Stanley invented pathways for the piano. Many times his two hands sounded as if they were six. The drums in the left hand, the strings or guitar in the middle, the horns and the voice up high, the kalimba down below. He was the soulful scientist of the piano. | | | | Too $hort in a Chicago hotel room, February 1989. He and E-40 face off in the Verzuz season finale Saturday night.
(Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Stanley invented pathways for the piano. Many times his two hands sounded as if they were six. The drums in the left hand, the strings or guitar in the middle, the horns and the voice up high, the kalimba down below. He was the soulful scientist of the piano.”
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| | rantnrave:// The US Congress may or may not pass a pandemic relief bill this weekend and it may or may not include the $10 billion SAVE OUR STAGES act, which would provide grants to struggling live venues across the US. The good news: There's reason to believe it will in fact happen. The bad news: For some venues, it may be too little, too late. Scores of clubs, including U STREET MUSIC HALL in Washington D.C., THREADGILL's in Austin, the SATELLITE in Los Angeles and the JAZZ STANDARD in Boston, are already gone, and others are hanging by a thread with no clarity on when they'll be able to reopen, even with a second vaccine about to be in circulation. The New York Times' JULIA JACOBS writes about the related issue of prestigious orchestras and opera companies—in New York, Boston, Washington and elsewhere—whose union musicians are facing the prospects of pay cuts that could last for years after the pandemic ends. Musicians in the NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC, Jacobs writes, have a new contract under which they'll "still earn less than they did before the pandemic struck when the contract expires in 2024." I'm reminded of the awful experience of Covid long-haulers, who appear to recover from the virus only to be blindsided a little while later by debilitating symptoms that appear to be chronic, with no cure on the horizon. Are the clubs and musicians facing a kind of economic long Covid? Will the stomach for government assistance still be there when the disease has been tamed but the economic pain remains? There's good news on the horizon that's worth cheering. But that doesn't mean the hard work can stop, or even slow down... LUCIAN GRAINGE's year-end memo to the UMG staff: "Putting music’s power to work for good may have been more important this year than it’s ever been"... China's TENCENT announced today it will exercise its option to double its stake in UMG from 10% to 20%... Good question from rock critic CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN: If MARIAH CAREY's "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU," is the most canonical Christmas song written in the last 30 years—which it clearly is—what's #2? His Twitter feed reached a certain consensus, but I'm wondering if it might actually be FLEET FOXES' "WHITE WINTER HYMNAL," which, despite (or maybe because of) its mysterious lyric, seems to have fully entered the seasonal choral repertoire (aided, perhaps, by the PENTATONIX seal of approval). You?... It took 51 years and a global lockdown, but PAUL MCCARTNEY has finally come up with a short, quirky, alliteratively titled character study to go along with JOHN LENNON's "MEAN MR. MUSTARD" and "POLYTHENE PAM." A tad too late for the ABBEY ROAD medley, unfortunately, but just in time for MCCARTNEY III, his home-recorded solo followup to MCCARTNEY and MCCARTNEY II, which arrives today. It's FRIDAY and that means there's also new music from TOO $HORT & E-40 (two new albums bundled together to coincide with their VERZUZ battle, scheduled for Saturday), EMINEM (surprise, sort of), JACKBOY, SHEFF G (released Wednesday), TYCHO (remix album), ARCA (remixes galore), KWEKU SMOKE, MAGGIE ROGERS (compilation of early recordings, many previously unreleased), RED DESERT ENSEMBLE, BECCA STEVENS & ELAN MEHLER and LG... Also BRANFORD MARSALIS' score for MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM (the film, with VIOLA DAVIS as the pioneering blues singer and the late CHADWICK BOSEMAN as Levee, her volatile trumpet player, is out today on NETFLIX) and TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS' score for SOUL... RIP STANLEY COWELL. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | The New York Times |
| The coronavirus crisis is leading many performing arts unions to agree to concessions, but some fear it could change the balance of power between labor and management. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| The Save Our Stages measure, part of the COVID stimulus package, could bring much-needed relief to club owners across L.A. and the country. Will it be enough? | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Before Too $hort and E-40 take the stage on Saturday, they spoke with The Ringer about the event, their new joint album, and how they laid the foundation for the past 30-plus years of North Cali hip-hop. | | |
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 | KQED |
| A musical battle between two heavyweights inspires columnist Pendarvis Harshaw to dig into his personal archives. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| New guide outlines steps to ‘move the music industry beyond conversation … towards actionable racial justice.' | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Musiio believes it's invented tech that's never been seen before in the music industry. The company's CEO, Hazel Savage, explains what it can do. | | |
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 | SPIN |
| Hip-hop duo look back at soundtracking protests, raising money for charity, bringing fun to an abysmal 2020. | | |
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 | WBGO |
| Stanley Cowell demonstrated a vast range of possibilities for jazz over the last 50 years. | | |
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 | Slate |
| My two favorite records of the year were unintentional quarantine albums. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The subject of Oscar-tipped Netflix drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was a pioneering queer black singer who battled white producers for control. | | |
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 | Synchblog |
| From smart speakers and livestreaming to discovery algorithms and contextual playlists, we look at how music metadata is evolving with new technologies. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Across the country, fall concerts were saved by staff whose work shifted rapidly from promotional videos to high-quality broadcasts. | | |
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 | The Forty-Five |
| Jenessa Williams pays tribute to a small force of musical nature that proffered some hope in a grim year. | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| From Salvador to São Paulo, passing through Rio and across the country, MCs, DJs and producers from Brazil are putting their spin on the British music genre. Felipe Maia reports. | | |
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 | Cabbages |
| "If you're not following the sort of blueprint of whatever genre that you have self identified with, then you can be called experimental." | | |
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| Billboard |
| Holiday music generates a lot of money in just a few weeks. Marketing it, however, is a year-round effort. | | |
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 | Variety |
| COVID-19 proposed an important question: In our current image-obsessed age, how does a music artist continue projecting an iconic image when they can’t go on tour? The answer: They hire an animator. | | |
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 | BBC Sounds |
| DJ and broadcaster Frank McWeeny speaks to leading DJs and promoters about the collaboration and creativity that is transforming China’s electronic music scene after lockdown. | | |
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 | Afropop Worldwide |
| Nigeria is the undisputed powerhouse of African pop music. Call it Naija Pop, Afrobeats, Afropop or what have you. The likes of Burna Boy, Wizkid, Yemi Alade, Tiwa Savage, Olamide and Fireboy DML are giants on the scene. | | |
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 | The FADER |
| From Phoebe Bridgers’ apocalyptic visions to Bad Bunny’s masterful chaos to Koffee’s uplifting riddims, these were the songs that defined 2020. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "McCartney III," out today on Capitol. |
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