IJ’s Music Wire

BET Awards Honour Michael Jackson - The BET Awards honoured Michael Jackson on Sunday evening, one day after the King of Pop’s family sought a second autopsy for more answers.  more…

Men At Work Accused of Stealing Riff from Campfire Song - Australian pop icons Men at Work are fighting accusations that a riff in their 1980s smash hit Down Under was snatched from a popular children’s song. more…

NYT Critic’s Choice CDs - It would be fun to borrow Brad Paisley for a bunch of afternoons. Each day you could give him an empty room and a pencil and feed him machine-generated random assignments based on mundane objects or sawed-off bits of sayings: to write a song called, say, “Chair,” or “A Little to the Left,” or “Receipt.” (He likes one-word titles.) In two weeks you might have an album like this one. more…

Pondering Prehistoric Melodies - “I have a reasonable good ear in music,” says Bottom in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “Let’s have the tongs and the bones.” A Stone Age ancestor living near what is now Ulm, Germany, did Bottom one better. He took the hollow bone of a griffon vulture, carved five holes in it and made one of the first flutes known to exist. more…

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• BET’s Michael Jackson Tribute (takepart.com)
• Get ready to start buying new Brad Paisley tunes tomorrow (nashvillegab.com)

Michael Jackson died today, and I didn’t know what to think.

There was a part of me that wasn’t at all surprised.  A dramatic end to a rather dramatic life seemed almost appropriate, if it weren’t so sad.  I can’t imagine what it was like to live in the bubble of his life and I don’t think very many could, as he could not have imagined how it would be to live a “normal” life like the rest of us.  The conclusion to his life seems somewhat akin to the sad conclusion of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, and I’m certain it will be discussed and rehashed over and over for the next few months, if not years.

I was appalled at the charges that were laid against him a few years back, and even though none of us really knows what went on behind his closed doors, somehow we could believe it because his behaviour had become so strange.  The surgeries to change his appearance, the masks that he often wore, the children he fathered in his very weird way, the lavish and out-of-control lifestyle…it all added up to something that didn’t feel quite right.

But musically, the guy was a genius.  It doesn’t forgive or negate his behaviour, but there is very little doubt that he was a pioneer, for lack of a more contemporary word.  He reached the kind of musical heights with his songwriting and production, his creation of unique dancing styles, and his musical persona that we couldn’t even dream about.  He was good.  Really good.  The tabloids are going to go crazy for weeks with all kinds of weird stuff about him, and about how he died.  They’ll make things up about his life or his last days, about his health, his relationships, his lifestyle, and the general public will sop it up.

But I hope it doesn’t overshadow the brilliance. As much as I disliked some of what he had become, he was a most amazing songwriter, producer and performer.  It’s the end of an era.

There is an excellent article in Time magazine that really reflects how I and probably many others feel about his life and his death here.

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• Michael Jackson Dies (huffingtonpost.com)
• Michael Jackson Dead at 50: A Life of Talent and Tragedy (time.com)

NYT Critics’ Choice CDs - A few disarming moments on “Octahedron” unfold slowly, with pockets of space and calm. Don’t be lured into trusting them. This album, the fifth studio release by the Mars Volta, employs stillness as a setup for all manner of disruption: sharply pealing riffs, phantasmagorical metaphors, convoluted song structures. - more

Watch Green Day’s “21 Guns” Video - Love conquers all — even a barrage of gunfire. That’s the message in Green Day’s new music video for “21 Guns,” the arena-filling second single from their latest rock opera, 21st Century Breakdown. - more

New Documentary “It Might Get Loud” - A little more than a year ago, Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White spent two days on an L.A. soundstage, talking and jamming. The reason: they were filming an epic scene for the new guitar documentary It Might Get Loud, a film directed by An Inconvenient Truth’s Davis Guggenheim that examines the three musicians from three generations’ relationship to the six-string. - more

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• It Might Get Loud Trailer Premieres, Featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White (pastemagazine.com)

The New York Times reports that a 32-year-old woman has been fined $1.92 million for illegally downloading 24 songs.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not entirely happy about illegal downloading because regardless of the attitude you have about record companies, a lot of good, harding working musicians have suffered because of it.  But it sure makes the RIAA look like the big, bad wolf trying to gobble up Little Red Riding Hood.  Don’t they have any awareness of how badly it reflects on their organization trying to make an example of a person like that?  Do they honestly think that people will be so afraid that they will stop downloading? I think not.

I have illegally downloaded songs through Limewire, but I now prefer using iTunes, not because I particularly like it, but because the downloads are quick and safe.  I had one too many viruses with Limewire and finally decided it was no longer worth the risk.  I rarely download for my own listening pleasure, I do so to get a copy of the songs my guitar students want to learn to play so I can work them out by ear.

But most people I talk to still use the “free” method and don’t mind the risk.  And I don’t think that is going to end anytime soon.

There has to be another music model that will replace how record companies have been doing business for the last forty or fifty years, but it isn’t going to help anyone to publicly lash one person because of 24 illegally downloaded songs.  Get over it, the illegal downloading will continue.  Put your heads together and figure out how to embrace new technology instead of desperately trying to hang on to the old ways.

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• Woman Ordered to Pay $1.92 Million For Illegally Downloading Songs (shoppingblog.com)

Promoter Launches Lawsuit Against Michael Jackson - With about a month to go until the start of Michael Jackson’s This Is It comeback concerts in London, a New Jersey promoter has followed through on a threat to sue the troubled entertainer.  more…

NY Times Critic’s Choice CDs - No Sonic Youth record boils down to a single imperative. Each one is hard to reduce. They’re all mixed up. They’re about songs, and they’re not; they’re about improvising, and they’re not; they’re aggressive, and they’re not.  more…

U2 Discuss Spider Man Musical - Set the stage, and light the lights: The much-anticipated Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, featuring music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and the Edge, is set to open February 18, 2010. more…