MUSIC BUZZ: Bono // NPR // Grimes // More

Filed Under: Buzz — By: Oliver Bouchard

Bono from A to Z

U2 singer Bono recaps 2014 in a very long, very personal blog post:

This is too long.
You should not have time to read this.

But it is actually well worth your time. No matter if you like U2 or not, it is interesting what one of the biggest rock stars on the planet has on his mind. For example, about the “scandalous” album give-away on iTunes:

That’s about it…no flagrant abuse of human rights, but very annoying to people who a) like being annoyed, and/or b) felt it was like someone robbing their phone in the pub and taking a couple of photos before leaving it back on the table… some kind of breach of privacy which was really not intended. I empathise with the b)’s, but for the a)’s I’ve started referring them to the philosopher Jimmy Kimmel.

Exactly. He writes about many other topics as well, so read it.

All Songs Considered turns 15

NPR’s excellent music podcast All Songs Considered turns 15. I’ve been a regular listener since around ten years.

Bob Boilen’s favorite shows

Speaking of NPR: All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen saw 662 band live in 2014 and lists his 20 favorites. St. Vincent is at the top – I’ve only seen her from the distance once, but I can agree with this. He also saw Warpaint and inexplicably didn’t put it in the top 20.

Melodee Writes’ Gazelle Twin review

Gazelle Twin’s excellent last album Unflesh cannot get too much attention: Here is a review by our friend Melanie:

Elizabeth Bernholz uses her voice as a distortion instrument, screeching, chirping and teasing with haunting echoes of  the ethereal soprano of her debut. With titles on this album like ‘Belly of The Beast’, ‘Good Death’, ‘Guts’, and ‘Exorcise’  how could I not fall in love instantly?

Grimes reveals the origin of her name

Why did Claire Boucher name her project “Grimes”? She had kept it a secret for a long time, but no longer.

Why collecting music matters

Jesse Jarnow writes an interesting piece about the importance music collectors in the digital age. For example:

Can SoundCloud or any of the streaming companies be trusted to preserve their endless feed of casual recordings? “I don’t think we trust anybody,” says Lazorchak, sounding more like Fox Mulder than a government librarian. “[Data] can disappear over time and no one realizes it, because no one has taken responsibility for it. Those are the twin challenges of organizations like ours. You want to preserve things, but there’s also the ownership aspect. You want to navigate that landscape very carefully.”

Vinyl’s difficult comeback

Vinyl is one bright spot in the music industry, but where do all those records come from? Apparently, it is not easy:

Hanging over everything Runge showed me was an awkward question. While demand for records is increasing year by year, Optimal’s stock of machinery is old, and getting older. New presses are unaffordable, unless the big companies were to invest, but vinyl is still too small a sector of the market for them to be convinced. The kind of painstaking maintenance and technical ingenuity one might think of as the Cadillacs-in-Cuba model keep the industry going. But for how long?