The Daily Swarm - Touré's Exploration Into Prince's Iconic Status Gets Picked Apart...

Lots of good points about the book. Definitely wasn't the "ultimate Prince book"...

The Daily Swarm - Touré's Exploration Into Prince's Iconic Status Gets Picked Apart...

Pac-Man Fever!

I'm reading Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, and in the section about the insane Pac-Man craze of 1981-82, they note that the game was so big that it even inspired novelty songs.

Check Out "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner and Garcia.

Songs about video games are common enough these days, but remember, this was on the radio. The radio.

Reading Jay-Z's decoded

I recently picked up a copy of Jay-Z's Decoded, and I'm about halfway through reading it. The book works as a bit of biography, and a bit of hip-hop history, offering some serious insight into his writing process and his mindset while writing songs.
One particular story is about the writing of "Big Pimpin'", and how he was going through some legal issues at the time with an assault charge. The song was a way to triumph when it looked like the deck was stacked against him.



He's a compelling storyteller, and the lyric notes are especially enlightening. These sections are the nitty gritty of the 'decoded' part of the book. I was somewhat worried that the notes would take away some of the mystique of the words, but frankly, I'll be listening to his lyrics, and certainly all hip-hop and rap lyrics, with a different ear after this book.
I'd recommend against getting the e-book version though, it's kind of a pain in the ass to jump back and forth from the lyric to notes on an e-reader.

It works as a broad autobiography, but not strictly a humble-beginnings-to-superstar sort of way. He jumps around a bit in service of grouping songs together thematically.

Here are a couple excerpts from the book in an MTV article published around the time of the book's release.

A good read for hip-hop enthusiasts, great read for Jay-Z fans.

Pretty Hate Machine in-depth analysis

Solid read for audio and NIN fans over at the NIN Hotline:
Halo Profile 02R: Pretty Hate Machine 2010 by Botley

And check this out: the 33 1/3 series of Pretty Hate Machine is finally shipping!

Reconnecting with Roxy Music

My friend Mark lent me the Brian Eno biography On a Faraway Beach, which compelled me to check out some footage of Roxy Music back in their early days, when Eno was still a member.

Check out this clip from the Old Grey Whistle Test:

Eno gets about ten seconds of screen time on his synth, but his presence is felt throughout as he manipulates the other band member's instruments.


It's pretty cool how this was 1972 yet this music still feels fresh and contemporary, like a transmission from outer space.

This song is pretty killer as well, it's the opener from their second album, For Your Pleasure:

Unlike the video above, they are clearly miming and phoning in their performances here, but it's pretty cool that Eno gets a little more screen time. It's also interesting to note how much the look and sound of the band had evolved in roughly a year.



I have to keep reminding myself that this was 1972-73. The music still holds up today, despite Roxy Music's formula being replicated ad nauseum in the 1980s with the so-called New Romantic bands, ie Duran Duran and other abominations... the band really was ground-breaking at the time, and Eno of course went on to have a major impact on Western popular music.

The CD's slow death

My dad sends me this article about the closing of a CD producing facility in New Jersey.

the company will shutter the facility and 300 workers will be out of jobs. A Sony spokeswoman recently cited an ailing U.S. economy and sagging interest in physical media as the reasons for the closure. A longtime employee sized up the situation more succinctly for CNET last week: "The CD is dying."

Another interesting passage here:

by selling CDs, the poobahs at the record labels also placed the equivalent of digital-master recordings in every home, Holzman said. They had no way to foresee how the CD would enable ripping, iPods, peer-to-peer networks or how those things would slam into their business like a wrecking ball.

Last year I read a fascinating book about the music industry called Appetite for Self-Destruction. [review link]

It talks about how the CD business was a massive bubble just waiting to burst. Sure, music sales have declined drastically in the past few years, but after reading this book, you can view the sales decline more as a matter of a market correction rather than anything else.

CD's started out around $20, and the industry claimed that prices would go down eventually... they never did, which is why the Napster phenomenon was able to cripple their business model the way it did. Appetite paints the music industry as an old-boys network unwilling to adapt to the times, and we all know what happens when you don't adapt.

Spotify seems like something that could save the industry (or at least prop it up for a while), but as usual, it's business as usual.

First listen to Rap with a book critic

Listening to the Anthology of Rap

[via Angry Robot]

Is it next Tuesday yet?

Alex Ross, the author of one of my favourite music books ever is releasing his new book next week. I rarely buy new books, I usually prefer to grab the library copy, but I will definitely make an exception for this one.

There's another audio guide for the new book, but I'm a spoiler-hater so I think I'll wait til next week...

Albums in paperback

Awesome gallery of a few albums rendered as classic Penguin paperbacks. These are really well done, the covers look worn out and well read, lots of character.



Flickr set

On Michael Jackson

I just finished reading a very interesting book by Margo Jefferson called "On Michael Jackson".

She compares Jackson to PT Barnum, suggesting that the King of Pop knew that he was turning himself into a spectacle that you can't take your eyes off of, much like Barnum's freak show, and greatest show on earth. She also talks about how race and sexual politics inform a great deal of Jackson's stage persona.

It's a pretty interesting read, more of an essay than a book. Available at the Toronto Public Library.

Mention of a book that Bjork describes as "Incredibly Nourishing"

I'm reading "The Rest Is Noise", a history of 20th century classical music by Alex Ross. Amazing book, I thought about going paperback on this one but I just had to go for the hardcover. Not great for travel or subway, but this isn't that type of book. This is a book you enjoy in an armchair with a large cup of tea and an excellent stereo system.

Let's just say that a clear line is being drawn from early avant garde through Steve Reich and on to Timbaland. That, basically, is what makes this book awesome.

The audio guide on the website is also awesome. Some of the compositions are mind blowing.

Of crossovers and sell-outs

Reading my wonderful xmas gift copy of the Pitchfork 500, I'm reminded of Marvin Gaye's sell-out disco crossover tune "Got To Give It Up (Part 1)":

Got to Give It Up - Marvin Gaye

Which is a pretty similar groove to LCD Soundsystem's crossover hit "Daft Punk is Playing at My House":



And I'm also reminded of an interview of James Murphy of the above band saying he'd turned down working with Madonna for whatever reason. I think he's fucking nuts for saying no.

Imagine the castle you could rent with that money.
Imagine the gear that you stock into that place.
Imagine the fridge full of drugs the craziest of all rock stars would have in a place like that.

Sell-out or not, I would have taken the money.

---

Anywho, getting to the point, here's the last Madonna single:

Give it 2 me - Madonna Ft. Pharrel

So did Madonna hire Pharrell & co. to produce an LCD-ified Marvin Gaye ripoff? Perhaps. I guess the moral of the story is: Madonna always gets her way.