According to This Day in Music, the following songs were No. 1 on the day I was born:
UK: "Amazing Grace" by The Pipes and Drums and Military Band of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
US: "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack
Australia: "Without You" by Nilsson
I just went to Last.fm to stream "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". I remember hearing the song when I was a kid, and as undeveloped as my musical senses were, I liked it. Hearing it again as an adult, I have to appreciate the minimal arrangement and what seems to be a very modal melody. Flack delivers a spine-tingling performance. I approve.
As for the UK and Australia, I don’t know what they were thinking.
Gay.com, The Advocate and ShoutTexas host a gay and lesbian showcase called RockOut during SXSW. It’s one of those pesky hanger-on shows that the festival doesn’t like, and it’s happening on Thursday night, the one night I’m leaving pretty wide open.
I’m tempted to check it out, if only because I haven’t been to Oilcan Harry’s in years, and I’ve never stepped inside Rain. One thing, however, makes me hesitant — the music itself.
For some reason, "emerging independent gay artist" is code for "sad gay folkie". All of the musicians featured on the program are all singer-songwriter types armed with the requisite acoustic guitar. Yes, I understand SXSW is held in Austin, Texas, a magnet for singer-songwriters, and the town is overrun with them during the five nights of the music festival. But when you’ve got R.E.M., Steve Reich, Wing and toddle playing at the same week-long event, maybe some of that diversity could have rubbed off?
I’m not expecting the Gossip, the Magnetic Fields or Matmos, but between Ari Gold, Sacha Sacket, Dylan Rice, Office and — to throw the curve out really far — Jennifer Higdon, gay musicians make all kinds of music. Why focus only on the folk ilk?
Ueda Gen, a former member of LA-PPISCH and the songwriter behind Hajime Chitose’s big hit "Wadatsumi no Ki", passed away on March 9, reports Bounce.com. He was 47.
Ueda announced he had cancer two years ago, and he would give his treatment undivided attention. Services for Ueda happen on March 13 at Sennichidanikaidou.
Ueda co-wrote and produced much of Hajime’s first releases, from the self-titled covers EP to her second album, Nomad Soul. He contributed two tracks to her third album, Hanadairo.
Before devoting his time as a songwriter and producer, Ueda played keyboard and saxophone for the ska band LA-PPISCH from 1984 to 2002. LA-PPISCH recorded for Speedstar Records before moving to Universal Music in the late ’90s. The band went on hiatus in 2003 but reunited for the Rising Rock Music Festival in 2007.
I received an e-mail bulletin from gay R&B singer Ari Gold saying he was invited to perform at SXSW. I found that odd since I didn’t see his name listed in the schedule. As it turns out, his sponsor, the USA Songwriting Competition, is holding a piggyback showcase during SXSW. The language is crafted in a way not to indicate any actual affiliation with the festival.
The venue in question is the Borders bookstore near my apartment. I’m kind of glad his performance happens somewhere convenient for me, but as a venue, that location is a booby prize. It’s essentially a dark corner of a cramped coffee bar, far removed from the bustle of the downtown clubs, where the real action takes place.
SXSW turns Austin into an entire playground, really, so any exposure is helpful on some level. Unfortunately, the event happens on Friday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m., and I’ve already promised myself to catch Wing’s performance at Maggie Mae’s at 8 p.m. that night.
I hope Ari knows what he’s getting into.
If you’re going, the Borders store in question is located at 4477 S. Lamar, in the same mall as Central Market.
This morning, SXSW notified me I was able to purchase a wristband for the 2008 music festival. The festival schedule has also been posted, and the first thing I did was figure out if there were any conflicts.
On Wednesday, I’m spending the entire night at St. David’s Cathedral for the Steve Reich showcase. If I can’t attend the interview with Thurston Moore, I’m not going to miss this performance.
On Friday, Maggie Mae’s hosts Wing at 8 p.m. That’s early enough for me to catch a good part of Japan Nite at Elysium, if there isn’t already a line to get in. I might stick around for detroit7, but I’m not terribly interested in seeing Petty Booka or ketchup mania.
Although not billed as a part of Japan Nite, Elysium’s Saturday schedule hosts more Japanese bands, including the one I really want to see, toddle. Tabuchi Hisako is no stranger to Austin, having performed with NUMBER GIRL at SXSW in 1999 and 2000. I’m definitely leaving after toddle in order to catch the 1 a.m. showcase of hey willpower at Lamberts.
And Thursday? Well, that’s the night I usually can’t find anything terribly compelling to attend. The NACO showcase at Flamingo Cantina is the most promising event. I’m going to have to wing it or perhaps do the unthinkable and stay in that night. I don’t usually do anything on Sunday, but if I’m squeezed out of Wing on Friday, it looks like she’s doing another show at Emo’s on Sunday.
With the exception of hey willpower, most of the shows I want to attend happen early enough in the evening that I might get home before the clusterfuck of 2 a.m. traffic. I’m so not young anymore.
Check out this press release by music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. If I manage to snag a wristband to SXSW this year, I know I’m heading to St. David’s Episopal Church on Wednesday night. Hell, I’ll probably show up an hour early.
Because that night, Boosey & Hawkes presents a showcase titled Reich, Rags & Road Movies: Music by Steve Reich & Friends, which features the music of Reich, John Adams, Elliott Carter, Elena Kats-Chernin and Michael Torke performed by the So Percussion Ensemble (as I suspected), guitarist C.E. Whalen, the SOLI chamber ensemble and Austin-based pianist Michelle Schumann.
Among the works on the program are Adams’ Road Movies, Carter’s Gra and Kats-Chernin’s Russian Rag I and II. The works by Reich include Electric Counterpoint, New York Counterpoint, Clapping Music (!), Drumming, Nagoya Marimbas and Music for a Piece of Wood.
Man, I hope I’m one of the lucky 4,000 in the lottery on Monday. If not, I’m going to bite the $180 bullet for the next set.
Back in mid-January, Billboard reported Sony BMG would make its catalog available for Amazon’s MP3 store, giving an approximate time table of "late this month" (i.e. January.) Well, it’s the end of February, and I didn’t see a follow-up news item anywhere. So I checked for myself. Sure enough, Sony BMG kept their word.
Among the majors, Sony has always struck me as one of the least adventurous in terms of A&R. One of the first Sony bands I searched on Amazon? Sade. The next? Hiroshima. When I try to think of artists similar to, say, Morrissey, Bill Frisell or Jane’s Addiction on Sony, I draw a blank. If I’m looking for classical repertoire before 1900, I can trust Sony Classical. After 1900, I’ll go to Nonesuch or an independent label.
The Kate Bush selection is a bit more complete, thankfully.
Before the merger, BMG was more adventurous than Sony, at one time distributing Beggars Banquet titles and signing the likes of Cowboy Junkies and Hoodoo Gurus. A few more Clannad titles are available, although their earliest and latest albums have been cast aside for three greatest hits collections. At least now I can crossgrade some Eurythmics and Annie Lennox albums from vinyl to digital.
More significant for Broadway fans are titles from RCA Victor, now called Masterworks Broadway. My particular yen is for Stephen Sondheim shows, such as Company and A Little Night Music. No Pacific Overtures or (bizarrely enough) Into the Woods, but Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd and Assassins are accounted for.
With all four majors providing content to Amazon, there’s now a significant alternative to the iTunes Store. I don’t shop at iTunes enough to see how comparable the offerings are, but I bet there are fewer holes in the iTunes catalog because DRM allowed labels to be a bit more, ahem, generous. But Amazon’s digital inventory is no slouch, and I can’t really see much incentive for me to launch iTunes.
Last year, my friend was pissed at me because I couldn’t go with her to buy SXSW wristbands. SXSW announced the sale of the wristbands by SMS text, and when the announcement went out, I was scheduled to conduct a training session at work. So she had to stand out in the hot sun for an hour, waiting in line outside Waterloo Records.
This year, she doesn’t have to go through that ordeal. Nor do I.
The first 4,000 SXSW 2008 wristbands will available only through a lottery. Entries will be accepted from Feb. 21, 9 a.m. to Feb. 25, 9 a.m. After all the entries have been accepted, names will be chosen randomly. These first wristbands cost $139. After that, the price jumps up to $180.
Back in 2006, Sony made a lot of noise about launching a label featuring gay artists. Music With a Twist, as the venture was called, managed to release a soundtrack to the television series The L Word and a compilation, Revolutions. Then … nothing.
A visit to label’s web site finds it gutted, and a Jan. 24, 2008 article in the Falls Church News-Press about signee Kirsten Price hints at the label’s fate. Price regained rights to an album she recorded for the label after Rick Rubin was brought in to head Columbia Records, Music with a Twist’s parent company. Rubin, I guess, was not impressed. Two Myspace pages — one for the label, another for the compilation — are still up, but no one has logged into either profile since October 2007. The darkened out layout gives a definite shuttered vibe.
Labels are all about the big launch, but when something goes under, it’s never a headline. No one has outright announced the closing of Music with a Twist, but a series of dead web sites and an artist dropped before an album release indicates the obvious. The Gossip, perhaps the label’s biggest score, looks like they’re still on track to release a new album with the band’s previous label, Kill Rock Stars, still in the picture.
(The New York Times profiled Rubin, giving his nod of approval to the Gossip but passing on someone else.)
The TWIST roster will feature LGBT artists who have mass appeal and hit potential across all musical genres. Also planned for the TWIST imprint is a series of branded compilations geared toward the LGBT audience, as well as music fans everywhere. These compilations will feature hit songs by established artists that have been embraced by LGBT audiences, as well as tracks from emerging gay artists.
Ambitious, but unfocused. It’s hard enough to find gay artists who don’t suck. (Get your head out of the gutter.) To market gay content to both gay and straight audiences? I don’t think the social forces are aligned to turn that into a money-making endeavor.
I didn’t really start investigating the fate of Music with a Twist till I wondered what was happening with Jonathan Mendelsohn, one of the few artists who contributed something I liked to the Revolutions compilation. Mendelsohn has a very minimal Myspace presence, and the "Type of Label" field used to say "major". Now it says "none". There are no blog entries, and the biography section is empty.
Whatever is happening with Music with a Twist, I hope Mendelsohn isn’t too adversely affected by it. I was actually looking forward to hearing more from him.
I tuned into the Grammys at the tail end of the broadcast, when Usher and Quincy Jones announced the award for Album of the Year. I didn’t even realize Foo Fighters, Vince Gill and Herbie Hancock made enough a ripple to earn a nomination. The fact Hancock won didn’t surprise me — Grammy voters go with the most familiar — but I wouldn’t recognize his album if it were blaring from someone’s stereo.
The Grammys stopped being relevant to me as far back as high school, but these days, the gap between what’s recognized by the industry and what’s playing on my media player is the size of a canyon. The game I play these days is to see how many nominees and winners I actually have in my collection. Not many, as would be expected.
I’ve gone so far as to root for bands I downright abhor to win the Best New Artist category. That category is the kiss of death for just about anyone who wins it. Amy Winehouse’s win should be of great concern to her fans.
But bashing the Grammys is a time-honored sport, and I was never any good at sports.
The Washington Post, however, has a great article about the classical Grammys, which seem to reflect the direction of recorded classical music more closely than its pop brethen. The classical nominees were quirky, a good number of them surprisingly including a lot of modern works. I don’t remember seeing so many of them nominated in a single year.
Many of these albums are also independent releases, a sharp contrast to the days when EMI, Universal and Sony dominated the classical categories. Joan Tower’s Made in America has been on my eMusic Save for Later list for a number of months now.
I’ve always looked up who won the Best Contemporary Classical Composition after the awards are announced — the Recording Academy sometimes gets it right, if Steve Reich’s 1989 win for Different Trains is any indication.