…it was Friday night’s screening and live soundtracks (created by Detroit techno godfather Carl Craig and Berlin’s nsi. duo) for Andy Warhol silent films Blow Job (1964) and Kiss (1963) that proved the festival’s love of the long departed pop artist. One can easily imagine the entire festival moving over from Poland after seven years and bringing along Finnish, German, and Romanian artists just to host these events amid Warhol’s old environs.
For Blow Job, a 35-minute study of theater director DeVeren Bookwalter’s facial reaction in the grips of an off-camera set of lips, Carl Craig exacted a similar intimacy from his analog components. On-screen, the audience was subjected to Bookwalter, off-center and at times out of the frame, as his eyelids fluttered, neck clenched, and mouth grew agape. Warhol’s film depicts both ecstasy and separation from its enacting; similiarly, Carl Craig away from a packed dancefloor means tantalizing moments of old techno drops rather than full-on release, his sounds always dissolving back into indelible bass frequencies and sizzling cymbal high tones. Dipping into the low range to make the theater throb like a heart (or, since you’re at a movie called Blow Job, a hard-on), the delicious play of frequencies meant you could be forgiven for shutting your eyes to the on-screen action/ non-action and just feeling it yourself.
Hoping to boost revenue, MySpace Music has begun experimenting with audio advertisements that users must hear if they want to listen to music for free online.
The 30-second ads began appearing last week when users listen to songs on artist profiles, album pages, playlists and pop-out players. They expand on a trial that began in December.
The ads are impossible to avoid, unlike the visual, banner ads that can be put out of sight in background windows as users listen along while doing other Web surfing or computer work. But the audio ads are timed so that a user can listen to up to 100 songs on a playlist or to a full album with just a single interruption after the first song.
White Stripes Official Web Site:
[Below] IS THE WHITE STRIPES SONG “FELL IN LOVE WITH A GIRL” [AND] THE NEW SUPER BOWL AIRED COMMERCIAL FOR THE AIR FORCE RESERVE
WE BELIEVE OUR SONG WAS RE-RECORDED AND USED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE WHITE STRIPES, OUR PUBLISHERS, LABEL OR MANAGEMENT.
THE WHITE STRIPES TAKE STRONG INSULT AND OBJECTION TO THE AIR FOCE RESERVES PRESENTING THIS ADVERTISEMENT WITH THE IMPLICATION THAT WE LICENSED ONE OF OUR SONGS TO ENCOURAGE RECRUITMENT DURING A WAR THAT WE DO NOT SUPPORT.
THE WHITE STRIPES SUPPORT THIS NATION’S MILITARY, AT HOME AND DURING TIMES WHEN OUR COUNTRY NEEDS AND DEPENDS ON THEM. WE SIMPLY DON’T WANT TO BE A COG IN THE WHEEL OF THE CURRENT CONFLICT AND HOPE FOR A SAVE AND SPEEDY RETURN HOME FOR OUR TROOPS.
WE HAVE NOT LICENSED THIS SONG TO THE AIR FORCE RESERVE AND WE PLAN TO TAK STRONG ACTION TO STOP THE AD CONTAINING THIS MUSIC.
Air Force Reserve Ad Here:
:
Photo: Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, and Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in February. (By Chip Somodevilla)
New York Times Editorial: Music Inc. Gets Bigger:
….antitrust regulation still suffers from an unwillingness to challenge “vertical integration,” in which companies, suppliers and customers become intertwined and a few corporations can control all aspects of their industry. Such is the case in the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which was approved with some limitations by the Justice Department’s antitrust division recently. Ideally, the merger should not have been….The merger created Live Nation Entertainment, a juggernaut that has it all. It will be tough for a band to tour without doing business with the new firm.
But the kind of consolidation embodied by Live Nation Entertainment is tremendously worrisome. Live Nation could easily shut out independent promoters — who don’t have their own venues and ticket services. This could reduce diversity in the music market. The cost savings that are supposed to flow from these mergers never seem to accrue to consumers because the mergers leave so little competition in their wake.
The mechanisms of antitrust regulation are not up to this challenge. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission must take a risk and take one of these mergers to court. Even a loss would be helpful. If antitrust legislation, as it stands, proves unable to stop the foreclosure of competition, maybe Congress will take notice and act to maintain a competitive playing field.
PREVIOUSLY:
Daily Swarm 2/3/10: WSJ: LIVE NATION TICKETMASTER INC. AS SOON AS NEXT WEEK?...:
Daily Swarm 1/29/10 – SPACELAND AND LA CONFRONT THE LOOMING SPECTRE OF LIVENATION…:
Yep, you should totally wear a T-shirt if you plan to whirl your arms around during the Super Bowl and you aren’t exactly into working your abs.
The band’s show was thrilling to say the least, but maybe someone (anyone) should have told Pete to button those bottom buttons or at least wear a T-shirt.
“And believe me, I’ll find some Kelly Clarksons out there,” Stern continued. First of all, I would have straightened out that Adam Lambert, number one. That’s why his career tanked—the kid had more publicity than anyone and he f——ed up. And Number 2, I wouldn’t even put through that good looking kid who won, that Kris Allen. He never would have even been through.”
Stern also shared his opinion on past “American Idol” winners. “Carrie Underwood—I would’ve told her to lose weight. I remember she was chubby, and look at her—she looked great on the Super Bowl. And Fantasia Barrino…I like you, but you gotta clean up your act.”
Stern didn’t spare any words for the current roster of “American Idol” judges, either. “I’m gonna buy one of those taser guns; I’m gonna tase Ellen DeGeneres,” Stern joked. ” ‘Go ahead Ellen, why don’t you do that dumb dance you do on your show? Here’s my taser.’”....“Can you imagine me sitting there with like a little ping-pong paddle, and I smack Randy Jackson’s belly every time he opens his dopey mouth?” Stern continued.
On Monday (February 8), Howard Stern not only confirmed reports that Fox is interested in hiring him to replace departing “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, but that the interest is mutual. “There’s not a better job on the planet than judging a f——-g karaoke contest,” Stern told his satellite radio listeners. “It might be possible, we’ll see.”
“I’m not going to comment about any discussions I might or might not have had,” he said. “I watch ‘American Idol.’ ... people seem to think that if I was on it, because I’m such a foul-mouthed, miserable f—-, that I would get them thrown off the air. I know how to judge.”
And when asked about the kinds of critiques he’d offer up to auditioners, he replied with this hypothetical nugget.
” ‘Hey Fantasia, you’re not getting little boys hard. You look like you stepped out of a cartoon. ... They want a Britney Spears or a Rihanna,” Stern said. “Little boys are scared that you are going to sit on them. You’re out. ... You’ve got to go clean up your act. Get a haircut like Rihanna if you want little boys [to get excited about] you.”
CNN:
Dr. Conrad Murray, personal physician to Michael Jackson, was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the pop star’s death last summer….A criminal complaint filed earlier in the day alleged that Murray “did unlawfully, and without malice, kill Michael Joseph Jackson.”
Murray turned himself in shortly before 4 p.m. at a branch courthouse near Los Angeles International Airport. He pleaded not guilty during a brief hearing before Judge Keith L. Schwartz….The judge set bail at $75,000, despite arguments from prosecutor David Walgren that Murray is a flight risk….The judge refused to suspend Murray’s medical license as a term of his bond, but he did order him not to use any anesthesia on patients. “I don’t want you sedating people,” Schwartz told Murray.
The involuntary manslaughter charge means that Murray caused Jackson’s death by acting “without due caution and circumspection.” If convicted, Murray would face a maximum four-year prison sentence, according to prosecutors.
Involuntary manslaughter wasn’t a tough enough charge against Michael Jackson’s doctor, says an attorney for the pop star’s father.
“This charge is a slap on the wrist,” Brian Oxman, Joseph Jackson’s longtime lawyer, tells PEOPLE. “There’s great disappointment here. [Conrad Murray] should’ve been charged with a higher degree of responsibility. What he did was reckless. It was a disregard for human life.”
Nearly eight months after Michael Jackson died suddenly, his personal physician was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter for providing him with a powerful anesthetic that was ruled a major factor in his death.
Michael Jackson fans gathered outside the courthouse where Conrad Murray was expected to appear.
The filing of the charges capped an investigation that revealed Mr. Jackson’s heavy reliance on narcotics, including propofol, an anesthetic normally used in surgery but administered to Mr. Jackson, 50, asThe filing of the charges capped an investigation that revealed Mr. Jackson’s heavy reliance on narcotics, including propofol, an anesthetic normally used in surgery but administered to Mr. Jackson, 50, as a sleep aid.
The doctor, Conrad Murray, a cardiologist with offices in Houston and Las Vegas, had acknowledged giving Mr. Jackson the drug shortly before the singer was found unconscious on June 25 in a rented mansion here, according to police affidavits. The coroner determined that Mr. Jackson had died from “acute propofol intoxication,” combined with other sedatives.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—NASA officials announced today the successful launch of the new shuttle Moonage Daydream, marking the beginning of a long-anticipated two-week conceptual mission inspired by British rock star David Bowie.According to NASA administrator Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., the highly experimental glam space program—dubbed Project Starman—has been in development for exactly five years. Though engineers initially feared the mission might “blow our minds,” the historic launch ultimately proceeded without incident.
Mojo:
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez will both play Washington later this week almost 50 years after they first sang during the Martin Luther King-led Jobs and Freedom March in 1963.
In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement, is set to take place on Wednesday (February 10) and will see the pair join a bill that already includes Smokey Robinson and John Mellencamp.
Reports that Dylan and Baez will perform together currently remain unconfirmed. The concert will be streamed live via whitehouse.gov.
Ozzy Osbourne will get fans to name his tenth studio album, which is set for a June release.
“I’m going to get a list of names and post it on my web site and find out which people like the best,” says the Double O, after fans unanimously rubbished the original title Soul Sucka.
Personal weirdness aside, I think it’s cool that someone wrote this book for a mainstream audience. My hope is that teenage girls and young women who don’t know this history will get inspired to find out about riot grrl. It would be really cool if it inspired girls to create a new young feminist movement rooted in their generation.
The book made me think a lot about documenting history from a strategic perspective. How could this story be told to incite participation in girls? A big part of the original “girl power” idea, was to get girls to stop being consumers of male-dominated culture and start producing our own. I guess my fear is that this kind of pop-culture history could encourage girls to simply consume “girl-culture”, thereby claiming the identity of “riot grrl” or “feminism” through the act of buying a record, as opposed to starting their own band or fanzine or putting on a show. To me the point is to encourage girls to start their own young feminist movement, not just to copy what we did. That is the danger of nostalgia I think…
Leonard Cohen, below, the singer-songwriter has postponed a European tour after hurting his back while exercising, his representatives said in a statement, Reuters reported. The tour, which was to begin March 1 in Caen, France, will be delayed by more than six months to allow for an extended regimen of physical therapy on advice from Mr. Cohen’s doctors. Shows are now planned to begin on Sept. 15 and to continue through Oct. 7. Mr. Cohen, 75, returned to performing in May 2008 after a 15-year absence. He was taken to the hospital in September after collapsing onstage in Valencia, Spain, during a performance. Tour promoters said he had suffered from a “stomach complaint” and was released the next day. Mr. Cohen received a Grammy Award on Jan. 31 for lifetime achievement.
We’ve got Cohen’s adjusted tour dates below.
Leonard Cohen:
Canceled:
03–01 Caen, France – Zenith
03–03 Lille, France – Zenith Grand Palais
03–05 Strasbourg, France – Zenith
03–07 Marseille, France – Le Dome
03–09 Grenoble, France – Palais des Sports
03–11 Tours, France – Parc Des Expositions
03–13 Bratislava, Slovakia – Incheba Expo Arena
03–15 Zagreb, Croatia – Arena Zagreb
03–18 Moscow, Russia – Kremlin PalaceRescheduled:
09–15 Caen, France – Zenith
09–17 Grenoble, France – Palais des Sports
09–19 Strasbourg, France – Zenith
09–21 Marseille, France – Le Dome
09–23 Tours, France – Parc Des Expositions
09–25 Lille, France – Zenith Grand Palais
10–04 Katowice, Poland – Spodek
10–07 Moscow, Russia – Kremlin Palace
10–13 Bratislava, Slovakia – Sibamac Arena
Class is America’s nastiest secret, always worth raising in pop. But the concept is at its most slippery in the U S of A, where economic power is wielded by an ever-changing alliance of the wealthy and the well-born. Although indeed Ivy Leaguers, another vexed concept, the members of Vampire Weekend come from backgrounds that are managerial if that. Bassist Chris Baio’s parents are lawyers, although his dad was a child actor and he’s related to ‘80s teenthrob Scott Baio. Drummer Chris Tomson’s father is an engineer. Having escaped Iran shortly after the ayatollahs took over, keyboard maestro Rostam Batmanglij’s mother Najmieh is a renowned Persian cooking expert, his father Mohammed a publisher of books on Iran who gave $250 to Howard Dean in 2004. Frontman, wordsmith, cutie-pie, and scholarship boy Ezra Koenig is the son of a set designer and an academic. This is all still privilege. But it’s no closer to ruling-class power than it is to the affluence of the average American geekboy who gets to insult music he resents online.
Like most 14-year-old girls, Rebecca Flint likes to dress up and dance. But unlike most girls, she records and posts her performances on YouTube.
The results have made her an internet phenomenon in Japan, home of the anime cartoon characters she imitates. More than eight million people have watched Rebecca performing as Beckii Cruel, dancing to bouncy J-pop (Japanese pop music) and anime theme songs in the attic of her home on the Isle of Man.
Beckii’s looks have created a sensation in Japan, where she has become a “moe idol”, a female worshipped for her small face, large eyes and slender limbs, similar to those found in anime characters – the Japanese animation-style heavily influenced by manga comic books.
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
People’s passion for karaoke doesn’t end in the Philippines, from the Telegraph:
In unusually dry language, the Stamford Police Department said in a press release that the six “made derogatory comments about the the other female’s singing ability (or lack thereof)”, before embarking on a sustained assault, punching, kicking and pulling the hair of Miss Alcantara.
From DNAinfo, the post-karaoke throat slash murder party:
A karaoke bar employee accused of slashing a woman’s throat after Lil’ Kim’s birthday party in Times Square pleaded guilty to murder on Tuesday.
Syed Rahman, 24, was charged with bludgeoning Ingrid Rivera, also 24, of Queens, on the rooftop of the popular Times Square karaoke club Spotlight Live after consuming shots of Patron tequila on Aug. 4, 2008, according to reports from the incident.
And, in other Guy Hands news:
Mr. Hands owns a 12th-century estate in Tuscany, where he produces wine and olive oil. He has an enormous collection of karaoke records, and, on at least one occasion, has belted out “My Way” after an exhausting day of deal-making.
LITTLE RICHARD
The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll
By David Kirby
218 pp. Continuum. $19.95Then there’s the cuteness factor. The dynamo born Richard Penniman has inspired many nicknames, beginning with the sobriquet “Little,” which, as with Stevie Wonder and many other African-American musicians, signaled his precocious gifts. However, Kirby’s calling him “the Macon Meistersinger, the Wagner of rock ’n’ roll, . . . an anti-Hitler” just seems silly. And, whatever the song’s lubricious origins in Little Richard’s early club performances, “Tutti Frutti,” his 1955 breakthrough hit, is not best described as “a paean” to anal sex that helped transform him into “a cultural icon on the scale of the founding fathers.”
VEVO:
Promoting New Music
Posted In: News, VEVO. Posted By: evan on 02.8.2010
Fans watching VEVO videos on YouTube might see something different today. Up until now we’ve had the same design on every video watch page, but today we’re starting to grow part of VEVO’s mission: exposing fans to new music. A selection of our video pages on YouTube today are promoting La Roux, an artist whose catchy electropop has already made waves across the Atlantic but is new to most fans in the US. Check out this video page for P!nk’s GRAMMYs performance on YouTube to see what I mean.
You know a situation is dire when Gawker puts away the snark and gets serious. And that’s just what they did Friday, in a guest post by film industry expert Edward Jay Epstein in which the author asks the question, “Can Indie Movies Survive?” His thorough, well-considered response, which cites everything from the huge profits major studios need to project to purchase a movie to the rapidly disappearing world of independent distribution, pretty much amounts to “no.”
Reading Epstein’s piece, it occurred to us that while indie film may be in the midst of a crisis, indie music has never been stronger or more vibrant. The number of new and exciting bands out there seems to increase exponentially every few years, bigger groups like Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend are all over the Billboard charts and vinyl sales are growing every year. So what gives? Why is indie film dying while indie music thrives? We’ve listed our best guesses after the jump.
Somehow we’ve never participated in Record Store Day before. We’ve done lots of instores all over the world, and have had to stop at stores to shop in probably every record store in the free world. This year we decided to do something special for RSD, because we think it’s important. This April you’ll be able to leave your house and go to a record store and get this cool record. We decided to use our 7” as a tribute to a bunch of cool stores in the US. Ten stores will each be featured with their own cover artwork, using pictures that they sent in to us. The 7” is just gonna be the two daytrotter songs from couple tracks, plus one that isn’t on the CD (“Crooked Head”). Here are the 11 covers (there’s a generic one), have fun trying to find them all:
9) Sufjan Stevens: ‘Chicago’
I vow to never tour the Midwest again without this song playing as the bus rolls into Chicago. So appropriate.
Super Bowl XLIV (44) took place Sunday night in Florida between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. The Saints semi-upset the Colts to win the big game for the first time in the franchise’s history. This post is a special edition of the long lost “Week In Music Licensing” post and as such, that’s the last you will hear about the game. Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, many videos and more below…
There was one person, however, whose absence was conspicuous at the soirée: Guy Hands, the chairman of Terra Firma, the British private equity firm that bought EMI, the music publishing and recording company, for what it now says was $8 billion at the peak of the credit bubble in 2007.
Mr. Hands was once a mainstay at such glitzy affairs, happy to pose for pictures with the likes of Ms. Perry. Now, he is less eager to be seen at those events because, by his own acknowledgment, the EMI acquisition has been a disaster for his firm and his investors.
As soon as Terra Firma took control, Mr. Hands spoke publicly about the need to drastically reduce artist advances at EMI and immediately alienated some of the storied company’s most famous acts. Radiohead and the Rolling Stones departed. Lily Allen, a major star in England, told the British press, “I hate Terra Firma.”
For Those Interested,
The song Down Under is my friend. It has always been my friend, ever since it was born. I have been playing it for over 30 years, to audiences the world over, and will no doubt play it for as long as I am able. We look after each other very well. I co-wrote this song known as Down Under, with Ron Strykert, sometime in the winter of 1978. I remember because we had played the song at the Cricketers Arms Hotel in Richmond one Thursday night, and on the way home to Arthur’s Creek, just north of Melbourne, with Ron and my girlfriend Linda in the car, I fell asleep at the wheel, and ran off the road into a ditch. We ended up with the car pointing toward the sky, and we found ourselves staring through the condensation streaked windscreen at the stars above. It was cold, very cold, you know that two o’ clock in the morning Melbourne cold, the kind that chills your bones.
The Federal Court ruling of Justice Jacobson regarding Down Under, and Marion Sinclair’s song Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree, came down today. I am as we speak, wading through the 60 page document of his ruling. Clearly, I’ve had better days.
The copyright of Kookaburra is owned and controlled by Larrikin Music Publishing, more specifically by a man named Norm Lurie. Larrikin Music Publishing is owned by a multi-national corporation called Music Sales.
I only mention this as Mr Lurie is always banging on about how he’s the underdog, the little guy. Yet, he is part of a multi-national corporation just like EMI Music Publishing. It’s all about money, make no mistake. He litigated against EMI Music Publishing, who controls the copyright of Down Under, and Ron Strykert and myself, the writers of Down Under. He alleged that we appropriated a “substantial” part of Kookaburra, and in so doing, infringed upon that copyright, and incorporated it into the flute line of Men At Work’s recording of Down Under. It is indeed true, that Greg Ham, (not a writer of the song) unconsciously referenced two bars of Kookaburra on the flute, during live shows after he joined the band in 1979, and it did end up in the Men At Work recording. What’s interesting to me, is that Mr Lurie is making a claim to share in the copyright of a song, namely Down Under, which was created and existed for at least a year before Men At Work recorded it. I stand by my claim that the two appropriated bars of Kookaburra were always part of the Men At Work “arrangement”, of the already existing work and not the “composition”.
When Men At Work released the song Down Under through CBS Records, (now Sony Music), in 1982, it became extremely successful. It was and continues to be, played literally millions of times all over the world, and it is no surprise that in over twenty years, no one noticed the reference to Kookaburra. There are reasons for this. It was inadvertent, naive, unconscious, and by the time Men At Work recorded the song, it had become unrecognizable. It is also unrecognizable for many reasons. Kookaburra is written as a round in a major key, and the Men At Work version of Down Under is played with a reggae influenced “feel” in a minor key. This difference alone creates a completely different listening experience. The two bars in question had become part of a four bar flute part, thereby unconsciously creating a new musical “sentence” harmonically, and in so doing, completely changed the musical context of the line in question, and became part of the instrumentation of Men At Work’s arrangement of Down Under.
Justice Jacobson has ruled, and for the most part, not in EMI‘s or my favour. What was born out of creative musical expression, became both a technical and mathematical argument. This ruling will have lasting repercussions, and I suspect not for the better.
Mr Lurie is a music publisher, and today Judge Jacobson ruled mostly in his favor. Mr Lurie claims to care only about protecting the copyright of Marion Sinclair, who sadly has passed away. I don’t believe him. It may well be noted, that Marion Sinclair herself never made any claim that we had appropriated any part of her song Kookaburra, and she wrote it, and was most definitely alive, when Men At Work’s version of Down Under was a big hit. Apparently she didn’t notice either.
I believe what has won today is opportunistic greed, and what has suffered, is creative musical endeavor. This outcome will have no real impact upon the relationship that I have with our song Down Under, for we are connected forever. When I co-wrote Down Under back in 1978, I appropriated nothing from anyone else’s song. There was no Men At Work, there was no flute, yet the song existed. That’s the truth of it, because I was there, Norm Lurie was not, and neither was Justice Jacobson. Down Under lives in my heart, and may perhaps live in yours. I claim it, and will continue to play it, for as long as you want to hear it.
Sincerely, Colin Hay
NEAKO’s ‘Junk Food’ has the most jarring non-sequiturs, the most unsettlingly swish Philly-soul arrangements, the coldest moments of electro-space, the dubbiest moments of slo-mo menace: play it end-to-end with YELAWOLF’s ‘Trunk Muzik’ mix for the best fill-in ‘til the next Outkast album you’ll ever need. The narcotic gunplay and grogginess of RAEKWON‘S Coke Up In Da Dollar Bill mixtape make for a typically addictive blast from Wu-world, the gorgeous sound-loungee that is DRAKE‘s ever-improving Heartbreak Drake series hits should-be-a-superstar-soon levels with 4 (check out the old stuff on the ThankYou tape to see how he got here), and a couple of J dots blow minds this month. J.Cole’s ‘A Nigga From The Ville’ may well be the last document from this N.Carolina native before he goes stellar – check it for some bumpin’ beats and blistering verbals that roll with an infectious confidence, but more imminently make sure you don’t miss JAY ELECTRONICA‘s stupendous, startling ‘Victory’. This isn’t just a mixtape, it’s technology harnessed to beauty’s service, it’s a snapshot of the future that transforms the way today looks, it’s poignantly from New Orleans & it defies and denies the bounce-bored crunked-out confines of that region’s rap-stereotypes. A tower of words, words that shift your focus in all directions and dimensions internal & external, the suite of grainy gleaming grooves that backdrop the words similarly able to give way to sudden, stereo-strafing moments where something unearthly and beautiful gets threaded through the mix. Uncut sonic bliss that leaves the body puckered and the mind fed and why isn’t Eno listening to this? Why aren’t you?
If you don’t do mixtapes there’s still no excuse to not be keeping up: the US rap underground is shooting out fullphat genius at an unmissable rate right now. Granted you can’t pick this shit up at Tesco’s but that’s no excuse: dig into X-RAY’s fab collage of instrumental intrigue on ‘The Ear Hustler’ (Mindbenda Recordings), STRONG ARM STEADY’s stunning In Search Of Stoney Jackson (Stones Throw), CRITICAL MADNESS’ Bringing Out The Dead (on the incredible Domination Records), & make sure you catch up with late-breaking corkers from ’09 you may have missed like DILLON & PATEN LOCKE’S delicious Studies In Hunger (Domination) and GRAYSKUL’S ‘Graymaker’ (Rhymesayers).
at You Ain’t No Picasso blog
The playlists were compiled by a friend of mine nicknamed Wom, as a result of a series of conversations about ‘the old days’. He has an extensive collection (and recollection) of the period whereas I’m a few years younger. I was exposed to the second part of the decade’s music very intimately and I’ve drawn some conjectural conclusions about the whole thing on the strengths of this compilation which I’m going to share with you all below. Not all the material is kick-ass music, some of it actually is pretty grating, but Wom in his wisdom has included it for a simple reason: the complete picture (and you should listen to the whole thing in one sitting a couple of times, don’t be a pussy) of the Greek black/ death/doom underground at the time is captured intimately. If all you’ve ever heard from the Greeks is a bit of Rotting Christ or Necromantia but you’d like to know more, read on!
via Cosmic Hearse
Are you educated in economics?
A little bit. I’m one year away from being a teacher in social studies, which includes economics — not on the big mathematical scale, but social economics.
What level of school will you be teaching?
High school. Geography, social studies, politics, history, and religion.
When did you decide to become a high school teacher?
Five years ago. I had been teaching without a diploma for a while. It was quite a big step, because even if school is free here, you don’t really earn money [in school]. So if you have kids and everything, you have to take a step to go into education, because it’s close to five years. But I really felt that it was something that brought me forward as a person and [was] the next natural step. I’m able to combine it really good with my musical [endeavors].
In the town where you’ll teach, will people know who you are?
It has happened. I try to downplay the role. I noticed that [with] the “cool” teacher, the kids think they can slide their way through that course (laughs). There’s no secret that I’m a singer in a punk or metal band, but it doesn’t have to be the first thing at their ear.
One thing I got from the Swedish Death Metal book (by Daniel Ekeroth, reviewed here) was that much of the ‘90s scene was due to Sweden having a good social support system. Is that still true?
It’s eroded due to socialism on a big scale being brought down. It’s on the way down in Europe, the whole welfare idea. Everything is [being] privatized. But it’s still better than in most countries. You can still get money to rent a rehearsal room, which is great. My son is starting to play guitar, and it would cost me 20 quid for a year.