A fun interview with actor Jason Momoa in Guitar World about his love of music and playing, bass in particular. It all started on the of 'Aquaman' where he had instruments, so his son was playing drums and his daughter was playing guitar. It was his assistant's birthday, "and she really loves Tool, so I borrowed a bass from my buddy and we all played 'Sober' for her", Momoa says, adding - "right then, my passion for bass really exploded". He says he likes Metallica, Pantera, Rage Against The Machine, Primus, Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers, but there's also music outside the "hard" canon for him - "one of my gods in music is Tom Waits, but having said that, my goddess is probably Ani DiFranco. I was raised with Miles Davis and Janis Joplin, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor is one of my all-time favorites, too”.

A heavy-metal lover named Prince Midnight has constructed a guitar out of his uncle Filip’s bones. The uncle died more than 20 years ago as the result of a car accident, and his skeleton had been donated to a college in Greece, where it was used for educational purposes for two decades. After they returned it to the family, Prince Midnight, who got into heavy-metal thanks to his uncle Filip, decided to build the guitar from the skeleton. The torso serves as the body of the guitar, to which Prince Midnight added a neck, pickups, volume knobs, and more. The name of the guitar - Filip Skelecaster. Metal Sucks brings the pictures of the guitar-building process.

Country singer Morgan Wallen got pretty much cancelled after using a racial slur (toward a white friend) taking "what was too far of a public step in what had largely been a possibly too narrowly divided space", Medium explained in an essay. "Regarding the first of what should be many reparational steps, Rissi Palmer offers a concise yet definitive proclamation. 'White people lost the privilege to use the n-word the moment that they enslaved and hung Black people. They don’t get to say it. They don’t get to say it for fun or with an ‘a’ or ‘er’ at the end. It’s simple. White people just can’t say it anymore'”.

Unable to play in "standard" venus due to the pandemic, the artists had to come up with novel ideas for places to play. It seems as if they're just getting started. Hot Since 82 played his sets from a hot air balloon and from under a pier, Liam Gallagher played aboard a barge as it floated down the River Thames with London's lockdown skyline and landmarks in full view, Biffy Clyro played from within a cube, Disclosure played a DJ set from above a waterfall at a national park... BBC reports about the start of something really new.

Just a very funny article in Vice about how to become a millionaire on Spotify by playing your music on your own computer, or rather on a lot of computers. You need 30-second songs - once a track is 30 seconds in, it counts as a stream. Continuously streaming 30-second songs for 24-hours on one computer nets you £7.89 per day. You need those songs to be played all day, every day, for a year, on 360 computers, and at the end of that year – you’ll have earned over £1,000,000 in streams! Genius; well, at least in theory.

Last weekend Bruce Springsteen appeared in a commercial, 71-year-old's first such appearance, and his first-ever product endorsement. Pitchfork isn't happy with the American institution trying to sell people a car. UPDATE: the automotive company has pulled the spot after it was revealed Wednesday that Springsteen had been arrested for driving while under the influence last fall, Rolling Stone reports. Springsteen was charged with DWI, reckless driving, and consuming alcohol in a closed area, while his blood alcohol content was 0.02 – one-fourth of New Jersey’s legal limit and the equivalent of one drink. Since the arrest occurred in a national park, federal prosecutors will pursue the case.

Over 280,000 people signed a petition calling for visa-free touring for UK bands through the EU. The campaign was also debated in the parliament, but it all ended in the UK government essentially ignoring the idea and doubling down on the EU being at fault, NME reports. The Conservative Minister for Culture Caroline Dineage did not suggest that negotiating visa-free touring was an option and repeated that “the UK pushed for ambitious arrangements” but that “quite simply the EU rejected this and there was no counter offer”.

In 1989, Norweigan pop sensation A-ha's singer Morten Harket and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen brought back from Switzerland to Norway something rarely seen back then - an electric car. Once in Oslo, A-ha boys started breaking the rules with the car: parking it illegally, driving it in bus lanes and blowing through toll booths without paying, sending a message that people should be allowed to drive electric cars - which weren’t classified for registration in Norway at the time - and, in fact, should be exempt from tolls, parking fees and bus lane restrictions for doing so. Harket's antics, heavily covered by the press, kicked off the country’s EV revolution - the following year, the government began implementing incentives for driving EVs, many of them closely resembling those that had been highlighted by the A-ha bandmates’ joyride. Last year, over half of all cars sold in Norway in 2020 were fully electric. Reasons to be Cheerful tells the whole nice story.

"Another notch in a string of slow-rolling, ever-expanding reconsiderations of American celebrity culture, and particularly the female tabloid figures of the 90s and aughts, one facilitated by the larger #MeToo retelling of sex, power and the spectra of traumas faced by women, partly by the simple passage of time" - Guardian writes in the review of 'Framing Britney Spears', a new docu mostly about the controversial conservatorship by her father. CNN asks a "more uncomfortable, slightly meta question... whether even serious attempts to examine the star's fame and potential exploitation wind up participating in the process". Decider thought it was "entertaining to watch, but even more than that, it is shocking and hopefully motivating".

Behemoth frontman Nergal is facing a charge of blasphemy in his native Poland due to an image in which he is seen stepping on artwork that depicts the Virgin Mary, Loudwire reports. The Polish musician, real name Adam Darski, is accused of “publicly insulting the object of Christian religious worship in the form of the person of the Mother of God” by sharing the offending image on social media. Nergal confirmed there was “another lawsuit in the process”, but claimed it was “nonsense”.

The spoken-word collaboration by 92-year-old Torben Ulrich with cellist Lori Goldston is titled 'Oakland moments: cello, voice, reuniting (rejoicing)' and it features Torben reciting text and poetry over Goldston’s cello, Louder reports. Recitations on 'Oakland' explore “athleticism, philosophy and mysticism”, including spiritual aspects of “alchemy, dance, yogic studies, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Sufism, Taoism, etc.”. Ulrich senior has maintained a lifelong presence in the Danish art world as a poet, musician, journalist, painter, filmmaker, and a tennis athlete.

The 50th anniversaries of the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison straddle 2020 and 2021. In April, it’ll be 27 years since we lost Kurt Cobain - Variety reminds us of the tragic losses of artists due to substance abuse. However, Variety argues, it has in the meantime become cool to be sober, although a path to sobriety isn't that easy. Alice Cooper explained: “All my other addictions, like cocaine and alcohol, were killing me. I knew I had an addictive personality — my stage show is a very addictive thing to do — so I had to find positive addictions”; he found golf!

Vocalist Mary Wilson, who co-founded the Supremes as a 15-year-old in a Detroit housing project and stayed with the hitmaking Motown trio until 1977,  died on Monday night at her home in Las Vegas at the age of 76, CNN reports. Some of their biggest hits include 'Baby Love', 'Stop! In the Name of Love', 'You Can’t Hurry Love', 'You Keep Me Hanging On'. Just two days prior to her death, Wilson put up a video on her YouTube channel announcing that she was working with Universal Music on releasing solo material, including the unreleased album 'Red Hot' she recorded in the 1970s with producer Gus Dudgeon.

The podcast industry thrived throughout the last year, The Chartable Blog reports. 2020 saw a more than 280% increase in the creation of new podcasts - from just over 300,000 new podcasts started in 2019 to almost 900,000 in 2020, which is 17,000 new podcasts each week. Just under half of the 900,000 new podcasts were in languages other than English. Many of these new podcasts have just one or two episodes - about 30%. However, 23% of podcasts started in 2021 have already published more than 10 episodes.

The YouTuber-turned-rapper KSI says he has earned enough money and is ready for a change in his life. The 27-year-old made his debut on the Heat Rich List last year, with estimated earnings of $12 million over 12 months, which seems to be enough for him - "I have reached peak happiness with the money I have. I don't need anymore, so I am just trying to do what I can, help who I can, support charities and have a good time man" - Music News reports.

The Quietus is delighted by the new documentary about Robert Lloyd and cult Birmingham punk band The Nightingales: "You’d expect a film by the director of Brass Eye and 'Toast of London', and the comedian behind some of the most brilliant stand-up sets ever to come from these shores, to be funny and smart – but the experience of 'King Rocker' explodes those expectations. It’s not hyperbole to say this is one of the best music documentaries of all time. Hilarious and brilliantly knowing about the form of music documentaries, and caustic about the music industry and fame, at its moving heart it’s a wonderful homage to and a portrait of a true outsider artist, and an inspiring comeback story that in the already boiling maelstrom of 2021 feels profoundly necessary".

"Like Hamburg to the Beatles, Europe was crucial to our growth as a band. It allowed us to see ourselves untethered from our UK roots and to imagine a life in music that could reach audiences everywhere" - Radiohead's Colin Greenwood wrote in Guardian about the big bureaucratic wall now erected between the UK and the EU. Elton John, also in Guardian, is worried about young bands: "I don’t want to live in a world where the only artists who can afford to tour properly are those who have been going for decades and have already sold millions of records".

Rave reviews of new album 'Ignorance' by The Weather Station who made a u-turn from indie-rock singer-songwriter to alter synth-pop. Pitchfork tagged it Best New Music (9.0) due to "unforgettable moments of calm and beauty". Guardian gave it perfect 5 stars - "quietly revolutionises an old, familiar trope – the pop album about heartbreak, co-starring piano and strings – and makes it a rallying cry for our time". Brooklyn Vegan says "she's explicitly making the case that ignorance is not bliss, not anymore, but musically, artistically, 'Ignorance' is a thoughtful, transportive and genuinely moving call to action".

Performers and songwriters "make all this stuff and we are last in the chain when it comes to remuneration", Blur drummer David Rowntree - now a city councillor - told BBC about unfair music streaming payments to songwriters and artists. "If something isn't done about it, that is terminal for the music industry" he said - "bands like mine will be fine, but the next generation of bands will be hit - bands living hand-to-mouth like we did for the first 10 years".

The Weekend was the big star at this year's Super Bowl and, for the first time in the game's 55-year history, he was largely forced to perform from the stands, rather than the pitch. His 12-minute show, which put the emphasis on his songs, was "watched" by thousands of cardboard cut-outs, Rolling Stone reports. The Weeknd spent $7m of his own money on the production, which included a set modelled on the city in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'. Rendition of 'America the Beautiful' by H.E.R. was also all about the music - R'n'B singer displayed her powerful voice and added a pyrotechnic guitar solo.

Morgan Wallen's racial slur scandal proved beneficial for his album sales in the US, the latest Billboard 200 chart shows. His double album 'Dangerous' earned 149,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 4, which is up 14% when compared to the previous week, Billboard reports. It is Walen's fourth week in a row on top of Billboard 200. The last country album to spend its first four weeks at No. 1 on this chart was Shania Twain's 'Up!' in 2003.

Phoebe Bridgers smashing her guitar on Saturday Night Live has become a very controversial topic, with one tweet going viral for saying that musician's guitar smash "seemed extra". Bridgers responded by taking on a lighter note retweeting comedian Caleb Hearon's tweet asking "did phoebe's guitar write this". Jason Isbell said - "that was like an 85 dollar guitar she smashed come on guys". Bridgers responded that guitar manufacturer Danelectro was in on it - "I told danelectro I was going to do it and they wished me luck and told me they’re hard to break". Isbell summoned the story up calling it "a salute to both Rock and Roll and fine craftsmanship".

Zambian-born, Limerick-based Denise Chaila is very proud of her Zambian-Irish identity, and quite eager to spread her message of freedom and unity with much self-confidence, as she said on an Irish TV show - "I would regret the things that I do not say far more than I would regret anything that I do say". He explored her identity very early on with her song 'Duel Citizenship', and last month her first mixtape 'Go Bravely' was nominated for Ireland’s Choice Music prize, both for best album, and best song for a track 'Chaila', about her name. Her latest song 'ANSEO' might just be her big break.

Tom Moulton is one of the pioneers of remixes in disco music, the inventor of the breakdown section and the 12-inch single vinyl format, and in his 80s he decided it's time - to work. He is releasing mixes on his Bandcamp, five disco volumes since the pandemic began, made in his apartment while he avoids the coronavirus. All the music is new, drawn from his towers of authorised multitrack tapes. Guardian talked to the never-stopping producer...

Fucked Up release an epic 19-minute punk beast 'Year Of The Horse – Act One'; Night Beats are part psychedelia part garage in 'New Day', a fun strange song; The Armed release a familiar-sounding yet new 'All Futures'; it took Neil Young decades to share his folk-waltz 'Daughters', well it's here now.

An unknown track 'Choose Your Weapon' by the unknown British electronic producer Scaramanga Silk has sold for over $41,000 (£29,800) on Discogs, making it the site’s most expensive record ever, and one of the most expensive records ever sold anywhere, Guardian reports. The vinyl was self-released in 2008, and there were only 20 copies made of the edition. It is the only time 'Choose Your Weapon' has been sold on the site, and artist, who earns nothing from the sale, is baffled by the price - “It is very difficult to understand why the release went for that kind of money, as I do not believe that any record is worthy of such a valuation”. Previous Discogs record was $27,500 paid for Prince's 1987 record 'The Black Album' that he had deleted before it went on sale.

After country star Morgan Wallen was caught on camera using a racial slur, his music was pulled from hundreds of radio stations in the US, his radio play fell 70% and his record contract was suspended. On the other hand, however, sales of his music skyrocketed by 339%, according to Billboard. The day before the story about his use of the n-word broke, he sold 5,000 total units, about 1,000 of which were copies of his recent release 'Dangerous: The Double Album'. As the backlash grew, on the first day of the scandal, he sold 7,000 albums and 22,500 total units, an increase of 339% compared to sales the day before. Breaking down album vs. song sales, Wallen's albums sold a little over 8,000 copies Feb. 3, up 593% from 1,000 on Feb. 2, while his songs sold 14,000 downloads Feb. 3, up 261% from 4,000 on Feb. 2.

Apart from the biggest streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music, classical music can be found on other services, in high audio quality. Qobuz hosts all genres, many albums are available in a better-than-CD quality, it features plenty of editorial material; it goes for a 50% higher price than Spotify. Idagio is classical music only, with the flexibility of their search and the richness with which the results are presented unrivaled by others; it’s supplemented by an excellent range of editorial material. Primephonic also hosts exclusively classical music, in high audio quality. Bach Track presents them all.

Indian government launched an unprecedented backlash against Rihanna, just hours after she posted a tweet about protest of Indian farmers. BBC reports. Tens of thousands of farmers have been protesting on the borders of the capital Delhi for more than two months against new laws that will loosen the rules around the sale, pricing and storage of agricultural produce. Her tweet linked to a news story about the internet blockade at the protest sites and soon went viral, gaining more than 700,000 likes. The government pushback was swift, led by Home Minister Amit Shah who tweeted - "No propaganda can deter India's unity! No propaganda can stop India to attain new heights!".

Critics from all over the spectrum are speaking highly about 'For The First Time', the debut album by the British septet Black Country, New Road. Clash Music places the band "in a paradox where so-called high and low art intersect", calling the album "a product of its time", promising "it will unsettle and confuse you". The Line of Best Fit appreciates the intensity of the band - "ferocious and endlessly intelligent, highly considered and wildly improvised, eked out with bristling tension". The Quietus likes how they sound - "it’s rare that a band this noisy, an album where chaos reigns, is recorded with this much clarity. There are so many different musical ideas, and none of them get lost along the way". Stereogum chose this debut for their Album of the Week, describing it as "a document of restless creativity and incisive minds processing an era of too much mediation and stimulation".