The Internet Archive has uploaded a whole bunch of commercials that were shown during Saturday morning cartoons through the 80s and 90s. It’s almost pathetic how many of these I remember. Cinnaburst … now with flavor crystals!
Leo Barraclough, writing for Variety, on how a documentary on Marvin Gaye has been approved by his family for the first time ever:
Noah Media Group and Greenlight are developing a documentary movie about the life of soul musician Marvin Gaye. “Marvin, What’s Going On?” centers on Gaye’s creation of his seminal 1971 album “What’s Going On” and marks the first time that his children — Nona, Marvin III and Frankie Gaye — along with his former wife, Janis Gaye, have supported and contributed to such a project.
Pokémon Go has issued an update that fixes that whole security issue thing. From 9to5Mac:
Today’s update puts a focus on improving the account process for users including fixing the Google full account access scope issue. Users should also no longer have to re-enter their credentials after they’ve been forcefully logged out, and the some issues with crashes should be resolved as well.
Back to hunting.
Zac Gelfand, writing for Stereogum, on the controversy over a pro-life/all lives matter tent appearing on Warped Tour this year:
Over the weekend, I noticed my Twitter feed begin to light up with photos of a tent in the middle of the Warped Tour dedicated solely to pro-life/All Lives Matter organization Rock For Life. Many tweeters were appalled that Warped Tour, whose target demographic consists mostly of individuals still in their teens, would allow this tent — which, it has been noted is being run by mostly men — to ask young, impressionable festival-goers when they think rights should begin for a fetus.
And from Caitlin White, over at Brooklyn Mag:
[I]t does raise the question why a festival that puts so little effort into booking women to play their stages feels comfortable bringing along an organization that will eagerly tell their young teen audience members what to do with their bodies.
I’ve seen quite a few bands posting about this on Twitter, and I gotta say, at the very least, selling “all lives matter” shirts is flat out disgusting. And for those that keep wondering why I have an issue with this phrase, this article from the New York Times does a good job explaining why:
When some people rejoin with “All Lives Matter” they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve.
Claiming that “all lives matter” does not immediately mark or enable black lives only because they have not been fully recognized as having lives that matter.
Update: It looks like the organization is not actually selling their “all lives matter” shirt at Warped Tour stops, just at the other festivals they attend.
Blink-182 officially have the number one album in the country.
After nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, Drake’s Views is dethroned from the top slot by Blink-182’s new set, California. The latter debuts at No. 1 with 186,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending July 7, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 172,000 were in traditional album sales — the third-largest sales week for a rock album in 2016.
Well deserved.
Blink-182 score their first #1 album in the UK.
Blink-182 landed their first U.K. No. 1 album with California (BMG), according to today’s new data from the Official Charts Company. […] California achieved chart sales of 24,000 in the week ending last night (Thursday). It’s Blink 182’s seventh studio album and eighth to chart in the U.K., in a 16-year span that also included 2005’s Greatest Hits. Their previous best showing before the new release was Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, which reached No. 4 in 2001.
Kerry Doole, writing for FYI Music News, looks at a new vinyl pressing plant opening in Ontario. The plant will be the second largest in North America:
The company has been pressing vinyl in Prague since January, filling orders for Universal and Sony Canada plus some independent labels. “In phase one we can do 4.5 million units out of the Burlington plant plus 2 million from the Czech plant,” says McGhee. “We’ve already put phase two into motion and that is adding five new automated presses. That’ll put us over the 11 million mark, making us the second largest plant in North America. We’ve already bought a plant in the US based in the Midwest and there’ll be a west coast plant so we’ll have three in North America.”
Rachel Brodsky of Spin sat down Blink-182 to talk about the band’s latest album, their relationship with Tom DeLonge, and the future of the band:
I think when people are jumping on top of each other’s ideas, it elevates it a lot more than me going into the studio and working on something all by myself for a while. By that point, you become so entrenched with what you’ve written that it’s hard to step back from that. We were working so quickly in the studio that Matt would be seeing something and say, “Is that good?” and I’d go, “Yeah, that’s awesome,” and he’d say, “Is that good?” and I’d say, “That could be better.” I need that feedback, too. Everybody was pushing each other, and it was just a much better result.
Ed Christman, writing for Billboard:
It’s the worst year (so far) for music sales since the 1991 debut of SoundScan (now Nielsen Music). Album sales, including track-equivalent albums (TEA, whereby 10 track sales equal one album unit) are down 16.9 percent in the first half of this year. But sales figures no longer tell the whole story of the record business.
Not great, Bob.
The Flaming Lips are teaming up Few Spirits with to create custom branded whiskey called the “Brainville Rye Whiskey.” The full press release is below.
Beck recently spoke with Rolling Stone about his work on his new album:
The sound, Beck says, was inspired by five years of heavy touring. He played big summer festivals to young audiences, and he soaked up the energy of acts like the Strokes, with whom he toured last year. “It’s a summer night, people have their hands up,” he says. “It’s a communal, celebratory thing. I wanted to take that into the studio, a kind of energy or joy. The thing that wakes you up a little bit.”
Time has announced that Riri Williams will be taking over the Iron Man suit for Tony Stark.
Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15. She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm. Creator and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis spoke exclusively to Time about the creation of Riri Williams with book artist Stefano Caselli and Marvel’s increasingly diverse cast of characters.
Police Inspector Leif Nystrom said there had been 32 reports of attacks by boys or young men at a three-day festival in the city of Karlstad, 300 kilometers (190 miles) west of the capital, Stockholm. The youngest alleged victim was 12. Police identified seven young men they wanted to question.\
And:
In neighboring Denmark, where the annual weeklong Roskilde rock festival attended by 130,000 people wound up on Sunday, police said they had reports of five cases of alleged rape or sexual assault, which police officer Carsten Andersen described as “nothing out of the ordinary at such a big event, although every single case is too much.”
Zac Farro has confirmed in an interview with Idobi that he’s drumming on the new Paramore album, but at the moment, that’s it.
They’ve asked me to play drums on their album, on their new album. So [Hayley] put it on their Instagram and put it on their website, and it’s no joke that I’m back just playing drums for them on their album alongside with doing my HalfNoise stuff. That’s it, and that’s literally all it is right now. No one’s really asked cause I’ve kind of deterred the question, but I’m doing HalfNoise – that’s my band. They’ve asked me to drum, and it was like, ‘Yeah, of course!’ We’ve always been friends, and yeah, there was a little bit of weirdness cause I left the band for a few years, but all that stuff is not even there anymore and there’s no hard feelings and it’s just been rad and fun.
Drake, again, is at the top of the charts this week. Projections have Blink-182 overtaking Views, which has now been at the top of the charts for nine weeks, when they debut on the charts next week.
Views earned 111,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 30, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 25,000 were in traditional album sales. The bulk of Views units were driven by streaming equivalent album units (67,000), owed to the album’s popularity on streaming services.