#ACFM podcast shared a podcast about the history of American folk music. It looks at the communism of Woody Guthrie and the singers of the Dust Bowl era, the Vietnam protest music of Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village scene, and the folk psychedelia of the Incredible String Band and Vashti Bunyan. The episode includes over 40 musical examples spanning a period of around 100 years.
Hip-hop playlist RapCaviar made The Mount Rushmore of 2010s hip-hop, picking the first three and leaving it to its Twitter followers to pick out the fourth. RC first chose Drake, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, with the Twittersphere picking out Nicki Minaj. Kanye West was close 2nd, followed by Future and Lil Wayne.
A great text by the American jazz critic and music historian Ted Gioia about how he worked as a fixer in the 1990s. He looks back into an episode from China where he had to find an "honest broker" - "true brokers, intermediaries between others. They aren’t going to participate in your deal, no matter what it is. They are go-betweens, really. But do not underestimate the power of this kind of brokerage. Whatever you need—a loan, a building permit, political influence, a place to land a private jet, whatever—they will introduce you to the right people and steer you away from the sharks. And they do this for a very simple reason: their prestige is enhanced by making these connections. In many cases, they don’t even want to be paid. Or let me put that differently—you repay them by becoming a trusted contact for them in future dealings". A great read!
Sound Field hosts Nahre Sol and Arthur Buckner dive into the history and mystery surrounding Beethoven's 'Für Elise', one of the most widely recognizable classical pieces in the world. It has appeared in commercials, movies, and even garbage trucks in Taiwan. So how did it get so popular, and is it overrated?
Miranda Reinert goes on to explain the punk subgenre orgcore, melodic punk, different from in due to the way music is discussed online, namely, it gets defined simply as “music enjoyed by users of punknews”. It is also defined by the type of person who enjoys it, which is why sometimes it is called FestCore and Beard Punk, because both bands and fans in the orgcore scene typically have beards. Typical bands from the scene include Dillinger Four, American Steel, None More Black, The Loved Ones, and The Falcon.
Medium writer Patsy Fergusson explaines why she liked Linda Lindas' 'Racist, Sexist Boy': "I’m not a fan of punk music. Screaming annoys me. But I loved the song... because it broke so many tired stereotypes.
Music analyst Bob Lefsetz argues in his latest blog post that mainstream music has become laughable: "Social media is fluid. It changes every day. It’s not so much about creating a track that everybody listens to ad infinitum, but something so outrageous that people take notice, train-wreck value is the most important criterion, you want something the viewers can tweak to their own advantage, utilize to garner views for themselves".
Former Led Zeppelin singer talks in his 'Digging Deep' podcast about how he spent the lockdown cleaning up his house, finding on the way plenty of music he worked on and never released. Plant says there's some "incredible" and "great" music there. He's instructed his kids to make it all available for free "when I kick the bucket".
'Afrique Victime' is the new, awesome album by the Touareg guitarist Mdou Moctar who made a list of albums, artists, songs and styles that made him the musician he is now. The Quietus assembled the list, which includes Van Halen, Abdallah Oumbadogou ("the founder, the source of my music"), Khaira Arby ("a golden voice"), Malam Maman Barka ("insanely good, totally insane"), Bob Marley ("a revolutionary and he’s someone who loved peace"), Tinariwen ("you have to write things to encourage people").
Brazilian freelance writer Beatriz Miranda wrote a piece for the Music Journalism Insider about the Bizz, a music magazine that arrived in 1985, after the country suffocated two decades of civil-military dictatorship. The first issue of the Bizz sold a staggering 120,000 copies.
"There’s a vast array of different kinds of Dylan covers: R&B singers love relaxing into the contours of 'Lay Lady Lay'; country singers like his rootsy stuff; indie-rockers key into his sad side; heroic rock singers love scaling the peaks of open-ended classics - like 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue' or 'Like a Rolling Stone' - finding their own way to make new meanings amidst the intersecting, and often contradictory, emotions and ideas that can roil around within one Dylan song" - Rolling Stone writes introducing their selection of 80 best Bob Dylan covers, from Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, and the Byrds to William Shatner, Adele, and the Roots.
The New Yorker is highlighting a selection of their pieces celebrating Bob Dylan's big birthday. "In 'The Crackin’, Shakin’, Breakin’ Sounds', from 1964, Nat Hentoff visits Dylan in the studio and catches the artist in the first stages of his meteoric recording career. ('Wiry, tense, and boyish, Dylan looks and acts like a fusion of Huck Finn and a young Woody Guthrie. Both onstage and off, he appears to be just barely able to contain his prodigious energy'). In 'The Wanderer', Alex Ross follows Dylan on the road during his Never Ending Tour, which has defined the most recent decades of his seminal performances ('It’s hard to pin down what he does: he is a composer and a performer at once, and his shows cause his songs to mutate, so that no definitive or ideal version exists. Dylan’s legacy will be the sum of thousands of performances, over many decades')".
"These are records that stop you in your tracks, that are impeccably recorded and have the two ingredients above all that we exist for: great songs and authenticity" - Chris Sheehan, founder of UK-based Karousel Music, writes in MBW after he launched a new label venture, Buried Treasure. It will be a platform for the "world’s most criminally overlooked artists to finally present their work to a new generation and earn the living they deserve". The first release on Buried Treasure is the UK folk singer-songwriter Matt Deighton.
"That an African American man played a massive and pivotal role in three seminal musical forms seemingly dominated by Caucasian artists – folk rock, prog rock, and proto-punk – is one of the most tragically untold stories in popular music’s history" - Tape Op writes introducing Tom Wilson, the man who produced albums, among many others, by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Velvet Underground, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa, The Animals, Gil Scott-Herron...
"Hope too resides in a gesture of kindness from one broken individual to another or, indeed, we can find it in a work of art that comes from the hand of a wrongdoer. These expressions of transcendence, of betterment, remind us that there is good in most things, rarely only evil. Once we awaken to this fact, we begin to see goodness everywhere, and this can go some way in setting right the current narrative that humans are shit and the world is fucked" - Nick Cave wrote deeply humanistic on his The Red Hand Files blog.
Music impacts blood pressure, body chemistry, brain rhythms, heart rate, body temperature, psychological attitude and a host of other factors. which makes it an audio-steroid, Ted Gioia argues examining the role of music in athletic performances. The research of professor Costas I. Karageorghis has shown the value of music in building team cohesion, creating dissociative mindsets that may reduce pain or fatigue, and almost any other sports parameter imaginable. USA Track & Field, the governing body regulating the sport, saw music as a threat - it imposed a ban in 2006 on headsets and portable audio players at races “to prevent runners from having a competitive edge".
"Today, Berlin is one of the premier destinations for techno music fans. People come from all over the world to party all night to the rhythmic beat of Berlin’s club scene. And this music that the city is most famous for developed in large part because of the thing the city is most infamous for: the Berlin wall, which divided the city into east and west for almost thirty years" - 99% Invisible podcast introduces its new episode about the unusual destiny of the dance capital.
"For decades, I have taught courses on nuclear weapons and the Cold War. Conveying what life was like with the everyday fear of immediate destruction, especially to younger students, has become more and more difficult over the years... But one medium from the Cold War, more than any other, gets through to my students: MTV, Music Television. When I show them videos from the age of glitter and spandex that are filled with images of nuclear destruction, they finally grasp how much the threat of instant and final war was woven into the daily life of young Americans" - Harvard professor Tom Nichols writes in the Atlantic about his latest addition to the curriculum. "In fact, messages about nuclear weapons, nuclear war, and the end of humanity, by some counts, appeared almost hourly on MTV, making nuclear destruction second only to sex as the most ubiquitous video theme flooding the eyes of America’s youth in the 1980s".
An easy-to-listen-to and funny podcast on Stitcher about a few specific chord progressions that show up again and again in popular music. Music journalist Jennifer Gersten and comedic musician Benny Davis discuss 'The Ice Cream Changes' progression, which originated in the 1930s, and has been used by Led Zeppelin, Bonnie Taylor, Everly Brothers and many more. The 4-chord progression is the most famous of them all, used by artists ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Lady Gaga, and from Bob Marley to Blink-182. Listen to the discussion below.
Australia’s take on the hyperpop is variegated and contested, producing some of the most vibrant and delightfully strange pop in the country - Guardian argues presenting the blooming genre. The stand-out artists at the moment at the continent are: Oh Boy, Ninajirachi ("glassy and exhilarating, drawing in club influences"), Donatachi ("all the kind of obnoxious elements of Top 40 pop, but dialled up to 11”), Cookii, Perto, Daine ("it’s [the genre]created a lot of room for people to experiment and still feel like they have mainstream appeal"), Muki, and Banoffee. Spotify playlist.
Beethoven's morning hygiene routine involved standing half-dressed before a mirror and pouring enormous pitchers of water over his hands while singing loudly to himself. After this, the German composer would count out exactly 60 beans and grind them, and make himself a coffee. Van Magazine's writer tried a week of this routine, as well as other somewhat strange daily routines of 4 other classical composers - Edvard Grieg, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and Antonin Dvořák.
A quintessential blog post at The Melt about "Spago Rock", defined by Mike Pace of Oxford Collapse: "A style of music that could be loosely defined as organic soul with synthetic instrumentation. If the yacht rock sound encompassed the mid-’70s to early ‘80s and centered around good times n' vibes, Spago Rock takes place from roughly 1986-1992, when many legacy artists matured and mellowed into their 40s, yet still wanted to be seen as contemporary and relevant. Artists who cut their teeth woodshedding in the analog days were now embracing the latest in digital studio technology, crafting immaculate electronic-based sophisti-pop while never truly abandoning their rock roots". Pace's new project Simmons & Matteo is the new phase of that genre.
“I’d like to have something to give to my daughter" - says a homeless LA man. Eddie Johns, however, could, however, have something for his daughter to inherit. Daft Punk have namely sampled Johns' 'More Spell on You' on their breakout hit 'One More Time'. The author was never credited or paid a dime. LA Times brings the sad story.
Spinal Tap were a fake band constructed for a movie ('This Is Spinal Tap'), yet not being real didn't prevent them from recording two albums and going on a tour. Others followed, like Stillwater from Cameron Crowe's 'Almost Famous', 'That Thing You Do!’s the Wonders, 'Under the Silver Lake’s Jesus and the Brides of Dracula, and MTV's 2gether. The Ringer discusses the nature of fake bands with the people behind some of them - including Crowe, Zooey Deschanel, Andy Samberg, and Emily Haines.
Author Oli Freke released his news book 'Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Digital (and Back)', a written celebration of the impact of synths on music and culture. Freke offers a comprehensive and meticulously researched directory of every major synthesizer, drum machine and sampler made between 1963 and 1995. For Mix Mag, he chose the 10 most influential synthesizers.
The Atlantic follows the unusual life story of the song 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' by the American folk singer John Denver. The magazine calls it "an ode to an uncomplicated vision of the United States", which, however, found fertile ground in China and South Korea.
Sao Paulo trio DEAFKIDS are the latest guests in Fact Magazine's Against the Clock, where an artist has 10 minutes to produce a song. The model proves a perfect fit for the psych-noise industrial experimentalists, since their music often comes to life in a spontaneous way. Watching music creation rarely gets this close!
Iranian metalcore band Out of Nowhere made a selection of 10 best Middle Eastern metal bands (or, we can call it Near East, depending, probably, on where we are). So, the best in metal from the vast region are:
Calibre - melodic metal core, Iran
Chopstick Suicide - mathcore, Turkey
Coast of Arms - metalcore, UAE/Qatar
Creative Waste - grindcore, Saudi Arabia
Kimaera - doom/death, Lebanon
Mortem Atra - melodic doom / death metal, Cyprus
New Carnis - death metal, Iran
Phenomy - thrash metal, Lebanon
Scarab - death metal, Egypt
Smouldering in Forgotten - death/black, Bahrain
The Pudding asks an intriguing question, and offers, for a start, two graphs that compare the success and popularity of solo artists compared to their original bands. The two metrics The Pudding uses are the number of Spotify followers, and their ranking on Billboard Hot 100.
To celebrate his 88th birthday, Willie Nelson has shared his 10 rules for life:
