“Being Muslim American already carries a decent amount of baggage. In our culture, when people think “Muslim,” the picture in their heads is not usually of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or the kid who left the boy band One Direction. It’s of a scary terrorist character from “Homeland” or some monster from the news.”
Aziz Ansari, Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family
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In July 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton on vacation and, inspired by the book, wrote a rap about Hamilton for the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on May 12, 2009, accompanied by Alex Lacamoire. Miranda later said he spent a year writing the Hamilton song “My Shot”, revising it countless times for every verse to reflect Alexander Hamilton’s intellect. By 2012, Miranda was performing an extended set of pieces based on the life of Hamilton, referred to as the Hamilton Mixtape; the New York Times called it “an obvious game changer”. In 2015, Chernow and Miranda received the 2015 History Makers Award by the New York Historical Society for their work in creating Hamilton.
Whiteout Conditions, the new full-length record from critically acclaimed supergroup The New Pornographers, is due April 7 via Dine Alone Records in Canada. In celebration of the new album, the group is sharing the interactive lyric video for the track “High Ticket Attractions” created by Vancouver-based interactive artist Chris Shier. The song is premiering today on all streaming services. The album is available for pre-order today with a glow-in-the-dark poster.
‘Sesame Street’ is now in it’s 47th Season. Jimmy grew up with Sesame Street, it’s how he learned to eat cookies. So he decided to invite himself to visit and while he was there he did a little bit of educating too.
BuzzFeed editor Jesse McLaren created a parody that replaced the audio about Donald Trump’s Inauguration crowd size during the tour segment of the David Muir-POTUS interview with the dialogue from the famous “Eleven” scene from the brilliant 1984 rock movie This Is Spinal Tap.
Spinal Tap audio under Trump is ??? pic.twitter.com/zXgKNMxWbd
— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) January 26, 2017
Nigel: This is the top to, uh, you know, what we use on stage, but it’s very, very special because, if you can see, the numbers all go to eleven. Look… (pointing at the amp dials), right across the board. Eleven, eleven, eleven and then…
Marty: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten.
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten – you’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up – you’re on ten on your guitar, where can you go from there? Where?
Marty: I don’t know.
Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty: Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel: (pause) These go to eleven.
Riding on the open road with Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” playing in your head. How do you make this experience any better? Hint: The legendary Peter Fonda might have an idea. Watch Peter Fonda come back for one more epic ride – this time with The Coen Brothers.
https://youtu.be/BvHFM8c7cPM
Neil Young insists in the latest issue of MOJO magazine that the door is not shut on a possible revival of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – or at least, not as far as he’s concerned. “I think CSNY has every chance of getting together again,” he tells MOJO’s David Fricke. “I’m not against it.” In addition to his conciliatory words regarding his latterly-estranged bandmates, Young talked MOJO through his latest album, Peace Trail, and shared his feelings about the current political situation. While underlining his commitment to causes that place him in apparent opposition to the new regime in the White House, Young is also surprisingly phlegmatic about President Trump, whom he describes as “water on the garden of activism”. Young’s latest thoughts on protest music, including a reflection on his groundbreaking 1969 song Ohio, his current philosophy of music making, and news of Pono – Young’s bespoke high-end digital music technology – round out a fascinating interview. Read more about Neil Young here.
And now some genuinely great news in the music industry: every aspect of Bandcamp’s business was up in 2016. Digital album sales grew 20%, tracks 23%, and merch 34%. Growth in physical sales was led by vinyl, which was up 48%, and further boosted by CDs (up 14%) and cassettes (up 58%). Every single one of these numbers represents an acceleration over last year’s growth. Hundreds of thousands of artists joined Bandcamp in 2016, more than 2,000 independent labels came on board (like Dischord, Merge, and Dualtone), and the rate of fan signups tripled. Fans have now paid artists nearly $200 million using Bandcamp, and they buy a record every three seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The record business overall did not fare as well. According to Nielsen, it grew 3% in the U.S. in 2016, while sales of digital albums fell 20%, tracks were down 25%, and physical albums dropped 14%. These declines are not at all surprising given the industry-wide push toward subscription music rental offerings, and indeed as the year came to a close, those services reached a combined 100 million paying subscribers.
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Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
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