Honestly, for me, financially, the best thing would be to walk away. This is an anchor weight around my neck, financially. The best thing would be to just let it sink to the bottom of the ocean and be free. But I can’t do that. | | | | Ingrid Jensen on flugelhorn at the 1998 Jazz à Vienne in Vienne, France.
(David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Honestly, for me, financially, the best thing would be to walk away. This is an anchor weight around my neck, financially. The best thing would be to just let it sink to the bottom of the ocean and be free. But I can’t do that.”
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| | rantnrave:// There've been a couple threads going around TWITTER lately asking what's the loudest band you've ever seen. (Answer: HANK WILLIAMS JR., MY BLOODY VALENTINE—if you're of a certain age and inclination, you know exactly which MBV show I'm talking about—and that buzzy metal band I saw with my friend MIKE RUBIN at the KNITTING FACTORY in Williamsburg during CMJ a decade ago whose name I forget, sorry, and which I remember mostly for its distinctly trebly loudness, a sound that aims straight at your forehead; loud bass is better.) The threads remind me of the old MOTÖRHEAD motto "Everything Louder Than Everything Else," which is of course the ideal way to mix a band if you happen to be in the band but not necessarily ideal for anyone who's listening or, come to think of it, anyone else in the band. No one ever said being in a band was easy. Which is why I have deep appreciation for anyone who has the self-assurance to not be louder than everyone else, and why I love this story that recording engineer JESS JACKSON tells of working on the late POP SMOKE's album SHOOT FOR THE STARS, AIM FOR THE MOON: "He used to always say, 'Don’t turn me up too loud.' He was like, 'My voice is crazy. They’re going to hear me regardless. My voice cuts. Just turn me down. Make sure the beat bangs!" Low-key swagger. Perfect. And, as Jackson continues in this oral history, "Rare. I’ve never worked with an artist that says they want to get turned down." It's nice when people think of themselves, and hear themselves, as part of a bigger entity. A song. A band. A community. A world. (Also, apology for the non-musical digression, but the Pop Smoke anecdote reminds me of one of my all-time favorite EDDIE MURPHY scenes, where he's calmly, quietly working the stock exchange floor in TRADING PLACES while chaos erupts in the pit around him. Starting around 3:40 in this clip. A salesman using the energy of his bandmates instead of trying to fight it. Beautiful.) The stories behind the storytellers who create the musical worlds we all inhabit are one of the main reasons MusicREDEF exists, and we love to share them. You'll find the Pop Smoke story and many more in MusicSET: "Shoot for the Studio, Aim for the Moon: Album Oral Histories Vol. 5." And you can read about how "FREE BIRD" grew from a four-minute ballad into a nine-minute guitar epic mostly because LYNYRD SKYNYRD singer RONNIE VAN ZANT needed more and more time to rest his voice, how JAY-Z told a few alternative facts to get the rights to a certain sample from "ANNIE," and other such tales in "Behind the Song, Vol. 14"... Oh, and an alternate, better Twitter thread: "What band have you seen live who played at the most reasonable volume?"... FACEBOOK secures music deals for FACEBOOK GAMING, and clarifies what's going on with your right to include music on your Facebook livestreams... A beautiful tribute to the ambiguity/duality of TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS' "PRESSURE DROP" (and, circling back to where this rant began, the "enveloping" sounds of low frequencies at reggae clubs), courtesy PIOTR ORLOV... RIP AL KASHA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| The field must acknowledge a history of systemic racism while also giving new weight to Black composers, musicians, and listeners. | | |
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| Rapper. Father. Superstar. Performer. Punk. Gamer. Collaborator. Stoner. Record-breaker. Believer. Protester. Leader... Dog-owner? Just who is Travis Scott? | | |
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| Thanks to a poorly designed relief effort and a never-ending pandemic, they might be the most screwed businesses of the coronavirus era. | | |
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| In which Pop Smoke asks to be turned down, Nirvana brings a few plugs to an "Unplugged" set and Selena goes grocery shopping between takes. First-hand accounts, from the artists in front of the mics and the crews behind them, of how classic albums came to be. | | |
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| What if rock fans screamed "Firefly" at every band instead of "Free Bird"? What if a DJ in Hawaii hadn't illegally downloaded Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" from Napster? What if Jay-Z hadn't told a few lies when seeking permission to sample "It's the Hard Knock Life"? Here are a few truths behind those and other hits. | | |
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| It’s not a sound, it’s an attitude. | | |
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| "My mom can hardly see, so I want the whole world to see us." That's what MCA Abdul, the 12-year-old from Gaza who recently went viral when a video of him rapping while flanked by his schoolmates was posted to Instagram, told me when we first got on the phone to talk. | | |
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| We chat with Tim Westergren about his new venture Sessions, which aims to make live streaming a viable business for artists in the age of social distancing. | | |
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| In this excerpt from "Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong," the trumpeter returns to New York and sets the course for jazz’s future. | | |
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| It grabbed me as I stood there in a corner, looking around a place I was not totally comfortable in, trying to understand the club’s internal rules, trying at once to be both aware and nondescript, forever the immigrant’s MO. Was “Pressure Drop” meant to be happy or sad? I couldn’t quite tell. | | |
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| As the film turns 20, we check in with people who were so inspired by its protagonist that they followed in his footsteps. | | |
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| LVRN helped turn artists like 6lack and Summer Walker into stars. Now, the Black-founded label is on a mission to be a “global Black company.” | | |
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| In the 1970s and ’80s, his music went largely unheralded, but an audience finally caught up. A new career-spanning mixtape, “Transmissions,” traces the evolution of a life fully in bloom. | | |
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| Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, the duo that comprises Sofi Tukker (no, it’s not one artist), hadn’t really gotten into social media before their touring life was put on pause. But not only have they discovered livestreaming, they’ve been doing it daily since March – now approaching 200 events – finding new fans and setting a new bar for livestreaming. | | |
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| Róisín Murphy is back with her fifth solo album, ‘Róisín Machine’. Carl Loben catches up with her to talk artistic exhibitionism, lockdown videos, her early clubbing years, and why she’s an unstoppable machine. | | |
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| My personal life was weaponised in a "Lord of the Mics" clash between an MC and my then-boyfriend. The abuse since has been unbearable. | | |
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| Artists and platform bosses discuss the app's impact on breaking new talent and its challenges ahead. | | |
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| The Nelson George Mixtape |
| After the Civil War freedmen and women collected to sing and play in ensembles that mixed the European scale with sounds and rhythms retained from Africa. | | |
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| The artist, who has collaborated with Frank Ocean, Radiohead, and more, wrote a soundtrack for an image from her childhood. | | |
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| This video is a bit longer than what we normally do so let us know if you like it! Thanks! | | |
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| | | | | | | Arranged by Ingrid Jensen. The jazz supergroup's wonderfully sprawling self-titled debut is out now on Blue Note. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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