I wanted to be a part of it. I’d seen it in history books, and now I got the chance to see it firsthand. I knew I was going to be involved. | | | | Time for tea and meet the wife: John Lennon, December 1968.
(Susan Wood/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I wanted to be a part of it. I’d seen it in history books, and now I got the chance to see it firsthand. I knew I was going to be involved.”
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| | rantnrave:// I probably should have something to say about rock's most celebrated songwriter selling rock's most celebrated catalog of songs for either way too little money or way too much money or OMG-can-you-believe this, and I do, but first a personal story about rock's other most celebrated songwriter, who was violently, suddenly taken from us 40 years ago today. JOHN LENNON wasn't the first celebrity death in my lifetime but it was the first one that knocked my world off its axis, the first one I didn't understand, the first one that felt personal, and the first event in my life, if I'm not mistaken, that forced me to confront violence and loss with no option to turn away. That's me in the dark blue jacket with the light blue bands around the arms in the photo on the upper right of this NEWSWEEK story dated Dec. 22, 1980. An anonymous boy standing motionless, staring at candles burning on the ground of Boston Common. John Lennon was sort of old as far as this anonymous boy knew, but he was one year younger than BEYONCÉ is now. He had just returned from a five-year near-total absence from making music—to raise his son SEAN—and he was, as he put it, starting over. It was an optimistic time for BEATLES/John Lennon fans. It was also, as the incoming president of the United States would later try to tell us, the beginning of morning in America. Like millions of Americans, I was watching MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. My team, the Patriots, was about to lose to the Dolphins. And like millions of Americans, I heard the news from HOWARD COSELL. (This is a fascinating story about ABC NEWS and ABC SPORTS' decision to break the news in the middle of a football game.) It was horrifying and didn't make sense. And I don't remember understanding right away that he was gone. He'd been shot and that was awful enough. I could hardly process that, never mind what would come next. History records that Cosell announced right away that the former Beatle had been shot and killed, but my own memories seem to have diverted a bit from the actual sequence of events, as memories will do. The game ended a short time later, in overtime, I know that, and I don't remember if I heard anything else Cosell said or if I talked to anyone or when exactly it all clicked, or how I got to my bed, where I stayed up late listening to Beatles songs on the radio in the otherwise silent darkness. My memory is that the entire FM dial played nothing but Beatles that night and for several days after. My memory is confusion and sadness. The next day I went to Boston Common with a friend. There were vigils everywhere, little circles of people standing around piles of photos and news clippings and burning candles. We picked one and stood there for I have no idea how long. It was cold. We just stood there, staring into the candles in our midst, staring at the ground, staring ahead, staring back down at the ground, trying in vain to connect the ground and the air into a coherent whole. At some point we left, and that's all I remember, except for Lennon and the Beatles continuing to be pretty much the only sound that existed in nature for quite some time afterward. It was overwhelming. I remember seeing myself in the magazine a week or so later, or, rather, trying hard to see myself within that photo of myself. My head is down and I look like I might be crying. It might just be my hair in my eyes. It might be both. I don't remember feeling emotion so much as feeling nothing at all. I still don't understand today. I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate handguns... Lennon influenced BOB DYLAN influenced Lennon and if the 79-year-old man in the middle of that chain wants to sell the rights to his Nobel Prize-worthy publishing to UNIVERSAL MUSIC or to his cousin Fred or to a used book store, he's earned the right to do that. I can think of several reasons why he might have wanted to. Among the most understandable floated on Monday were that cashing in an intangible asset presumably makes it easier for a wealthy man in his twilight years with six children to begin divvying up his estate. Others noted that publishers and investment funds are bidding against each other with what might as well be Monopoly money for songwriting catalogs, and valuations have never been so high and might never be so high again. It's a seller's market. On the other hand, they also noted that STEVIE NICKS got an estimated $80 million (paywall) for 80% of her catalog last month and IMAGINE DRAGONS reportedly got more than $100 million for all of theirs, which suggests Dylan's asking price—he sold full control and 100% of the income in all of his existing songs (but not his future ones)—should be, according to some simple back-of-the-envelope math, roughly seven trillion dollars. The New York Times estimates he got "more than $300 million," a figure that simultaneously seems both low and high and you're free to direct all your questions to Dylan, who I'm sure will be happy to answer. I'm pretty sure he knows what he's doing. Artists have been increasingly vocal in recent years about their desire to own and control their masters and their publishing, but part of ownership and control is having the right to sell if that's what you want to do. Being in control of the decision is what matters most of all. (As for the prospect of Dylan songs suddenly showing up in all manner of commercials and TV shows, Dylan's never not been amenable to that. "There’s been literally nothing more simple than clearing a Bob Dylan song," music supervisor THOMAS GOLUBIC told Variety in 2015)... My friend and boss JASON HIRSCHHORN would like to send a shoutout to MAURICE BERNSTEIN and his team at the New York institution GIANT STEP, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. This is a cool oral history of the music and culture of a legendary weekly club night... One of the elements of hip-hop is now, for better or worse, an Olympic sport... RIP HOWARD WALES. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Smithsonian Magazine |
| The former Beatle had a packed schedule as he finalized a new song and posed for some final photographs that would become iconic. (Excerpted from "John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life," by Kenneth Womack.) | | |
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 | NBC News |
| "He was so alive, and he felt that he had something important to say about raising his baby and marriage. That's the story he would want told, I think," says a writer who interviewed the artist. | | |
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 | Okayplayer |
| Giant Step was more than a weekly club night. It was a musical mecca for a burgeoning hip-hop contingent including The Roots, Erykah Badu, A Tribe Called Quest, Massive Attack, The Fugees, De La Soul, Jamiroquai, and many more. It was the place where hip-hop stood on the shoulders of jazz. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| 2020 was defined by the sounds of rage, resolve, mourning and solidarity. Here are 20 songs and albums that represent the best protest music of the year. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The tracks that defined this bizarre year, featuring Megan Thee Stallion, the Weeknd, Christine and the Queens, Noname, Waxahatchee, and more. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| "The Bigger Picture" elevated Lil Baby from streaming champ to voice for a generation. But like everyone else, he just wants life to get back to normal. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The bow is a huge win for a Latin music industry that for decades has seen its artists systematically undermined by the mainstream media, and by the industry overall, unless they either sing in English or collaborate with a mainstream act who does. | | |
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 | The Baffler |
| Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaigns make unpaid influencers of us all. | | |
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 | Water & Music |
| A few days into 2020, the artist known as ericdoa woke up in his New York AirBnB, went on his laptop and was met with a sea of SoundCloud notifications. “Disappointment” — a song of his that had racked up over 70,000 plays on SoundCloud — had been taken down for copyright infringement. “I was like, what the f***? This has no sample in it!” eric says. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Singer has been a frequent flogger of his songs, his clothes, his drawings and his whiskeys. | | |
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 | Psychology Today |
| On the 40th anniversary of an untimely death, examining the Janov connection. | | |
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 | Slate |
| Michaelangelo Matos' "Can’t Slow Down" tells music history the way it’s actually lived. | | |
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| Billboard |
| The biggest and best in global, tribute, archival, and festival live streams on YouTube in 2020. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| "Could an artist following in Freddie Mercury’s footsteps execute the same call-and-response with an internet audience?" | | |
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 | USA TODAY |
| While much of the breaking community has embraced its inclusion at the Olympics, some have expressed concerns — that breaking's culture is being co-opted, or that its authenticity will get twisted in the transition. | | |
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| Los Angeles Times |
| Hailing from a successful musical family, Inglewood's D Smoke won a rap competition show on Netflix, propelling him to two unlikely Grammy nominations. | | |
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 | VICE |
| 'Please Take Off Your Hoodies' tells the story of London via Tweeko, who owns the recording studio underneath Cummin' Up in New Cross. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Highlights from a hard year -- featuring a disco revival, K-pop kings and queens, new hip-hop rockstars, and some country wisdom. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Tracks responding to real-time events and a spectrum of moods captured the hodgepodge feelings of life in lockdown. | | |
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| NPR Music |
| The Austin-based rock band is nominated for the album and record of the year at next year's Grammys. See why in this Tiny Desk quarantine concert. | | |
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 | DJ Mag |
| Tajh Morris spends an afternoon at the home and studio of legendary Detroit musician and educator Amp Fiddler, who talks about his hybrid live show and the magic of collaborating with fellow Detroit artists. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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