| We've been playing for our road crew for the past six months. I'm so f***in' sick of it. | | | | |  | St. Vincent on "Saturday Night Live," April 3, 2021.
(Will Heath/NBCUniversal/Getty Images) | | | | | "We've been playing for our road crew for the past six months. I'm so f***in' sick of it." | | | | Around the Way Vote
A note on LL COOL J, KRAFTWERK, GIL SCOTT-HERON and the other artists who made it into the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME this week not as "performers" elected by the Hall's 1,200-strong voting membership but through special categories for early influence and musical excellence as selected by a much smaller committee of Hall insiders: They, like NILE RODGERS, SISTER ROSETTA THARPE, RINGO STARR and others who came before, are in fact Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. Full stop. "It's the same plaque on the wall," Rock Hall of Fame Foundation chairman JOHN SYKES tells Billboard. "The fan walks into Cleveland and looks at that wall—it's the same exact honor."
I've heard lots of chatter over the past 24 hours suggesting that LL and Kraftwerk in particular, who were ushered in by those committees after being rejected six times each by the voting body, are basically getting consolation prizes and they won't quite be full inductees. But that's not how the Hall works. It's more like a party where there are three or four hosts who you might get an invitation from, but once you walk through the doors, no one knows, or cares, which one you got yours from. Everyone winds up at the same party.
As for the legitimacy of the selections? The main voting body is a large group of music execs, historians and schlubs like me, along with every living inductee, and it's the body that decided, six separate times, that Kraftwerk isn't worthy of the Hall. The committees are small, select teams of seven insiders, including artists and executives, who think Kraftwerk does belong. Which one do you think is more legit? Personally, I think it's to the Hall's benefit that each avenue exists, like a popular vote and a functioning electoral college operating side by side, without one canceling the other out.
In other Rock Hall goings-on, punk and indie-rock continue to be terribly underrepresented, but this year's inductees include two alumni of seminal LA punks the GERMS: guitarist PAT SMEAR, who got his invitation as a member of FOO FIGHTERS, and early drummer DOTTIE DANGER, better known as BELINDA CARLISLE, lead singer of the GO-GO'S. "I guess we'll have to play an original Germs song, or something" at the induction ceremony, Go-Go CHARLOTTE CAFFEY tells Rolling Stone. "Let's do 'FORMING.' It's got two chords"... CAROLE KING wants to play a song with JAY-Z, as long as there's time to rehearse: "If they do, then Jay and I are going to figure something out, I assure you"... LL Cool J has no idea why ERIC B & RAKIM, BIG DADDY KANE and SALT-N-PEPA don't have Hall of Fame plaques... Head Foo Fighter DAVE GROHL, who's on the Hall's nominating committee himself, says he's fought repeatedly for BAD BRAINS and DEVO... Go-Go KATHY VALENTINE wants either HAIM or HAYLEY WILLIAMS to induct her band... Three 2021 inductees—the Go-Go's, TINA TURNER and "Black Godfather" CLARENCE AVANT—are the subjects of major documentaries released within the past two years. Someone please make one about the SHANGRI-LA'S. I'm available to write.
Dot Dot Dot
UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP will be spun out from parent VIVENDI and go public on the Amsterdam-based EURONEXT market "before or by" Sept. 27... A 26-hour marathon of performances of ALVIN LUCIER's classic sound-art piece "I AM SITTING IN A ROOM" will be streamed tonight and tomorrow by Brooklyn's ISSUE PROJECT ROOM to celebrate the composer's 90th birthday. Lucier himself will begin the program at 8 pm ET... Dave Grohl and his mom hang out with PHARRELL WILLIAMS and his mom in the second episode of Grohl's series FROM CRADLE TO STAGE, which drops today on Paramount+... Name of the day: ROAD RUNNER. As two words, he's a Pakistani-Canadian rapper who's been recording acclaimed singles and videos while under house arrest in Toronto. Compressed into one word, it's a 3,500-cap BOWERY PRESENTS club under construction in my native Boston, named for the best song ever written about my native Boston... Sixteen-year-old country songwriter CALEB KENNEDY, one of the final five on this season's AMERICAN IDOL, is off the show after an old social media post surfaced in which he's sitting next to a friend who's wearing what appears to be a Ku Klux Klan hood. His mother says the hood was actually inspired by the slasher film THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT. He apologized Wednesday via Twitter.
Rest in Peace
PERVIS STAPLES, tenor singer and founding member of the STAPLE SINGERS, who left in the late 1960s because he didn't want to listen to his father, POPS STAPLES, all the time. He went on to manage the R&B group the EMOTIONS and open a popular Chicago nightclub, PERV'S HOUSE... BOB KOESTER, who founded the long-running blues/jazz label DELMARK RECORDS and the Chicago retail institution JAZZ RECORD MART... British soprano PAULINE TINSLEY.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | Variety |
| | Why NFT Sales in the Music Business Are Still the Wild West -- and How It Might Be Tamed | | by Kristin Robinson | | The music industry didn't catch onto the NFT craze until the last six months. Now major players hope to follow indies into the market, but the more stakeholders there are, the steeper the hurdles. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | If Michael Jackson is canceled, can we still enjoy the Jacksons? | | by Jody Rosen | | Lost to history, the Jacksons came between the Jackson 5 and Michael's solo triumphs. A set of reissues arrives compromised by his transgressions. | |  | | Billboard |
| | John Sykes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Broader Focus: 'We Honor the Artists Who Created the Sound of Youth Culture' | | by Paul Grein | | John Sykes, chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, discusses the Hall's 2021 induction class and its broadened focus. | |  | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | How Dua Lipa's 'Future Nostalgia' was born -- and what it means for Warner Records | | by Tim Ingham | | You'd have been forgiven for betting that an upbeat electro-pop record would have met a tough commercial reaction as the ghoulish turmoil of Covid-19's effects began to be understood by the wider world. | |  | | Twenty Thousand Hertz |
| | Twenty Thousand Hertz: Progression Obsession | | by Dallas Taylor, Jennifer Gersten and Benny Davis | | There are a few specific chord progressions that show up again and again in popular music. Across hundreds of hit songs, the same basic musical formulas have been used by artists ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Lady Gaga, and from Bob Marley to Blink-182. Where did these musical tropes even come from, and what makes them so enduring? | |  | | Populism |
| | The Rock Hall Class of 2021: 3 Steps Forward, 7 Steps Back | | by Evelyn McDonnell | | It sounds great. The Go-Go's, Carole King and Tina Turner -- my top three choices among the year's nominees -- all being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as performers, at long last. But scroll down a little further. | | | | Los Angeles Times |
| | 'OG punks for the win!' The Go-Go's on their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction | | by Randall Roberts | | The Go-Go's had to wait a few years to be inducted into the Rock Hall, but that hasn't dimmed their enthusiasm: 'Hell, yeah,' exclaims Jane Wiedlin. | |  | | The Quietus |
| | Music Is A Time Machine: Sons of Kemet Interviewed | | by Adam Quarshie | | Ahead of the release of their fourth album, Adam Quarshie caught up with Sons of Kemet to discuss the idea of music transmitting encoded information, escaping the grid and connecting with ancestral knowledge. | |  | | Please Kill Me |
| | Miles Copeland: His Life In The Music Business | | by Eric Davidson | | Miles Copeland III was already a veteran music promoter and manager when the punk scene exploded in London. With an office in the same building as Malcolm McLaren, he found himself in a position to sign and/or promote a number of the bands, including the Sex Pistols and Sham 69. Soon after, he jumpstarted the indie label movement. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | This man made opera history. Why did I not know him? | | by Peter Brathwaite | | Peter Brathwaite knew Bobby (Don't Worry Be Happy) McFerrin but not his father Robert, the first Black man to sing at the Met. He celebrates a trailblazer and an inspiration. | | |  | | Passion of the Weiss |
| | Who Killed Mac Dre? | | by Donald Morrison | | Over 1,200 documents from the Kansas City Police Department help shed light on one of hip-hop's biggest mysteries. | |  | | Paper |
| | Soulja Boy Wants His Check | | by Trey Alston | | "People don't understand what I did. I really made history in our timeline. It's lit. It's lit for y'all to be the witnesses." | | | | Billboard |
| | Radio On the Mend: Takeaways From iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus' Q1 Earnings | | by Glenn Peoples | | Radio stations were among the hardest hit entertainment companies in 2020, but they're battling back to recapture some of their losses. | |  | | The Forty-Five |
| | The Biggest Winner of the 2021 Brits? Progress | | by Jenessa Williams | | Jenessa Williams applauds an awarding body that listens to feedback. | |  | | British GQ |
| | Lil Nas X: 'At first I felt a sense of responsibility. But now I just don't care' | | by Jamal Jordan | | Lil Nas X is having a moment again. Fresh off the instant ubiquity of "Montero (Call My By Your Name)" and its accompanying "Satan shoes", he speaks to GQ Style about learning to love life as a young gay black man with the freedom to do whatever he wants. | |  | | Mixmag |
| | Baby Weight is the Dolly Parton-loving DJ who's here to take tech-house back from the Big Room Bros | | by Marcus K. Dowling | | Marcus Dowling meets Baby Weight, the Washington DC partystarter who is resolutely anti-bulls*** and pro fun. | |  | | How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams |
| | How to Build a Sustainable Music Career and Collect All Revenue Streams, E6: Imogen Heap | | by Emily White and Imogen Heap | | How to record with or without a budget. | |  | | Sound Expertise |
| | Handel and the Slave Trade with David Hunter | | by Will Robin and David Hunter | | In 2013, the music librarian David Hunter found the name George Frideric Handel in a printed list of investors in one of Britain's official slave trading companies. Since then, Dr. Hunter has researched Handel and his patrons' investments in the slave trade, as well as the broader relationship between slavery and the history of classical music. | | | | The Guardian |
| | 'Everything's dialled up to 11': meet Australia's rising stars of hyperpop | | by Shaad D'Souza | | Bubblegum sweet, razor sharp and deliriously chaotic, the genre - if it even is one - is responsible for some of the most vibrant, strange pop in the country. | | | |  | | | Music of the day | | "Down" | | St. Vincent | | From "Daddy's Home," out Friday on Loma Vista. |  | | YouTube |
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From "Daddy's Home," out Friday on Loma Vista. | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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