I only have to hear that Pitchfork and Consequence Of Sound like a song for me to doubt my own instincts. And absolutely, for me, popularity improves a sound. Lorde’s “Royal” is a perfect example where I dismissed it and dismissed it and though it took a live performance to turn me all the way around, its success was what had me wondering.
What does it mean when you don’t hear great music because it was never written? It is like me, childless, all the wonderful kids I never had and all the wonderful songs I never heard because they weren’t written or because I couldn’t find them and that is the great sorrow of this maybe great moment in pop music. We can’t hear it.
There is so much music out there that I feel if you could find all the good stuff the 2010s would be the equal of the 00s… but how do you find it? Overhere at rock nyc we try and save you time by telling you what to listen to (that’s also why we use grades so liberally, so you don’t even have to bother reading it). The next decade should be interesting at the very least…
We’re on the verge of irrelevance. You have to make stuff relevant to you and where you’re at, make an honest account of what you’re going through. If that’s relevant to other people, great. But we don’t know.’ So why do U2 now think they could be relevant with this new music? Looking at their recent setlists they play a lot of these innocent songs, while the Stones play ‘Sticky Fingers’!
Nothing is the same. In a world of ‘been there done that’ rehashed tripe its astounding to think we really haven’t ‘heard it all’
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
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?
Wilson can make music that sounds like the slow yearn of conclusion. It is one of his many strengths that even as a teen surfer sensation there was something else there, there was an awareness of thought and solitude. “Somewhere Quiet” is the ghost of “Please Let Me Wonder”.
Stabbing is a very painful way to kill yourself. Those who commit suicide by knife tend to have very deep personality disturbances. And it is more difficult to stab oneself through clothing, requires a lot of strength to do that to yourself (unless the clothing is a thin T-shirt). Being very depressed won’t make it any less painful. There WILL be hesitation marks.
So as illness takes me down yet I can’t, I don’t have the time, to be taken down, so somewhere I am in both places, three places , somewhere I am ill, somewhere I am working and somewhere I have drifted back to a late sunny afternoon. And all three are listening to “The Only Living Boy In New York”.
That is a question that goes to the heart of our insecurities, it is the unanswerable, unequivicable question between adults and children. Do you love me? Really? Do you love me enough? How much? How often? Why? Why not? Carrie And Lowell has no answers for Sufjan or us, but it has the right questions, and the right concerns and that is so rare, so important. It illuminates who we are.
There is a very simple test you can do on Tidal, it allows you to play five songs (you don’t pick the songs, and I got the Killers, James Blake, Daft Punk, the Eagles and the Dixie Chicks) using two sound sources A and B. You can switch back and forth between A and B during the short music sample, then determine which of the two is the high fidelity sound source. I was using my Macbook connected to a Logitech speaker system. I paid around $40 for them and they sound okay for me, but I did very badly at the test, I guessed 2 out of 5 correctly!! Not bad? Are they kidding?
Arabs aren’t the only, and not even the biggest, objects of rock racism. In ’76, mindless punks wore swastikas at English concerts (swastikas adorned the label of Vicious’s pathetic Sid Sings). Siouxsie Sioux used to sing “too many Jews for my liking.” By the time punk had passed, an English offspring called “Oi” aligned themselves with the fascist party, the National Front. The NF advocated Pakistani bashing and sending the West Indians back to where they came from
The bottom of the barrel was Monday evening. No “L” train to Brooklyn, a good 90 minute trip to the club, the doors are at 8pm, opening act, figure it is over 11p to 1130p and then what? If I get home by one it will be a miracle ad then not just work but work and the new releases tomorrow.
We are Paul with new loves, John during break ups, Ringo over lunch with college pals, George when hungover, John in righteous indignation, Paul in loving sublimation, Paul when we are loving our kids, Ringo when we’re playing with them and John when we are reprimanding them.
There have been riots (Run DMC and the Beastie Boys) near riots (Public Enemy), concerts with a single white person (New Edition, Black Street -I sat behind Whitney Houston), people dying mid-set (Patti Lupone), standing in line for entire days (David Bowie at Roseland -actually my friend did most of the standing), hostile audiences (Liz Phair got booed off stage at Town Hall
For better or worse and even if you are going there for the primary purpose of reviewing the show, you are hoping for a pleasant experience. And last month the weather made sure you didn’t get one, nothing felt worth the effort of going to a show.
let me make it simpler. Buy all the UK official releases up to “Let It Be” except for “Magical Mystery Tour”where you need the US version, “Live At the BBC” “Anthology 2” and “Past Masters” I and II and you can pass on the rest
I am as completely unbiased when it comes to music as I can be,, and if you want proof here is my review of Madonna at Yankee Stadium. But there is doubting her pop music genius and while Lady Gaga may one day find herself in the same league, it sure hasn’t happened yet.
joke about Kanye West all the time, but he must be the most divisive musician ever, people either love him or hate him, he sure polarizes people, however I just don’t get the coverage that this guy can receive. He comes up with the most trite title and everyone is talking about i, when it is just a name
So right now I’m working on a video game for ‘Only One.’ The idea is, it’s my mother going through the gates of heaven and you have to bring her to the highest gates of heaven by holding her to the light. We’ve been working on it for like six months.’
What she did was terrible, especially to Conor, she singlehandedly blew his last album to smitherines: you can’t be a sensitive songwriter and a rapist: it is one of those either or situations. But still, it is just a horrible, pathetic and sad story.
Suicide is the end of a persons story at the place they decided to end it, and murder is an interruption of a life just about randomly. It matters how people die, it matters how an artist dies. Would Sylvia Path read the way she reads if she didn’t kill herself?
Masterson thinks the documentary ‘interviewed eight people who hate Scientology’, and he ponders ‘I wonder if Sundance would allow a documentary of, like, eight people who hate Judaism’… Is it such an unfair and stupid comparison, does he know there are entire organizations which mobilize against Scientology in order to denounce the abuse and the isolation in which members of the church are maintain?
Every time Kanye opens his mouth, we reach another layer of Kanye’s mind and this is an endless source of entertainment. But why do people respect anything of what he says? This is a guy who admits to never read a book, to be God’s vessel despite contradicting himself at any occasion, so why giving him so much credit?
Whatever magic music weaves now it isn’t the magic of old, you don’t listen to it and think that you are finding the deep insides of an album, you can’t unlock or maybe even notice great albums the way you once did. Because one of the ingredients is missing, time
‘I was praying and I got a word from God and he says, ‘You got this and I got you,’’ she declared to Ryan Seacrest on the Red Carpet before the Grammy Awards. ‘And then I was on top of the lion and a random guy looked at me with a headset that I’d never communicated with before, he looked me straight in the eyes and said ‘You got this.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s God confirming I can do this!’’
He knocked on the bathroom door. He told Chiba he was sorry. He asked her to come out. He told her he knew he was crazy. He apologized for what he had said. But Chiba wasn’t ready. Impulsively, she told him to leave her the fuck alone. She was sick of the paranoia.’
saw this book from the 1800s and it was velvet-covered with brass and everything. I looked at all these people’s photos and they look so real and their outfits were incredible and they weren’t smiling and people, you know the paparazzi, always come up to me, ‘Why you not smiling?’ and I think, not smiling makes me smile
I believe now, even though everyone and their mother can release tracks without a record company backing them, the glut of product, even though it may be fantastic, may be getting overlooked
‘If I was literally responsible for something I would take credit or accept the responsibility, if I did a crime I would take the punishment, but I’m not going to accept any blame for things that I make
My car is so old that it doesn’t even have a CD player but a cassette player! I kid you not! But I may be a winner at this level because cassettes are making a come back in hipsters’ world – I see more and more cassettes at the merchandize table of local bands in Silver Lake
Hot 97 Presents: The Tip-Off starring Puff Daddy & Snoop Dogg on February 12 th. 2015. A Thursday, which isn’t a Friday but isn’t a Sunday either. And the chance to see two legends, one of whom stands as the inventor of modern hip hop and the other one of the great voices of rap.
At “Charlie Hebdo” the brutality of extremism went up against the freedom of political satirists and extremism lost as the world as one gasped in repugnance. How rock and roll can you get.
The tenderness of the Everly Brothers, a song like the gentle river flowing “Devoted To You” or the birth of romantic love “Till I Kissed You”, the eternal love song “Let It Be Me” is from a foreign country. Our music isn’t this gentle any more, melodies don’t dig so deep. It’s foreign to us.
Michael Jackson lived and breathed excellence; he made millions because he gave to millions; world changer, people changer; one of the greatest performers of all time, a legend who left an immortal legacy and a shining example of the pinnacle of human achievement.
He’s often said he doesn’t deserve the life he has and he is forever grateful for it. I’ve seen 26 shows and EVERY SINGLE TIME he’s thanked the fans for giving the band a great life. Bono knows and admits his megalomania. Without it, there is no U2.
So now that CDs are totally useless, now that mp3s, or even better, streaming is all the rage, what are you going to do with all these CDs? Mine are in the drawer chest holding my TV, but I barely look at them anymore… every single song is on my computer of course
When EDM connects to a song now, it doesn’t change it in any fundamental sense. It doesn’t change the way sound sounds in your ears the way rock and roll does. It is parasitic, not giving birth to different sounds but sucking dry every single thing it touches.
The post-Saville Witch trial from the 1970s would find just about everybody ready for a stint in jail: What Saville did was allow two different parts to his story to become one and the result is much like putting Phillip II of Macedonia on trial for war crimes in 200 BC.
Like the Red Sox and the Yanks, great rock bands won’t die, they will go on forever. Sure, they’ll have their ups and downs, like the SNL players, it can’t all be John Belushi, sometimes it’ Bobby Monihan, but it will even out, the format can remain constant, the greatest rock bands will never ever leave us.
I painted while listening to The Animals Greatest Hits and The Band’s Music from Big Pink on vinyl. I escaped to some other plane…to some other place where the muse talks to me and guides my hand and I think Misty could have been there too, in her chair, watching and enjoying the sunshine and digging music she never listened to before
The top five of the title is a game in which the characters name the best five rappers of all time. Ridiculously, they only sneak Biggie in when obviously he is the greatest of all time. Still, I am happy they remebered KRS One even if I didn’t include him
I like to sing this song. I’ve liked singing it for 18 years now. It’s in my perfect range and the tempo is somehow irresistible. As long as no one can see me emoting like a 15-year-old who just got dumped by her boyfriend, I will continue to sing this song
Is Bob Lefsetz as good as he thinks he is? I dunno, man, he is a bit of a twit. In the past two weeks he made demonstrably wrong claims. It is as though he makes the axiom, the axiom is right, and he ignores it when it doesn’t suit his purposes.
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
There are hundreds of cases similar to this one, leading to convictions, proving that the legal system doesn’t get rap at all, that it doesn’t consider ‘rap as form of artistic expression’, ignoring the fact that rappers use stage names or frequent ‘metaphor and hyperbole’, never being able to separate the art from its author’s own life
It took me nine months of writing “overrated” about Lorde before catching her at Roseland and changing my mind, it was a live show which we me round on the Drums as well. These three artists I essentially dismissed, some of them for a couple of years!, but changed my mind…
The sleazy misogynist character wants to marry Swift and is in love with Grande, but does he really think anything of all this or is it just a series of bon mots? Does he really like Taylor Swift, or should I read again
It’s difficult for me to accept the steady decline in the music industry. Streaming services are killing record sales, and are slowly dying out one by one themselves. With that, they are slowing dragging down the entire music business
