To help explain the severity of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, John Oliver asked Hamilton creator/star Lin-Manuel Miranda — whose is of Puerto Rican descent — to rap about the situation.
Watch Liz Phair and Coldplay perform Prince’s hits
Tributes from music stars continue to roll in for Prince. Liz Phair just performed “Nothing Compares 2 U”, while at a cancer research benefit on Sunday night, Chris Martin (Coldplay) performed “Raspberry Beret” with a band of eighth-graders.
https://youtu.be/MRdHowRiu_w
Ani DiFranco on Prince, ‘one of the most vivid people’ she’s ever met
Former Prince collaborator, singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco reflects on the “stunningly musical” late artist.
DiFranco and Prince worked with each other on many projects over the years, but she says their friendship and partnership began long before they met face to face.
“We had been talking about each other before we talked to each other,” she tells Shad.
She looks back on fond memories of jam sessions at Paisley Park, and a man who was musical at his very core.
“He bounced from instrument to instrument and each one of them he spoke with. It wasn’t like he could just play a beat, it was like he could play drums,” remembers DiFranco.
Mark Zuckerberg In Video Interview From 1991: “I think Facebook is an online directory for colleges. There doesn’t necessarily have to be more, you know?”
It’s still hard to believe Facebook was invented by one guy in dorm room. Back in 2005, when the social networking site was still called “Thefacebook,” creator Mark Zuckerberg gave a candid interview explaining why he started it, without a care for it to be developed outside a campus online directory.
“I think Facebook is an online directory for colleges. There doesn’t necessarily have to be more, you know? A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing, getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.”
If only he knew what the opportunities were. I mean, nobody knew.
You HAVE to watch this music video on your cell phone
J-Pop girl group Lyrical School created this knockout video for their Run And Run single, designed to be played on your iPhone. The song is cool enough, but watch as it takes over your device (it doesn’t, so no worries.)
The time has come for Johnny Marr’s autobiography.
Johnny has announced the details of his autobiography. Set The Boy Free will be released on November 3rd, 2016.
Commenting on the title, Johnny Marr said, “I wanted to convey a feeling of breaking free, that has been a constant throughout my life. A feeling that expresses itself as both escape and discovery. Transcendence. I found it through rock ‘n’ roll and art and a journey living both in the modern world.
“For the past few years as I’ve been out on tour promoting my solo work fans and journalists have been asking me when I’ll write my book. I’m very happy to say that the time has come to tell my story.”
Century publishing director Ben Dunn promises a book that Johnny Marr followers have craved: “It’s the book Smiths fans have been waiting their whole lives and the early material that Johnny has written is utterly breathtaking. I’m delighted that Johnny has chosen Century to be his publisher.”
Marr has also been a member of Electronic, an alternative dance supergroup formed with New Order singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner; The The, an English musical and multimedia group led by singer/songwriter Matt Johnson; Modest Mouse, an American indie rock band formed in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington; and The Cribs, an English three-piece indie rock band originally from Wakefield, West Yorkshire. As well, he has worked as a prolific session musician. In 2013, he released a solo album titled The Messenger.
A paperback version of the book will be released the year after the hardback in 2017.
Sometimes, when you’re rock stars, you just don’t want to do another interview. Here’s Nirvana in 1991
I’ve been around plenty of artists who are vibrant, talkative and superb interviees at 10:00am. By 6:00pm, they want to kill both the media outlet, and myself.
Now imagine you’re Nirvana, and Nevermind has just been released. Everyone is calling you the voices of a generation, the saviours of rock and roll, the greatest thing since Elvis. And you don’t want to hear it anymore.
https://youtu.be/UFfuCnCBwgk
Patterson Hood on Prince the songwriter gets it right
In 2006, Paste released an issue on the 100 Greatest Living Songwriters, getting a different writer to sum up their thoughts on why each of the 100 deserved a spot on the list. Patterson Hood of the Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers had volunteered to write about his favorite artist of the 1980s—Prince. Now you’re thinking…wait…what? But read on below, and you’ll see why Petterson is so great, and why Prince transcends. His entry is below:
“If I was your one and only friend, would you run to me if somebody hurt you / Even if that somebody was me? Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be”
Prince was absolutely the greatest artist of the 1980s. He had a run of amazing albums from ’80 to ’87 that ranks among the modern era’s greatest string of classics. He sold a ton of records and was constantly in the news for various exploits. He was heralded as a trendsetter, a chameleon presence and an incredibly versatile musician. What has often been overlooked, though, is the stellar quality of his better songs. Beginning with his third album, 1980’s stripped-down Dirty Mind, and building through his 1987 masterpiece, Sign O’ The Times, Prince sold millions of records while pushing the boundaries of popular music and creating an enormous catalog of incredible songs. His brain became a musical melting pot of different styles and varied influences, yet all of his songs were unmistakably Prince. The funk of James Brown and the rock of Jimi Hendrix mixed with Joni Mitchell’s wordplay and Curtis Mayfield’s social commentary. Influences as varied as The Beatles, The Stylistics, Funkadelic, Brill Building formulaic pop and ’70s art-rock all meshed together into an otherworldly musical stew. His mixing of gospel with carnal sexuality took what Ray Charles had done a quarter of a century earlier to some higher plane. In my favorite Prince song, 1983’s masterpiece single, “Little Red Corvette,” he took the tired old rock-’n’-roll-car-song cliché to such grand heights, it was the greatest single of the entire decade. Every note of the song, from its minimalist opening to its transcendent guitar solo was picture-perfect and has yet to be improved upon. In later years, he was much less successful in trying to adapt to changing styles and his attempts to incorporate hip-hop into the mix made him seem outdated and ridiculous, but none of that (nor his bizarre attempt of a name change or any of his tabloid shenanigans) should ever detract from the greatness of his classic ’80s output. —Patterson Hood
Pressing A Vinyl Record In One Short Minute
The Vinyl Factory is an independent British music and arts enterprise. Founded in 2001, the enterprise encompasses a record label, vinyl pressing plant, gallery spaces, record shop and music magazine. Here’s an up-close look at how they press records on the world’s most iconic record presses.