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What album from 2007 was the least-reviewed and most-underrated?
The Charm and the Strange by Simon Wilcox. Even Larry LeBlanc thinks so:
“Simon Wilcox is an astounding find. On the first listen to her third release I had the same reaction to when I first head the recorded debuts of Kate Bush and Mary Margaret O’Hara as well as to hearing any Van Morrison album in the ’70s. She has recorded a classic work.”
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE ANNOUNCES 2008 SHORTLIST FOR BEST CANADIAN ALBUM
Steve Jordan, Founder and Executive Director of the Polaris Music Prize, today revealed the Short List of 10 Canadian albums eligible for the third annual $20,000 award.
“The Sub Pop Singles Club is back, all tan and rested after a shockingly long sabbatical. It is a somewhat louche, world-weary thing with its eye on your wallet. And, for a price, The Sub Pop Singles Club is ready and willing to satisfy you aurally in ways you never dreamed possible.
Without further pandering, here are the facts!
Fact 1!
This run of The Sub Pop Singles Club will run for 1 year only, before returning to its secret island vacation spot for eternity (or until we here at Sub Pop feel masochistic enough to take on coordinating this debacle again.)”
Okay - it took me a minute, but I get… Kanye and Absolut have joined forces to poke fun at lifestyle marketing, the kind of marketing the music business *believes* it lives or dies on (please note emphasis on *believe*)… Instead of going the aspirational route and portraying a rich, well-dressed Kanye hanging in an elegant club drinking Absolut (the Kanye you wish you could be), their tactic is to skip the vodka cocktails and smalltalk and get to the point - see Kanye, take a pill and be Kanye - straight-up. Fuck inference …
… but wait, aren’t they still trying to peddle Absolut to y’all?
There’s an idea here but it really smacks of insincerity, don’t you think? Or perhaps it’s terrible execution of a good idea that needs more fleshing out.
Time will tell. In terms of execution, there’s zero social media on the site currently, but you can sign up for a countdown alert via email… looks like something’s going to happen in ten days.
There’s nothing like a great song to inspire music fans to want to learn to play it themselves, but doing it right is rarely easy. Enter Now Play It, a UK-based site that offers video instruction taught by the artists themselves.
Launched last year, Now Play It aims to get people as close to the artists and songs they love as possible. To do that, it offers downloadable video tutorials on the art and craft of playing hundreds of different songs on guitar, bass, piano or drums, many of them led by the artists who wrote or perform them. Paul McCartney, Blur and KT Tunstal are among the artists currently offering instruction on the site, and users can search for tutorials by artist, song, instrument, difficulty level or tutor. Now Play It’s full tutorials, priced at GBP 3.99, are typically split into three parts—lesson, recap and play-through—and are at least 15 minutes long. In-house tutorials follow the same format but with instruction by a Now Play It tutor instead. ‘Lite’ tutorials, meanwhile, are just two parts—play-through and recap—and are generally between three and six minutes long; pricing is GBP 1.99. Downloads are available in MP4 or Windows Media Video formats.
With Generation C’s penchant for content production, Now Play It is sure to find an enthusiastic audience among the many consumers out there seeking to create, to express themselves and to make the music they love their own. Being taught by a well-known artist, meanwhile—even if by video—is sure to give them a heaping helping of status skills and stories to share about the experience. Now Play It currently offers a forum for community discussion, but a logical next step, it seems to us, would be to give consumers a place to show off the results of their instruction with video and recordings of them playing the music they learned—along with opportunities to critique and discuss. If there’s anything better than content, it’s content plus community! (Related: Music school for generation YouTube.)
Well this is interesting. Via ebay, Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac is auctioning 50% of his future earnings for a minimum bid of $1.5 million.
Reuters has a pretty decent article on the facts and reasoning behind the move here.
From what I understand, the deal includes royalties and future earnings spanning his entire career, not just from future publishing / recordings…
There are way too many undisclosed variables for me to make a comment on the viability of an investor recouping his/her investment but I will say this: I think it’s an interesting idea, albeit not entirely new, and I’m all for any musician who’s willing to take a risk with a new model in this rapidly deteriorating space. Obviously MacIsaac is never going to get a Live Nation 360 deal like Ms. Hips Don’t Lie, so he’s making one up himself.
The future of the music business is *not* going to be based on any one magic model alone, so the more musicians and artists willing to experiment and take risks, the better for us all.
Kudos Mr. MacIsaac - I hope it works for you and I really do hope you’ll share your learning with us.
Well this is interesting. Via ebay, Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac is auctioning 50% of his future earnings for a 
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