Categories
Concerts

Nope. Not going. Hope all who do have a blast!!

Beyoncé, The Weeknd and Eminem to headline Coachella

Toronto singer The Weeknd will join superstar Beyoncé and veteran rapper Eminem to headline this year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival.

Organizers announced the forthcoming lineup for this year’s festival on Tuesday. The event, held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., takes place across two consecutive weekends in April, featuring the same lineup over each weekend.

The high-profile gig was an expected one for Beyoncé, who was set to make her debut as a solo headliner in 2017 after having previously made guest appearances with her husband, rapper Jay-Z, and her sister, Solange. However, she withdrew and postponed after becoming pregnant with twins and was replaced by Lady Gaga.

The festival’s recent pivot toward a hip hop and R&B-heavy offering continues with Eminem, who released his latest album Revival in December, and The Weeknd, whose most recent release was 2016’s acclaimed Starboy.

Other notable acts on the bill include SZA, HAIM, Tyler the Creator, Migos, Cardi B, St. Vincent, Jamiroquai, David Byrne formerly of the Talking Heads and Chic featuring Nile Rodgers.

Rising R&B singer Daniel Caesar, rapper Belly and electro-funk duo Chromeo are among the Canadians headed down to the festival.

The 2018 Coachella festival takes place April 13-15 and April 20-22.

Categories
Music

Great news, everyone!!

Pearl Jam Finally Reveal If They’re Making A New Album

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament was recently interviewed on The Powell Movement, and he revealed that Pearl Jam are indeed hard at work on a new album, their first since 2013’s Lightning Bolt. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.

“We’ve sort of been in writing mode here in Seattle the last couple of months. A typical day is getting together with anywhere from one to four of the guys and making music.”

He also discussed dealing with newfound fame with Pearl Jam in the early 90’s.

“The challenge for me was, I grew up in a small town, everybody knew each other, but everybody sort of left everybody alone. There wasn’t a ton of energy around how people interact in a small town. Immediately you go to a big city, and I wanted that energy, but then when the energy comes with non anonymity, it’s a weird thing.

It’s far worse now, now the average kid doesn’t have anonymity, because if he screws up, somebody’s got an iPhone on it, and all of a sudden it’s up on somebody’s Instagram account, and it’s forever. So in some ways, what I was going through in 1992 with the band and all of that is not that different than what a kid is dealing with.

It’s just the way technology has changed. I had a hard time with it, I think I always felt like I could sort of ride my bike around town and I could lurk around and do my thing, and nobodoy would bug me. I ended up going out to Montana to visit some friends, and there was something about that whole world where it seemed like there was less expectation on me.”

He mentioned that he fell in love with Montana, and he now lives there 3-6 months per year. He said if he didn’t have Pearl Jam obligations, he would live there permanently.

“I would probably be there full time if the band wasn’t going.”

Categories
Music

Vinyl sales are up? Really?!?

People Paid for Music in 2017: Streaming Subscriptions and Vinyl Sales Rise

The numbers have arrived, and as it turns out, the music industry had a good year in 2017. Paid subscription streams rose 54 percent over last year and made up 80 percent of all streams in 2017, according to a new report on U.S. music consumption by data tracker BuzzAngle Music. Audio streams reached an overall record high of 376.9 billion, which is up 50% over 2016’s numbers. It was a good year for vinyl sales, too, which were up 20% over sales in 2016. Vinyl accounted for 10% of all physical album sales (which is up from 8% last year).

Downloads, however, are down once again. The daily average of 1.67 billion streams per day dwarves the number of song downloads for the entire year (563.7 million). Only two songs had more than two million downloads total (compared to five songs that surpassed that total in 2016 and 16 songs in 2015). Overall album and song sales continued to decline, as well, by 14.6% and 23.2% respectively.

It was a huge year for Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito.” It was the most streamed song of the year and became the first to cross the one billion streams mark. Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” followed with 979.3 million streams overall. Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.” was the most audio-streamed song of the year—a tally that excludes video streams—with over 555.2 million plays. Drake and Future were, respectively, the two most streamed artists of 2017.

Ed Sheeran’s ÷ was the top album of the year overall with 2,645,600 total project consumption units. Taylor Swift’s Reputation led in pure album sales with 1,899,772 sold. November 10, the day Reputation was released, was the biggest day for album sales in 2017. Sixteen songs were streamed more than 500 million times in 2017 (compared to six in 2016 and two in 2015).

Categories
Bruuuuuuuuce!!

Today is a great day in music history!!

HOW ONE AMAZING NIGHT LED TO BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S ‘NEBRASKA’

Following the massive success of 1980’s double album The River, many expected Bruce Springsteen to follow up his first No. 1 album with another set of radio-friendly rock songs. Instead, the songwriter released Nebraska, a stark acoustic record that was mostly recorded in one session, on Jan. 3, 1982.

Ironically, the recording of Nebraska began as an exercise in then-new technology. For years, Springsteen had recorded demos into a boom box. But he decided to invest in a Teac Tascam 144 four-track cassette recorder so that he could add an extra guitar or percussion to give the E Street Band a better idea of what he wanted.

Mike Batlan, his then-guitar tech, set up the portable studio in Springsteen’s bedroom in Colts Neck, N.J. on the morning of Jan. 3 and went to work. In a marathon session that took them deep into the night, Springsteen recorded guitar-and-vocal tracks for 15 songs, with overdubs on a few. Two others, “My Father’s House” and “The Big Payback,” were recorded a few months later.

But when the band tried to record Spingsteen’s new material, only four of the songs – “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Pink Cadillac,” “Downbound Train” and “Child Bride,” which was later rewritten as “Working on the Highway” – translated to a full-band arrangement. Three of those wound up on Born in the U.S.A. two years later, while “Pink Cadillac” was the b-side of “Dancing in the Dark.”

The problem was that the songs continued the dark themes found on the second disc of The River, like “Stolen Car” and “Wreck on the Highway.” While the songs weren’t necessarily autobiographical, the demons haunting the characters reflected Springsteen’s own desperation and isolation – even as he was becoming a big star – that stemmed largely from his troubled relationship with his father. The characters were lost and adrift, and the raw, ghostly sound of the demos worked better than the E Street Band’s bar-band rock.

Five of the songs – “Atlantic City,” “Highway Patrolman,” “Johnny 99,” “State Trooper” and the title track – deal with characters who have turned to a life of crime. It didn’t make sense to put a heavy back beat to, say, “My Father’s House,” or a soul-inflected Clarence Clemons sax solo on “Used Cars.” Springsteen’s harmonica did the trick.

Unable to get the sound he wanted from the band, Springsteen asked engineer Toby Scott if there was any way to put out the cassette of the demos. Scott was able to do his magic, and Nebraska was released, to minimal hype, on Sept. 30, 1982.

To this day, the “Electric Nebraska” sessions, outside of those four songs, have not been released either officially or on bootleg. But Springsteen has since figured out how to rock out on half of the Nebraska material. “Atlantic City,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Johnny 99,” “Open All Night” and “Reason to Believe” have all been somewhat regularly performed by the full band on various tours.

Meanwhile, Springsteen has revisited this period’s stripped-down approach on two other albums; 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Devils & Dust from a decade later. Neither of them, however, have the consistency and power of what was recorded in a New Jersey bedroom on that January day in 1982.

Categories
James Bond

Just make great movies, with great actors, and we’ll all be happy.

Will James Bond Continue To Be A Handsome White Dude After Daniel Craig Leaves?

The times are a changin’ for the James Bond franchise. Eon Productions is still looking for a director to succeed Sam Mendes and oversee James Bond 25, as well as figure out if the movie will remain at Sony Pictures or be released by a different studio. Once James Bond 25 is out of the way, it will be the end of an era, as it will mark Daniel Craig’s last time playing 007. It will be a long time until we learn who Craig’s Bond replacement will be, but Eon producer Barbara Broccoli hasn’t ruled out that the next person to play the spy who’s fond of drinking shaken, not stirred, martinis won’t be the traditional white man. When asked if the next James Bond could be a woman and/or person of colour, Broccoli responded:

“These films tend to reflect the times so we always try to push the envelope a little bit. Anything is possible.”

While this is by no means confirmation that the next time we see James Bond, it will be a woman or person of color portraying the spy, Barbara Broccoli’s comment to Daily Mail reveal that the option, among others, hasn’t been ruled out. For over 50 years, James Bond has been played by a white man, and while each have ranged in age and occasionally had different hair color, there haven’t been many major visual differences between these incarnations. Given the loose continuity between each “generation” of James Bond movies, the franchise could certainly “relaunch” with a different kind of actor donning the tuxedo, much like how 2006’s Casino Royale was a reboot that introduced Daniel Craig as a Bond who was just beginning his career as a 007 agent. This doesn’t work quite as seamlessly as Time Lords regenerating on Doctor Who, but it’s a creative direction that’s at least on the table.

For now, though, Eon Productions is working on making sure that Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond ends with a bang. After months of rumors and speculation, Craig finally confirmed that he would play Bond for a fifth time. Neil Purvis and Robert Wade returned to pen the script, and last August, it was reported that Denis Villeneuve, David Mackenzie and Yann Demange were the frontrunners for the directing gig, though Villeneuve has since taken himself out of the running due to already being committed to the Dune reboot. So far Craig is the only actor confirmed to appear in James Bond 25, but it was rumored last September that Léa Seydoux might briefly reprise her role as Dr. Madeleine Swann, who debuted in Spectre.

James Bond 25 will be released in theaters on November 8, 2019, so keep checking back with CinemaBlend for updates on that movie, as well as what’s in store for 007 after that. Don’t forget to also browse through our 2018 premiere guide to see what’s being screened over the next 12 months.