it say? And is it prepared to say it? Is now the time? How much sway does the NRA have? How much sway do people like newly politicized JOSH ABBOTT BAND guitarist CALEB KEETER have? Who is ready, and available, to listen?... Heartbreaking read (and listen) of the day: RANDY LEWIS' hourlong interview with TOM PETTY, conducted in MALIBU last Wednesday. Our still-growing MusicSET: "Remembering Tom Petty: He Was an American Boy"... JUDAS PRIEST(!!!), SISTER ROSETTA THARPE, RADIOHEAD, NINA SIMONE, DEPECHE MODE and KATE BUSH among 19 nominees for the next ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME class, in roughly the order I would kindly ask the hall to put them in, thank you... The single lingering question about MTV's TRL reboot, which continues to seek its footing: Why?... GHOSTFACE KILLAH is co-founder of a cryptocurrency startup. He met his partners online, during a REDDIT AMA. The company is called CREAM CAPITAL. This should probably be the basis of the next JAMES BOND movie... ALEXA's top 50 lyric requests is one of the strangest music charts I have ever seen... Curatorial help wanted: MusicREDEF is looking for a few great freelance curators for future fill-in gigs. Must love: pop, the internet, the written word. CVs to jobs@redefgroup.com. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Five days before his death, Tom Petty and members of the Heartbreakers sat down with the L.A. Times' Randy Lewis to talk about the band's 40th anniversary and a lifetime in music. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| How a folk hero inspired one of the most covered songs in American history. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Kesha opens up about beating a life-threatening eating disorder, and how her personal struggles informed her new Number One LP, 'Rainbow.' | | |
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 | CNN |
| Since Sunday's massacre, debate has taken place on the airwaves at country music radio stations, around dinner tables and on social media over gun control. | | |
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 | Collapse Board |
| "UK Consumers Of Illegal Online Music On The Decrease" runs the headline from 18 September in "M Magazine," which is published by PRS for Music Limited, the UK music copyright collective. Whatever. Personally, I’ll never know why more people don’t have supermassive music collections. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| In the wake of his sudden passing, I asked a handful of songwriters to share a favorite Tom Petty song with us for this feature. Well, more than a handful. I honestly didn’t expect so many artists to participate, but I’m glad the wide response — and variety of selections — speaks to the greatness of Petty’s impact. | | |
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 | Hollywood Reporter |
| With 59 dead and more than 500 injured, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history leaves lives destroyed and the $10 billion concert industry grappling with a terrifying fact: "You could not have taken any [safety] measures." | | |
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 | DOPECAUSEWESAID |
| Growing up with hip hop in the 90’s, it was all about crews. You rolled with a crew, that is just how things went. You look back on some of the biggest acts of the time and they were all crews. Tribe Called Quest, Onyx, Wu-Tang, Pharcyde, hell, don’t make me name drop the Fu-Schnickens on your naive asses, you get my point. | | |
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 | The Fader |
| What their new albums, "Now" and "Younger Now," say about the ever-evolving genre. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The reason Bieber had come to Montclair was to spend time with Carl Lentz, the 38-year-old face of the New York and New Jersey chapter of Hillsong, a Pentecostal church that claims nearly 100,000 adherents in 19 countries. Hillsong has become the congregation of choice for young celebrities including the Jenner sisters, Kevin Durant, and Bieber | | |
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| | | don't take your guns to town |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Her music inspires a deep sense of intimacy, yet her fierce privacy is the key to her genius. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| "Blade Runner 2049" arrives this week. Gary Numan, Ikonika and more explain why electronic music is still obsessed with the original in our new documentary. | | |
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 | XXL |
| He's a real wild child and has the fans flippin’. Lil Uzi Vert’s also on his way to being one of the biggest "XXL" Freshmen of all time. The Philadelphia rapper’s riding a rocket to stardom and there seems to be no stopping him. "XXL" jumped on the wave early and has been steadily documenting his rise. | | |
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 | LA Weekly |
| Let’s keep going to concerts. Let’s continue to write and perform music, to make things that bring us joy and bring us together. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Asbury Park has truly, finally, returned. | | |
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 | Red Bull Music Academy |
| The true story of the apartment building where LA punk truly became a scene. | | |
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| Vulture |
| Last week at a bar, I ended up talking to a musician who must've been in his 50s about differences between the politics of the 1960s and today, about the ballooning costs of elections and the growing influence of lobbyists and the departure of this year from all the ways we both understood things worked. | | |
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 | Charlie Rose |
| An interview and performance from Ed Sheeran. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Andreas Magnusson, a music producer, sound mixer and "Dreamer" on what Trump's desire to "wind down" DACA could mean for him, the industry and the hundreds of thousands of other dreamers in the U.S. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Folks are beginning to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Maria, and for Puerto Rico's plena musicians, it means rebuilding a sense of culture and community. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited |
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