IJ’s Music Wire
- Image via Wikipedia
August 30, 2010
NYT Critic’s Choice New CDs - Jenny Lewis must be kidding when she sings, “I don’t think that two heads are better than one,” on “I’m Having Fun Now,” the debut album by Jenny and Johnny. She has thrived with collaborators through most of her career, from her time as lead singer of the band Rilo Kiley to sharing her own 2008 album, “Acid Tongue,” with guests including Elvis Costello. Her partner in Jenny and Johnny is Johnathan Rice, the songwriter who’s also her boyfriend and a charter member of her touring band. Her voice is clear and sunny; his is smoky. To record “I’m Having Fun Now,” they played most of the instruments themselves, sometimes assisted by Jason Boesel, Rilo Kiley’s drummer. Read More …
X Factor Auto-Tune Scandal - No sooner has Simon Cowell departed from “American Idol” than the reality series has started distancing itself from that acid-tongued former judge, as his British series “The X Factor” finds itself embroiled in scandal.
Producers of Fox’s “American Idol” said in a statement reported by The Associated Press that they do not use pitch-correcting technology to tweak the singing voices of their show’s contestants. Read More…
Is Your Songwriting Artist-Centric or Writer-Centric? - Put another way, for whom are you writing your songs? There are several answers to this question, and no answer is right or wrong. But, if your heart is set on hearing one of your creations sung by a voice other than the one in you head, then you owe it to yourself to answer the question posed in the title of this article, because knowing the answer may help you to move closer towards achieving your goal. Read More…
Is “Free” The Future of Music? - Perhaps it’s attributable to the contrast between the giant beard and the business suit, but Robert “Bobby” Kittleman has the messianic quality of someone who has seen visions. With a resume that at 27 includes a five-year stint as a business analyst at a Fortune 500 company, a UCLA business school degree, and a work ethic that rivals Thomas Edison, he seems destined for great things. There is an unmistakable gleam in his blue eyes, as if despite what anyone says to the contrary, he has seen the future and knows that it’s simply a matter of time until the rest of us catch up. That look, and his enthusiasm, makes him dangerous.
Kittleman cares deeply about music. Most people would call him a music freak. His apartment is neatly covered in concert posters and band memorabilia. Plus, he has a significant vinyl collection, the hallmark of any music savant. His tastes are wide-ranging: bands as disparate as Akron/Family, Lungfish, Sean Hayes, Oneida and Fools Gold are his favorites. But they all have one thing in common: by their choice or otherwise, they are not a part of the corporate music world. Read More…
June 15, 2010
NYT Critic’s Choice New CDs - Many of the songs on “Laws of Illusion,” Sarah McLachlan’s new album, end with her virtually by herself: just her voice and a minimum of accompaniment, alone in a quiet place. “Laws of Illusion” is Ms. McLachlan’s first album of new songs in seven years, and her first since the dissolution of her 11-year marriage to her band’s drummer, Ashwin Sood; they separated in 2008. The new album’s songs revolve around breaking up: the tension, the denial, the failed reconciliations, the anger, the reckoning, the aftermath. Titles tell the story: “Illusions of Bliss,” “Changes,” “Don’t Give Up on Us,” “Heartbreak.” The songs are as direct as Ms. McLachlan’s have ever been, and as finely turned. Read more…
Coldplay on Glee - As Fox’s “Glee” became a breakout hit, bands lined up for a chance to have their music performed by the William McKinley High kids. Well, not every artist. Notably, Canadian power-ballad master Bryan Adams and British soft-rockers Coldplay said no.
But writer-producer Ryan Murphy told the Hollywood Reporter that not only has Coldplay changed its collective mind, the band’s entire catalog has also been made available to the show.
“At the beginning,” Murphy said, “a lot of people didn’t know what we were and asked to see pages (in advance), but I refused because I didn’t want to set precedent of them having any involvement. My favorite rejection was Bryan Adams. Coldplay and Bryan Adams were really the only rejections. But Coldplay called a week ago and said, ‘We’re sorry, you can have our catalog.’” Read more…
June 3, 2010
From Yahoo Music News - Rock veteran Mick Jagger has warned newcomers the days of huge pay packets in the music industry are over.
The Rolling Stones legend started his career at a time when record bosses had complete control over their acts, and refused to pay them for their album sales.
He admits times changed during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and he received a fortune in royalties during the music industry’s boom years.
But the star has told new acts not to expect to make millions from their released material, insisting: “That period has gone”.
He says, “People only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When the Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you. They didn’t pay anyone.
“Then there was a small period between 1970 and 1997 where people did get paid and they got paid handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.”
May 25, 2010
Company Offers Bieber-Free Websurfing - Software developers have figured out how to erase Justin Bieber from the Internet.
A new add-on to the popular Firefox web browser automatically scans web pages for text and photos that reference the 16-year-old pop star and blocks them from loading, or blacks them out. Read More… [Gee, maybe they could spend more time working on an add-on that eliminates spam. Hmmm. - Ed.]
U2 Cancels North American Tour - U2 frontman Bono left hospital in Germany on Tuesday after undergoing emergency surgery on his back, but the injury has forced the Irish band to postpone the entire North American leg of its world tour.
It also means the band will not be appearing at Glastonbury, one of the biggest live music events of the annual pop calendar.
Bono has been told to recuperate for at least eight weeks and band manager Paul McGuinness, speaking to Reuters outside the Munich hospital where the operation was performed on Friday, said the 50-year-old singer “feels awful” about the tour changes, which will affect over a million fans. Read More…
May 19, 2010
NY Times Critic’s Choice CD’s - James Murphy, the semicomic force behind the one-man dance-rock band LCD Soundsystem, has loaded himself up with broad, juicy aesthetic problems. He makes the nature of those problems pretty clear, and so his records radiate with anxiety.
One problem is how to transfer the magic of one form to another. He admires the slow, additive, build-up-the-vibes process of an extended dance mix or a D.J. set, and he wants to replicate it with live instruments in a single song. (In the studio he plays all the instruments; for his live show, which will come to Terminal 5 in Manhattan for four nights starting Thursday, he uses a band.) He lays down simplistic but steady disco drumming, beautifully squelchy old synthesizer tones and a junkier version of the guitar-scratching perfected by James Brown’s old guitarist, Jimmy Nolen.
Read more…
Where Have All The Rock Tunes Gone? - On Broadway, though it took decades, rock has been transformed from nemesis to novelty to mainstay. Electric guitars onstage, not mini-orchestra-pit bands, drive all four of this year’s Tony nominees for best musical: “American Idiot,” “Fela!,” “Memphis” and “Million Dollar Quartet.” Their music bypasses Tin Pan Alley for punk, funk, rhythm-and-blues and rockabilly. And this year’s rock musicals aren’t alone; they have been sharing the theater district with a celebratory revival of the foundational rock musical, “Hair,” and with entrenched jukebox shows like “Jersey Boys” and “Rock of Ages.”
Read more…
April 26, 2010
NY Times Critic’s Choice CDs - Every week on “American Idol” this season, the young roots singer Crystal Bowersox puts on a bravado vocal display, and every week she leaves unanswered the question of how exactly her sound might matter outside the confines of the competition. “Idol” hasn’t reliably generated pop stars on a scale equal to the popularity of the show, but agents within the record business, handed these anointed if unfocused singers, have done their best to squeeze them into familiar paradigms: country queen, blue-eyed soul diva, blunt-force-trauma rocker.
Ms. Bowersox, with a scraped-up Joplinesque voice and a tangle of dreadlocks, isn’t likely to be any of these. That said, she could do far worse than to mainline a pop star of a whole different sort, Melissa Etheridge. On the cusp of 50 and more than two decades into her career, Ms. Etheridge remains a primal force, a singer of intensity and clarity and — not insignificantly to a likely future “Idol” winner — popularity.
April 20, 2010
Is the television music theme dying? Having written theme music for television for more than 17 years, I hope not! But now the Emmy’s in the U.S. are threatening to replace that category with something called “music composition for a non-fiction program”. Huh?
From the LA Times: “You are no longer loved, TV Theme Music, at least not by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which is threatening to decommission your category from its Emmy Awards. In its place, more or less, will be a new prize for ‘music composition for a non-fiction program.’ As if you could ever hum that.
Many of us, I’ll wager, had forgotten, or never knew, that they were giving you an Emmy at all — even before it was eliminated, your category was shut out of the prime-time telecast. The stated reasoning behind this bruited change is the fact that fewer and fewer series are mounting a ‘traditional’ TV theme, though just what ‘traditional’ means is unclear, and fewer does not yet mean ‘none.’ “ Read more…
April 17, 2010
Lost Stones Single - A recently re-discovered Rolling Stones‘ track is being released as a limited edition single in honour of Record Store Day, an international day to bring attention to independent record stores. Plundered My Soul was recorded for the band’s 1972 double album Exile On Main Street, but was never used. One thousand vinyl copies have been pressed for sale on Saturday, available at independent music stores across the U.K.
An estimated 1,400 stores are participating this year, mostly in the U.K. and U.S. and including about 70 Canadian shops such as Vancouver’s Zulu Records Halifax’s Random Play and Sonic Boom in Toronto.
We’ve collated the latest plug-ins, audio editors, synths, interfaces, monitors, mics and DJ gear to have fallen under the watchful eyes of Computer Music and Future Music’s test teams. All the gear on show here was originally reviewed in Computer Music issue 150 and Future Music issue 225. It was published on MusicRadar throughout March and April. Read more…
