News

News, Slideshow

Kanye West’s ‘Bound 2’ As A Children Book?

If you are a fan, you have realized that it is actually an adaptation of his music video ’Bound 2’, into a kids’ book, and you can see the whole story here. Tebbal will be soon graduating from New York’s famed School of Visual Arts, so he is a little chicken too, with, apparently, a lot of talent and humor.

Business, News

Spotify And Universal No Closer To Deal

I once pitched a Spotify muckety muck on the central importance of upping their paid subscription base and they all but sneered at me. There was nothing more important for Spotify and all they did was fuck around for the past three years. They should have advertised everywhere all the time, if they had 50 million paid subscriptions today, they’d be paying their artists a lot more money

Medium Cool, News, Slideshow

Medium Cool: Goodbye To David Letterman

Will history remember David Letterman? Well, does history remember Johnny Carson, and he was much bigger? Put it this way, working late night television is like being a telivison columnist. Murray Kempton was one of New York’s best and when was the last time you heard his name? Letterman was great and then he wasn’t great and within a coupla years it will be all the two Jimmys and when they retire no one will remember them, indeed, they will remember them even less.

News, Opinion, Slideshow

The Summer Of 2015 Is The Summer Of 1982 Repeated

When we look at this great moment in pop, I think we will see it as an equivalent to the summer of 1982: the pieces are on the chessboard but the moves haven’t been made yet. The moment in pop, when videos became central to pop and rock, hadn’t quite happened. In January 1983, Michael Jackson would drop “Beat It” and MTV and videos would become the story of music

News, Slideshow

Will Justin Bieber Please Stop Apologizing

From roasts to toast, Bieber is rebuilding a career that hasn’t tanked. Did you hear his Jack U song with Diplo and Skrillex, earlier this month, “Where Are U Now”? To my mind, the best the duo have managed and a fine vocal.So, in conclusion, let me quote from the book of Marx: Hey, you big bully. What’s the idea of hitting that little bully?

News, Slideshow

Fox News Blame Rap For The Decline Of Christianity

Rap is not responsible for the decline of Christianity, on the contrary they push the God agenda all the time… but O’Reilly is a simple guy with huge blinders on each side of his big head… A decline of Christianity? I see that as a good thing, may be the product of more science in school curriculum?

controversy, News

The Kurt Cobain Saga Continues: Theatrical Release Of ‘Soaked In Bleached’ On June 11th

Cobain’s death was ruled a suicide by the Seattle Police Department shortly after his body was found, but 21 years later, suspicions and theories around the events leading to his death have never been more alive, and a long series of inconsistencies, oddities and plain weirdness (including taped phone conversations with Courtney Love) have let Tom Grant to continue his investigation about the case till this day

News, Slideshow

Your Favorite Rock Stars: What Are They Really Like?

Who knows what anybody is really really like? So take these snapshot deep character studies as semi-fictional impressionistic cliches but with some truth thrown in here and there for taste. Much like TMZ, it is gossip by other means… But there is enough info out on these folks where it isn’t SCIENCE FICTION.

Movies, News, Slideshow

Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” Reviewed

The acting is very very sharp, Alicia Vikander is tremendous, she reminds me of Jeff Bridges in “Starman”, there is something both the same and other. The four are all hidden agendas and playfulness that isn’t really playful at all. And in this remote supersonic prison cum laboratory the most deadly thing is not always who it appears to be.

News, Slideshow

Music Distribution Wars

With the field to themselves, they should have advertised Spotify everywhere till it became part of the landscape, till the commercial was being spoofed on SNL, and they should have gone after paid subscribers day and night, instead they sat back and waited and while they were waiting, Apple woke up.

News, Slideshow, That Was The Week That Was

That Was The Week That Was: May 4th, 2015

In an act somewhere between hubris and stupidity, ingenue singer Natalie Prass cancelled her Bowery Ballroom gig an hour before she was meant to go on stage, leaving management to send a manager to unceremoniously give us the boot with “we don’t know why she is sick but you have to get out of here now”. Her explanation on Facebook (she had a sore throat) was fulsome but too late. Amateurs.

News, Slideshow

I Was The Junior Publicist On Nirvana’s “Nevermind”

He told them that we were promoting him to “lame, hair metal” mags (or maybe he called us lame, metal publicists?) and that’s not what Nirvana was about. He couldn’t handle being that popular with just about everyone, it made it fake somehow to him. I know I was devastated that I wasn’t going to be working with them anymore, but I was tired too. Working for a “phenom” can wear you out, even at 24.

News, Slideshow

Kurt Cobain: About The Voice Of A Generation, Beyond It All

I have to accept that his greatness hasn’t managed to survive the decades intact. So maybe he is very much of his time, maybe he was such a cusp superstar, such a harbinger of the new century, he hasn’t quite managed to move forward. But songs as great as “All Apologies”, “Heart Shape Box” “Negative Creep” “About A Girl”… maybe they are ripe for re-discovery for the voice of a generation, beyond it all

Music Festivals, News

A Study About Drug Use In Music Festivals Based On Instagram Posts?

The larger mention of MDMA applies to Electric Daisy Carnival or Ultra Music Festival, and it was again very expected, whereas Burning Man is more into psychedelic drugs, like mushrooms, DMT and LSD, because they need all their creative potential. Otherwise Coachella go-ers are not that stoned after all, but they are the first cocaine users, just followed by Mad Decent Block Party attendees.

News, Slideshow

Winner Errol Brown Of Hot Chocolate Dead At 71 Years Of Age

Hot Chocolate had the distinction of performing truly soulful UK disco, they sounded like nobody else as they stretched their way through 15 hits in the 1970s and while I never saw them live on stage, Hot Chocolate exuded a more knowing egotism then either the white disco of the Bee Gees, or the more universal black disco of Tavares. They were like the last line of defense before Chic changed the landscape

News, Slideshow

Patrick Stickles Of Titus Andronicus: Liquor Distributor

For one thing, as The Monitor producer Kevin McMahon, once told me, Stickles makes every decision about the sound: it will be his new testament. For another thing, the new single, “Dimed Out” is great, a melodic anthem, a myth of Patrick specialty, as Alyson noted a couple of days. It doesn’t feel like a move forward, but if it is treading water, it is standing on the shoulders of giant songs and maintaining its balance

Books, News, Slideshow

Marvin Gaye’s Second Wife: He Was A Pervert

Naturally, the reason for “After The Dance” is money. But also, and I say this without benefit of reading the book, maybe something else: “That I lost myself in someone else — someone as remarkable as Marvin Gaye — is no longer cause for self-condemnation.” Can’t we all claim the same?

Movies, News, Slideshow

“Avengers: Age of Ultron” Reviewed

The first hour is lousy, till they get to Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) hideout where his wife claims Hawkeye is the only Avenger without a superpower (apparently she hasn’t met Tony Stark), is a boring whirl, the rest of the movie is better but I can’t stand the witticism. Everybody sounds like they didn’t make the cut in “Pulp Fiction”.

controversy, News, Slideshow

McCartney Compares West To Lennon, Starts An Outcry

‘My mum came to me in a dream when she’d died years previously. I was in a bit of a state – it was the Sixties and I was overdoing it. In the dream she said, ‘Don’t worry it’s all going to be fine, just let it be.’ And I woke up and thought, ‘Woah’ and wrote the song.’ And this moving story really inspired Kanye, who said, ‘I’m going to write a song with my mum.’ Macca sat at the piano and they wrote ‘Only One’.

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