Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry and Andy Mackay at the Brighton Dome, Brighton, England, April 11, 1973.
(David Warner Ellis/Redferns/Getty Images)
Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry and Andy Mackay at the Brighton Dome, Brighton, England, April 11, 1973.
(David Warner Ellis/Redferns/Getty Images)
MUSICREDEF PICKS
Blurred Melodies, Why Digital Music Is Blooming, Stack Bundles, Jeff Rosenstock, Taylor Swift...
Matty Karas, curator January 11, 2018
QUOTABLES!
quote of the day
Music's all about things that you feel for split seconds, and try and capture.
Jeff Rosenstock, punk-rocker
music
rant n' rave
rantnrave://

Today it's LANA DEL REY (who is not actually being sued) vs. RADIOHEAD (which is not actually suing but wants credit). Yesterday, SAM SMITH vs. TOM PETTY, or ROBIN THICKE vs. MARVIN GAYE, or LADY GAGA vs. MADONNA, or LED ZEPPELIN vs. [FILL-IN-THE-BLANK]. Or an AUSTRALIAN electronic musician vs. companies who create white noise. Seriously. Musical plagiarism comes in many forms, so little of it intentional, even less of it truly harmful. Sometimes we are richer for it. "There’s something lovely and comforting," the NEW YORKER's AMANDA PETRUSICH writes, "about the continuum—about art begetting art, about a pulse traveling down a line. The interconnections and overlaps are evidence of a mysterious symbiosis, a hand in the dark, a history." Can you imagine a world in which songs don't give birth to other songs? How alien would that be? Is any song truly original? Or is originality simply a question, in the end, of how much is begged, borrowed and stolen and how artful the theft is? MusicSET: "The Song (Is Different but the Melody) Remains the Same"... I love NPR MUSIC's SLINGSHOT project, which is harnessing public radio stations across the country as curators for a network-wide emerging-artists promotion. The first full class of 20 artists, who you can expect to hear a lot on participating stations, includes PHOEBE BRIDGERS, MCKINLEY DIXON, KNOX FORTUNE and others who range from singer-songwriters to rock bands to hip-hop producers to a classical pianist. It's broad and generous curation, filtered through a public-radio lens. In other words, recommended if you like MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC or ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. NPRCAVIAR, if you will... Music sounds better with you, especially if you are a massage chair... PAUL MCCARTNEY and BRIAN ENO among artists fighting to save grassroots venues in the UK... ERIC CLAPTON has tinnitus... CHARLIE DANIELS is concerned about the ILLUMINATI... Can you pay musicians by clapping?... RIP ALFRED MORRIS III.

Matty Karas, curator

January 11, 2018