The twenty-second in a series of posts where we bring to you the most interesting and stimulating music articles we found this week.
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On Katy Perry’s 'Teenage Dream' by Nick Sylvester (Riff City): Those of you reading this may be aware that I also write a recurring feature on the current #1 single for the Vine (see the
current one here), and that the art of the #1 single is both illuminating and horrifying. Nick Sylvester’s article on Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” here captures quite well how I feel about commercial pop in general, and nails, exactly, the appeal of the song.
Pop Music As Branding? Shh… by Tom Ewing (The Guardian): Will.i.am is unusual in his will.ing.ness to call his band Black Eyed Peas a brand – to think of the music that pushes and pulls at our emotions as being the result of a brand seems somewhat distasteful, right? We want there to be a mystery at the heart of what we listen to, not a commercial strategy. But every commercially successful band is a brand, of course, from the Black Eyed Peas to Animal Collective.
Five Questions With Free Energy by Amy Klein (Amy Andronicus): Amy Klein’s band, Titus Andronicus, is on tour with 1970s power pop throwbacks Free Energy, and perhaps this is why her interview with Free Energy is so filled with life and interesting tidbits; she knows things about them that only people living with them for a while would know. Like that the guitarist used to play a Transylvanian flute to herd the sheep he looked after.
Bootlegging Inc. by Miles Raymer (Vice): There’s a point, as a music fan, where you inevitably discover bootlegs. While some people prefer to listen to the proper albums, others (including me) are fascinated by out-takes, demos, and live recordings (and, well, there are a million sites on the internet which could fill any such desires you might have). But bootlegs started somewhere, and that somewhere is with Ken Douglas and Dub Taylor (interviewed in this article), who in 1969 produced the very first ‘commercial’ bootleg, the
Great White Wonder, made from of (at the time) unreleased Bob Dylan recordings.
Ask A Real Musician: 5 Classic Male Metal Singers by Claudia Friedlander (Invisible Oranges): Friedlander is a classically trained voice singer, who knows how the voice works and what it’s meant to do, and she listens to 5 heavy metal vocalists and discusses the sound of their voice and their technique. She has nothing but praise for Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, who she considers to be “a manifesto on how to sing well”, but listening to Ozzy Osbourne made her feel like her throat was hurting. Fascinating stuff!
The Shock Heard ‘Round The World: “Bitches Brew” Turns 40 by Sean Murphy (PopMatters): Miles Davis’s
Bitches Brew is easily one of the most controversial and influential jazz albums of all time – it was the point where jazz went electric (*gasp!*), and at the point when Miles Davis abandoned the jazz scene to marry a young firecracker (Betty Davis, who later made exceptionally raunchy funk) and support Neil Young and the Grateful Dead. Even today, the music sounds unsettling and revolutionary. And many of the jazz cognoscenti – critics like Stanley Crouch and filmmakers like Ken Burns, still hate it.
In The Forest Of Instruments, Signs Of Evolution by Allan Kozinn (New York Times): The classical orchestra is a hidebound institution where people play the same instruments orchestras played 150 years ago (in some cases, literally). But then, not too many rock bands venture outside of guitars, bass and drums (or synths). But new, bizarre instruments are being developed: the ‘mutantrumpet’ and the ‘glissando headjoint’ to the rescue!
Real Gone, But Not Forgotten by Jason Walker (The Dead Heart): Guerrilla artist Banksy said in a recent interview that “they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” Gram Parsons – friend of Keith Richards, duet-singer with Emmylou Harris, former Byrd – is generally thought to have invented country rock. He may have died for the first time in 1973, but his cult of devoted fans, covers, authors, tribute albums, etc, mean that he isn’t dying for the second time just yet…