It's the only industry I'm aware of where the client wants to hire [a lawyer] who has conflicts. | | | | Blues singer and social activist Josh White accompanied by saxophonist Franz Jackson and bassist Al Mott in 1943.
(Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | | | “It's the only industry I'm aware of where the client wants to hire [a lawyer] who has conflicts.”
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| | rantnrave:// Three basic facts about the DJs who brought house music to the US: They weren't white, they weren't French and they didn't have to go very far because they were coming from Chicago, which, according to most of the references on my shelf, is considered part of the US. ABC's NIGHTLINE is doing no major harm to anyone but itself by promoting a five-minute puff piece on a guy who was 13 or 14 at the time with the headline "How DAVID GUETTA helped bring house music to the US." It's puffery being puffery. Bad TV being bad TV. Random pop-culture filler being random pop-culture filler. But correspondent ZACHARY KIESCH's piece on a talented 21st century pop star who caught a good ride on a good wave is an ugly act of erasure—of the black men who started that wave when they created house in Chicago's gay clubs in the '80s. Men like FRANKIE KNUCKLES, whose parties at the WAREHOUSE gave the music its name. Men like MARSHALL JEFFERSON and MR. FINGERS, whose recordings helped codify a sound. Others whose stories NIGHTLINE is unlikely to ever tell. True pioneers. At some point over the weekend, ABC changed its online headline to the less sexy and more accurate "David Guetta on his latest album '7' and his rise to the top," presumably as a result of social-media shaming from the dance music community. The piece itself, in which Kiesch implies house is a European phenomenon that crested with Guetta's work with the BLACK EYED PEAS and FLO RIDA circa 2009-2010, remains unchanged. Life goes on. And ABC NEWS goes back to covering Washington and Saudi Arabia and elections, and you'll have to take it on faith that it's paying more attention to its fact-checkers in those arenas and that it isn't erasing anyone else... Guetta shows up at #5 in DJ MAG's annual TOP 100 DJs poll, published this weekend. MARTIN GARRIX is #1 for a third straight year... DAN RUNCIE's TRAPITAL newsletter is an essential hip-hop business read. You should subscribe. But I take issue with his suggestion, in the middle of his argument for why SPOTIFY should spin off RAPCAVIAR as a separate company, that RapCaviar could be a record label and guarantee its artists placement in its influential playlist. Dealmaking obviously happens in major playlists, often for good reason. But if a playlist explicitly tells me it's trading record deals for placement, I'm unfollowing faster than you can say ALAN FREED or DICK CLARK. I kinda disagree with the entire piece, actually, and yet I'll be first in line to suggest you read it... $44 million!!! For a song that never made it past a Billboard "Bubbling Under" chart! Wow... How the media would have covered the events of A STAR IS BORN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The most powerful playlist in music would be better off as a standalone company that still collaborates with Spotify. | | |
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| Funkadelic never said that a lecture is funkier than a party -- but they weren’t far off. | | |
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| A room full of children, one teacher and a conversation about love. Lauryn Hill’s debut solo album was filled with memorable interludes. Here’s what six of those voices have to say now. | | |
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| After an intense lobbying effort that yielded the first changes to copyright law in two decades, the hard part begins. | | |
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| Thirty years ago this week, a New Age classic was released into the world. What, exactly, has made "Orinoco Flow" so popular? | | |
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| It used to be that the chief goal of rock ’n’ roll was to piss off mom and dad. Now its greatest purpose is to pay them homage. | | |
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| A couple weeks ago Spotify announced you would be able to upload your music directly to Spotify. This week it was announced Spotify is making a minority investment in the distribution service DistroKid and you would be able to upload your music to Spotify and distribute it to other platforms using DistroKid. This is BIG! | | |
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| Richard Magarey has facial hair, pigtails, a closetful of schoolgirl outfits and an endless supply of energy. In Tokyo, he became the world’s unlikeliest death metal superstar. | | |
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| On the rock 'n' roll art of Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, and more. (Excerpted from 'The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punks, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, And Rock ‘n’ Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture," by Kembrew McLeod.) | | |
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| Usher is off the hook, though | | |
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| Every time hard-rock manager David "Beno" Benveniste signs a band, he recommends that the group hire a veteran attorney he knows personally: Jeffrey Light. | | |
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| The music icon talks LCD Soundsystem, Reddit, Apple, Coachella, 'The Social Network,' and that ridiculous 'Dance Party USA' video. | | |
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| For me, every project has three clearly defined phases: the scheming and planning; the writing of actual notes; the editing. The planning process almost entirely excludes, by design, notes and rhythms. | | |
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| Otis Williams might actually be the sensible, stable core of the Temptations that the new musical "Ain’t Too Proud" makes him out to be. | | |
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| How the genre mined 80s nostalgia and modern dystopia to become a giant on YouTube. | | |
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| Rather than creating overnight stars, today’s programs focus on long-term goals such as fundraising and audience development. | | |
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| To date, the most significant day in the career of Big Machine Records chief Scott Borchetta was Nov. 2, 2004, when he met 14-year-old Taylor Swift, who signed with his then-fledgling label and has become one of the 21st century’s most successful and influential recording stars. | | |
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| The Mudhoney frontman talks pulling double duty for Sub Pop. | | |
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