Guardian really appreciates Two Minutes to Late Night, a comedy metal show hosted by comedian Jordan Olds’s corpse-painted alter ego Gwarsenio Hall (Gwar + Arsenio Hall). Its DIY, punk ethos and absurd, profanity-laced comedy made it a hit among metalheads, especially in lockdown, the G insists.
GQ started a lovely "Happiness Project" where 12 culture-shapers discuss what makes them happy, including songs. Director and musician David Lynch chose 'Song to the Siren' by This Mortal Coil (a Tim Buckley cover) - "Elizabeth Fraser drives me crazy. So many things. There are so many pieces of music, I just burst into tears it's so beautiful". Phoebe Bridgers says it's 'If It Makes You Happy' by Sheryl Crow - "it's like just enough of a guilty pleasure". Roddy Ricch chose Pharrell's 'Happy' - "the fact that Pharrell could make a song like that was crazy".
San Francisco-based start-up Audius has raised $8,6m from Silicon Valley investors for a blockchain-based digital streaming network that connects fans directly with artists and exclusive new releases, Music Business Worldwide reports. The platform aims to allow artists to set the rate for their own work and capitalise on data that shows them who their superfans are. Audius will keep 10% of revenue and the rightsholder will keep 90%. Audius launched in 2019, it has reached 1.3m users listening every month, over 50k people have uploaded content, and the platform hosts around 200k tracks.
LA-based collector Jonathan Ward released a new 100-track compilation, 'An Alternate History of the World’s Music', focused on music recorded across the non-Anglo world, and beyond popular music, between 1907-1967. There's Crimean Tartar Orchestra, as well as music from the Persian Gulf, the Okinawa islands, Afghanistan, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Uganda, Spain, Albania, Mongolia, Mexico, etc. Ward is a collector of old 78rpm records who started his website Excavated Shellac in 2007, posting up a recording every day, which means this is just a glimpse into his collection. Guardian's Garth Cartwright calls it "the best album of 2021" (it actually came out in December). Bandcamp sells digital copies for $35.
Filmmaker Jed I. Rosenberg directed a documentary 'System Shock' which provides an intriguing and insightful overview of how the MP3 set in motion a series of events that completely disrupted the music industry. The bottom line of this docu is that the MP3 technology nearly destroyed the music industry, but that its principle made much more money elsewhere.
Decades before Merch Mercuriadis's Hipgnosis Fund started spending billions of dollars on famous artists' catalogs, David Bowie did a similar thing. In 1997 he sold 10-year-security on his entire catalog for $55 million to Prudential Insurance at a fixed interest rate, backed by the royalties from his pre-1990 master recordings and publishing. In essence, he gave up a decade's worth of royalties on 'Heroes', 'Life on Mars', and everything else in exchange for an immediate payout, MusicREDEF reminded us and started a thread about it. Last 12 months Bob Dylan, Shakira, Imagine Dragons and many others did a similar thing - it's a lasting deal, not just 10 years.
DJ Mag breaks down what the current rules post-Brexit mean for the UK-based artists touring in the EU, the EU-based artists touring in the UK, as well as for the roadies and tour-bus owners. There are also changes affecting event promoters.
Producer Terrace Martin narrates a video about how jazz influenced New York graffiti artist Basquiat. Martin delves into how the genre, and especially artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, played a role in his artistic vision.
New Zealand seems like Mars now with the rest of the world in some sort of lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, while the island-country in the southern Pacific holds big shows (it had 1,927 Covid-19 infections over the past year). Pop band Six60 held a concert in Hastings on Saturday night which was attended by - 20,000 fans. Hawke's Bay reports from the show.
A lovely article in the Bangla newspaper The Daily Star about a small music shop Rainbow Music Store which opened up in 1982 in the backstreet of its capital Dhaka only to leave a great influence on Bangladeshi hard rock. The owners of the store weren't just selling music, they were also educators in all things rock and metal – the bands, the albums, and the history. Several prominent bands rose from that foundation - prog metal band Artcell, RockStrata, and Warfaze.
SOHH shares an amazing video of UCLA Bruins gymnastics dancer Nia Dennis showing off big moves while dancing (gymnasticing?!?) to hip-hop classics. The star athlete delivers jaw-dropping moves dancing to Kendrick Lamar and 2Pac.
A great interview in the Guardian with Jon Bon Jovi after his band performed at the American president's inauguration. "Bon Jovi at 58 looks like a man who spent his youth on yoga retreats as opposed to hanging out with Aerosmith. But how did he resist when he was so young?" the G's journalist asked - "To be honest with you, I didn’t have the capacity to handle drugs. I didn’t find joy in it, and I didn’t need to bury myself emotionally, so what was the purpose?". He's married to his high-school sweetheart, and still lives in New Jersey - “I got the house in Malibu, saw the guys who are looking over your shoulder to see if they should go talk to someone else. That whole lifestyle was so vapid to me. I couldn’t wait to get away from it”. So, a regular Jon...
South African anti-apartheid activist, composer, and jazz trombonist Jonas Gwangwa has died aged 83, NPR reports. “A giant of our revolutionary cultural movement and our democratic creative industries has been called to rest” - South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said confirming the news. Gwangwa's death comes three years to the day after the passing of Hugh Masekela and exactly two after the death of Zimbabwean great Oliver Mtukudzi.
Prince's former lover and backing singer Sheila E. has announced that she’s making a biopic about her relationship with the musician - “Coming soon…Sheila E. to release ‘Girl Meets Boy’, a film telling the beautiful story of her time with Prince. Stay Tuned”, Spin reports. Sheila E. first met Prince at a concert in the late ’70s, years later she ended up contributing vocals during the 'Purple Rain' recording sessions as well as opening Prince’s 'Purple Rain' tour when the two developed a fleeting romantic relationship. They became briefly engaged after Prince proposed in 1987, but by the 1988-89 Lovesexy Tour, their relationship fractured. Over the years they remained close friends who would periodically join forces on-stage.
Morgan Wallen’s 'Dangerous: The Double Album' spends a second week in a row at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, earning 159,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 21, Billboard reports. 'Dangerous' might be the album to mark a shift in the way country-music lovers consume music - the big majority of its sales comes from SEA units, 133,000, equaling 177.11 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs. Album sales - where traditionally the majority of country music sales comes - comprise 22,000 and TEA units comprise 4,000. 'Dangerous' is the first country album to spend two weeks in a row at No. 1 since Chris Stapleton’s 'Traveller' in 2015.
"My daddy said I am starting to go through an emo phase as I discovered My Chemical Romance this week" - drum wonder-girl Nandi Bushell said about her latest video where she covers dark-emo band's 'Welcome to the Black Parade'. The 10-year old says she loves "being able to let out all my energy after a stressful week of home learning and online exams".
Olivia Rodrigo holds to the top of the UK Official Singles chart with 117,000 chart sales of her hit single 'Drivers Licence', some three times higher than her closest rival, Anne-Marie, KSI and Digital Farm Animals' 'Don’t Play'. The hit single clocks up 13.7 million streams, the biggest one-week figure for a Number 1 single in two years. the Official Charts reports. Also making waves is Longest Johns’ sea shanty 'Wellerman' which rides into the chart at No. 37 following enormous viral success on TikTok.
British Pearl Jam tribute act Pearl Jam has changed its name to Legal Jam, after receiving a cease and desist letter in September 2020 from the Seattle grunge icons, Metal Injection reports. Pearl Jamm indicate that the band with only one “m” requested they change their name and logo, claiming that it was too close to Pearl Jam’s actual name and logo. The original also requested Pearl Jamm to remove and destroy all the merchandise containing the name and the logo.
In other countries, it takes decades for musicians to get their images on coins and banknotes, but the Bank of Mongolia believes in The Hu so much that they plan to feature them on a new commemorative coin as soon as this February. Mongolian folk-metal quartet has seen a rise in popularity in the last few years, Loudwire reports.
Sea shanties are antiphonal music - one where there is a call and an answer in the song - and as such perfectly fitted for TikTok, music theorist Adam Neely says in his latest video about the latest viral trend. Neely, with help from his mom, explains how it works.
The Flaming Lips played their first space bubbles show in Oklahoma City's The Criterion on Friday night (it was postponed from December due to rising COVID numbers). The show had fans in 100 inflatable balls, each of which could hold three people. Members of the band were in their own capsules as well. The band put on a typically bombastic spectacle, Brooklyn Vegan reports.
Organizers of the Ultra Music Festival Miami 2021 cancelled the popular DJ techno fest for the second year in a row, citing COVID-19 concerns, Billboard reports. The Bayfront Park event would have happened in March in downtown Miami. Organizers of Ultra are requesting that City of Miami officials approve their permit request to stage the event next year in March.
Rapper Hus Kingpin made a whole album inspired by Portishead, 'Beth Gibbons' is the stand-out track so far; Cassandra Jenkins' 'Hard Drive' is just a smooth-cool-groovey indie rock drive; Kendrick Lamar's hip-hop gets interpreted as jazz in 'How Much A Dollar Cost' by the jazz supergroup R+R=NOW which includes Robert Glasper, Terrace Martin, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Derrick Hodge, Taylor McFerrin, and Justin Tyson; Panopticon share a 12-minute epic black/sludge/post metal 'KnowHope'; Amanda Gorman's powerful Inauguration Day poem 'The Hill We Climb' gets even richer with a piano improv by Rostam; Madlib's 'Dirtknock' is a simple song, barely-there - just some guitar and vocals; Black Sheep Wall share a 13-minute psychedelic sludge/hardcore/post metal 'New Measures Of Failure'; th1rt3en is the new rap-rock group of Pharoahe Monch, Daru Jones, and Marcus Machado - 'Cult 45' promises a lot; Austrian post-blackers Harakiri For The Sky share a furious and melodic 'I'm All About The Dusk'; Matthew E White & Lonnie Holley share jazzy and arythmical 'This Here Jungle Of Moderness/Composition 14'; the Faith No More-Jesus Lizard-Helmet-M. Bungle super-group Tomahawk gets its groove back in 'Business Casual'.
Scottish postman Nathan Evans has signed a record label with Polydor and quit his day job, a mere month after storming TikTok with sea shanties. His rendition of 'The Wellerman' literary exploded in just a matter of weeks, and it had also made people interested in sea shanties as well. The 26-year-old said it goes to show that if you keep going anything can happen, BBC reports.
An amazing and hilarious article in the Guardian about Tommy James, the American pop-singer who in 1966, as a 19-year old small-town boy, signed a deal with Roulette Records, only to find out it is being run by a mobster Morris Levy. James scored 23 US chart singles, plus nine gold or platinum albums – selling 100m records, but he never got any royalties until 1986 when Levy sold Roulette to EMI. James believes Levy owed him up to $40 million when the mobster died in 1990. James however got poetic justice with his bestselling autobiography 'Me, the Mob and the Music' which is being adapted to a movie by Barbara De Fina, the film producer behind Martin Scorsese’s 'Goodfellas' and many other movies. James continues to play across the US...
Joey “Shithead” Keithley, frontman of Vancouver hardcore pioneers D.O.A., is the subject of a new documentary from Scott Crawford called 'Something Better Change' (named after D.O.A.'s 1980 debut album), Rolling Stone reports. It shows the journey of a punk-rocker to a position of power, and possibility to change stuff. The doc will explore "connections between music and activism," and it features Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Jello Biafra, Krist Novoselic, Duff McKagan, and Beto O'Rourke.
Smaller summer festivals in the UK are "still possible" this summer, despite the cancellation of Glastonbury - Paul Reed, the head of the Association of Independent Festivals, told the BBC. Glastonbury 2021 was cancelled by its organizers, but, as Reed says, it is "a different beast to most festivals and most likely ran out of time due to the size and complexity of the event". Smaller events could still happen if the government ensures organisers can access cancellation insurance, Reed believes, adding - "for most festivals, the cut-off point is more likely the end of March". The UK government doesn't still believe that insurance is the right way to help the concert industry, Guardian reports
"People close to Britney Spears and lawyers tied to her conservatorship now reassess her career as she battles her father in court over who should control her life" - the press release for the upcoming documentary 'Framing Britney Spears' says. It is a part of 'The New York Times Presents' series and it comes out Feb. 5.
"I always liked things that most people didn't like" - Rick Rubin says in an interesting Stitcher podcast about his choice of artists he produced, and his creative process - "I've always been voraciously interesting in counter-culture. I'm just interested!". He says also how he guards his passion: "I try to be as true to my interests as possible. I don't listen to music to find out what's going on, I listen to music because I like music". Rubin also says how the creative moment isn't rational: "The magic doesn't happen in the head, the magic happens in the heart. The actual magic is not intellectual, it's faster than the intellect, it's much more primal, it's much more immediate, it's not to be figured out".
Disney Channel actor Olivia Rodrigo released her single 'Drivers License' to attract 82 million domestic streams across all platforms, the biggest US streaming week ever, and it had 15.17 million global Spotify streams on Jan. 11, a record for a non-holiday track. Stereogum argues the 17-year old's moody indie-pop ballad will have a big effect on pop music this year, and sees the song as a clear sign of a turn in pop-music: "Depressive guitar balladry might be a more reliable pathway to mainstream success than sparkling synth-pop. For years cultural critics have been noting that streaming, social media, and a lifestyle dominated by screen time were fostering a moodier, blearier mainstream".
20-year-old piano player Joe Jenkins from Bristol has made a career by posting videos of himself playing piano in strange places on YouTube. He's taken his piano on a boat, outside Buckingham Palace and even in a hot-air balloon. He has gained 3.9 million subscribers playing songs from video games, films, memes and anime shows in unusual places, and he doesn't actually like playing in public! BBC reports on the interesting musician.
Billboard calculates losses Neil Yung and Joni Mitchell are going to have due to their withdrawal from Spotify: "At an estimated $2.8 million in streaming royalties last year, Young’s decision will forego about $1.2 million each year for him and his label, Warner Music/Reprise (Spotify accounted for about 43%). Of that, Young likely received half — $600,000. On top of that, Young earned $308,000 in publishing revenue from Spotify last year. Half of that — $154,000 — he would receive for the songwriter share with the other half going to Hipgnosis Songs. For Young, personally, the decision to pull his music from Spotify will cost him about $754,000 annually. In 2021, Mitchell’s recording catalog earned $373,000 from Spotify revenues. Like Young, Mitchell’s heritage contract likely earns her half of those revenues, adding up to about $186,500 in artist royalties she is foregoing. Her publishing, including her songwriting share, earned about $702,000 annually, of which about 11% — $79,000 — came from Spotify. Mitchell’s personal annual loss, based on her catalog’s performance for 2021, would be about $257,000 in total artist and publishing royalties", Billboard estimates.
LA Times traces Neil Young's fights against corporations throughout his career: "Over the decades, Young has made the news for indicting: MTV’s corporate ties; musical peers including Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones for earning millions selling their music for commercials; record mogul David Geffen’s market-driven tastes; Monsanto and corporate control of family farms; the owner of Lionel trains for announcing its closure (Young ended up buying the company); the sonic inferiority of compact discs; and the ways in which tech companies have been willing to compromise on audio quality for bigger profit margins".
Joni Mitchell has announced on her blog that she intended to remove “all my music” from Spotify, MBW reports. Her reason are “irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives”. Mitchell added: “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue”. Neil Young pulled his albums from Spotify due to his belief that the podcaster Joe Rogan has been spreading untruths about Covid vaccinations on the service.
"Dan Charnas’ book, 'Dilla Time', is a fascinating, immersive look at J Dilla’s impact both during his lifetime and beyond: the producer’s relationships and upbringing, his musical interventions, and the contentious dispute over who gets to control his posthumous legacy" - Pitchfork presents the new book about the late hip-hop producer. They also share an excerpt.
Two days before his death, Jimi Hendrix played with Eric Burdon, the former Animals frontman, who had recently teamed up with Latin-influenced rock band War. When the group began a residency at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, they were playing some of their first concerts together. Burdon invited Hendrix to sit in, and he showed up on the evening of Sept. 16, 1970 for the second set, and played moving, dramatic phrases all across the ensemble’s covers of blues and folk standards 'Mother Earth' and 'Tobacco Road', rousing the crowd to cheer and holler at the stage, Rolling Stone reports. Recording of guitarist jamming with War, remastered by filmmaker Oliver Murray and his team, features in upcoming doc chronicling London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s.
Guardian shares a moving story about members of Iranian-Norwegian band Confess Nikan Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani who got arrested in 2015, and spent 18 months of incarceration awaiting trial. Their crime was writing anti-establishment metal music, for which they were charged with blasphemy and propaganda against the state. After paying am $80,000 bail, they waited for the trial and, following a guilty verdict that sentenced them to six years in prison, they sought asylum in Norway. Now they have an album out 'Revenge at All Costs' where they're "making the statement that you cannot do this to a human".
Rihanna has donated $15 million to the Climate Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Movement for Black Lives, and 15 other organizations that work to restore climate justice in the United States and Rihanna’s home – the Caribbean. “Climate disasters, which are growing in frequency and intensity, do not impact all communities equally, with communities of color and island nations facing the brunt of climate change,” Rihanna says in a statement announcing her support.
Pitchfork likes the new documentary 'Meet Me in the Bathroom', based on Lizzy Goodman’s 2017 book chronicling the New York City’s early-millennium rock boom: "It’s a thrill seeing the Strokes wow stage-jumping British fans, revisiting the uncanny brilliance of TV on the Radio’s 'Ambulance', and witnessing LCD Soundsystem becoming a band in real time in an unhinged rendition of 'Daft Punk Is Playing at My House' where Murphy howls like Jim Morrison".
"The tension between dreams and reality, spirit and society, permeate every layer of Baghdadi’s impressionistic film. Personal narrative and genres like road and war documentaries interweave as Mayassi, Bechara, and their bandmates struggle to find their definition of success in a society that was not built to appreciate their work. But make no mistake: This is not another stereotypical work that casts Arab women as meek victims of repression. It’s a rallying cry (well, scream) for self-determination and rebellion" - The Daily Beast presents Rita Baghdadi’s new documentary 'Sirens', about the Middle East’s only all-female thrash metal band Slaves to Sirens.
