To me, all music’s the same... There’s only one note and we’re all trying to get it down to that one note. | | | | The Black Madonna at FYF Fest in Los Angeles, Aug. 28, 2016.
(Natt Lim/Getty Images) | | | | | | “To me, all music’s the same... There’s only one note and we’re all trying to get it down to that one note.”
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| | rantnrave:// "It’s the sense of, ‘I don’t know who’s screwing me, but I feel screwed.’" That's LIVE NATION exec DAVID MARCUS, perfectly encapsulating how you feel after refreshing your browser constantly between 10 and 10:01 a.m. in a vain attempt to score tickets to a KENDRICK LAMAR or LCD SOUNDSYSTEM show, only to discover it sold out at 10:00:32. Marcus is one of the players on various sides of the issue who spoke to VULTURE's STEVEN J. HOROWITZ for a nice roundup on all the ways the ticketing business is conspiring to drive you mad, along with some of the ways it's trying to make amends. Initiatives like verified fan programs, which are designed to lock scalpers out of primary ticket sales, and which have been at least somewhat successful, are promising—and more fan-friendly, if you ask me, than calls to beat the scalpers at their own game by pricing tickets higher in the first place. The latter is like fighting bank robbers by having banks clean out their own customers' funds before the robbers can do it. IMHO. We took a close look at the problems, and possible solutions, in our recent REDEF MusicSET "Can Concert Ticketing Be Fixed?"... Has HARRY STYLES spent the past 12 months raiding his parents' record collection? This is really good... It's about time someone made a lyric video inspired by captcha text... A nap at the opera, starring AL ROKER... The EAGLES are suing a MEXICAN hotel called HOTEL CALIFORNIA because of course they are... History wants us to believe HAMPTON GREASE BAND's deliriously out-to-lunch 1971 album MUSIC TO EAT is the second-worst-selling album in the history of COLUMBIA RECORDS (with a yoga instructional record at #1). History may or may not be telling the truth in this case, but it serves the album's legend well. It sounds like an album that *would* sell that poorly because the players are more interested in amusing each other than in entertaining you, and because sometimes the songs go on for 19 or 20 minutes, but then 19 or 20 years later its demented genius would become clear to another generation, which it sort of did. Frontman COL. BRUCE HAMPTON went on to a long career as en elder statesman and active participant in the jam band scene, helped start the H.O.R.D.E. tour and appeared in the movie SLING BLADE with his friend BILLY BOB THORNTON. He collapsed onstage while playing "TURN ON YOUR LOVE LIGHT" at his 70th birthday celebration Monday night and died shortly afterward. "I've dreaded this day for years," his ex-bandmate JEFF MOSIER wrote, "but could have never imagined a more joyful departure." RIP... RIP also Finnish composer and synth designer ERKKI KURENNIEMI, GRANDADDY bassist KEVIN GARCIA and pioneering classical music radio presenter JUNE LEBELL. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Why do bands, in 2017, have to comb through their own tickets sold to determine their legitimacy? What sort of initiatives are taken on the state and federal level to prevent both legal and illegal behavior that precludes actual fans from buying tickets? What good are those initiatives? Does the artist have any responsibility in this? Who is really to blame? | | |
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| Gilbert Monterrosa was 15 years old during the 1992 riots. He and some friends decided to loot a Fedco department store where he found something unexpected -- Nirvana's album, "Nevermind." | | |
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| Last week the major labels were all over the media shouting excitedly about new positive streaming figures. But, points out Eamonn Forde, the reality is far from rosy -- especially for those artists tQ loves. | | |
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| A music festival fiasco so ridiculous, it began with Ja Rule and a dream, picked up steam as a meme, and resulted in a $100 million lawsuit. This is the remaining smoke around Fyre. | | |
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| “Whatever glamour there was on that stage,” he writes, “many of the artists were basically subsisting at poverty level.” | | |
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| "The Last Songwriter," a documentary that made its debut last week at the Nashville Film Festival, does not present quite as dire a picture as its title suggests, but it does depict the fate of composers working in the digital age. | | |
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| We explore how Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ became a pop classic over a quarter of century after its release. | | |
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| Techno rises in the heart of the Midwest and with it, a bold call to action. | | |
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| The band that backed Prince during the Purple Rain era is on tour celebrating his music. Members Wendy Melvoin, Bobby Z. and Doctor Fink say it helps them - and audiences - to process their grief. | | |
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| Colonel Bruce Hampton was born Gustav Valentine Bergland III in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on April 30, 1947. His music transcends mundane boundaries. Bruce always walked to the beat of a different drummer. We discuss hid early musical influences, his Atlanta roots, the Hampton Grease Band, the H.O.R.D.E tours, musical instinct, Billy Bob Thornton, Widespread Panic and more. | | |
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| Review and reaction channels are all the rage right now. Should you be tuning in? | | |
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| A composer's style becomes distinctive not only because certain ideas are present in many of their compositions, but because that composer has made compelling artistic choices deliberately and repeatedly across their body of work. Rather than imitating old ideas or forcefully repurposing them into new pieces, we can view a creative lifetime as a chance to create our own musical vocabulary. | | |
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| She’s also the kind of country singer-songwriter who’ll challenge your preconceived notions of rural America. | | |
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| Did you know Spotify users have made over 35 million playlists with emoji in their titles? Which artists get the most emoji? Which ones do they get? And what could the dog emoji have to do with reggaeton? | | |
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| Travelling in space will probably be a lot less glorious than what most of science fiction would like us to imagine. When it comes, space travel will be intrinsically tied with the very real forces of economics, efficiency, and all powerful physics. As such, the smooth flight of an "Enterprise" or the impossible leaps of a "Heart of Gold" are unlikely. | | |
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| As a commentary on music’s increasing ease of availability, Auris Apothecary has released cassettes that are cut in half, CD-Rs covered in herbs, and more. | | |
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| The Bengali-American rapper seeks to expose more people to what isn’t represented in music and culture. | | |
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| The label founded by Richard D. James and Grant Wilson-Claridge specialized in a playful, psychedelic take on acid techno. | | |
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| Fresh off the release of her album "Every Where is Somewhere," K.Flay discusses her upbringing in the midwest where music was surprisingly not a focus in her life, her transition from rapping into singing, co-writing with Pharrell, Trump, her departure from RCA records, and her stint on Warped Tour. | | |
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| Angus Batey looks back 20 years to the album that came at the end of the Wu-Tang Clan's five year plan and asks, What went wrong? | | |
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| | | | | | | Title track from album due Friday from DFA Records. |
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