Music

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Required Reading: Russian Feminist Punk Band Pussy Riot Arrested For Protesting Putin

Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:02 PM

This is the best thing you will read and/or listen to all day. NPR has the story of a 25-person Russian feminist punk collective named Pussy Riot (brilliant) whose members were arrested after a video of their protest in the Red Square went viral on the world wide web.

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Can An Opera Be Anti-Love and Pro-America?

Posted by Henry Stewart on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:25 PM

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When Christoph Willibald Gluck's Armide opens, the composer employs sweet major keys for women's talk of love, and ominous minors when their topic changes to war. But the title character is unbound by such convention; when she sings of romance, it's through darkened melodies. For her love will be another kind of war, no less because her true love—the crusader Renaud—is a warrior and her enemy. "How sweet it would be to bind him in chains," she sings. I bet!

Love is slavery in Gluck's cynical and astonishingly good opera, now too briefly in a superb semi-staging, a co-production between Juilliard and the Metropolitan Opera. (The first performance was last night; the second and last is Saturday.) Armide, a sorceress who controls the dark powers of Hell—the 17th century's vision of a typical woman?—is reluctant to marry because it means the loss of her independence. Similarly, Renaud prides himself on his freedom from love, a liberty of which that wicked witch robs him with a spell, after she spares his life, asking, "is it not enough if love punishes him?"

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5 Trademarked Blue Ivy Carter Items We Can't Wait to Buy

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:47 PM

Jay-Z and Beyonce at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, waiting for their names to be called.
  • Jay-Z and Beyonce at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, waiting for their names to be called.

Jay-Z and Beyonce's daughter's name, which we've been obsessing over for many months, is now trademarked! On January 26 the pop music royals filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect the name "Blue Ivy Carter" for future merchandising and licensing opportunities like diaper bags, baby carriages, and other sensible things. But as Blue Ivy Carter™ grows up, we look forward to buying other items with her name on them...

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Which Borough Has the Most Top-Selling Singles of All-Time?

Posted by Josh Kurp on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:01 PM

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During some pointless, quality time spent browsing the Internet, I came across this page for the Best Selling Singles of All-Time. The list includes every song that’s sold over five million copies, ranging from “Daydream Believer” by the Monkees to “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby, which has sales numbers in excess of 11 million. This page got me thinking about something: which of New York City’s five boroughs has the most top-selling singles artists? So, using that page, I went through and checked to see which of the mega-popular singers and musicians were from Manhattan, from Brooklyn, from Queens, etc. I only included them if they were born in one of the five boroughs (sorry, Paul Simon), and also kept it restricted to credited artists (it’s sometimes a little tricky to find the location of birth of session musicians).

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Oh Look, Lee Ranaldo's Better Than All the Youngs at the Brooklyn Indie Rock Video Aesthetic Too

Posted by Mike Conklin on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:18 AM

This song just keeps getting better for me, the lines "Watch me as a I fall, then scrape me off the wall and take me home/See me as I am, just half a man" reminding me of a time not so long ago when my life's relative lack responsibilities allowed me the freedom, if you want to call it that, to be at best half a man. I also continue to be entertained by how handily Mr. Ranaldo is beating the kids at their own game, first with the sort of fuzzed-out indie pop they all like so much these days, and now with a hazy video with cut up footage of, like, trees and the sun. Boy, am I ever excited about his full-length, due our on March 20th.

Follow Mike Conklin on Twitter @LMagMusic

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Permanent Collection: 4 New Songs You Should Hold on To

Posted by Jeff Klingman on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 1:40 PM

Koko, covering Destroyers Kaputt
  • Koko, covering Destroyer's "Kaputt"
In maybe the most exciting bit of new music news since last time we talked, Koko the gorilla has learned to play the recorder! Somebody alert Damon Albarn! (He's about to save a mint in live-show animation fees.) There's no mp3 or stream of the in-the-works jams just yet, so the great ape is technically ineligible for inclusion in this edition of The Permanent Collection, sadly. But speculation runs rampant. As we've previously established, loud guitars only anger gorillas. Koko's soft piping might slot in nicely with the smoother sounds of the current underground? Hopes remain high for an epic DFA remix.

There were some good songs released by humans, however...

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Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon Has A New Clothing Line

Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:52 PM

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This isn't the first time Sonic Youth bassist (and, devastatingly, soon-to-be ex of guitarist Thurston Moore) Kim Gordon has tried her hand at fashion design. Back in the early 1990s, Gordon started a riot grrrl clothing line called X-Girl, whose short A-line dresses and ringer tees were modeled by the likes of Chloe Sevigny, Kathleen Hanna and Sofia Coppola. But today, Gordon has told the New York Times that she wanted to create a new collection of easily mixed-and-matched, tour-friendly items that could "fit in the overhead compartment of a bus." So, Gordon's been collaborating with French label Surface to Air, which will feature her line in its New York store this month.

“I like balancing things. I’m a mom, too, you know, but I don’t always want to look just like that,” Gordon told the NYT. “It’s the idea of finding things that work and are comfortable, but in which you can still feel like you have an identity.”

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When Music Meets the Art World: 6 Multidisciplinary Works

Posted by Tobias Carroll on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:03 PM

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On Sunday, avant-dance musician Nicolas Jaar performed a five-hour-long afternoon of music and visual art in the museum’s “Performance Dome.” Aided by numerous collaborators, the piece combined recording, sampling, and looping techniques with analogue instrumentation and sound-derived video. Given that Jaar’s more pop-oriented music still hovers around the fringes of the abstract, it’s not surprising to see him making a move in the direction of the art world. What follows are six others musicians or bands who have also, either through multidisciplinary work or collaboration, found themselves occupying a similar space.

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Restaurant Playlist: T. Rex, Tom Waits, Cypress Hill and More at Calyer

Posted by Kara Zuaro on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:17 AM

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"Filtering music for this room was a challenge. It's small, moody and cozy and finding the balance between not-too-bright-and-sharp and not-too-dark-and-heavy took some time," says Calyer's general manager, Virginia Brown. "I'm from the South and I've definitely got some soul running through my veins so we basically we found our niche in a mixture of soul, funk, lo-fi and blues rock, with a little punk and rap just to keep the streets alive."

You can check out most of the playlist on Spotify if you're a member, but for the whole thing — including an old White Stripes jam and Ms. Brown's thoughts on each track — listen below.

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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Sasha Frere-Jones Gives Middle Fingers to Critics of M.I.A.'s Middle Finger

Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:45 PM

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Well, it's not like we couldn't see this one coming from a million miles away. Janet Jackson's stray nipple was met, perhaps one-upped, by M.I.A. acting in typical M.I.A. fashion during the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. American viewers witnessed the rapper flipping the bird, which deeply offended some people's selectively wholesome sensibilities. Apologies from the NFL, NBC and M.I.A. were subsequently issued, and now there's the possibility of M.I.A. paying up a fine to the FCC. Blah blah, our inflamed Puritan eyeballs, yes, yes, more blessed, offensive Super Bowl commercials instead, yes, and please pass the Doritos.

One critic, however, wasn't as complacent about this series of events. The New Yorker's resident pop culture critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, had his own message to deliver to Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, who had just published a statement of the PTC's displeasure online.

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The Double Life Q&A: Justin Scurti, Saint Vitus Owner/Primitive Weapons Guitarist/Photographer

Posted by Kara Zuaro on Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 9:02 AM

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Greenpoint's metal bar, Saint Vitus, is a dream-come-true for local Renaissance man Justin Scurti. When he's not at his custom-made hang-out, which he co-owns with his best friends, he's playing guitar with Primitive Weapons and I Hate Our Freedom, touring the world as a guitar tech, and pursuing his fourth career as an accomplished rock photographer. We talked with him about balancing a handful of dream jobs, cheese steak steamed buns, and whether or not librarian-type ladies can mix with the metal heads at Saint Vitus.

The L: Where in Brooklyn do you live, how long have you been here, and where are you from originally?

Scurti: I currently live in Greenpoint. Been here for 2 years. Before that I was in Fort Greene for almost 2 years, after leaving Long Island City. Originally I'm born and raised in Queens.

The L: Can you tell us a little about your bar and restaurant experience, and how you ended up opening your own place?

Scurti: I started working in restaurants at 17 years old. I worked at a new Italian place in my neighborhood in Queens. My mom got me the job through one of her friends. I learned how to do everything there. Bus, serve, prep, cook, everything. Since then I've worked at the Zen Palate in Garden City, Long Island, Lil' Frankie's and Frank Restaurant in the East Village, Matchless in Greenpoint, and No.7 in Ft. Greene. My friendship with some of the guys at No.7 led to me getting involved with the right people and making my own place, Saint Vitus, happen. My best friends and I were able to finally do what we spoke about during so many late nights, while working at other places. You meet a lot of people in this world and sometimes the right person is listening.

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Monday, February 6, 2012

Meet Justin Vernon's Parents, Who Will Probably Remind You of Your Parents

Posted by Lauren Beck on Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:25 PM

Of all the accolades Bon Iver's Justin Vernon has piled up in recent months (like playing Saturday Night Live this weekend, for one), none comes packaged with such a beaming sense of pride as this local news segment from Vernon's hometown, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which, in the week leading up to the Grammys, takes us "At Home with the Vernons" to brief viewers on the top nominee's upbringing. I might not be a huge Bon Iver fan, but I am now a huge fan of his parents. Watch an extended version here, in which Mrs. Vernon remembers sitting around the table folding and stuffing the first 500 copies of For Emma, Forever Ago with good-natured aplomb. Five years later, and she's maybe concerned how many times her son said "fuck" in the press last week?

Follow Lauren Beck on Twitter @heylaurenbeck.

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Madonna's Super Bowl Half-Time Show: Good and Awful, Now the Same

Posted by Jeff Klingman on Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 12:00 PM

In terms of ridiculousness, spectacle, inanity, and cheap, pre-canned controversy, I think we can all agree that last night's Madonna medley was one of the greats. It was very Super Bowl. Very half-time. The role she was born to play! (Seriously, maybe the best/stupidest use of a huge/stupid platform since Prince?)

The entire show was immediately boiled down to .gif form, because of course it was, but the whole thing was kind of one big, dumb replayable loop. So, lets relive it, together:

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Live: Nicolas Jaar’s “From Scratch” at MoMA PS1

Posted by Tobias Carroll on Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 9:40 AM

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First came the sound of scraping, and then of footsteps. 21-year-old electronic musician Nicolas Jaar sat behind a bank of electronics on a circular stage in the middle of a geodesic dome and began cueing samples. The smell of smoke from an adjoining space in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 drifted in as well, settling among the floorboards and high ceilings. The early arrivals clustered around the stage or watched the video projected on the section of the dome directly behind Jaar: sometimes slow pans across landscapes, at other times, equally-paced views of the faces of the crowd, either watching music be made, following the camera with their eyes, or absorbed in electronics of their own.

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Friday, February 3, 2012

OK, What the Christ is Going On With this Madonna, M.I.A., and Nicki Minaj Thing?

Posted by Mike Conklin on Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 10:22 AM

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I've heard people talking about this for the past few days, and Klingman even blogged about it earlier in the week, but I sort of couldn't even get myself to acknowledge that it could be true. Except it is. Madonna has a terrible and embarrassing new song called "Give Me All Your Luvin'," which features Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., two otherwise strong-enough seeming women who were inexplicably willing to dress up as cheerleaders and prance around like fucking idiots for 4 minutes while Madonna dances with football players or whatever. We're probably supposed to assume something subversive is happening here, because that's what I've gathered we're supposed to assume about everything that's stupid these days, but mostly I think it's just some bullshit jock-pop jam with dialed-in, cliché-ridden lyrics more befitting a 9th-grade girl than, say, a 53-year-old woman. Watch the video here, if you must.

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Lana Del Rey Performs on Letterman, Isn't So Bad!

Posted by Mike Conklin on Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 8:40 AM

So I guess this is when people start saying that Lana Del Rey's handlers and image consultants and lawyers and rich fathers coached her on the art of the televised performance. After the SNL debacle from a few weeks back, LDR gave it another go last night on Late Night With David Letterman with a performance of "Video Games." To say the very least, she sounded better: she all but did away with the ridiculous and infuriating baby-voice, and she wisely let the vocal melody sit in a range where she's comfortable, rather than taking it higher and lower than she's actually capable of, a trap she'd fallen deeply into of late. There were some really nice moments throughout—the small adjustments she's made to the song's melody are subtle and perfect for the stripped down arrangement. She seemed more comfortable this time around, and she was perfectly grateful and gracious when Dave and Paul started creepily fawning over her at the end. In short, if my parents had seen this performance, they probably would have though nothing of it it, maybe even liked it a little bit, rather than watching in horror and then calling me up the next morning for an explanation like they did after SNL. This is progress. Granted, it's the kind of progress one generally makes before appearing on Saturday Night Live and Letterman, but it's progress all the same.

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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Live: Jóhann Jóhannsson Joins Wordless Music Orchestra at the Winter Garden

Posted by Tobias Carroll on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:17 PM

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The Winter Garden at the World Financial Center is a peculiar space: cathedral-height ceilings, a low-slung series of steps that can double as seating for particularly crowded events, and rows of palm trees that make the negotiation of sight lines a challenge for attendees at concerts where film or video plays a part. Such was the case on Tuesday night, the first of a four-night tribute to the filmmaker Bill Morrison, known for his use of found footage and a fondness for talented musical collaborators, including Bill Frisell and Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon. The Miners’ Hymns, the film shown Tuesday, was accompanied by a score by the Icelandic composer and musician Jóhann Jóhannsson. Jóhannsson joined the Wordless Music Orchestra on electronics for the evening’s concert.

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Interview: Fluxblog Turns 10

Posted by Jeff Klingman on Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:42 PM

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Ten years ago this month, New York City writer Matthew Perpetua launched Fluxblog, a combination of music criticism and personal writing that's provided a template for thousands of mp3 blogs created since. By the end of 2002 it had settled into daily song reviews and downloads, an elegant formula that's been a defining influence on music criticism written for the Internet. Perpetua, now an associate editor at Rolling Stone, went on to contribute to publications like SPIN, New York magazine, Pitchfork, and many others, but still writes daily for the site that got him started.

Wednesday, he began posting a series of gargantuan survey mixes, one marking each year of the site's life. On the first weekday of each following month, you'll be able to drown yourself in chronologically distinct moments of pop music's recent past. (The first mix also exists as a Spotify playlist.) We talked to Perpetua about his ground-breaking site, the writing career it launched, what all perfect pop songs have in common, and why the 2003 mix is going to be insane.

The L: What goals did you have for Fluxblog when you started the site in 2002?

Matthew Perpetua: I had extremely modest goals in the early days of the site. It was mainly written for an audience of people I knew from around the Internet, mainly from the I Love Music and Barbelith online communities. I was just out of art school and hadn't really considered writing as a career, so it was just something I was doing to kill the time and entertain people who I'd never really met. The first year or so of the site wasn't in the format I developed with mp3 reviews, it was actually more similar to the Fluxblog Tumblr which would eventually be the sidebar of the site. I'm pretty sure the Tumblr is more popular than the regular site these days, though!

How has curating Fluxblog changed your tastes in music?

It made me more open, especially early on. By setting up a requirement to write about a certain number of songs per week — these days, it's generally one song per weekday, though I used to do two songs or more — it made me look outside of comfort zones to find things I might like and want to write about. I used to put the emphasis more on discovery, but it's shifted over time to being more focused on writing, so for the most part I write about what interests me as a writer. Somewhere along the line I felt like the audience I have cares more about me and what I'm writing than in discovering things — there are lots of other, more efficient way to find out the newest possible thing. Which isn't to say that I don't want to write about the newest possible thing, just that I'm not a slave to it and don't mind dropping everything to write about some song from a long time ago or a record from the recent past that isn't in a hype cycle anymore.

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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

In Memory of Don Cornelius: 8 Must-Watch Soul Train Performances

Posted by Josh Kurp on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:43 PM

Don Cornelius, now riding the big soul train in the sky.
  • Don Cornelius, now riding the big soul train in the sky.

Sad news today: Don Cornelius, who created, produced, and hosted the influential dance show Soul Train, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 75 early this morning. According to Los Angeles Police Department, it appears to be suicide.

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BET Refuses To Air New Nicki Minaj "Stupid Hoe" Video

Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:56 PM

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TMZ reports that BET has banned the new Nicki Minaj video, and argues it did so for a couple of reasons: First, the blatantly demeaning title, and second, because of how excessively "raunchy" the video is, featuring lots of "nearly naked" female figures. Eh, that justification alone doesn't seem quite right. When has raunchiness stopped videos from being broadcast in the past? There's no visual element in this video that seems like it should really qualify for a black bar of censorship, unless you count the side view of a well-moisturized butt.

Perhaps what's offensive about this video has less to do with the video's "explicit" nature (c'mon, Lady Gaga shows us just as much skin), and all to do with the fact that Nicki Minaj displays and inhabits every degrading female trope in the book—a posing statue to a plasticine barbie, to an animal in a cage to an "innocent" little girl licking a lollipop. Network's perspective aside, the nudity's neither here nor there; the problem is that Nicki's video plays like an action-packed trailer for a misogynist fantasy. BET did not immediately respond to comment for TMZ, so who knows if the execs took that into account when deciding not to air it. Either way, you can decide for yourself and watch it here.

You can follow Sydney Brownstone on Twitter @sydbrownstone

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