Music Industry News

Preserving the Culture of New Orleans is Essential

Source: All About Jazz
July 30, 2008

Strike Up the Band A musicologist and Gulf folklorist explains why preserving the culture of New Orleans is essential.

“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans," Louis Armstrong sang in the 1947 film “New Orleans." “I miss it, each night and day/The longer I stay away." The tune was actually written by two songwriters, Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter, who never lived in Louisiana. A hugely successful pop ditty, “Do You Know What it Means to Miss ...

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Northwest String Summit | 07.18 - 07.20 | OR

Source: All About Jazz
July 30, 2008

Words by: Sarah Hagerman | Images by: Bill Ball

Northwest String Summit :: 07.18.08 - 07.20.08 :: Horning's Hideout :: North Plains, OR

Northwest String Summit 2008 Nestled in the towering pines, this nexus of shaking strings and squawking peacocks kicks the door off the hinges in anything-goes moments of musical majesty and near madness. Blink and you might miss something in the mass pick-a-rama (not to mention the late night campground sessions and ...

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Best Buy Stores Expanding to Musical Instruments

Source: All About Jazz
July 29, 2008

Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. is announcing a massive new initiative that sets aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide.

The nation's largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the ...

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Can Amy Winehouse Be Saved?

Source: All About Jazz
July 28, 2008

Her phenomenal talent has been eclipsed by her terrifying ability to self-destruct. Can anything save Amy from herself? From the mayhem of the past year, if Amy Winehouse has learnt anything it might be the terrible truth contained in the saying “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it". Since giving up her whimsical teenage plan to become a roller-skating waitress, the 24-year-old Winehouse has reached a summit that few pop stars even dream of; and, as ...

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At 83, Jazz Legend Haynes Finds Career in Fast Lane

Source: All About Jazz
July 28, 2008

Roy Haynes has a soft spot for sweet rides: a '98 custom Cadillac El Dorado, '74 Bricklin, '02 Mercedes and '05 Dodge Magnum have all been in his collection. Lucky for him the cars destroyed in his latest project only existed in the virtual world. The 83-year-old Roxbury native known as the father of modern jazz drumming recently parlayed his legend status into one of his most unusual gigs ever: He's a jazz DJ in the hottest game in the ...

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This Fil-AM Has Jazz in His Genes

Source: All About Jazz
July 27, 2008

The year is 2002. The place is Charlie O's, a comfortable, somewhat-upscale jazz club in North Hollywood, Southern California, whose claim to fame is “great music" in the jazz universe. It is Thursday night and a jam session is about to take center stage. Tonight, just like any Thursday night at Charlie O's, several musicians have listed their names and wait for a call to perform and intuitively integrate their sense of rhythm, harmony, and melody without any dress rehearsal. ...

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High Culture Meets Low Culture in a Mass-Media World

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

Many stigmas are gone as the lines between highbrow and lowbrow blur. But will a loss of quality be the price?

It was only 50 or so years ago that critics and intellectuals were busy constructing -- and redrawing, and shoring up -- hierarchies about what kinds of culture were good for us and which ones were bad. Literary man Dwight Macdonald wrote a famous essay about “Masscult and Midcult" -- both, he said, were degrading real, traditional High Culture. ...

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Elitism is Not a Dirty Word

Source: Michael Ricci
July 27, 2008

Categorizing 'the best' isn't confined to art; it plays out in sports, cinema, pop music and beyond.

EVERY NOW and then, writers at The Times lose a word. Mainly these are adjectives subject to misuse. Some years ago we were advised to let go of legendary. Similarly, don't expect to see iconic, which has become equally cheapened, in the paper much anymore. The adjectival criminal I'd like to see handed over to the word police is elitist, especially in its ...

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