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Let’s Not Mistake The Dickies’ Onstage Warped Tour Rant for Anything but Misogyny

War on Women
Jason Tate

Shawna Potter, writing at Noisey:

I wish I could laugh it off with some clever joke, like “the Dickies are just boys who are as immature as their name,” but they’re not boys, they’re not immature; they are grown men. And the grown-man lead singer of the Dickies had such a problem with one single woman holding a protest sign during their set (not a group of friends, as he reported), that he threw a tantrum about it.

The anger that erupted in Phillips is always under the surface of men like this, even beneath their onstage characters. They do not like being challenged in any way, especially by women. And they definitely don’t equate their right to free speech with anyone else’s. In fact, they see others’ right to free speech as an affront to their own, and in this case, one to be met with anger and hate. That’s not punk.

And:

This incident highlights one of the often overlooked problems the music industry in general has been plagued with. While recent controversies at Warped have typically revolved around young male performers in their early 20s engaging in predatory behavior, there is a subset of older men, waving the “punk/rock/metal means free speech” flag as an excuse to put others at risk. This seems to always get shrugged off because they’re elder statesmen of the genre and are connected to the right people. But how do you suppose they got that far? At one point they were all young men pushing the limits of what they could get away with, a cycle that repeats itself each time their friends turn a blind eye and victims are silenced or belittled because someone really liked that one song they wrote.

That’s why it’s so important that we call out bad behavior when it happens, especially with our friends, no matter what band they’re in.

Fyre Festival Founder Arrested in New York

Legal
Jason Tate

NME:

One of the men responsible for April’s disastrous Fyre Festival was arrested in New York City on Friday.

Billy McFarland, 25, is charged with wire fraud after allegedly defrauding investors in Fyre Media, his company. […] Explaining McFarland’s arrest, US Attorney Joon Kim said that he had allegedly shown fake documents to investors to encourage them to put more than $1 million into both Fyre Media and Fyre Festival. Ja Rule, the company’s co-founder, has not been arrested.

Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump Cast in Animated Movie

Patrick Stump
Jason Tate

Variety reports that Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy will be doing various voice-over roles in the upcoming animated film Gnome Alone. He’s also working on the score and has written an original song for the movie:

Patrick Stump of the band Fall Out Boy performed multiple voice-over roles, composed the score and has written an original song to be performed by Becky G, whose character discovers that her new home’s garden gnomes are not what they seem, she joins the gnomes to fight against little monsters who have invaded through a portal from another world.

How Instagram Uses AI to Block Offensive Comments

Instagram
Jason Tate

Nicholas Thompson, writing at Wired:

The algorithms that resulted were then tested on the one-fifth of the data that hadn’t been given to DeepText, to see how well the machines had matched the humans. Eventually, Instagram became satisfied with the results, and the company quietly launched the product last October. Spam began to vanish as the algorithms did their work, circling like high-IQ Roombas let loose in an apartment overrun with dust bunnies.

The iPhone Turns 10

iPhone
Jason Tate

The iPhone turned 10 today. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has a good piece:

There is no way to overstate it. The iPhone was the inflection point where “personal computing” truly became personal. Apple had amazing product introductions before the iPhone, and it’s had a few good ones after. But the iPhone was the only product introduction I’ve ever experienced that felt impossible. Apple couldn’t have shrunk Mac OS X — a Unix-based workstation OS — to a point where it could run on a cell phone. Scrolling couldn’t be that smooth and fluid. Touchscreen response couldn’t be so responsive. Apple couldn’t possibly have gotten a major carrier to cede them control over every aspect of the device, both hardware and software. I can recall sitting the hall at Moscone West, watching the keynote unfold, 90 percent excited as hell, 10 percent concerned that I was losing my goddamn mind. Literally mind-blowing.

Hayley Williams Talks with The Fader

Jason Tate

The Fader has a pretty interesting interview with Hayley Williams of Paramore:

She tells me that after we spoke, she had a panic attack in her car. She apologizes profusely for how this encounter has played out, and tells me that she felt triggered when I asked about the fallout from the lawsuit with her former bandmate. She says that legal reasons make it difficult for her to know what she can and cannot say, and that it both bores her and stresses her out that every recent story about the band has focused on band drama and not on the songs. Fair enough. I keep digging, though, and eventually she admits it was more than that, but that she is having a hard time explaining, or figuring out for herself, what it is.

I offer to let her sleep on it, telling her I was now likely to write about this strange episode, and that it might be good if she provided a more fully realized account from her own perspective. This idea, to my surprise, seems to immediately pique her interest. She quickly agrees and we hug, then go bowling at a little neon spot that doesn’t seem to have changed the decor since the 1980s.

The entire thing is worth reading.

Tumblr’s Unclear Future

Jason Tate

Brian Feldman, writing at New York Magazine:

The future of Tumblr is still an open question. The site is enormously popular among the coveted youth crowd — that’s partly why then-CEO Marissa Mayer paid $1 billion for the property in 2013 — but despite a user base near the size of Instagram’s, Tumblr never quite figured out how to make money at the level Facebook has led managers and shareholders to expect.

I haven’t read a Tumblr blog regularly since Property of Zack closed down. I haven’t even logged into my account in quite a while now. What’s the main Tumblr use case these days?

Adele’s Note to Fans Confirms She May Not Tour Again

Jason Tate

Adele has confirmed in a letter to fans that she may be taking a break from touring:

Touring is a peculiar thing, it doesn’t suit me particularly well. I’m a real homebody and I get so much joy in the small things. Plus I’m dramatic and have a terrible history of touring. Until now that is! I’ve done 119 shows and these last 4 will take me up to 123, it has been hard out an absolute thrill and pleasure to have done. I only ever did this tour for you and to hopefully have an impact on you the way that some of my favourite artist have had on me live. And I wanted my final shows to be in London because I don’t know if I’ll ever tour again and so I want my last time to be at home.

MTV News Laying Off Writers

MTV
Jason Tate

MTV News is laying off a bunch of their writing staff to shift toward video and short form content for a younger audience. Variety reports:

Among the most significant changes — MTV has reached an agreement with the Writers Guild of America East to represent MTV News staff members. As part of that agreement, MTV News is parting ways with fewer than a dozen staffers and several freelancers. The news division is in the process of hiring additional personnel to focus on video and short-form content.

I actually thought MTV had been putting out some pretty good written content over the last year. A shame to see how difficult making money online has become for most publishers.

Manchester Orchestra Talk with Uproxx

Jason Tate

Uproxx has a great interview with Manchester Orchestra:

Never one to wait for experiences that most people put off until well into adulthood, Hull now felt that life was moving too fast even for him.

“All of a sudden the Foo Fighters were offering us shows that we had to turn down,” Hull says. “It seemed very strange. Very strange.”

Damn.

This unity was crucial during the sometimes fraught process of recording of A Black Mile To The Surface. Hull and McDowell were obsessive about capturing the precise sounds they needed, no matter the expense or time involved. After sessions with Marks in Asheville and the band’s home studio, Manchester Orchestra went to LA and consulted with Congleton, who suggested some seemingly minor tweaks that the band nonetheless feels completed the record. For instance, Congleton added a sequencer to the end of “A Maze” that prompted Hull to overdub a chain-gang-style vocal to the show’s climax, giving the track a new sense of uplift. They also solicited some changes from Wilson via email, which Hull believes helped to further flesh out the record’s sonic tapestry.

For what it’s worth, I think they nailed this sound. A few people got to hear the album yesterday at a listening event and have posted some of their thoughts in the forum as well. They seem to agree.

It’s easy to pop over for impromptu projects, like recording a cover of the Avett Brothers’ “No Hard Feelings” just for the fun of it. Recording unlikely covers has become a kind of hobby for the band — they’ve done everything from Neil Young’s “Walk On” to No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” to a full-length version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that the band doesn’t play for me but promises is epic.

Holy shit I want all of these.