Eddie put the smile back in rock guitar, at a time when it was all getting a bit brooding. | | | | Ah, yeah, beautiful boys: David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen at the US Festival, Ontario, Ca., May 29, 1983.
(Paul Natkin/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Eddie put the smile back in rock guitar, at a time when it was all getting a bit brooding.”
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| | rantnrave:// Can't stop thinking about that smile. That boyish grin that seemed to say, "I know that you know that I know exactly how good I am and still I can't believe I get to do this." And that exuberant guitar sound that radiated with the wonder of his own virtuosity. And which, in the past 48 hours, has been reminding me of another superhumanly gifted guitarist who made it look not only easy, but fun, and who wanted nothing more than to share his own wonder. I don't think I'd ever realized how much EDDIE VAN HALEN and PRINCE, who led very different bands in very different lanes, reminded me of each other. Prince had a wider range of guitar-face than Eddie did, and could be a bit more—OK, a lot more—vain about his talents. But there was a wide-eyed, childlike sweetness to both guitarists' playing, and they had in common an absolute commitment to feel over technique, no matter how advanced (obscene even) that technique may have been, and a delirious pop sensibility. You can hear all of that in every riff and every solo Eddie played. DAVID LEE ROTH, for all his considerable talents as a frontman—he was Eddie's greatest foil by far—top-lined some of those riffs with lyrics not worth transcribing or repeating, but that never much mattered because the real lyrics and soul of Van Halen's best songs are embedded in those riffs. His guitars did his talking. (Also, they were abstract expressionist artworks whose paint jobs radiated with that same wonder. It all connects.) This rock death seems to have hit incredibly close to home for a lot of rock fans and it isn't hard to see why. It's going to hurt for a while. MusicSET: "Suddenly There Came a Tapping: Remembering Eddie Van Halen"... Is MORGAN WALLEN the first musical guest kicked off SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE three days before he was supposed to perform? The country star was caught hanging out in a bar in Alabama last weekend without a mask and canoodling with apparent strangers, in violation of the show's Covid-19 protocols (also in violation of common sense in 2020). He used a video of his own on social media to announce that SNL had dumped him, and apologized. "I have some growin' up to do," he told his fans. This remains a great breezy crossover tune. (The East Tennessee native may still have to apologize for being in Tuscaloosa on an Alabama football weekend, which is not what one does when one is from East Tennessee)... WADADA LEO SMITH kicks off the avant-garde jazz VISION FESTIVAL: HEALING SOUL, which is happening outdoors on New York's Lower East Side and on livestream, at 7 pm ET today. The five-day fest will also feature ANDREW CYRILLE, OLIVER LAKE and WILLIAM PARKER... Hi, APHEX TWIN... An Irish poem, just because: "A man will rise / A man will fall / From the sheer face of love / Like a fly from a wall"... RIP REV. JOHN WILKINS, BUNNY LEE, VERNE EDQUIST and RAY PENNINGTON. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | pretty fly (for a white guy) |
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 | REDEF |
| The greatest guitarist of our lifetime shredded rock and roll and remade it in his loud as f***, finger-tapping, pop-friendly, joyous image. He wrote a few chapters of the classic-rock songbook and invented some guitar stuff along the way. RIP. | | |
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 | Penny Fractions |
| Most acts are looking at yet another season off the road with little clarity on where and how venues can reopen. | | |
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 | WIRED |
| Composers like Eímear Noone and Manami Matsumae created some of the most iconic songs in games that have defined the industry. | | |
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 | Tape Op |
| Earning a living as an audio engineer is tremendously difficult in the best of times. Somehow you've made it work, to some degree at least, so you already possess all the knowledge and resources you need to meet whatever awaits us in the future. | | |
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 | GQ |
| The “voice of God” was just one part of a cohesive vision. | | |
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 | Song Exploder |
| Dua co-wrote the song “Levitating” with some of her closest collaborators, including producer Stephen Kozmeniuk, AKA Koz. In this episode, Dua and Koz break down “Levitating” and how Dua’s childhood memories shaped its sound. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Future research could begin to link streaming behavior with brain scanning, genetic, and physiological data." | | |
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 | The Line of Best Fit |
| Chart topping single "Mad At Disney" and millions of new followers and Salem Ilese proves she's more than just a catchy chorus. | | |
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 | Complex |
| If anyone's got an informed opinion on the current state of the music industry, it's Zane Lowe. The New Zealand-born DJ-turned-host certainly has the CV for it: he's renowned for his intimate one-on-ones with the world's biggest artists (first on BBC Radio 1, then on Apple Music's Beats 1) and is currently the global creative director of Apple Music. | | |
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 | Level |
| When my team told me that Biden wanted to use my music for his campaign, it almost didn’t register at first. My management is freaking the f*** out, and I’m thinking, “Is it that big of a deal?” | | |
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 | Money 4 Nothing |
| This week we go deep (like really really deep) on the Music Modernization Act—a landmark, near-unanimous 2018 law that will reshape the legal landscape of American music when it kicks in early next year. Despite this, it has received little or no critical press attention since. | | |
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 | Magnetic Magazine |
| By not passing any sort of relief for the music business, the US government is doing its best to kill off independent music. | | |
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 | The Moment with Brian Koppelman |
| Amanda Shires, brilliant songwriter/singer/fiddle player, on life in Nashville, Texas and the road. | | |
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 | SPIN |
| "With this guitar, make people realize this connection we have -- to the music, to each other, to the world. And we're connected to our trees, man." | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The new Music 360 Report by MRC Data suggests a healthy demand for livestream shows to continue through the pandemic and beyond. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Choruses are a pandemic no-no, but there is a solution. One music-starved writer joined a drive-in rehearsal. | | |
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 | Indy Week |
| The Shelby-born rapper, a one-time member of the Last Poets and graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Correctional Education Program, wants to tell the whole story of gang life--and the way out. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| One of R&B's biggest stars performs an eight-song medley for her Tiny Desk quarantine concert. | | |
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 | Broken Record |
| Khruangbin will tell you they did everything wrong. Gave their band a Thai name, play mostly instrumental music, two members wear wigs, they record in barn ... and yet, they've had a charmed existence since they released their first record almost exactly five years ago. They've crushed the festival circuit, opened up for Wu Tang and found themselves on Obama's summer playlist. | | |
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 | Centuries of Sound |
| The relentless innovation and experimentation of the last two years is still present in this year of a devastating stock market crash, but it’s being recorded in a more careful, more deliberate way. From small-scale almost field recordings to professional studios, this is the absolute peak of engineering for quite a few years to come. | | |
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