Working for the Weeknd

If I'm ever in the position to be a considered a favorite for an Album or Record of the Year GRAMMY and I've played all the right games and I've rubbed all the right shoulders and then the RECORDING ACADEMY has the audacity to not even nominate me, I want my manager to be the guy who immediately calls the president of the Academy to say, "Hey, bro, how are you? How’s your day? Our day is s***. What the f*** just went down?," and who follows up by suggesting the president of the Academy "call a 911 staff meeting and figure out what the f*** happened and then call me back so we can figure out how to handle this." Call me naïve but I had no idea until 24 hours ago that that's how the music industry works. Though maybe that's not how it works because, as far as we know, the 911 staff meeting didn't happen and the situation was not in fact handled. But that's how SAL SLAIBY apparently works and that's how I now want everything to work. So, anyway, meet the take-no-prisoners Toronto crew behind the WEEKND, via this Billboard cover story by KATIE BAIN, in which we also learn the Weeknd put up $7 million of his own money for next week's SUPER BOWL halftime show—about $540,000 per minute—even though he isn't responsible for the cost of the production. He's planning a "cinematic experience." That halftime show, in case you've forgotten, was at the center of one of the main theories for why the Grammys snubbed the Weeknd. The theory was the Academy was angry that the Weeknd had booked a major TV gig a week after the Grammys were supposed to have been held (they've since been moved to March 14 because of the pandemic). The theory never made sense, and the one quote HARVEY MASON JR.—the Recording Academy president who was on the receiving end of that phone call—gave Billboard was that no, that definitely wasn't it. Which leaves it to the Weeknd to offer his own theory: racism. "I don’t want to make this about me," he tells Bain. "That’s just a fact."

Sundancing With Myself

The QUESTLOVE-directed SUMMER OF SOUL (...OR WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) was on Thursday's (virtual, of course) opening night slate of the SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. The doc about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, featuring rare live footage of STEVIE WONDER, NINA SIMONE MAHALIA JACKSON and many others, will be available on-demand on Saturday. The Sundance music slate also includes PÉREZ RIERA's documentary RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT (premiere today; on demand Sunday), EDGAR WRIGHT's SPARKS documentary THE SPARKS BROTHERS (premiere Saturday, on demand Monday); and IN THE AIR TONIGHT, a short by ANDREW NORMAN WILSON that imagines the story behind the PHIL COLLINS song of the same name (on demand throughout the fest, or just watch it on VIMEO).

Dot Dot Dot

From viral tweet about a nonexistent PHOEBE BRIDGERS song (Jan. 14) to viral snippet of how that nonexistent Phoebe Bridgers song might go (Jan. 16) to (soon to be) viral recording of actual song (Jan. 28). What took you so long, JENSEN MCRAE?... PRIMARY WAVE has bought the entire SUN RECORDS catalog—minus the 10 sides a young ELVIS PRESLEY cut for the label before leaving for RCA—for an estimated $30 million. Confirming your suspicions about the current run on classic catalogs, JOHN SINGLETON, who has managed Sun since the death of his brother SHELBY, who bought the label in 1969, told the New York Times, "It’s one of those bubbles that might eventually burst. So we thought, well, let’s get in before that happens"... The Croatian prankster who convinced a few too many people on the internet that the schematic for a BOSS METAL ZONE guitar pedal was actually the diagram of a 5G chip that big pharma was secretly inserting in Covid vaccines tells GUITAR WORLD his intent was to make conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers look like fools. "Every sane person in the world would get it's a joke," he says, "but well, there ain't a lot of sane people in the world"... MARTIN's newest guitar, the 00L Earth, is an eco-friendly model inspired by GRETA THUNBERG... A group of architects, event producers and production directors have proposed a design for a socially distanced "vertical theater"... There's a band consisting of four people in three countries who are all named PAUL O'SULLIVAN, and I guess it's up to you to decide if your PAUL O'SULLIVAN BAND records should be filed under "P" or "O."

It's Friday

And that means new music from MADLIB (his first proper solo album, in collaboration with FOUR TET), ARLO PARKS (her full-length debut), LIL DURK, WEEZER, the ALCHEMIST, GOAT GIRLS, INDIGO SPARKE (Australian singer/songwriter's ADRIANNE LENKER-produced debut), WILLIAM PARKER (10-CD set of new material from the jazz bassist/composer), NAHAWA DOUMBIA, CELESTE, HAITI BABII, 2KBABY, FENDI P, PORTRAYAL OF GUILT, DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE, the BODY (noise duo's album is "a meditation on distortion"), TRIBULATION, BUKE AND GASE & SO PERCUSSION, SELWYN BIRCHWOOD, MARTIN GORE, ANI DIFRANCO, LANGHORNE SLIM, HEATH SANDERS, WILL DOWNING, the NOTWIST, the SONDER BOMBS, LIA ICES, the BESNARD LAKES, LNZNDRF, BAIO, YASMIN WILLIAMS, ANNA B SAVAGE, STEVEN WILSON, DELVON LAMARR ORGAN TRIO, JOE LOVANO TRIO TAPESTRY, EMMET COHEN and the South African jazz comp INDABA IS... And MARSHALL JEFFERSON and BYRON STINGILY team up for the first TEN CITY track in 25 years.

Rest in Peace

Owner/promoter JERRY BRANDT, who gave New York the ELECTRIC CIRCUS and the RITZ... Asbury Park rock guitar staple BILLY RYAN.