You would think if you’re going to go to world’s most famous zebra crossing in Abbey Road, you’d be really happy.
But going on TripAdvisor, you’ll see some have branded it ‘extremely disappointing’, ‘smaller than you imagine’ and ‘just a street.’
The London crossing became a must-see site for fans after The Beatles were photograpped walking across it for the cover of their 11th studio album.
“What has become apparent to me is that we live in ridiculous f***ing times now. The music that’s being made now is so f***ing bland. It’s nice and kind of meaningless and then you turn on the television and the news is so savage! The music doesn’t reflect the times at all.
“I hear Radio 1 in the morning when the kids are up and going to school and it’s just bland, meaningless, mindless pop music and then the news is: ‘The World Is Going To End!’ What’s going on? The music of George Ezra: Wow!”
“I was talking to a mate recently who’s been in various bands and I was asking what he was doing and he was saying, ‘I’m trying to do my own stuff now.’ I said, ‘You should be in a band, you look great,’ and he said, ‘Nobody wants to be in bands any more, everybody wants to be a singer-songwriter.’ That’s his generation. Everyone wants to be Jake Bugg or George Ezra. The band thing is dying out.
“I blame it on the lack of rehearsal rooms and the lack of little tiny studios because it’s easier for a guy to sit at home with a tape recorder and send it to a record company than it is for a band.
“Back in my day, we used to go down the rehearsal room when it was 20 quid a night, or whatever it was, and you bash it out. Everybody’s got a home recording studio on their iPhone now. All the cheap studios and venues are going to go soon. You’re going to either be stuck at the bottom in [London pub venue] the Boston Arms or you’re going to be catapulted to the top at The O2 and there will be nothing in between.”
Jarvis Cocker, the Britpop frontman for Pulp, revealed in Another Man Magazine his manifesto for a new Stone Age of creativity:
NU-TROGLODYTE MANIFESTO
Where can you find peace?
Where can you find total silence?
Complete darkness?
Here.
No phone reception.
No wi-fi.
No TV.
No radio.
This is the real sound of the Underground: (cos it is, y’know actually underground)
No outside influences whatsoever.
A blank canvas.
Well, not exactly blank – look at those walls: what do you see when you look there? Can you see faces? Patterns? They’re not really there you know – just like there aren’t any scorpions or bears or hunters up in the night sky. No, they’re just dot-to-dot pictures invented by some forgotten caveman. The universe is random: only man tries to give it a pattern. To make it mean something.
But aren’t these patterns good enough as they are? Without any interpretation? And wouldn’t you love to be able to make something as beautiful as this? Of course you would. But no one made it: it just happened.
Stalagmites
Stalactites
Which is which?
“Tights come down” – (a crude but effective way to remember)
These things take over 20,000 years to form, you know.
And I thought I was a slow worker…
Is it a coincidence that the club that gave birth to the most significant and influential musical group of the past century was called “The Cavern”?
I don’t think so.
And why are all the best nightclubs in dark, dingy basements with low ceilings?
Easy:
Because it reminds us of being here… Back in the cave. I mean – c’mon: why do you think it was even called “Rock Music” in the first place?
This is where it all began
A member of your family once lived here
The original Des-Res
Now it’s time to come home
Time to come back to the source
Time to escape the constant, endless, meaningless jabbering that distracts you from who you really are and what you really want to do.
There’s room to think in here
Room to live
Come in (mind your head)
Sit down
Stare at a rock
Let’s start all over again.
As a writer, a failure is just information. It’s something that I’ve done wrong in writing, or is inaccurate or unclear. I recognize failure—which is important; some people don’t—and fix it, because it is data, it is information, knowledge of what does not work. That’s rewriting and editing.
With physical failures like liver, kidneys, heart, something else has to be done, something fixable that’s not in one’s own hands. But if it’s in your hands, then you have to pay very close attention to it, rather than get depressed or unnerved or feel ashamed. None of that is useful. It’s as though you’re in a laboratory and you’re working on an experiment with chemicals or with rats, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t mix. You don’t throw up your hands and run out of the lab. What you do is you identify the procedure and what went wrong and then correct it. If you think of [writing] simply as information, you can get closer to success.
Thank You Mask Man is an animated short film based upon a comedy routine by Lenny Bruce involving The Lone Ranger and Tonto. The film was produced by John Magnuson, and directed by Jeff Hale (a former member of the National Film Board of Canada). Bruce intended to deconstruct homophobia and other issues explored within the routine.
When you want to show just how kick-ass, rough, tough, dirty, sexy, vibrant, independent and a lone-wolf of a character you are, baby, you turn to Led Zeppelin. Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, in theaters July 31st.
Duff McKagan – who has spent time playing with Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Loaded and several other groups over the past three decades – has amassed a number of habits and routines to get him from point A to B.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an “inventive” cornet and trumpet player, Louis Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music’s focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, resembling the sound of a trumpet, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics.
And in 1964, he pitched a baby doll on television, which makes him even cooler to me.
https://youtu.be/cHHtCdALgwk
NME’s Keith Altham did the last interview with Jimi Hendrix on September 11, 1970, just seven days before the artist’s death. It shows Hendrix not knowing for sure where he’s going musically, but he certainly still wants to continue to make great music. If you don’t get through all 30 minutes or so, check out this pretty smooth and hippy end to their conversation.
ALTHAM: Do you feel personally that you have enough money to live comfortably without necessarily making more as a sort of professional entertainer?
HENDRIX: Ah, I don’t think so, not the way I’d like to live, because like I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swimming pool and then swim to the breakfast table, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or something like that. Then just flop over from the chair into the swimming pool, swim into the bathroom and go on and shave and whatever.
ALTHAM: You don’t want to live just comfortably, you wanna live luxuriously?
HENDRIX: No! Is that luxurious? I was thinking about a tent, maybe, [laughs] overhanging … overhanging this … a mountain stream! [laughter].
Via Open Culture
YouTube has taken a lot of flak from musicians and the music industry in recent months, but one thing it’s done that has been generally welcomed is YouTube for Artists.
Launched in March, it was a music-focused hub to help artists get more out of YouTube, with tips and case studies. At the time, YouTube said it would also be adding more powerful analytics to the site. Today, they’re going live.
The new tool is called Music Insights, and its key features include city-level data on where people are watching music videos, as well as a combination of stats from artists’ own uploads and those of fans that include their music – well, the videos claimed using Content ID, anyway.
According to YouTube, the new tool uses a new classification system it rolled out in September 2014, rounding up views by artist rather than by channel, as well as drilling down to city-level for viewers.
Its launch coincides with an expansion for YouTube for Artists: from the purely English-language version available in March, it has now expanded to 22 languages.
Via MusicAlly
Follow us on Instagram @thatericalper
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
© Copyright - That Eric Alper
