The Grammy’s are tonight and we’ve got an open thread in our forums for the award show. Everything starts at 5:00 PM PT on CBS.
Open Thread: The Grammy Awards
Do Young Artists Care About Album Sequencing?
I saw Mike Herrera of MxPx post this question on Twitter last night, and I am curious what people think:
Do young artists (median age 20) care about album sequencing? Song order.
I’ve talked about it before, but sequencing and the entire album experience are two of the things I love most about music. Listening to an entire work of art put together with care and precision, or seeing feeling like the flow is messed up if something is out-of-whack, has always fascinated me. The streaming/single based world makes me feel like an outlier sometimes.
Laura Jane Grace on The Daily Show
Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! was on The Daily Show last night. Her segment shows up around the 15:33 mark.
“The Magic iPod” or “2007 Forever”
Why have I never seen this “Magic iPod” before? And why does the Nelly and Yellowcard mashup kinda work?
An Oral History of ‘The West Wing’
The Hollywood Reporter has an informative oral history of The West Wing:
Aaron Sorkin: I didn’t really know anything about television beyond watching a lot of it, and my plan was to come up with an idea for a new play or movie, but my agent wanted me to meet with John Wells, and I said, “Sure.” The night before the meeting, there were some friends over at my house, and at some point [Akiva Goldsman and I] slipped downstairs to sneak a cigarette. Kivi knew about the meeting and said, “Hey, you know what would make a good series? That.” He was pointing at the poster for The American President. “But this time you’d focus on the staffers.” I told him I wasn’t going to be doing a series and that I was meeting with John to meet John — I wanted to hear stories about China Beach and ER, and I especially wanted to hear about his years as stage manager for A Chorus Line. The next day I showed up for the lunch, and John was flanked by executives from Warner Bros. and agents from CAA. John got down to business and said, “What do you want to do?” And instead of saying, “I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t have anything to pitch,” I said, “I’d like to do a series about staffers at the White House.” And John said, “We’ve got a deal.”
Run for Cover Records Announces Rally for Change
Run for Cover Records will be donating 25 cents for every website order over the next year to a charitable organization:
In the wake of repeated harmful speech and actions by the Trump administration, we at Run For Cover feel compelled to use the platform you’ve afforded us to help protect the rights of marginalized people, raise awareness of injustice, and defend human rights in any way we can. Like many of our artists and colleagues, we’ve raised both money and awareness for worthy causes over the past few months in an effort to fight back against our failing political leadership, but we can always do more.
Read More “Run for Cover Records Announces Rally for Change”
Amazon and Alexa’s Roll in the Future of Music
Stephen Witt interviewed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Steve Boom about Amazon Music, the music industry, and the Echo’s roll in the future:
If you’re asking people to pay for streaming music in a world where there are a lot of free alternatives, then you need to build a service that they want to use every day. And that’s one of the beauties of this device. What we are seeing is that people are listening to more music than ever: we see from data, and we hear anecdotally from customers. Since I have the Echo in my kitchen, my living room, my bedroom, the kids’ room, we’re listening to more music than we were listening to in the past
Ryan Adams Recounts “Summer of ’69” Heckler Incident
Ryan Adams has penned a new op-ed for The New York Times:
By the time I got there, I was so angry. I felt humiliated, but what else could be done? Either way I had lost something. Unlike a more seasoned comic or musician, I didn’t have the experience to ignore a situation like this, or to use wit to turn it around. I felt a kind of disappointment and disillusionment that I had never known — and it was in front of a thousand-plus people.
Prince Estate Selects Universal to Manage NPG Records Catalog
Universal Music Group will manage Prince’s vault of unreleased music. Billboard reports:
As expected, the Universal Music Group has announced a multi-year agreement with Prince’s estate and NPG Records, granting the major label group exclusive licensing rights to much of the late artist’s catalog of released and unreleased works. Much of the material dates from the latter part of Prince’s career, after he parted ways with Warner Bros. Records in 1996.
Sufjan Stevens Pens Washington Post Op-Ed
Sufjan Stevens has written an op-ed for The Washington Post:
A “Christian Nation” is absolutely heretical. Christ did not come into this world to become a modifier. Look what happened to the Holy Roman Empire.
Jesus said you must hate your mother and father and love your enemies. This is not obtuse provocation, but it’s spiritual deployment of true identity, which no longer resides in skin color combination, ideology, genealogy, name, people, places and things, but in the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind, which is ruled by love at any cost.
Sherri DuPree Talks About New Eisley Album
Sherri DuPree of Eisley sat down with Alternative Press to talk about the band’s upcoming album:
Ever since I was a kid, this has been our band. Eisley has just been such a big part of my life. I’ve never wanted to do a solo project or anything like that. I felt like writing the songs under a different name would just be confusing and pointless, just because I have a certain style, and that style is Eisley.
I’m a very sentimental person, too, so that was probably some of it. When faced with losing [Eisley], I was just kind of shellshocked. I never saw there being an end to this in my life. It’s just everything that I want to do creatively, so I feel very, very blessed that I had everyone on the record rallying around me, and lifting me up, and being like, “You can do this.” Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have pushed through.
New York Times Subscription Comes With Free Spotify Premium
The (I hear failing) New York Times has teamed up with Spotify to create a new subscription package:
Get a one-year New York Times All Access subscription for $5 a week, get Spotify Premium free — a $120 annual value.
New Star Wars-Themed Lands for Disney Parks Announced
During the “Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60” special that aired last night on ABC-TV, we shared some exciting details about the Star Wars-themed lands planned for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts. Walt Disney Imagineering has joined forces with the imagination of Lucasfilm to bring this galaxy to life, and the illustrations shared during the TV special show the epic scale of these new lands.
I’m so in. They will open in 2019.
‘Infinity on High’ Turns Ten
Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy posted a little blog to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Infinity on High.
this one was strange. it was transitional. If FUCT was the caterpillar album- Infinity On High was the cocoon one. we had been on tour around the world nonstop but hadn’t really seen any of the magazine covers we were on or had any perspective of seeing our videos on TRL- it was odd how everything was changing but it felt like we were in a time capsule… this record would bring so many ideas from jay z doing the intro to working with baby face on “thnks fr th mmrs” to the flight 101 saga (3 shows in a day in ny, chicago, and la)… but first and foremost it documented this blur that had become our lives. this record more than any of the others has always reminded me of night time- both the anxiety of insomnia and the peace of being awake when everyone else is asleep. i remember before we released it i used like a security blanket listening and trying to fall asleep. i really appreciate everyone who gave this one a chance.
“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.” vincent van gogh
I’ll always remember this album for getting to sneakily release the first song, “The Carpal Tunnel of Love,” and seeing AP.net screenshots up on MTV. (And ten years later I feel pretty vindicated in my praise for the album after getting called all kinds of names originally.)
“Thnks fr th Mmrs” remains one of my favorite Fall Out Boy songs and I’m feeling in the mood to go give it another spin.
Twitter to Hide Abusive Tweets
Twitter is once again rolling out new features to try and curb abuse on their platform. Kurt Wagner, writing at Recode:
There’s a general theme to all of these changes: Keep mean or abusive content out of sight. It’s the same approach Twitter used in August when it rolled out a feature so users could filter their notifications.
I dunno, I feel like there’s some low hanging fruit still out there. Like banning Nazis.