Writer's note: Greetings! My name’s Ned Raggett, occasional music writer for a variety of spots. The Cream approached me to talk a bit about interesting music news, think pieces, longreads and more from the previous week. And some actual music too, strangely enough. You can thank a huge range of friends for suggesting things to their own circles as much as anyone else. Maybe I just like to be my own aggregator. Welcome to the column, and hope you enjoy!
Strictly speaking, Beyonce won the weekend thanks to the one-two of “Foundation”’s release and the singer's stellar Super Bowl 50 halftime performance, which also featured some other band whose name escapes me. But the thinkpieces will flow this week instead — last week touched on Super Bowls past, as well as other anniversaries, talked-up new clubs and old-scene anthologies, forgotten bands and music industry politics. And a year marked by notable deaths continued, with Dan Hicks’ passing last Saturday morning following hard on the crushing loss on Thursday of Earth, Wind and Fire’s founder Maurice White.
When Whitney Hit the High Note
At ESPN, Danyel Smith looked back 25 years on the anniversary of Whitney Houston’s famed performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV. Both via Smith’s thorough, entertaining and pointed setting of the stage for what 1991 was like and in her study of the performance, it’s a memory-stirrer and a half.
But there are more than 1,700 security professionals on the grounds. And if it seems every person is waving a tiny U.S. flag, that's because a tiny U.S. flag has been placed on every seat. The field is a kaleidoscope of honor guard uniforms and team uniforms and kids doing a red, white and blue card stunt. Central is the entire Florida Orchestra — standing in full dress, signaling serious and formal. Then Whitney Houston steps onto a platform — it looks to be the size of a card table — in a loose white tracksuit with mild red and blue accents. She has on white Nike Cortezes with a red swoosh. No heels in which to step daintily, and definitely not a gown. Her hair is held back by a pretty but plain ivory bandanna — there are no wisps blowing onto her face. No visible earplugs to take away from the naturalness of the moment. Everything is arranged to convey casual confidence.
Among the annals of national anthems as a prelude to sporting events, few have topped the one delivered by Whitney Houston before Super Bowl XXV in 1991 in Tampa. A woman, her incredible voice and the bare minimum of extraneous notes. Her rendition came at a particularly patriotic time, just after the onset of the Persian Gulf War, and was released as a single. It was re-released after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Houston donated all proceeds to charity. She ranks among the best of all-time because of the circumstances and ... that voice..
On 30 Years of Janet Jackson’s Control Meaghan Garvey wrote at MTV on the anniversary of Jackson’s solo breakout success, celebrating its landmark status not simply as a popular standout but as an artistic fusion, musical and visual, that continues to point the way forward.
The pace of Internet media today nudges us toward hyperbole; we throw around words like “classic” without as much care as we should. But it’s hard to overstate the significance of Control, whether in terms of the pop landscape, the evolution of the music video as a vessel for promotion and expression, or Top 40 feminist anthems. With their stylized tug-of-war between hard and soft, Jackson, Jam, and Lewis — who collaboratively wrote and produced all but one of the album’s nine tracks — roughed a blueprint for New Jack Swing, bridging the gap between hip-hop and R&B that continues to narrow today. It made pop tougher, funkier, blacker — it’s important to note that Control’s self-actualization anthems were expressions of black female pride. Control spawned a whopping six videos — great ones, at that — which played an immeasurable role in the shift toward visible black pop.If Rihanna Can Go Platinum Giving ANTI Away For Free, What Does Platinum Even Mean?
At Stereogum, Michael Nelson took another dive into what streaming has caused in terms of conventional music sales metrics — specifically the gold and platinum designations, which the RIAA announced would include streaming figures for the first time. Nelson wasn’t terribly sanguine.
How much did Samsung pay for those ANTI giveaways? That’s a mystery. It could have been $5 apiece; that would have matched what the company paid for each “pre-sold” copy of Magna Carta. It could have been $2; that would be the minimum amount necessary to satisfy the RIAA’s requirements, at least according to its statement regarding Songs Of Innocence. In either case, it’s a good deal less than what the end user would pay. If you were to buy the standard-edition version of ANTI today on iTunes, it would run you $11.99. That won’t count as six sales, mind you. Even though it would be the equivalent value of six sales — if you were to pay the bulk minimum offered to Samsung, based on the RIAA’s requirements — it will go down in the books as only one.Katy B And Her Collaborators Unravel Every Track On HoneyWhich brings us back to the question of consumer demand. More specifically: How does any of this, in any way, reflect consumer demand? If anything, it seems to obfuscate actual demand. Does the high number of doughnuts given away on National Doughnut Day reflect the public’s actual appetite for doughnuts? Or just our appetite for free shit? One could argue that piracy is a better indicator of consumer demand than stunts like the ones pulled by Samsung and Roc Nation. Why would people break the law to obtain music if they weren’t interested in hearing it? Forget about piracy — how about mixtapes? It seems grossly unfair (and radically unrepresentative) to award plaques only to those artists who are able to strike lucrative deals with gigantic multinational conglomerates.
In the Fader, Alex Macpherson interviewed the British singer and others such as Diplo, Kaytranada, Four Tet, D Double E and Geeneus as a preview of her third album. As an example of both the global aspirations and nature of the modern pop industry and how to aim to make for killer art out of same, it’s an energetic snapshot of the present moment at its best.
KATY B: There's a rave called Chapter every year at [Birmingham club] Rainbow and I went last year — and I remember thinking, ‘me and my friends are getting old now — well, not that old — but we're not calming down, we're still loving it, still love hearing music on big soundsystems.’ Those first lines — When we ever gonna calm down, I know I should do but I love the sound — I remember recording them on my phone while I was dancing. Four Tet messaged me on Twitter and sent me that beat and I tried that idea on it, then Floating Points did all the strings. And after we'd finished [Floating Points] was like, “Come to my house for a cup of tea.” He was lovely and we just talked for hours about music. I feel like I should do this with every producer I work with.How America’s Standout Party Hot Mass is Changing Pittsburgh
Taylor Hodges wrote for Electronic Beats about Hot Mass, now open for three years and running, and how it’s reacted to initial attention as well as continued to build its own space as a strong blend of individual artistic impulses and a relaxed, open clientele.
When I asked Hot Mass regulars to help me describe the club’s special atmosphere, many used the same word: freedom. And you can see that freedom on the dance floor at any time. Hot Mass is largely free of the kind of posturing or pretention common in dance scenes in other major American cities; partygoers dance with abandon. The club owes at least part of its liberated culture from its many gay patrons and how free they feel can behave there. “I certainly don’t worry that someone’s going to scowl if I kiss another dude,” a Hot Mass regular told me. But others told me that they simply feel comfortable being themselves at Hot Mass.Review: “Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995”“Coming here has made me extremely body positive,” said Gage Colangelo, a young Pittsburgh local who regularly attends Hot Mass. “When I was growing up, I thought, ‘I’m fat and gross.’ The people I met here made me realize who I was as a person.”
According to Thomas Cox, one of the members of Pittsburgh Track Authority, the DJs invited to play at the club also sense its free spirit. “We’re sitting with Theo Parrish for breakfast after his set with us and he says, ‘Yeah, it was really cool because the people would go with you anywhere,’” Cox said. “Theo played for five hours dropping crazy African jazz and people were just there with him all the way.”
“It was total freedom,” gushed The Black Madonna. “I remember realizing that the training wheels were totally off.”
Simon Reynolds reviewed the five-CD box set of that name for Pitchfork, bringing his own particular context as a writer and fan from the time in England as well as retrospective thoughts on what the genre as such signalled when it emerged, and what it could still mean in the present.
Shoegaze, in contrast, made a fetish of the swoon. The sighing vocals, the sickly drooping drones and melodic descents, the watery timbres — these signature sonic effects induced listener responses like rolling your eyes back in your head or swaying slightly as if about to faint. The feeling transmitted by shoegaze at its most compelling combined surging urgency and heavy-lidded languor. It suggested threshold states: drowsily slipping into a nap in the mid-afternoon, not being able to shake off the dream in the morning. The connective thread with all these sensations is the relinquishing of control, the scary bliss of losing orientation and agency.I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to imagine that this had some kind of semi-conscious resonance for a generation that felt powerless. It’s quite hard to reconstruct how bleak things seemed in the late '80s and early '90s; in both Britain and America, conservative governments were in third-term ascendance, and mainstream popular culture from hair metal to Hollywood seemed be in sync with the rightward shift. For many — not all, but many — this encouraged resignation, a withdrawal verging on hibernation. That’s why American nu-punks L7 wrote their anti-slacker anthem "Pretend We’re Dead" as a wake-up call from apathy. That’s why Welsh nu-punks Manic Street Preachers declared that they hated Slowdive more than Hitler — for being so dreamily disengaged, advocates for reverie rather than revolution.
The Veldt: pioneering black shoegazers who inspired the Weeknd
In the Guardian, Mike Doherty wrote about Danny and Daniel Chavis, the North Carolina brothers whose bands the Veldt and Apollo Heights have been going for a quarter century without being given due credit for being awesome. And who are millions of times better than the Weeknd on many levels, though I’m glad said Canadian act gives them props, sure. Sorry, do I sound biased? Thanks.
One A&R rep advised them to get a blonde bass player. Danny recalls: “We had to go out and make a project so this motherfucker could understand what we were doing. We had cut out pictures of bands we were interested in from magazines – I was like, ‘I know we’re niggas, but can you understand what we’re saying? Try looking at our faces, please?’” The label overcompensated by plastering their image everywhere. Says Daniel: “You remember how it was in the 50s, when a black artist had to put a white couple dancing on [a record]? It was like that. And when we went on tour, they had our pictures all over the wall – it was horrible.”
In Defense of the CD David Browne wrote for Rolling Stone about the now much maligned format, wondering exactly why it had become so maligned to start with, as well as its potential continued relevance.
In some ways, CD loathing feels like a manifestation of anger toward the music business establishment – the Jeb Bush of entertainment media. As anyone who bought new releases or replaced old vinyl on CD will tell you, the major labels experienced a huge financial boon thanks to the compact disc. And as those Amazon prices dismayingly prove, CDs didn't really get much cheaper later on, despite what we were once told to believe. In a world in which "major label" and "A&R executive" are often considered evil phrases – no matter all the momentous, enduring records released by majors and all the wheat-and-chaff separating done by skilled A&R execs over the decades – the CD is the symbol of music biz avarice, the one-percenter of pop.10 leaked releases that show Record Store Day needs to get its shit together
At FACT, Miles Howe posted a brief but fully understandable vent at what appeared to be upcoming Record Store Day releases that were leaked early via Universal — and were not exactly positively received.
Carl Douglas – “Kung Fu Fighting / Dance The Kung Fu” [7”] (newly updated artwork, indie-retail exclusive) — We’re not going to say anything bad about the novelty classic ‘Kung-Fu Fighting’ — we’re not monsters. But the fact is, you can get a copy of this for 25 cents on Discogs while you get bet this will cost a damn sight more. “Everybody was getting ripped off” is more like it.Zayn Malik, Desi Thirst TrapWojciech Kilar – The Ninth Gate (Soundtrack) — The soundtrack to Roman Polanski’s dullest, most forgettable film is more unpleasant than at least six of the nine levels of hell. RSD has managed to dig up something so undesirable, it’s almost impressive. Almost.
At Pitchfork, Mayukh Sen talked about how the former One Directioner, Pakistani background via his father, has helped rewrite the stereotypical perception of those of desi background in the Anglosphere, both by his general public image and how he has put himself forward in the time of social media.
When was the last time a desi man's beauty was his cultural currency? Like Zayn, I am both brown and white, my blood a mix of South Asian and British. For a time, I resented this. I grew up with the nagging feeling that life would’ve been easier if I were just plain old white. Every beautiful man I saw around me, whether on television or the ones people my age had crushes on, had Aryan-style blonde hair and blue eyes. I was just a few generations removed from this standard of beauty. Had my South Asian ancestry been less pronounced, I thought, I could’ve so easily fit in. If desi guys ever hoped to grow into sexual desirability, popular culture had convinced us of its impossibility. Desi guys could dream, but those dreams wouldn’t materialize.JUDGE’s Matt Pincus Is Getting Old Punk and Hardcore Bands Paid for Their Song Streams, FinallyZayn is that possibility made flesh. He’s a free agent now, having broken his association from the melange of whiteness that was One Direction. Now, as a solo artist, the way he’s positioned himself reads like something of a reconciliation between those divergent parts of his identity, brown and white. He’s a desi guy who can command someone’s horny gaze, and he’s distilled it through his art. Zayn inspires, in a word, thirst.
Dan Ozzi wrote for Noisey about Pincus’s shift from band member to publishing company owner helped him in getting royalties back for bands who were getting the shaft in the world of licensed streams.
Things have come full circle for Pincus lately, starting with JUDGE's run of reunion shows in 2013. One day recently, while talking to Jordan Cooper, who runs Revelation Records, the label responsible for the release of JUDGE’s output as well as a long list of other seminal New York hardcore records, Pincus realized something was off. “Jordan said, ‘You know, I don’t think any of the bands on the Revelation catalog are earning any money from streaming service other than what I pay them,’” recalls Pincus. “So for shits and giggles, I started looking around at whether classic punk and hardcore records were registered with PROs.” Artists need to be registered with societies like ASCAP and BMI in order to collect money for their music being streamed or publicly broadcasted. “Almost none of them are. Some of the biggest names in punk and hardcore, not one of them.”My Dreams of Populist Clubbing in Manhattan Died on Flash Factory's Dance Floor
For Thump, Kevin Camps visited the much hyped club Flash Factory and its promise to make “a big club feel homey,” to quote one of the backers elsewhere. To say that by Camps’ account it has somewhat failed on that front probably shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been to Manhattan lately.
The bottle service booths surrounding the outer edge of the dance floor weren't in themselves offensive — if the VIP section were restricted to just these booths, you could enjoy the club without feeling as though bottle service were the club's main focus. But the addition of the large section behind the booth for VIPs tipped things over the edge — you couldn't look at the DJ without being reminded of it.Earl Brutus: the greatest British band of the 1990s?Of course, bottle service and underground club music aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Exchange in Los Angeles and Verboten in Brooklyn both offer bottle service without the classism attached — off to the side and out of the way. Both venues allow for just enough space for VIPs to feel Very Important while leaving the main area open for those who bought the standard tickets. Whereas at Flash Factory, the VIP tables were literally center stage.
In the New Statesman, Bob Stanley profiled said group on the rerelease of their albums and singles, flying the flag for a group that never really crossed over even to Anglophiles in the U.S., and to only a small but increasingly vociferous gaggle of fans of in the U.K.
They don't fit the mould of the great “lost” band – they weren’t Byrds-influenced, or impoverished innovators who were ripped off, or mired in tragedy – but Earl Brutus were magical; among their fans who cite them as an influence are artists Scott King and Jeremy Deller. Uniquely, they mixed Kraftwerk hooks and a Roxy-influenced look, with seventies bovver boy grunts and terrace chants. A new box set called Closed, with artwork by Scott King, pulls together Earl Brutus’s brace of albums (1996’s Your Majesty We Are Here, 1998’s Tonight You Are The Special One) plus a bunch of singles. Confrontational, antagonistic, intellectual and hilarious, Earl Brutus swam in the slipstream of Britpop, playing key venues like Blow Up and the Leisure Lounge, but were far closer to the art terrorism of the KLF than the Bluetones; they gleefully pointed to a route out of the scene’s conservatism that was sadly never followed.
Navyhead - Earl Brutus.
Directed by Philip Shotton.
Organization Behind Grammys to Create Lobbying Group Ben Sisario wrote for The New York Times about the Grammy organization’s stepping into active politics, specifically as an alternate voice to lobbying by broadcasters and tech firms — no small thing in an era of continuing contraction and redirection of where the money in music ends up.
The fund will solicit contributions from its members, with campaigning by star “ambassadors” including Babyface, Nile Rodgers, Anita Baker, Sheila E. and the producers Rodney Jerkins and Jimmy Jam, many of whom have deep associations with the academy; Mr. Rodgers, for example, is on the organization’s board of trustees. The establishment of the Grammy Fund is the latest step in the recording academy’s increasing efforts at lobbying and rallying its members. In 2014, the group started a campaign called Grammys in My District, in which about 100 of its members visited congressmen in their district offices. By its second year, that effort grew to include 1,650 members.How Freddie Mercury Refused to Allow HIV to Derail His Art
For Cuepoint, David Chiu looked at Queen’s final album before Mercury’s death, 1991’s Innuendo. A study in how Mercury balanced out his final months with AIDS as well as how he worked to kept public word from leaking until the day before his passing, it’s a portrayal of a time and place a quarter century away, but with its own current resonances.
“A lot of people thought Freddie wrote “The Show Must Go On,” but mainly I wrote it,” May later said of the song about 20 years later. “I did a complete demo for “The Show Must Go On,” including that very high part, ‘on with the show.’ Freddie always used to say, ‘Oh Brian, you’re fucking making me tear my throat to bits again!’ I remember apologizing in advance. I said, ‘I’ve done this in falsetto, I don’t know if it’s possible to do it full voice. Obviously that would be great.’Maurice White RIP“And he went, ‘Oh for God’s sake.’” He said, ‘Roll the tape’ … and he went for that line, which is outstanding for him to reach those notes. He’s reaching heights he’s never done before. He’s finding the energy from somewhere. And the voice on “The Show Must Go On” is incredible. I’ve never heard anybody sing like that in my whole life. He rose to every challenge and seemed to reach heights that he’s never even reached before.”
The news of White’s death after his lengthy suffering from Parkinson’s disease simply seemed to make what was already a grim year worse. Among the earliest reactions, via his personal blog, was writer Alfred Soto.
From the early seventies to 1987 polymath Maurice White and his combo recorded some of the most buoyant tracks in music history. Play “That’s the Way of the World,” “September,” “Sing a Song,” “Serpentine Fire,” “Let’s Groove,” and my beloved “Fantasy” in a continuous sequence — all masterpieces of vocal arranging (notably whenever Philip Bailey’s falsetto shook the rafters), horn charts, and syncopation. George Clinton grumbled (“Earth, Hot Air & No Fire”!), and I understand: EW&F sold an astonishing number of albums and singles by taking funk to the pop mainstream. But where Clinton gummed up the works with a range of showboating guitarists and poop jokes, nobody in EW&F with the possible exception of Bailey stood out: an ensemble performing as a formidable whole. Even drummer White blurred into the ensemble, although he and bassist Verdine White forged the kind of rhythm section concentrating so hard on being tight that they didn’t mind being invisible.
"Fantasy" by Earth, Wind and Fire - Live Video
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Facebook: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followFI
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Chorus:
Dance, boogie wonderland
Dance, boogie wonderland
I find romance when I start to dance in boogie wonderland
I find romance when I start to dance in boogie wonderland
Dance, dance, dance, dance
Dance, dance, dance, dance
#EarthWindandFire #Fantasy #OfficialVideo
Maurice White, a Voyager Who Traveled Countless Musical Paths In The New York Times, Nate Chinen celebrated White, naming some of his band’s biggest hits and discussing his talent for seemingly easy but astonishingly detailed fusions and approaches.
Some of Earth, Wind & Fire’s most undeniable hits feature similar flashes of formal invention, woven so ingeniously into the fabric of the songs that they feel functional, even essential. Mr. White was often the architect of these moments, applying his galactic musical insight to the airtight design of unbeatable pop songs. His genius has always been there in plain sight — by no means hiding, yet somehow expertly hidden.Maurice White: five deep cuts from the Earth, Wind & Fire co-founder
In the Guardian, Oliver Wang took a look at White’s less well-known work both in and out of Earth, Wind & Fire, given his notable abilities both as a drummer and, over time, as an incredible producer for a variety of artists.
The group’s failure to launch with Warner Brothers led White to change labels and move over to Columbia, jettisoning much of his original band in the process. The “modern” EW&F lineup came into formation, including bassist Verdine White (Maurice’s brother), organist Larry Dunn and vocalist Philip Bailey, whose honeyed-voice would power many of the group’s later ballad hits. Power is notable as one of the first times Maurice White put his beloved kalimba thumb piano on to a record. White had experimented with the kalimba – an African thumb piano – back in his Cadet days and he gradually began to incorporate its dulcet, bell-like melodies into more and more of Earth, Wind & Fire’s songs. As he shared in the liner notes to the group’s Eternal Dance anthology, “the kalimba represented my link to Africa. It was my way of taking part of that culture and spreading it all over the world.”Maurice White: The Audacity of Uplift
Finally, at NPR, Jason King spoke movingly about White’s spiritual and artistic vision, its place in the era immediately following the culmination of 1960s civil rights advances and the resonance his music maintains through to the present.
Maurice White, who'd taken an early interest in astrology and mysticism, deserves credit for helping to Africanize the Top 40 through his willful introduction of Egyptian symbols like the Ankh and the Eye of the Horus in the band's visual imagery, as well as his pursuit of themes and lyrics mining Egyptology and other aspects of African spirituality. White also broke ground by introducing quirky African instrumentation like the kalimba (thumb piano) and complex African and Latin percussion into pop songs — see 1973's "Zanzibar," for instance — a gesture which remains as meaningful to a certain cadre of black folks as the Beatles' introduction of the tambura into '60s rock with Revolver was to other people. Especially given their pursuit of Brazilian bliss on songs like the sublimely sunny "Brazilian Rhyme (Beijo)" and Ramsey Lewis' "Sun Goddess," we might begin to revisit EWF as the quintessential proto world music act of the '70s.With lyrics like "you will find peace of mind if you look way down in your heart and soul," EWF could admittedly come off as preachy. Still, White's dogged Afrocentric Christianity never drove audiences away, and his secular sermonizing never seemed to conflict with his crossover ambition. A friend once hyperbolically suggested to me that back in the late '70s she and her friends were so mesmerized and swept up in rapture watching EWF perform in concert that they would have jumped off a bridge or done anything lead singer Philip Bailey encouraged them to do. In their pursuit of musical universalism, EWF transcended organized religion to become a kind of religion unto themselves: the thrill of EWF is hearing Maurice White and his bandmates preach the gospel of feel-good multicultural funk as the path to supreme glory.
And to close the week — just let it play out:
Watch the official music video for "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire
Listen to Earth, Wind and Fire: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/listenYD
Subscribe to the official Earth, Wind and Fire: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/subscribeYD
Watch more Earth, Wind and Fire videos: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/listenYC/youtube
Follow Earth, Wind and Fire:
Facebook: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followFI
Instagram: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followII
Twitter: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followTI
Website: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followWI
Spotify: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/followSI
YouTube: https://EarthWindandFire.lnk.to/listenYC/youtube
Chorus:
Hey, hey, hey!
Ba-dee-ya, say, do you remember?
Ba-dee-ya, dancin' in September
Ba-dee-ya, never was a cloudy day
#EarthWindandFire #September #OfficialMusicVideo

