Music writer Ted Gioia shares a fresh chapter from his new book 'Music to Raise the Dead' - the results of many years of research into the most famous story in the history of the blues, namely guitarist Robert Johnson’s legendary deal with the Devil. Gioia goes deep into history and religious practices, as well as into the meaning of crossroads, and how it all provided an environment for Johnson's experience and music.

"Feelings of loneliness, anger, and, perhaps most potently, loss seem like they’ll never end. The experience is utterly overwhelming, and it’s frankly not healthy to keep all of those emotions bottled up. The best way to get them out? The tried-and-true breakup album" - Consequence introduces their list of 20 best break-up albums. The interesting selection includes Adele, Bright Eyes, Converge, The Cure, and Taylor Swift, among others.

Despite the fact that the '20s were ruled by segregation and racist sentiments, the most popular music of the era in the US was heavily influenced by the work of black performers who created and defined ragtime, jazz, and blues - All Music introduces their selection of songs of 1923. The themes come out quite modern - 'Beside a Babbling Brook' is about a man who feels climbing the ladder of life "isn't worth the worry and strife" and he would rather spend his time "beside a babbling brook" in the midst of nature. Check out the full list here.

Quite a few funny little posts on Composers Doing Normal Shit Twitter profile lately, the latest being composer Burt Bacharach having cheese and crackers. Previously seen - Leonard Cohen playing pinball, Franz Liszt having miserable time with his students, Miles Davis having fun, and many more.

"When did you become a Hallmark card hippie? Joy, love, peace. Puke! Where’s the rage, anger, hatred?" - a fan named Ermine asked Nick Cave. He responded on his Red Hand Files blog - "things changed after my first son died. I changed... Sitting around in my own mess, pissed off at the world... contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don’t know, in the end, sort of dumb... I felt a sudden, urgent need to, at the very least, extend a hand in some way to assist it – this terrible, beautiful world – instead of merely vilifying it, and sitting in judgement of it".

Consequence has rounded up a list of "20 of the most bleak, grim, melancholic albums out there for the most efficient commiserating", because "sad songs are so cathartic". The interesting list starts with Greet Death’s 'New Hell', at No. 20, to reach the catharsis with Mount Eerie's 'A Crow Looked at Me' at No. 1. Check out the full list.

"Medieval Córdoba had more influence on global music than any other city in history. A thousand years before New Orleans spurred the rise of jazz, and instigated the Africanization of American music, a similar thing happened in Córdoba, Spain. You could even call that city the prototype for all the decisive musical trends of our modern times" - Ted Gioia proclaims in his latest post, about the culture hub which at the time had the largest population in the West - 450,000 inhabitants (much more than Paris, London, or Roma at the time). “This was the chapter in Europe’s culture when Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side,” asserts Yale professor María Rosa Menocal, “and, despite their intractable differences and enduring hostilities, nourished a complex culture of tolerance.” It is that intersection of cultures that made it so impactful - "It is our single best example of how the West can enter into fruitful cultural dialogue with the outsider—to the benefit of both... The Córdoba Model still has something to teach us today. If we flourished by living together a thousand years ago, why shouldn’t it happen again now? The role model we need isn’t hard to describe—the rules are tolerance, connectivity, interaction, sharing, a welcoming attitude to new peoples and influences".

"Sure jazz is a big body of music, but it is full of wonders. If you’ve always wanted to get interested in jazz, just jump in. Don’t approach it with fear or a sense that you don’t know enough about it. It’s just a smorgasbord of stuff to enjoy. Or not. Take your pick from the variety" - PopMatters dares you to give jazz a chance. There are two lists - "the historical canon for those who want to be students [Coltrane, Holiday, Davis, Ellington...], but first I’m giving you a list designed to draw you in [Billy Cobham, Louis Jordan, Cassandra Wilson, Aaron Parks...]. No lessons here. No crusty things that don’t groove or only appeal to the brain. But, yes, it’s JAZZ, with the improvising and the daring but without the scary stuff".

"ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend... Judging by this song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’ though, it doesn’t look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks" - Nich Cave writes on his Red Hand Files blog about a song the AI made in Cave's style. "Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value".

"Social media and online music content is being prejudicially mined for evidence in criminal trials" - Ciaran Thapar looks back at years of trials against young rappers, based on their lyrics. "Most older adults are still coming to terms with the mere existence of social media, let alone the mind-boggling speed of TikTok, the nuances of British rap or the respawning etymologies of slang. But these are the people overseeing the metaphorical guillotine that now hovers over a whole generation of lost youth. Young people who have grown up under a mounting cost-of-living crisis, cared for by public services — youth clubs, schools, the NHS, the judiciary itself – that have been gutted by austerity".

"My plan for this year is to make a new record with the Bad Seeds" - Nick Cave writes in his first post of 2023 on his The Red Hand Files site. "This is both good news and bad news. Good news because who doesn’t want a new Bad Seeds record? Bad news because I’ve got to write the bloody thing". He continued on to detail the difficulty of songwriting: "Writing lyrics is the pits. It’s like jumping for frogs, Fred. It’s the shits. It’s the bogs. It actually hurts. It comes in spurts, but few and far between. There is something obscene about the whole affair. Like crimes that rhyme."

Ted Gioia writes an hommage to harpist Therese Schroeder-Sheker who has "devoted her life to performing music for the dying. She has done this on countless occasions, and has accumulated a huge body of knowledge, wisdom, and practical skills that she generously shares with others... This life story would be impressive under any circumstances, but especially so when you consider that Therese Schroeder-Sheker had a brilliantly successful career as a recording artist and concert hall performer. She could have spent her entire life as a music star, but instead put her primary focus on serving those in the most dire and hopeless situations... She is the antithesis of a pop star. Therese is an exemplar of compassion, caring, and contemplation".

"There’s a long history of feared or conquered foreigners as musical innovators. But their new musical styles are initially attacked and suppressed, although they eventually enter the mainstream. This seems to be the case with the Aztec zarabanda... The chaconne, too, probably originated in Latin America before showing up in Spain in the late sixteenth century. Early source documents describe the dance as Peruvian, although some believe it came from the Caribbean coast areas of Mexico. As with the zarabanda, the chacona was viewed as sexy and disreputable" - music writer Ted Gioia goes back centuries looking for the roots of chaconne and sarabande, now examples of European classical music popularized by Bach.

Drugs and parties specialist Michelle Lhooq checked out New York Dimes Square scene and published a great post about it, including some very interesting thoughts:

“One thing is obvious: when too many people try to adopt the contrarian position at once, it’s no longer contrarian. Mavericks become the new herd.”

“At the end of the night we’re all humans working to the real cause of just being,”

"There’s no such thing as purity anymore."

The former American president revealed his favorite songs of 2022. In includes SZA’s 'Shirt', Danger Mouse and Black Thought’s 'Belize' featuring MF DOOM, Lizzo’s 'About Damn Time', Rosalía’s 'SAOKO', Beyoncé’s 'Break My Soul', Bad Bunny’s 'Tití Me Preguntó', Kendrick Lamar’s non-album hype track 'The Heart Part 5', and others.

Music writer Ted Gioia made a list of his favorite online articles and essays from 2022 on music, arts, and culture - "if the article is good enough, I include it, no matter what the subject". Interesting pieces about heavy metal’s fascination with Roman emperors, the connection between Mozart na J Dilla, using music as torture, and many more.

"I’m happy to carry this remnant of my youth with me, not just as a reminder of two of the most beautiful people who walked the earth... but also that there was a time when I was both heroic and dumb enough to get a tattoo of a badly drawn skull with my girlfriend’s name on it" - Nick Cave answers a fan's questions on his Red Hand Files blog, whether he should get a tattoo. "I guess I am wiser now, but that folly of youth will always go with me, and when I am finally in the ground, the grinning skull will continue to mock and jeer at all the lofty pretensions and vanities and cautions of these, my latter years. So, should you get a tattoo, Chris? As a sage man of a mature age I would advise against it, which is why I think you should probably get one".

"Dear, sweet tinnitus — the musician’s curse. Mine is actually pretty manageable most of the time, it comes and goes, and only really kicks off when I am playing live music, which now I come to think of it is most of the time" - Nick Cave answers a fan's question about tinnitus in his Red Hand Files blog. "An ear specialist once told me there was not much I could do other than to ‘love my tinnitus’ — and then charged me three hundred quid" - Cave continue "but, you know, I don’t love my tinnitus, I don’t love my tinnitus at all, it’s a pain in the arse. So, I feel for you, Denise, sitting there in your solitude, with your tinnitus for company, and I don’t really have any advice for you, other than to say, if it is any consolation, that not only my cricket choir is singing, loud and very clear, but Warren’s is too, and Larry’s and Colin’s (Greenwood), and Wendy’s and Janet’s and T Jae’s — all our dreary crickets singing their moronic and endless serenade back to you".

English guitarist and singer/songwriter Wilko Johnson, a member of the 1970s pub band Dr. Feelgood, passed away this week. The New Cue paid a tribute to the musician revisiting Johnson's list of records that shaped him. There are a few famous ones, like The Doors' 'LA Woman', or Bob Dylan's 'Highway 61 Revisited', but also some lesser known, like Sir Douglas Quintet' 'Mendocino', and Mickey Jupp’s Legend's 'Legend (aka Red Boot)'.

All About Jazz writer Chris Vella made a collection of songs that allows you to get lost and "have it transport you to a state of bliss. Like the diamonds of the music, no matter the era or style, they just shine... They're not splashy or overly complicated... You can just hang inside the groove like it's in some kind of snow globe heaven".

Music writer Harmony Holiday was a part of Madlib's camp, and thought about what it was: "The entourage is its own worst enemy. It’s an endless funeral procession for the personalities that existed before of it, and the retribution that pursues it and evades it. It makes those men almost untraceable, intractable, easy to distract and extract from and run. I wanted to save this man from becoming the entourage’s pawn or mime, with the kind of feminine power that is mine, that makes men men. It turned me, for a time, into his pawn or mime, a thankless, timeless easy-to-abuse muse position. The entourage is a ruins".

In his latest post, music writer Ted Gioia presents a scientific basis for his alternative musicology—a holistic way of thinking about songs and their impact on individuals and societies. He makes the argument that too much of our world today is controlled by left-hemisphere-of-the-brain worldview — analytic and detail-oriented - and calls for the right hemisphere - controls creativity, intuition, and imagination - to take over. "The simplest way to tap into the right hemisphere is music… The connection between songs and the right hemisphere of our brains is so strong that stroke victims who have lost the language-making capacity of their left brain are sometimes still able to sing words they can no longer speak". A great intro to the theory.

"So many posthumous jazz releases are just live concerts with the same songs we’ve already heard before, but this album (entitled 'HOME.S.') genuinely breaks new ground" - music writer Ted Gioia recommends the only solo piano album by Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson, released this week, 15 years after his death. "There is no time zone for jazz nowadays. Svensson played a key role in breaking down that barrier, one of the last in the genre’s long history of overcoming limitations. And that’s perhaps the most fitting legacy of all for this artist, whose music itself is timeless" - Gioia points out.

"Growing up in a working class neighborhood, I judged the possibilities in my own life on the basis of what others in our home town had achieved. I was fortunate that I had a few success stories to latch onto—and others deserve that same kind of boost. They now have it in more than a dozen cities in North Carolina" - music writer Ted Gioia points out introducing music murals of John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk, and others, painted by graffiti artist Scott Nurkin in several cities in North Carolina, where the painted musicians hail from.

If you run a business that depends on creativity, you can’t punish the creators without consequences. Sometimes it takes a while for the cycle to play out, but it always plays out the same way - music writer Ted Gioia points out in his latest, optimistic post about the future of the creative economy. He believes things are about to change for the better for musicians, writers, and other creative professionals.

Here are a few of his predictions:

- Record labels are offering far more attractive terms to musicians than ever before

- Artist-friendly platforms are the future of music

- Single individuals will have more impact in launching new artists than major record labels or streaming platforms

Composer Ned Rorem celebrated his 99th birthday this week. Music writer Ted Gioia, however, highly recommends composer's diaries - "the most remarkable firsthand documentation we have of a musical life—surpassing those of Charles Burney, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, or whomever else you care to cite. Not even Mozart’s voluminous letters can match the scope and depth of Rorem’s six decades of journaling. He operates on a larger sphere, up their with Pepys and Boswell and others at the pinnacle of the diary as a literary genre".

Gioia also offers a choice of aphorisms:

• “The best music must be nasty as well as beautiful.”
• “Wagner, too, I love, if I don’t have to listen to him.”
• “Americans say what they think, the French think what they say.”
• “The end of love is like the Boléro played backwards.”

Music writer Ted Gioia opens a question on the role of conductors with an interesting take on the double meanings referring to both music and traveling. "When we refer to the movement of a classical work or a favorite track on a playlist, or even to structural forms such as the fugue (etymologically linked to the verb to flee). Take for example, the ancient Greek word oimê, signifying song, which is connected to the similar word oimos, designating a road or path".

Music writer Ted Gioia takes a critical look at today's music magazines which are (supposedly) leaning too much towards nostalgia: "Music writers serve as the conscience of the art form. They don’t simply reflect back to fans what they expect or want to hear. This is always important to remember but especially right now when the dominant platforms reward technocrats at the expense of musicians. Music media outlets have a responsibility to push back against these forces of marginalization and homogenization that not only hurt individual artists but weaken the en

Jack Probst shared with Creem.com his fascinating story from his years as a janitor at a music venue ten years ago. He was collecting fans' letters that bands such as My Chemical Romance, Death Cab For Cutie, and many more had left behind. "Reading the intimate stories fans shared with their idols kept me going as I mopped sticky floors and scrubbed permanent marker graffiti off bathroom stalls. They are a unique part of music history, the human side of a cold industry most of us never get to see".

Sudan Archives is releasing her second album this year, and one of the tracks on it is “Selfish Soul”. She talked to Song Exploder about how the idea for this song "started when she asked her boyfriend, James (who is the rapper Nocando) to shave her head. Cutting off her hair made her reflect on her whole hair story, from experiences she had as a kid, to the cultural and racial issues that have historically surrounded Black women’s hair".