Watching a concert on TV is to watching it in person is exactly what watching porn is to having sex. Even the least intimate of venues, even Hydepark at the back of 500,000 people is more intimate than watching it on television,if, for no other reason than you are among other people.
The answer is obvious. Shorter albums. Cut out the crap if it is crap. Better quality control. Stop filling space. It is like everybody has become Prince in the 1990s, they won’t stop releasing music. And stop with the remixes. Perhaps the music biz would make more money if they changed the recording music paradigm.
I had never heard of Lady Gaga before, until her song “Poker Face”, and then she became a big star wearing meat dresses! I guess she is not a vegetarian!
This is this time of the year when we have to decide about the best songs, albums, concerts and make our 2012 best-of list. I haven’t been to as many concerts as the previous years, blame it on my ever-more-demanding job and a bad schedule that forced me to wake up at dawn, but I saw some good ones nevertheless
Gangnam style is a song that most people love and dance to. My favourite part is when he says “ohhhhh sexy lady”, it is the only English in this song, and the only thing people can understand
I will take James Brown on The One and no melody or I will take Smokey Robinson and melody to die for, but I don’t get either with Frank Ocean (or the Weeknd or Miguel…). Instead I get an excellent falsetto and a good vocal range and an atmospheric mood music so constantly downcast it is like pall upon the songs
Swift is dating Harry Styles from One Direction, WHO I ABSOLUTELY HATE, Harry flew on Taylor’s private jet to London, and the boys were not invited and everyone’s worried in case she splits up the band.
Art is fake. Rock is fake, the truest artist in the world is outrageously unreal, has nothing whatsoever to do with their own life. Life is too messy, too lonely, too inevitable: if you stare right into life it is so black you would suffer from nyctolopea, you would go blind.
‘Yeah, it’s legal in the United States. It’s part of our Constitution. You know, the right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police…if somebody wants to kill people well you know they don’t need a gun to do it…United States is based on guns.’
The best music at inducing sleep is not, as you probably expected Coldplay (though they are at # 5) but the Mancunian Trio Marconi Union who were attempting to do precisely that.
I don’t drive but if you don’t drive, the Westbury takes a train and a car to get there and man is it a drag. I’ve only been twice, once to see Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and once to see Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. It was worth it at the age of 36, at the age of 56? Not so much.
he Monkees, the Stones, and the Who all played excellent sets in the past week or so, and made a mockery of claims that 70 years old was too old to rock. What is with this new ageism? What’s the kick against growing old and still doing what you’ve always done? I mean if you can still do it. do it till you die. Dave Brubeck just died and played right through his 80s, what’s the problem. Here’s to growing old and rocking to the grave.
Conor is the poster child for bad childhoods and bleak outlooks to a generation that is unable to do their own laundry. At age 32 his genius is more rooted in his ability to grab this demographic and hold them captive.
Rihanna wants to forgive him, not because it looks like the commonly regarded right thing to do but because it is the new commodity for her. She goes back to where she was, being half of the most successful couple of the moment.
As pretenders come and go one thing remains constant: nobody comes close to MJ. From pop starlet to teen idol to rock star to pariah to early death, there is no trajectory close to it. And as every year another class of pretenders attempt to scale these heights and fail, currently an Usher (who failed himself) protégée, is just mere shadow of the King Of Pop. As the biggest musicians in the world, men and women, from Lady Gaga to Will I Am circle round and round MJ’s career, none can touch him.
I will not go out of this world like a loser. When u finally get the chance to see me, u will hear that my voice is enormous and I never sing out of tune and there is no one, no one who can match me today.It is a fact.
Musicians, if you want to stand out and invite an original guest on stage, please pick somebody else than Johnny Depp! Gee Whiz, if I had just counted the number of times I have read ‘joined on stage by Johnny Depp!….
I have this theory and the theory goes like this, celebrities replicate DNA from one person to another ad infinitum and certain characteristic are metamorphosed through time so one star is really just another star in a different body…. call it cloning.
‘I want to set the right example and, at the same time, live my life….I feel like pop stars can’t be rock stars anymore because they have to be role models, and it takes the fun out of it for us, because we just want to have fun with art.’
This is Jon’s smartest moments, it is the best thing he has ever said though it needs translating. What he is saying is this: being a rock star, if you don’t take it too seriously, is a good life. But even a good job can’t protect you from life itself.
The tune incorporates the lines “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” and “You make me happy, oh when skies are grey”. That’s a song that my grandmother used to sing to me all the time, and hearing it has always stayed resonant.
Look at it this way: 6 million years have gone by without your consciousness, and 6 million more will go by without your consciousness. For fuck’s sake tough it out for the 100 years you are conscious
People feel guilty for being unable to have the discipline to shun this barbaric lifestyle. How come? Cuz it tastes good? I hear anti freeze tastes good too but I don’t chug it like a margarita
Special thanks to: Joseph and Donna McElroy, who I seldom get to see but who are family to me, and my co-editor Helen Bach who I admire greatly and tease mercilessly.
Should I continue? They also did a map with the most popular acts based on the number of fans and other data, and boom! Los Angeles crushes New York once again with 3,547.9 against 1,967.6 for NYC in music popularity index (in millions)
Along with Bryan Adams,Geezer Butler, k.d. Lang, Alanis Morrisette,The Church, and Silverstein, Ozzy Osborne, Jon Robb, Thom Yorke, Michael Franti, Garth Brooks,Chrissie Hynde, Anthony Keidis, Grace Slick, and Prince I offer you a cruelty free thanksgiving holiday
A politicians job is to get re-elected. That’s it. That’s all It isn’t even the weilding of power that matters any more, it is just the doing of the job and the job is to be reelected. And that’s slimey but fine even when politicians lead nations into war for the sole purpose of being reelected
‘More recently, digital developments have made songs even less substantial-seeming than they were when they came on vinyl or CD. Access to music has changed the perception of it. Songs have lost their cachet; they compete with so much other noise now that they can become more exaggerated in an attempt to capture attention”
Madonna’s fans are for the most part not 20 somethings, they are 30, 40, and 50 somethings. Pity the poor sucker with a General Admission ticket who got to MSG at 7pm on Monday evening, it would be five hours before she saw her Madge
The myth of Bruce was bigger than party politics. The son of a blue collar worker who took his Daddy issues and placed it on the biggest stage of all, who spoke not just for him and his people but for all of us, everyone born to, as Chuck D recently put it, run till its dark
Rockers, Ron Wood, go on stage and between the music and the audiences reaction, are transmitted on to another level, away from the lives of quiet desperation that inflicts most people. The problem, once he gets off the stage, he is Ron Wood again
To add insult to injury, Robbie quotes his own record label, who have made a fortune off the man, complaining to Robbie that he might want to try something a little more suited to his age… Robbie didn’t appreciate the suggestion and they were, of course, supremely wrong
When you get those awful sing-alongs, and a band’s ego kicks in when the crowd sing their words back. It’s as if they’re standing on stage thinking ‘this is what we’re worth’ and really the audience would sing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ if it was playing.
Around three, four years ago, I wrote about the best young songwriters in the biz, so with two of them releasing new albums this week, I thought i would update them, and add a fourth.
It’s cliche when people say “music changed my life” because it seems so trivial and so obvious, but it truly did. I will never forget the very first time I put in my headphones, played “Poison Oak”. I got chills- real, physical, tangible goosebumps and a shiver up my spine
My bet is millions of people saw that pix of Ben Affleck with a beard and thought, “not with my $14, you don’t”. There is something smug about the entire enterprise. And while movie critics probably got too caught up in the hype, it is difficult to convince people what they know not to be true
I feel gipped for not being born in that time. To be part of that scene would’ve been insanely cool. Hearing stories about it makes my eyes light up, and a bit green with envy. I’ve heard to much bad about it; the drugs, the violence, and the hatred seems scary and dangerous.
If you can’t wait, Madison Square Park (one of MSGs four homes) will have an exhibit of some of the greatest concerts on Thursday at 11am. Here is Larry Getlin of the posts list, followed by some I went to
Tom Morello has hair but hasn’t changed a bit, and who could miss James Hetfield or Steven Tyler’s giant smiles? Others have obviously undergone some metamorphosis, Alice Cooper? Is that you? And Marilyn Manson had a mull
Many Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver’s fans grow a large beard and wear flannel shirts, Vampire Weekend’s fans wear Izod polos and seem to be talking about the last indie movies, and Tegan & Sara’s fans are all cute lesbians!
Lick My Decals Off, Baby – Captain Beefheart – . It doesn’t really make any sense. Why would you want to lick his decals? Which decals? The album label? Is he suggesting you have physical relations with the actual album. How sexy and positive. Yeah, come fuck the actual piece of viunyl while you’re at it. Try doing that on spotify.
Winner – Jack White – at Radio city Music was a lesson on the limits, and lack of limits, placed upon a rock superstar. With two slim downed, all lean, custom built flying machines of a set, White made his case as forcefully as he could
Whenever I go past Mcdonalds I get very, very angry. I feel the same way. Either it’s because consumerism makes me gag, or because of how cruel they are. I absolutely despise Mcdonald’s; what they do is entirely unforgivable
Most people, no matter how old they are, like to reference their younger days when they were alive and vital and had fun. But an old guy singing about how nobody loves him because he’s sad doesn’t quite do it for me.
Both Year Of Refusal (Morrissey’s last) and Born To Sing: No Plan B (Morrison’s newly released) would fit in at any time in the last 20 years, no question asked.
Here’s a question for Morrissey, if the only choices are the semblance of intimacy or the essence of loneliness, why choose the essence of loneliness.?
100 people died that day Trapped in a filthy club as the flammable foam coating the walls ignited and created a brick fire oven. A horrible event at a Great White concert.
This past week Morrissey was in a bookstore in New York City. An elderly woman fell nearby. He bent down to gather her belongings and ask if she was ok
Tired ? Got work tomorrow? It is 113opm, sit own and take it. Cold? Hungry? Drunk? Meet the Bruce Sprinsgteen endurance test. Your eyes are shutting but shut up while somewhere near the third hour mark HE IS TELLING A STORY ABOUT HIS GRANDPARENTS.
Arkansas. A place where people spontaneously yell “Woo Pig Sooie!” for no particular reason. The state that gave us Wal-Mart and Tyson’s Chicken and Dillard’s Department Stores and Mary Steenburgen and Billy Bob Thornton… and some notable musicians
