Brett Morgen’s ‘Montage of Heck’ received seven nominations for the Creative Arts Emmys which took place on Saturday at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, I don’t know how many he actually won but this is revolting,… revolting because Morgen has tried to sell this fiction for the truth, heavily promoting a story that simply is a lie. Didn’t Buzz Osborne say ‘Montage of Heck’ was 90% bullshit?
Producer Kevin Moyer revealed to Pitchfork that the track list had ‘20 Elliott songs from the film with only around four or five having been previously released’. ‘So hopefully we can keep him and his memory alive through the movie and of course his music too with this soundtrack release,’ he said Moyer to Pitchfork. I know that the producers have the best intention, Kevin was a close friend of Elliott’s and he obviously still misses him a lot, but is this the right thing to do?
America is all about capitalism, materialism and owning stuff, nevertheless people are currently falling for streaming services? In a way, streaming is the equivalent of renting your music, you don’t own anything anymore, and you share it with everyone. Isn’t it weird America?
Contrarily to common belief, if you read informed reports about Cobain, the shotgun blast had resulted in very little visible damage, there was no blood or tissue splatter which are typical in most shotgun blasts to the head, there was curiously no exit wound, and if you have seen Cobain’s death scene pictures circulating on the internet in the past, they were false. Cobain was fingerprinted for identification as a matter of procedure, not for necessity, as it was falsely reported in the press. People who saw the body recognized him immediately and the lack of damage is one of the numerous aberrations of the case
People have gone overboard with song interpretations and I will start with the worst example of all, Charles Manson. The infamous rockstar wannabe was convinced that the Beatles’ White Album was as prophetic as the Bible, he would often quote ‘The Beatles and the Bible’ and considered the fab four as the ‘four angels’ as in Revelation 9
This is going to lead to a big problem, people will not be able to express opinions anymore, they will not take the risk to be ostracized by others. And so what? are we going to end in a like-everything world? I have to admit it, I am sometimes tired to push that ‘like’ button, but, if I don’t do it, will people get mad at me? Yes, some will! And this is very annoying.
In the Smith case like in the Cobain case (both cases have been heavily put in parallel lately because of these two recent movies), suicide is the easy way out for most people, suicide is more convenient, it is the lazy way of thinking since you could not have come up with an easier reasoning than this one: a depressed junky committed suicide, wow why would you believe anything else? And that’s the problem, at the end people pick what they believe, and believes work hand to hand with emotions, feelings, impressions and presumptions.
‘Disappointed with the Satellite’s pittance is privilege policy’, he wrote. ‘Why do musicians go for this crap? I’m just now reading this show advance for tonight and will never play there again. No pay, no parking, no area-plays 2wks prior, no soundcheck, and ‘just checking in to see how promotion is going?’
The world is messy, my house, my room, my desk are messy, I constantly fight against the entropy of the world around me and each day I am losing the battle… but am I right? Should I even fight it?
I suppose old people just don’t care for Ed or Sam when they have better in store. But I suppose this is probably very different for Avicii and Wiz Khalifa (also high ranked on Echo Nest hotness list). I am way above 33 and I can’t stand EDM, so it would certainly be interesting to know if we are really refractory to new sounds and rhythms after a certain age, as I presume.
We are always told to separate the art from the artist, this should be the norm even though it is often difficult. But when it comes to making movies and writing books about artists, I wonder why directors and writers cheerfully transgress this rule and get away with it?
if you believe in this new interpretation by Traczyk , the real soundtrack of the universe is not some Mozart-like requiem, not even like Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ as Kubrick thought, it is heavy, very heavy metal.
Pretty girls, sure, lot of skin and useless accessories, but are these people really attending a music festival or are they attending a fashion gig? Are they just here to show off their highly-researched bohemian look? Has Coachella become a fashion show?
The average age of death of this list is 56.6 without the last two, and 58.3 when they are included, and despite the fact that this quick survey is far from being an extensive study, this shows that, this year too, musicians died very young and the numbers verify the studies.
That musical diversity has not declined after all… remember about these articles pretending that music has become more homogenized? They were apparently wrong as there is no decline in diversity of music according to this new study. Even better, diversity declined to a minimum around 1984 but increased again to a maximum in the early 2000’s.
‘Listening to classical music enhanced the activity of genes involved in dopamine secretion and transport, synaptic neurotransmission, learning and memory, and down-regulated the genes mediating neurodegeneration.’
Some people are able to see colors when they hear sounds, it’s chromesthesia as synesthesia is a wider phenomenon which messes up with all senses and allow people to see words and numbers in colors or even associate a taste with words.
ut wait a minute, is it possible that our genes have memory? ‘Genetic memory, simply put, is complex abilities and actual sophisticated knowledge inherited along with other more typical and commonly accepted physical and behavioral characteristics,’ writes Treffert. It is what Carl Jung called the ‘collective unconscious.’
The ‘innocent until proven guilty’ statement just applies in the courtroom, not only we have the right to express an informed opinion outside of it, but we should! Expressing and writing what we think is part of our rights. What are people so afraid of?
I was so surprised to see that 71-year-old Joni Mitchell becoming the new face for Yves Saint Laurent. The 70’s folk legend was photographed by Hedi Slimane for the designer’s ongoing music project, which has previously featured Ariel Pink, Courtney Love, Kim Gordon and Marilyn Manson
Today, there is certainly a lot of mediocrity, any American Idol, X Factor product is an example for me! But at the same time, there is a lot of excellent music, it is just harder to find it because of the enormous amount of bands formed every year and songs released each day!
Albert Einstein is truly part of our pop culture and figures in many songs as expected: They Might Be Giants’ ‘The World’s Address’, Landscape‘s ‘Einstein A Go-Go’, Counting Crows’ ‘Einstein on the Beach’, Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Einstein was a Surfer’ Bob Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’, and even Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Einstein’… so weird!
A psychology professor at the University of Washington who ‘used rhythmic light and sound therapy on his students and discovered that their grades improved’. Other studies have even used the same method on middle school boys with ADD, with successful results!
Cosby has even more supporters among artists, actress Whoopi Goldberg said she had ‘a lot of questions for the lady’ and actress-choreographer Debbie Allen admitted that the accusations were ‘hard to believe’… And this is even worst when this kind of affirmation comes from women
‘I was very interested in what I could take and what I could do. I looked upon the body as a laboratory – I used to throw in this chemical and then that one to see what would happen; I was intrigued by that.’
Scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function, and we don’t know exactly why, but one thing is sure, it has a tremendous effect on women and girls,… we know that since Elvis Presley and Beatlemania, but was that always the case?
It echoes what I see at shows where people, who have paid good money to have a good seat at a show that have chosen to attend, nevertheless check their messages on Facebook half of the time.
To all these young kids who occasionally give me the weird look, I want to say, okay kid, my generation (and even the one before) invented punk rock, what did yours exactly come up with? EDM may be? I rest my case… or may be I am showing my age once again.
Across the seven decades studied, popular musicians’ lifespans were up to 25 years shorter than the comparable US population. Accidental death rates were between five and 10 times greater. Suicide rates were between two and seven times greater; and homicide rates were up to eight times greater than the US population
I was actually surprised to see how many comments following articles about Anna Magdalena Bach were very sexist and were making fun of the author of the study… What have we accomplished since the 18th century? Not much!
Everyone knows this, when an album or a single has sold a certain amount of copies, it turns Gold (500,000), Platinum (1,000,000) or Diamond (10,000,000), and this is obviously the goal of most artists. However, Forbes reports that, this year, not a single artist’s album has gone platinum, and the year is almost over! Really? Not even Beyoncé or someone in her league?
U2 (in red) is the band which promotes the most its latest album without any doubt, whereas the Rolling Stones hardly played their latest effort and were rather stuck in some 60s nostalgia… they surely played all these 60s hits. Springsteen had about the same attitude, to a lesser extent.
‘I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if i did this by accident and i’m gonna flounder without them. or as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology.”
I don’t participate to this sort of behavior – of course! – but I would never imagine a law against stage diving, as a matter of fact, if I see a sign ‘No stage diving’, like in some unnamed clubs on the strip, I have a tendency to think the place sucks… yes I got really scared a few times, like in the pit of the Bad Brains at the Sunset Junction fair, at a Trash Talk show at the El Rey where bodies were flying over my hea
‘The treatment, which Dr. Mason perfected by slicing a small section of the eyelid, has been dubbed by local fanatics as the “Yorke cut.” In the simplest terms, the $600 surgery gives fans a chance to re-create on their own person the trademark Thom Yorke amblyopic left eye.’
Will a time come when it is totally impossible to buy a ticket online? Are the bots gonna finally take over one day? Ticketmaster says they are working on the problem, but whatever they are doing is not enough! Will I have to buy my own bot one day? But rich people will have a better bot then mine, and we’ll go back to the beginning
people have noticed that many musicians have a long ring finger, and hand casts of Anton Rubinstein, Beethoven and Franz Listz have effectively revealed a long ring finger in both hands. This has been studied by professor John Manning of the Liverpool University, who compared the index finger (second one) to the ring finge
She had a glass of beer in one hand (of course) her iPhone in the other one, and I wonder where she was during the whole show, loudly chatting on her phone? Good thing she was not around. Why was she even showing up, that’s my question. Next time, check the number on your ticket, and don’t annoy people who want to listen.
Big rock stars are a bit like aliens, you rarely see them, they travel inside big black vehicles, and you work very hard at getting close to them. But when you get there, it seems surreal. I had a summer of encounters with rock stars, whatever the level of the encounters (and they were all at least of the third kind) they left the biggest impression of the summer on me
People were jumping from electric poles, the crowd was pushing and the barricades were not holding up, it was scary! I have seen a guy passing out at a Shins in-store show at Amoeba, the poor kid had been waiting too long in the sun without water probably, but what else out of the ordinary could I remember?
Since his death, two books (biographies) and two movies have been made, beside the numerous articles printed in magazines. Before accusing the authors and filmmakers of anything, I just wanted to point out a few things I have noticed which make me cringe, more or less
The best parts are created when these brainwaves sounds are mixed with real instruments, because at best, these brainwaves are just an amplified ommmmmm people do during a yoga class. I don’t buy any of that as interesting music.
I have already noticed how a song can be strongly associated with a specific memory, and transport you in time better than any other time-machine (I know Proust had his Madeleine) but we honestly don’t understand why music, and apparently music better than anything else, can do that.
I continue to have a problem with posthumous releases and I don’t trust them, they generally do not represent the artists’ intentions, they do not truly reflect his or her work, and I feel so uneasy when it happens to an artist I deeply care about. But there are posthumous releases and posthumous releases, they aren’t all equal on the moral scale
‘For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept. . . Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested. I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities.’
According to this article, ‘traditional stringed instruments do not discriminate against left-handers at all, because the left hand (which performs the fingering, chords, etc) actually has the more difficult job, requiring most the dexterity.’ So would left-handers have an advantage?
This one comes from the bizarro side of art-science with no other purpose than looking cool: an artist actually managed to ‘play’ slices of tree trunks just like vinyl…. or close to this! You can imagine this actually needed much more work than slicing a tree and putting it on a turntable.
‘With just sound, or sound and video, novices and experts both guessed right at about the same level as chance (33% of the time), or a little less. But with silent video alone, the success rate for both was about 46–53%. The experts did no better than the novices.
Music critics will never be objective, it’s impossible, any music review is an opinion piece, and just an opinion at the end, but famous blogs and magazines all have an agenda. Time is the best critic, let’s read any review written today in 20 years and let’s have a good laugh
Choosing a moniker for your band is a hard thing to do, there are already so many out there that it is unavoidable some good ones are going be reused or even stolen? Is it ever acceptable to steal a name? If the band was an obscure music act that everybody has forgotten, why not? Although it is ethically questionable, hey they got the idea first, right? If it was successful band, forget about it, there’s no way you re gonna do better.
