Music Industry News

Bands Encouraged to Not Sign and Do It Yourself

Source: All About Jazz
July 6, 2008

Creation Records Founder McGee Tells Bands to “Do It Yourself"

Alan McGee, the former head of Creation Records who is credited with discovering artists like Oasis and the Libertines, spoke out against record labels in an interview with XFM. McGee urged new bands not to sign with labels, saying “I'd recommend a band not to go to any record label, I think they're all fucking rubbish. You're better off doing it yourself. They're living in the past." McGee apparently practices ...

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Mark Twain Americas Original Superstar

Source: All About Jazz
July 5, 2008

Mark Twain: Our Original Superstar

Twain first came to national attention in 1865, when he published a comical short story in dialect, which was eventually titled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. ("You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted.") It appeared in newspapers all across the country, was received as a whole new kind of hilariousness and made him famous. “At the close of the Civil War, Americans ...

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Digital Download Model Puts Song Exposure Above Sales

Source: Michael Ricci
July 5, 2008

Some artists are using the pay-what-you-want option. But industry experts question the plan's long-term worth.

Mash-up artist Girl Talk's new album, Feed the Animals comes with some impressive numbers: About 300 sampled songs on 14 tracks that play for a manic 55 minutes. One number it doesn't come with, however, is a price. That's because Girl Talk, as Gregg Gillis calls himself, is adopting the model pioneered by artists such as Radiohead that allows fans to name their own price ...

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Coda is Heard for a Daytime Jazz Club in Harlem

Source: Michael Ricci
July 5, 2008

Gordon Polatnick's business plan, he concedes, was heavy on the things that fueled his daydreams and too light on almost everything else. The idea itself was simple. On the blocks in Harlem where Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker performed, Mr. Polatnick would open a nightclub. But it would do business during the day, charge no cover and sell soft drinks instead of liquor to encourage a family atmosphere. Never mind that the particular stretch of Adam Clayton Powell ...

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A Musical Missionary Returns, Joyful Spirit Intact

Source: Michael Ricci
July 5, 2008

At 86 the visionary musical sage Jon Hendricks, who along with Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson originated the jazz style called vocalese -- the setting of swing and jazz instrumentals with playful scat lyrics -- is as voluble as ever. Since the late 1950s, when he was a co-founder of the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, this verbal conjurer and scat-singing virtuoso has remained a dedicated popularizer of a form that the Manhattan Transfer refined to a high buff ...

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Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Sign with Ted Kurland

Source: All About Jazz
July 4, 2008

Legendary trumpet player Herb Alpert and his wife, internationally renowned GRAMMY-winning singer Lani Hall, have signed with the Boston, MA-based booking agency Ted Kurland Associates for worldwide representation. TKA will exclusively represent Alpert and Hall both for their performances as a duo. The move to TKA comes after Alpert and Hall's rare tour together this spring, where their legendary chemistry was spotlighted at intimate evenings of American and Brazilian jazz and American popular standards at sold-out shows for the entire ...

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George and Satch

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
July 4, 2008

A few years ago, research disclosed that Louis Armstrong was not born on the Fourth of July, 1900, but a little more than a year later. No matter; Armstrong believed that Independence Day was his birthday and identified himself with the United States of America. As his career and popularity developed and the magnitude of his genius became apparent, the country he loved--and much of the rest of the world--adopted him as a symbol of the spirit of America.

Much ...

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Global Noize:global Noize

Source: All About Jazz
July 3, 2008

DJ Logic and Jason Miles haven't merely epitomized the term “world music" with their brainchild Global Noize (Shanachie), but rather redefined what that vague musical classification can encompass. In creating such a diversified mixture, they've set an entirely new bar of what the genre is capable of implying. Blending flavors of funk, jazz, calypso, Afrobeat, reggae and Arabic music, to name a few, the album takes listeners on an auditory odyssey around the entire planet, making stops at notable locales ...

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