Month: May 2020

Where Happiness Reigned: Exit/In’s 1970s Heyday

May 21, 2020 webcatt_admin

Maybe a new beginning for clubs everywhere. Listening rooms. Maybe in your house?

“Our place is centered around the artists, and we do ask people to keep their talking down so that the performers can come across to everyone.”

—From one of Exit/In’s first advertisements in The Tennessean

Within its first year, Exit/In quickly stood out for what it was not. It was no concert hall in size or character. It wasn’t a sports bar or old-fashioned nightclub. Modeled after Atlanta’s Bottom of the Barrel, it was a listening room where patrons behaved much like they would at the movie theater. It had a coffeehouse feel but sold liquor by the drink. Perhaps the civility of its patrons could be chalked up in part to the bar’s serving only top-shelf liquor. “Cheaper stuff brought bad vibes,” says Manier. There were also the house rules: no fighting, and no talking during performances. True to the owners’ plans, Exit/In would provide patrons with equal parts musical entertainment and education.

Read it all at Source: Where Happiness Reigned: Exit/In’s 1970s Heyday

Music, People

The Rolling Stones Cruise on Eighth Street | The Village Voice

May 12, 2020 webcatt_admin

“The Stones Cruise on Eighth Street”

July 23, 1980

I was talking to a friend of mine one night a couple of years ago, after ten thousand varyingly voluntary rehearings of Some Girls had convinced us it wasn’t so bad after all, that in fact we really actually liked it: “Do you think the Stones should break up now while they’re temporarily ahead,” I asked, “or play it out to the very end?”

“Oh, no!” he fairly cackled. “l think they should stay together till they all drop dead, a little more pathetic and decrepit each time, out there grinding away at the same Chuck Berry licks when they’re 60 years old!”

Go ahead and laugh, but they’re probably going to do exactly that, and after panning just about everything they released in the ’70s I’ve had a change of heart. You tell me whether it has something to do with turning 30 and all that, but what I said to another friend the other night in a similar conversation was, “Shit, yeah, let’s all grow old with the Rolling Stories, I can think of worse things.”

Source: The Rolling Stones Cruise on Eighth Street | The Village Voice

Music, Review

‘Rockers and spies’ – how the CIA used culture to shred the iron curtain | US news | The Guardian

May 7, 2020 webcatt_admin

Now, it turns out, that sparkler-swaying anthem may have been contrived by US intelligence as cultural subversion of communism. An upcoming podcast series, Wind of Change, by the New Yorker’s Pat Radden Keefe, investigates whether it was – as the journalist was told a decade ago – actually a CIA-crafted confection.

The producers can be sure of an audience for Keefe’s exploration of “the dark byways of cold war history and … nearly a hundred interviews in four countries with rockers and spies”. But if the song was created by the agency, this was nothing new – indeed, it would have been a late arrival to a policy and practice almost as long-established as the Berlin Wall itself.

Source: ‘Rockers and spies’ – how the CIA used culture to shred the iron curtain | US news | The Guardian

Music, News

Former Music Exec Describes The Scary Meeting That Resulted In Today’s Violent Rap Music

May 7, 2020 webcatt_admin

Where did all the good music go? Here’s one answer and it makes sense considering what we have had to endure.

Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision makers”. At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering.

The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement.

He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments.

Source: Former Music Exec Describes The Scary Meeting That Resulted In Today’s Violent Rap Music – Business Insider

Music, People

The Vinyl? It’s Pricey. The Sound? Otherworldly. – The New York Times

May 2, 2020 webcatt_admin

Hutchison defends such efforts as part of the label’s devotion to authenticity. But it comes at a cost. Its manufacturing methods, and the quality-control attention paid to each record, bring no economies of scale. So Electric Recording would gain no reduction in expenses if it made more, thus negating the question Hutchison is most frequently asked: Why not press more records and sell them more cheaply? “We probably make the most expensive records in the world,” Hutchison said, “and make the least profit.”

Source: The Vinyl? It’s Pricey. The Sound? Otherworldly. – The New York Times

Music, People