There’s something to learn from being the strongest member of an ensemble, and there’s something to be learned from being the weakest member of the ensemble. | | | | Sing me Spanish trap, yo: Bad Bunny at Calibash Los Angeles, Jan. 20, 2018.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “There’s something to learn from being the strongest member of an ensemble, and there’s something to be learned from being the weakest member of the ensemble.”
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| | rantnrave:// Short-attention-span Wednesday, starting with music docs and similar content that won't take up even half of your lunch break, and some of which are more moving and/or informative than their feature-length big sisters: STEVE ALBINI records an album by and about JOHN GRABSKI III, an upstate New York musician who's dying of cancer, and is rewarded with "a genuinely great powerful album, made more intense by the context—a missive from inside the disease of cancer, like a dispatch from the front to the outside world." Tears, and loud drums and guitars... What, exactly, is a marimba (and what happens when the world runs out of Honduras rosewood)?... PINK hears a little-known Dutch singer covering her "What About Us" and proceeds to change her life... CARDI B turns CARPOOL KARAOKE into a much better show than it actually is... How, exactly, to play a SOULQUARIANS-style drunken beat, while sober... And finally, this zen-like DIAMOND DAVE entry will take up around three lunch breaks, and when it's done you'll probably want to watch it again. How on earth does it only have 23,000 views?... "Spokespeople for SPOTIFY and NETFLIX said they were unaware of the broad powers FACEBOOK had granted them." "APPLE officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its devices any special access." Umm. I believe there are going to be a few followup questions... We've surpassed 200 year-end lists, and counting, in our MusicSET "Best Music of 2018: The Year in Lists," from PITCHFORK and COMPLEX to FRACTURED AIR, OPIUM_HUM and way beyond. But we haven't thought to turn it all into a spreadsheet and crunch the numbers. For that you have ROB MITCHUM, whose Google Docs master list is currently tracking 21 sites and more than 400 albums, and who's calculating PUSHA-T's DAYTONA and JANELLE MONÁE's DIRTY COMPUTER as the year's most critically acclaimed albums. They're both short albums (21 and 49 minutes)—take that, DRAKE—and both artists played AFROPUNK the same day in August, which was a very good day... After a hiatus of zero years—take that, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM—WARPED TOUR, which had its farewell run in 2018, will return in 2019 for a limited 25th anniversary run... A wild and innocent congrats to my friend BRIAN HIATT, whose exhaustive BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN tome, THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS, is coming out in March... RIP JERRY CHESNUT, who wrote the all-time greatest song about an unmowed lawn and an unmade bed... We'll honor all the great musicians we lost in 2018 in a special edition of MusicREDEF next week. Today, REDEF takes a wider look at cultural figures across the spectrum who died this year. Titans of soul music, soul food, little black dresses, comic books, science, bipartisanship and so much more. MediaSET: "Spirits in the Dark: In Memoriam 2018." | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Longreads |
| Standard recording contracts screwed Bluesmen out of royalties in the early 1900s, and the system was no different when Columbia released Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990. (Excerpted from "Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music's Hometown," by Robert Gordon.) | | |
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 | Variety |
| As far as Rolling Stones chart hits go, “She’s A Rainbow” is more of a cult favorite in the band’s canon, just missing the Top 40 of Mick Jagger’s biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits of all time. But by 2018 standards, it’s suddenly become a smash. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| It’s a harsh competitive landscape for emerging acts, says Peter Robinson. Maybe the music industry should start signing more interesting people. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The first chapter of Rosalía’s world-altering second album, "El Mal Querer," is an omen. The Catalan songwriter warns us as much in the song’s title (“Malamente -- Cap. 1, Augurio”), so if you’d hoped for a fairy tale, you might want to temper your expectations. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Among Tokyo's bustling streets, there is an underground collection of audiophile venues, sound-obsessed restaurants and clubs. Following in the footsteps of that model, this year two trendy new hi-fi bars have opened in Los Angeles from some notable members of the city's music scene. | | |
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 | 5 Magazine |
| How it all began with one bad edit and an engineer wasting everyone's time: Harold Heath meets Danny Krivit for our disco issue cover story. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Here's who stands a chance in the key categories come Feb. 10 of grabbing Grammy gold. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| Every year, Music Ally publishes an end-of-year report for Sandbox, our music-marketing brand, rounding up the best campaigns of the year. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| This year, rappers including Eminem, Kanye West, 6ix9ine, and Nicki Minaj turned trolling into a lifestyle. | | |
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 | Q Magazine |
| That’s me in the corner... (Originally published October 1995.) | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| How a surprisingly grown-up kids’ show spawned an international cult following. | | |
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 | The Vinyl Factory |
| Róisín Murphy, Beach House, the Decemberists, "1+1=X," Wayne Shorter... | | |
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| Billboard |
| The trend of recent farewell tours reminds us that all things must end at some point, and that the live industry won’t be able to lean on this golden generation of stadium performers for much longer. | | |
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| Music Business Worldwide |
| FanFair Alliance Campaign Manager Adam Webb rounds up the changes to secondary ticketing in 2018. | | |
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 | Garage Magazine |
| In the premiere episode of our podcast Fit Tea, we dissect Madonnas “Ray of Light” period, which ushered in the age of wellness and mysticism in Hollywood. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Kurtis Blow's 1979 track "Christmas Rappin'" was proof that rap had a place in the money-or-nothing recording industry. It was also just really sweet. | | |
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 | 1A |
| Holiday music is big business. | | |
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 | DownBeat |
| Whether he was wielding his alto saxophone, flute or bass clarinet, Eric Dolphy was a godsend to the cadre of musicians who were on a mission to expand the language of jazz. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| ‘It’s time for us to have as much creative freedom as those who are privileged.’ | | |
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 | Refinery29 |
| 10 pivotal songs by 10 women who changed music forever - and risked everything to do so. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | He had a muy buen año indeed in 2018. |
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| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
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