WKCR Blues

I'm writing this Tuesday night in the shadow of unconfirmed reports about PHIL SCHAAP, the great jazz historian, curator, DJ and guide to multiple generations of New Yorkers. May the city and the world be filled today with the sound and the spirit of jazz, especially by his beloved CHARLIE PARKER.

I Believe I Can Search

It's Wednesday and unless something has changed in the past several hours, the top search result on SPOTIFY for DRAKE's new album isn't in fact Drake's new album but an official Spotify playlist containing the entirety of Drake's new album, in order. This seems to be Spotify's awkward response to the fact that on release day, last Friday, the top album search result wasn't Drake's album but rather an album called DRAKE by an artist called CERTIFIED LOVER BOY (which has since, it appears, been removed or de-indexed from Spotify and other services). That album/artist titling is a common troll/tactic in online music services, where anyone with a few dollars to spare can upload music with any title they can think of (or that anyone else has already thought of), but rarely if ever has it worked so well. ALEXA and other voice assistants apparently were having a hard time responding to requests to play the actual Drake's actual album on Friday, which is a little amusing and more than a little alarming. You can't completely stop people from trying to game the system, but it shouldn’t be so easy. Is no one in the world's default virtual record store keeping an eye on the virtual end caps? An artist at Drake's level, of course, can stand the certified hiccup. But what if the same thing happened to a smaller, middle-class artist who depends on those release-week streams for chart impact and income? What happens when her potential listeners give up after searching and failing to find her music? Will Spotify make a playlist of her album, too, to game its own search engine? Can Spotify make up her losses? Can the service really not figure out how to make its own search algorithm produce the actual best answer? Do we even want to know the answer to that?

In other "Certified Lover Boy" news, Drake has taken some flack for giving a songwriting credit on the new album to R. KELLY. The optics of simply putting that name on a song is 2021 are cringeworthy enough; what's worse is it means Kelly is getting paid for streams and downloads of both the song, "TSU," and the album. Ugh. The official explanation from Drake's camp is that a Kelly song happened to be playing, barely audibly, in the background of a sample of Houston DJ OG RON C talking that opens the song, which means the song itself is being sampled. Which makes perfect legal sense. But which otherwise makes no sense at all. Why didn't someone ask OG Ron C—who co-produced the track—to re-record the same spiel with a clean background, or any other background? He could have done this even after the album was released—it's never too late to edit an album anymore. The most charitable answer is that Drake simply doesn't care if a tiny piece of your $9.99 music subscription winds up winds up in R. Kelly's pocket every time his song shows up on a playlist. There are less charitable answers, too.

Etc Etc Etc

BRITNEY SPEARS' father, perhaps sensing the end was near, has asked a judge to terminate the conservatorship that has given him control of her finances and her affairs for 13 years. "Vindication for Ms. Spears," her new lawyer said... ANITA BAKER, suggesting she's won her battle to reclaim her masters from ELEKTRA RECORDS, but without quite saying so, says she no longer objects to people streaming her music. People will find that somewhat easier to do after her music actually returns to streaming services, which, Baker also suggested via tweet, will happen soon, courtesy RHINO RECORDS... After a very long wait, PAULA COLE "I DON'T WANT TO WAIT" has returned to its rightful place as the theme song for the classic TV series DAWSON'S CREEK, which is on NETFLIX. The show's studio had never licensed the song—or much of the rest of the original "Dawson's Creek" soundtrack—for home video or streaming, and for nearly two decades JANN ARDEN's "RUN LIKE MAD" had taken Cole's place. A new deal with Cole's publisher has allowed the show to restore things almost as they were. One difference: It's a re-recorded version and this time Cole owns the master. "Artists," she tweeted, "should be compensated for their intellectual work"... 1938, a big year for jazz, as rendered by the great blog/podcast CENTURIES OF SOUND... The nostalgic power of record stores in movies... Covering the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS with red hot chili peppers.

Rest in Peace

Pop singer SARAH HARDING of UK girl group Girls Aloud... BENNIE PETE, sousaphone player and co-founder of New Orleans institution the Hot 8 Brass Band... JOHN DRAKE, who led us on a journey to the center of the mind as lead singer of the Amboy Dukes... Rock merchandising pioneer DELL FURANO, who co-founded Winterland Productions with Bill Graham and will be remembered as the inventor of the black concert tee... Another Bill Graham associate, ARNIE PUSTILNIK, who managed Carlos Santana, Train and Joe Satriani... British classical harpist SHEILA BROMBERG, who played on the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" and Heatwave's "Boogie Nights"... BLACK OAK ARKANSAS guitarist RICKIE LEE REYNOLDS... Ukrainian violinist IGOR OISTRAKH... Guitarist JOCHEN SCHRÖDER of German metal band Rage... Entertainment lawyer LINDA MENSCH, who was president of the Recording Academy's Chicago chapter in the 1990s.