Monthly Archives: December 2013

Pussy Riot Member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to Spend Rest of Prison Term at Hospital

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Maria Alyokhina (middle) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (right) are serving two-year sentences; Yekaterina Samutsevich (left) had her sentence suspended. Photo via The Journalist.

The Moscow Times Reports:

Jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will spend the rest of her two-year prison term at a hospital in the Krasnoyarsk region, a news report said Monday.

Tolokonnikova made the request herself after she had been examined at the hospital, which is run by the prison, and the authorities will now decide what job to give her while she is there, Itar-Tass reported.

Tolokonnikova’s lawyer said her client was feeling well and has joined the hospital’s band.

Her sentence is set to run until March 2014, but her lawyer thinks that she could be released earlier under an amnesty planned for this month in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Constitution.

A draft of the amnesty is currently under consideration by the State Duma and is expected to be passed on Wednesday. It could come into effect by the weekend.

More here.

Meanwhile, as I previously reported, the Russian Federation Supreme Court has ordered a review of the Pussy Riot verdicts.

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Watch: Jeff Tweedy Does ‘I Got You (End of the Century)’ at The Fillmore

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Jeff Tweedy, “I Got You (End of the Century),” The Fillmore, San Francisco, Dec 12, 2013.

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Beyoncé Changes the Music Biz Rules With Unorthodox Release of Sales Busting New Album, ‘Beyoncé’

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With the release of her fifth album, Beyoncé has upended the music business.

Things will never be the same.

With no advance marketing, no lead-up single or video, Beyoncé simply announced on Instagram last Thursday at midnight that her new album was available at iTunes.

The album sold 365,000 copies the first day of release, according to the New York Times, and then the album broke the iTunes sales record when it proceeded to sell 617,000 over the first three days of release. The previous top seller was Taylor Swift’s Red, which sold 465,000 in the week ending Oct. 28, 2012.

Although Beyoncé is signed to a traditional record company, Columbia, her success at going directly to her fans paves the way for artists to seriously consider why they need to sign with a label (and share their recording revenue) when with the held of a good manager they could do it all themselves.

Does Bruce Springsteen really need Columbia at this point in his career? Does U2 need a label?

Recently the Throwing Muses released an album, Purgatory/ Paradise on their own and they seem to be doing just fine.

Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices fame has been releasing his own records for many years.

For more on the Beyoncé story, head to the New York Times.

Some videos from the new album:

Plus a live version of “XO,” which is on the new album.

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Listen: U2’s ‘Ordinary Love’ Remixed By Paul Epworth

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This is on U2’s website, along with the remix:

Ordinary Love (Paul Epworth Version)

Bono was in South Africa this week, to join those paying tribute to Nelson Mandela at Tuesday’s memorial service.

‘In Ireland,’ he says, ‘A wake is never without humour but it’s fair to say we lean heavily on the melancholy… one thing I love about Africa is they accompany the departed with dancing, lots of it, and music full of joy.’

On Thursday, ‘Ordinary Love’, the song the band wrote for ‘Mandela:Long Walk To Freedom’, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and today the band wanted to share Paul Epworth’s new version.

‘We think Paul Epworth’s mix is a very soulful, uplifting one and we hope our audience will agree,’ says Bono. ‘Nelson Mandela’s life and times meant more to me than I can ever tell you, I would need a hundred songs to do that… but this complicated little love song to Winnie and South Africa is the one that landed on our lap.

‘I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press for believing in us and the film. This is truly a great honour.’

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R.I.P. Dept.: DA! Post-Punk Singer/Bassist Lorna Donley Dead at 53

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Lorna Donley, once the intense singer for the post-punk band DA! but more recently a librarian, died on December 1, 2013, She was 53.

DA! was a Chicago band that formed in 1977, recorded two EPs, and broke up in 1982. As is particularly evident from the black and white video made for their song, “Next To Nothing” (check it out below), DA! never got had either the exposure or the success they deserved. Donley, who stars in the video, is has downbeat charisma.

As the Chicago Sun-Times noted in their obit, “In his ‘Secret History of Chicago Music’ comic strip in the Chicago Reader, Steve Krakow compared the band to ‘Patti Smith fronting Joy Division.'”

Lorna Donley with husband, Scott Taves, on their wedding day, just a few months before her death.

In early December Donley “had chest pain while having coffee with her husband of less than three months, Scott Taves, at their home near Peterson and Western,” the Sun Times reported. “They went to Swedish Covenant hospital, where she died Dec. 1 of a ruptured aorta.”

For an in-depth obit, head to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Next to Nothing (1982) starring Lorna Donley.

Dark Rooms (1981) — first single

White Castles (1981)

This final clip includes the Dark Rooms/ White Castles EP (1981)

1. Dark Rooms 0:00
2. White Castles 4:53

and the

Time Will Be Kind LP (1982)

3. Next to Nothing 8:32
2. Strangers 11:29
3. Silent Snow 14:11
4. Three Shadows 17:06
5. This Doubt 21:03

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Watch & Listen: Bob Dylan’s Infamous 1963 Tom Paine Award Speech

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Dylan accepting Tom Paine award.

Fifty years and two days ago an inebreated Bob Dylan shocked an audience of liberals at the Emergency Civil Liberties Union’s (E.C.L.U.) annual Bill of Rights dinner when on receiving their prestigious Tom Paine Award, he launched into a rant (see below) that in part attacked members of the audience as well as those on the stage with him.

In the days following the speech a letter was sent by one of the organizers of the dinner to all the attendees of the dinner defending the E.C.L.U.’s choice of Dylan to get the award that year.

Dylan ended up writing an open letter which was really a long poem (on page two of this post) in which he tried to explain where he was coming from when he made his speech and what he was talking about.

The video below is taken from Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan” documentary.

Transcript of the full speech:

I haven’t got any guitar, I can talk though. I want to thank you for the Tom Paine award in behalf everybody that went down to Cuba. First of all because they’re all young and it’s took me a long time to get young and now I consider myself young. And I’m proud of it. I’m proud that I’m young. And I only wish that all you people who are sitting out here today or tonight weren’t here and I could see all kinds of faces with hair on their head – and everything like that, everything leading to youngness, celebrating the anniversary when we overthrew the House Un-American Activities just yesterday, – Because you people should be at the beach. You should be out there and you should be swimming and you should be just relaxing in the time you have to relax. (Laughter) It is not an old peoples’ world. It is not an old peoples’ world. It has nothing to do with old people. Old people when their hair grows out, they should go out. (Laughter) And I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules – and they haven’t got any hair on their head – I get very uptight about it. (Laughter)

— continued —

Use this link or the one below below to get to the rest of this post.

Pages: 1 2

Country Great Ray Price is Still With Us

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Despite earlier reports, Ray Price is still alive, though he is very ill with pancreatic cancer. His son mistakenly posted on Facebook that his father was dead.

Price’s wife, Janie Price, told The Tennessean he is alive.

Price’s wife Janie posted on Facebook: “At this time our loveable Ray Price is still with. us. When it is the time there will be a official statement.”

Bill Mack, who works with Ray Price, posted this: I just completed a telephone call with Janie Price at 10:15PM, Central. She said Ray’s condition is still in a “coma” mode, is not expected to improve. However, I will have my phone next to the bed constantly … if I decide to “crash-out”. She, or someone at the house, will call if there are any changes that need to be posted. I have spoken with so many of Ray’s peers, all so concerned about the “Chief”. That, and the hundreds of responses from you people, has made me realize the true value of friends. Yes, it’s been a day filled with hurt, but for a purpose: Love, concern … and prayers for Ray’s family. God bless you, thanks.

Below the obit I posted earlier, which is premature. However you still might want to check out the some of Price’s hits, which I’ve posted.

Country singer Ray Price, who scored #1 country hits including “Crazy Arms,” “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You,” and “The Same Old Me,” died today at age 87 at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. Price had been suffering complications from pancreatic cancer since late last year.

In addition to charting in the country top 10 (beginning with “Talk To Your Heart” in 1952), for over 30 years, Price is known for his baritone voice and for pioneering the honky-tonk sound still heard in some country music.

For an in-depth look at Ray Price’s career, check out this article in The Tennessean.

Ray Price performs his first #1 hit, “Crazy Arms,” in 1956 at the Ryman Auditorium.

“My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You,” 1957:

“Heartaches By the Numbers,” 1959:

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Listen: U2 Release Acoustic ‘Mandela Version’ of ‘Breathe’

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The flipside of U2’s “Ordinary Love” single is an acoustic interpretation of “Breathe” — “Breathe (Mandela Version)”

Now the group has made it available via YouTube.

“Breathe (Mandela Version)”:

Plus here’s “Ordinary Love” in case you missed it:

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Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker on Lou Reed

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Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground wrote a piece about Lou Reed, which ran yesterday in The Observer.

Tucker wrote:

I first met Lou when he came by one day to see my brother. They were friends from college and he came by to pick up my brother around Thanksgiving or maybe Christmas. That was in the early 60s. A long time ago. A different time. A different world. I think we said hello, and I knew from my brother that he was into music, but he didn’t make that big an impression.

Lou and Sterling [Morrison] met through my brother. They were all at Syracuse together, and that’s when the two of them started to play together. I got involved in their group almost by accident because the original drummer left just before a gig in New York in 1965 and they needed a new drummer real fast. Sterling said, “Oh, Tucker’s sister plays drums.” I lived way out on Long Island and they came out there from the city to see if I could keep a beat. That’s how it happened.

I was working as a data puncher for IBM and playing drums at night in a band that a brother of one of my girlfriends had formed. I was a pop fan, the Beatles and the Stones and all that 60s stuff, and suddenly I was playing this really avant-garde stuff in a group called the Velvet Underground. I had no grounding in the experimental stuff that John [Cale] loved, so it was quite a leap.

“There She Goes Again”:

The first gig I played was the first gig as the Velvet Underground. [Summit high school New Jersey, 11 December 1965] We played three songs [There She Goes Again, Venus in Furs and Heroin]. A lot of people were bewildered. A lot of people left. I think Lou kind of liked that. Then we played Cafe Bizarre in New York and the guy who owned it didn’t want the drums as they were too loud, so I played tambourine. I like the sound of the tambourine so that was fine. That’s where Barbara Rubin introduced us to Andy (Warhol).

“Heroin”:

It was a whole different world to the one I knew, especially at the Factory with the Warhol crowd, but it was really exciting and a lot of fun. I wasn’t scared or overwhelmed, I was just excited. Sterling was a kind of comforting presence. I’d known him since I was 11. John and Lou were just so full of ideas. I was super-impressed – the drones, the lyrics, the noise, the whole way they approached music was just new and exciting, and there was a pop imagination in there, too.

“Venus In Furs”:

To read the rest, head to The Observer.

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Best of 2013 Dept.: New York Times Critics Pick Year’s Top Albums

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One of the year’s best comes from M.I.A.

In todays New York Times the papers music critics pick the year’s best albums.

Jon Pareles

1 Lorde “Pure Heroine”
2 Laura Marling “Once I Was an Eagle”

3 Vampire Weekend “Modern Vampires of the City”
4 Nine Inch Nails “Hesitation Marks”
5 M.I.A. “Matangi”
6 Janelle Monáe “The Electric Lady”
7 David Bowie “The Next Day”
8 Tal National “Kaani”
9 Laura Mvula “Sing to the Moon”
10 The Haxan Cloak “Excavation”

Ben Ratliff

1 Cécile McLorin Salvant “WomanChild”
2 Deafheaven “Sunbather”
3 Body/Head “Coming Apart”

4 ‘Mestres Navegantes: Edição Cariri’
5 Craig Taborn Trio “Chants”
6 Black Host “Life in the Sugar Candle Mines”
7 Marc Anthony “3.0”
8 Sky Ferreira “Night Time, My Time”
9 Tye Tribbett “Greater Than”
10 Rhye “Woman”

Jon Caramanica

1 Drake “Nothing Was the Same”
2 Kanye West “Yeezus”
3 Ashley Monroe “Like A Rose”
4 Jai Paul
5 Pusha T “My Name Is My Name”
6 Sky Ferreira “Night Time, My Time”

7 Migos “Y.R.N.”
8 Chance the Rapper “Acid Rap”
9 Haim “Days Are Gone”
10 Ty Dolla Sign “Beach House 2”

Nate Chinen

1 Craig Taborn Trio “Chants”
2 Wayne Shorter Quartet “Without a Net”
3 Bill Callahan “Dream River”

4 Andy Bey “The World According to Andy Bey”
5 Ashley Monroe “Like a Rose”
6 Dave Douglas Quintet “Time Travel”
7 Eric Revis, Kris Davis, Andrew Cyrille “City of Asylum”
8 Chris Potter “The Sirens”
9 Earl Sweatshirt “Doris”
10 Cécile McLorin Salvant “WomanChild”

For these critic’s favorite songs plus comments about each album, head to the New York Times.

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