Fans have been saying, and I include myself in this, ‘I want my music when I want it. You, DJ guy: You can’t hold the records anymore. I’m happy to listen to you, but not 'cause you’re the only one who’s got it’... I look back on it now like, ‘Wow, how did we get away with that for so long?’" | | | | Up to his neck: Mississippi Fred McDowell in London, 1969.
(Val Wilmer/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Fans have been saying, and I include myself in this, ‘I want my music when I want it. You, DJ guy: You can’t hold the records anymore. I’m happy to listen to you, but not 'cause you’re the only one who’s got it’... I look back on it now like, ‘Wow, how did we get away with that for so long?’"”
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| | rantnrave:// For music fans who wish some rapper or rocker would bring back protest songs, preferably the kind that have a phrase like "this is a protest song" or "f*** the man" somewhere in the title, lest we inadvertently miss the message as we go about our daily lives protesting 24/7 in our own jobs while the radio plays quietly in the background, here is your semi-regular reminder: There are protest songs everywhere you look and listen. Still. Today. Right now. But very few of them announce themselves as protest songs. One of the cardinal rules of writing: Show, don't tell. Good songwriters know that rule. They call their protest songs things like, oh, "PYNK." DAVID PORTER, the legendary Memphis songwriter/producer, lived and worked through that allegedly golden age of pop music protest, the '60s, and was an essential contributor to it with titles like "SOUL MAN," "I THANK YOU" and "HOLD ON, I'M COMIN'." Titles that don't often come up when '60s protest music is discussed. Which was partly on purpose. "There was an underground-railroad kind of messaging in music that was quite prevalent in song," Porter tells writer TONYAA WEATHERSBEE (in the wonderful journal THE BITTER SOUTHERNER). "If you would listen to the lyrics in an emotional way, you would get the feeling." It's a great interview, combined with a good analysis of how pop music messaging works. Sometimes you have to listen hard to get the feeling. Sometimes you have to be paying attention, and not just to the song. Because you, the listener, are part of the protest, and you have to do some of the work. But, goddamn, they're everywhere these days. This, for example, is good hip-hop protest song. This is a good country protest song. This is a good jazz protest song. Turn on the radio. There are lots more, and most aren't quite so obvious... I just told you all that rather than showing you. Apologies... This is good protesting (or maybe not; maybe it's recognition of a plain truth): CMT's ARTISTS OF THE YEAR special, airing live at 8 pm ET tonight, has an all-female lineup of honorees, including CARRIE UNDERWOOD, MIRANDA LAMBERT, MAREN MORRIS, KELSEA BALLERINI and LORETTA LYNN... Half of all new guitar players are women, according to FENDER, which is in a position to know. The guitar company's CEO, ANDY MOONEY, tells ROLLING STONE that the industry attributed this to the "TAYLOR SWIFT factor" for a while, but the trend has persisted even as Swift has moved on from primarily guitar-based music... At the BET HIP-HOP AWARDS (pre-taped and aired Tuesday night), ANDERSON .PAAK honors the late MAC MILLER, and VIC MENSA does not honor the late XXXTENTACION... Dust off your old 128k files. WINAMP is coming back. (But what about the skins?)... RIP MARLEY G, GARY YOUNG, ALFRED HUBAY and PAUL ALLEN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The man who wrote "Soul Man" gives a master class on how code-switching through music helped catalyze the Civil Rights Movement. | | |
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| Dolly Parton has built her empire on and with the debris of old, racist amusements and wrapped it in working-class signifiers and feminist politics. I ignored that fact for a long time because it didn’t fit the script of the feminist, working-class heroine I had conjured. | | |
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| DJ/producer Justin Blau, aka 3LAU, discusses his Our Music Festival, the first-ever blockchain-powered music fest. The Oct. 20 event at Berkeley's Greek Theatre is headlined by Zedd, Big Sean, Matt and Kim, and Charlotte Lawrence. | | |
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| HYUKOH, one of South Korea’s most popular indie rock bands, set their sights on the U.S. market. | | |
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| Two years ago, the Columbus band unexpectedly broke out big with the anxiety anthems of “Blurryface.” Can they keep doing things their own way in the face of mass success? | | |
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| It's a great name, perfectly capturing the essence of the genre, but where did it come from, who came up with it, and perhaps most importantly, why? | | |
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| Marsha Vlasic won't tolerate bulls***, and she's seen it all. For over 40 years, the veteran music executive has wielded her power and influence to steer the careers of Neil Young, Elvis Costello, the Strokes, and Iggy Pop. | | |
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| There was a time when MP3s were collectibles, like bugs or baseball cards. And that time is over, my friends. | | |
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| Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus make records that seemingly flaunt their loneliness to make the listener feel less alone. Devastatingly honest, each singer-songwriter’s most recent record provides an unflinching and overwhelmingly vulnerable look at themselves and their past relationships, at times both embracing darkness and searching for the dim proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. | | |
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| They’re not really idols, and very few become stars. They’re girls exploited for marketing, and Honoka Omoto, 16, couldn’t take it anymore. | | |
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| Lynn routinely rejects the label of feminist. But her songs have repeatedly called out misogynistic attitudes that excuse or idealize male misbehavior. | | |
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| On a recent London trip, we spoke to the Beats 1 creative director and DJ about how to make sense of internet radio in a shifting business. | | |
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| A dozen artists were allowed to work closely with Spotify and upload music directly while the service was still in its early stages. We talked to one of them. Mia Coleman, who records as VIAA, was one of the first artists to see the future of streaming music. | | |
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| In this episode, Janelle Monáe takes “So Afraid” apart to explain how she built it, step by step—beginning with a trip to the dentist. | | |
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| The Los Angeles electro-pop artist talks about her uncomfortably direct lyrics, the activism of simply existing, and her inclusive new album, "Us." | | |
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| “As we move into space and cruise ships and hotels, it’s important that we keep our roots through things like festivals,” Branson says of planned Virgin Fest. | | |
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| Yes, the new 9th Circuit surprising reversal of the "Stairway to Heaven" jury verdict looks like "Blurred Lines" all over again -- only in reverse. But I'm pleased to report that the judges are attempting to improve copyright law by replacing the Ninth Circuit's (very bad) framework for copyright infringement with a much better one. | | |
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| The Icarus Line is dead, but Joe Cardamone lives on. Ahead of his appearance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, he tells Stevie Chick about his searing new multimedia project, making art in the era of Trump, and how he survived the end of the greatest rock & roll band of his generation. | | |
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| A signed, framed photograph of "California Soul" singer Marlena Shaw hangs from the basement wall. There's also a photo of a tan bass-drum head, with a hand-painted portrait of Ray Charles' visage on it. Below Ray's image, it reads, in black-ink hand-lettering, "Roger's drum," and there's a large hole punched in it. | | |
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| Lindsey Buckingham vs. Fleetwood Mac -- Buckingham has sued his former bandmates of 44 years. What can we learn from this? Click for a deep dive! | | |
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