Spotify declined to comment; Apple hasn’t responded to request for comment.
For the past year, Spotify has argued publicly, and to various regulators in the U.S. and Europe, that Apple’s subscription policies effectively punish third-party music services that use Apple’s platform, while boosting Apple Music, the home-grown service it launched in June 2015.
Well, this is not going to end well.
“Music is the binding agent of our mundane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dishes, type the resumes, go to the funerals, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the memory, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawling span of freaked-out kids over three generations. He bonded us to our weird selves. We can be us. He said. Just for one day.”
Source: Strung Out In Heaven: A Bowie String Quartet Tribute, by Jherek Bischoff and Amanda Palmer
David Bowie’s track Blackstar off of his same-titled album is my favorite song (AND VIDEO… yowzers) at the moment.
I’ve followed Amanda Palmer for years and have been to a few of her shows. She’s not my favorite marketer, but her cover of Blackstar is goosebump raising. As is her work on Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes, Heroes etc…
Great work from an artist who “gets it” and isn’t afraid to be herself, which is something we could all learn from her.
Thanks to Elisabeth for turning me on to this.
“‘Mic number one was a valve U47, and with the other two on gates I made sure that number two, an 87 placed about 15 feet away from him, would go on at a certain level, while the third mic, another 87 that was all the way at the other end of the room, didn’t open up until he really sang loud. That reverb on his voice is therefore the room itself, none of it is artificial, and it’s his voice triggering the gates. What is really great is that the sound of the opening two verses is really intimate. It doesn’t sound like a big room yet, it sounds like somebody just singing about a foot away from your ear. The whole idea worked, and what you hear on the record is probably take three. We wouldn’t go beyond that. He was really worked up by then and I can tell you he was feeling it. It was quite an emotional song for him to sing, he deliberated long and hard over these lyrics, and he was ready to go, there was no holding him back'”
Source: CLASSIC TRACKS: Heroes
I agree with the post linked here… Spotify:
Spotify Is the Best Streaming Music Service: “As countless Rdio fans sit back helplessly as their accounts go dark, it’s time to be blunt. Spotify continues to outpace its growing army of competitors, and if you’re going to spend money on a streaming music service, you should sign up for Spotify Premium. Or save a few bucks and get the free version, because it’s pretty damn great, too!”
HOWEVER! I will include the caveat that I love Google Music’s ability to upload my own music and my wife and I (and our newborn and kids) make great use of the uploaded music on Amazon that powers our family’s Echo. Don’t get me started on my 10 year old (heavily) curated Pandora station which makes me pay for Pandora One every year.
It’s a hard-knock-life for us streamers.
But yeah… Spotify at the end of the day.
The ability to change our minds is one of the greatest human blessings. To see an issue or a situation, take into account the data presented, be reminded of our past history of decisions, and ultimately come to a conclusion is a wonderful adaptation our mammalian brains have come up with to help us deal with the insanity of existing in this overwhelming universe.
“Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles
What makes you think you’re something special when you smile?”
We often don’t share our ideas, thoughts, dreams, or views because we don’t feel as if we know enough on the topic at hand, or there are people who have already volunteered enough of their own viewpoints to suck all the oxygen out of a conversation. With the rise of social media and perceived online anonymity, it’s easy to throw up our hands in the face of the vapid cacophony and decide not to take part in all of the noise.
Although we are all more than capable of making quality decisions on everything from our lunch to our 401k investments, it’s easier to not engage or just have someone else make the decision for us. That’s human nature. It’s also a sentiment we have to daily engage with and overcome. The universe needs our voices and our views. Speak up.
But do so not with an over abundance of confidence or certainty… or fear.
“Some kind of innocence is measured out in years
You don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears.”
During the recording sessions for The Beatles’ song Hey Bulldog, Paul McCartney began to bark and howl in a dog like voice as the song reached its climax. John Lennon does what any well minded singer might do, and immediately alters his corresponding lyric from the intended “hey bullfrog” (there was a reference to “bullfrog” at the beginning of the song) to “hey bulldog.” And hence, the name of the song changed as well.
Hey Bulldog is one of those songs in which The Beatles sneak an incredible set of lyrics, base lines, and piano notes (it was written as a piano rocker originally). It appears on the otherwise flippant Yellow Submarine album and as a b-side to Lady Madonna (also a piano rocker), and doesn’t make many Top 10 Beatles Songs lists in 2015. However, the song has amazing staying power and has been covered countless times by everyone from Dave Matthews to Dave Grohl. It’s one of my favorites, as well.
It’s not a *nice* Beatles song. John’s lyrics don’t speak of young and un-requited love, or the need for love. Instead, the menacing guitar from Harrison, grandiose bass line from Paul (Harrison was fond of telling Paul to tone down the bass on the songs he wrote as Paul tended to dominate the melody otherwise), and rambling piano backdrop are matched by Lennon’s lyric structure employing a simple but clever repetition of “Some kind of…” at the start and an eyebrow raising cutdown to finish the phrase.
“Some kind of solitude is measured out in you
You think you know me but you haven’t got a clue.”
Loneliness, solitude, innocence… all get measure out in the listener and John doesn’t hold back. He tells us if we’re lonely, we can talk to him in a passive aggressive manner that runs opposite of the sentiment in a song like Tell Me What You See from Help.
It’s a tongue in cheek challenge to misguided reliance on others and false dependency (in my mind, at least… feel free to argue). Even so, there’s the beauty of the interaction and changing of minds happening in a meta real time sense during the recording sessions.
There’s the obtuse and avant-garde rap battle between John and Paul after the barking. And John changed the title mid-way through the song.
The change of the lyric, and ultimately song title, is an outward expression of the creative genius of The Beatles as well as a beautiful testament to the interplay (on the spot sometimes as here) between John and Paul as musicians, friends, and partners.
We have the same opportunities everyday to influence those around us, and be influenced by those around us (or virtually in the case of online interactions). Every major religious system includes an ethical component for these types of influencing and interactions. We’d do well to follow those guidelines. But speak up.
Only Wilco could make something this eruptive feel so comfy, like a steel-wool security blanket.
Source: Wilco’s New Album: Star Wars | Rolling Stone
I’ve been enjoying the heck out of this album over the past week. I was skeptical at first … it being a “free” and “surprise” album with a cutesy yet askew title that Wilco just dropped on us all last week.
After listening to it in the office throughout the week then on replay during a 5 hour drive (the album is just over 30 mins, which is something of a miracle in itself for a Wilco production), I’m a believer.
To make it completely personal and anecdotal, Tweedy’s lyrics and the band’s music reminds me that even though I’m heading into my 37th year of being here and continue to find my own way in business while working with my clients, there are still opportunities to explore the cracks in the sidewalk and allow myself to be creative. I’ve smoothed over those moments of opportunity. I’ve wasted my words and openings for personal and work actualization. This album has helped me realize that.
It’s not enough to coast. Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) and The Whole Love were fine albums in their own rights. But they didn’t cause the type of “woah, wait a minute … think about how these lyrics and this music can get you to explore your own space, Sam” moments that made me start listening to Wilco in the first place.
The first time I heard Misunderstood from Being There, I was in college and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. So, I got a religion major. It made sense at the time. That song was a part of that decision that seemed so flippant yet daring looking back on my younger self. “I would never do that today,” I think to myself as I take my multivitamin supplements and do my morning stretches while looking at my agenda.
Shortly after I took my first office job, my friend Jon said I needed to listen to something and slipped me a CD (it was the style of the times). While sitting in my fluorescent cubicle, I plugged in my headphones and the first cacophonous notes of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot entered my consciousness. I started blogging. My career took me on a path I could have never imagined. That song could be a metaphor for my 20’s (at least in my own head) both in terms of work, exploring my creativity, and relationships. It still gives me chills. It, like Misunderstood, was a strange reflecting pool where I could see myself askew and needed to explore that further before I could look away.
The songs on Star Wars are pushing me to that type of mirror pool reflection. The trick, I think, as I turn 37 is to realize that there will be other songs to push and pull me later, but I need to enjoy these for now and see where they go. Creativity in work, and life, is a blessing and a curse as it seems to come as quickly as it goes. You’re thinking up the color of the tech world at 27 and then you realize you’re 35 and still using the same palette.
It’s time to push the obtuse in my work, and find the angles that I smoothed over.
Then, I have to walk on and find the next mirror pond of songs before settling in as I did before:
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s 1993 Greatest Hits album was the first CD I ever bought with my own money (big day). I was in full blown “Grunge Sam” mode at the time listening to mostly Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog, Alice In Chains etc, but this Tom Petty CD was always on the player.
In 1994 when Wildflowers came out, I had to go buy it. I’m glad I did… just relistened to the album for the first time in a while and I could still sing almost every word. It’s funny how certain albums stick to your mind.
It’s great that we live in the world of Spotify and Pandora streaming almost any song we can think of, but it’s sad that we don’t buy whole albums and commit them to memory.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Oh well…
“Excuse me if I have some place in my mind where I go time to time.”
“I bought a borrowed suit and learned to dance
I was spending money like the way it likes to rain
Man I ended up with pockets full of cane
Oh my sweet Carolina
What compels me to go
Oh my sweet disposition…”
Looks like a beautiful collection of ancient Mesopotamian poetry set to the original lyrics (relatively, of course) with close-to-original instruments.
I’ve always wondered what the Hymn to Nikkal (the world’s oldest song that we’ve recovered) might have sounded like.
Of course, we don’t really know what ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, or even Attic Greek really sounded like, but we do know that these languages were inherently more “musical” than English.
What did ancient Babylonian songs sound like? Something like this.
Ordered!
