I Don't Do Memes, But...

Joan Armatrading's Last World Tour

Thanks to my old mag, Glide, for a great interview.

Beginning next week, on September 23 to be precise, the legendary singer/songwriter Joan Armatrading will kick off the second half of the United States leg of her Me Myself I world tour, playing approximately thirty dates over a two month period. What makes this tour unique is that it is the first time in her forty year career that Armatrading has done a whole tour completely solo. Just her voice, her words, her guitar. This is something that the woman born on the island of Saint Kitts has wanted to do for some time. Why she has decided to finally do these shows this way is to say goodbye to endless touring.

Some Pics From Lockn' Fest

Hat tip to Jorma Kaukonen for sharing

Wouldn't This Be A Great Read!

“Contrary to what conventional wisdom would have you believe…record collecting isn’t about music. Not entirely, anyway,” says music writer Jeff “Chairman” Mao in Dust & Grooves. Rather, it’s about the passion of collecting, and that’s what this captivating book is about.

Photographer Eilon Paz spent six years traveling to forty cities in twelve countries to meet the world’s most enthusiastic vinyl collectors. The result is the seductive book,Dust & Grooves, originally published as a Kickstarter project but released today in this newer edition by Ten Speed Press.

Afternoon Interlude: The Band "Forever Young" Remastered

Django's Daughters

The Increasing Irrelevancy of the Recording Industry

Grammys a Ho-Hum Affair for TV Viewers
I'll do the full disclosure here - studio music as delivered by radio reached its qualitative peak in 1978. The industry had declined since then, a spectacular dissolution into self-referential chaos. And now, at last, when uber-geek and musical illiterate Steve Jobs effectively owns the recording industry, even its award show has fallen to a depth merely indicative of its essentially meaningless place in culture.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Amy Winehouse, Herbie Hancock and Kanye West didn't provide quite enough drama to enthrall television viewers. Preliminary estimates indicate the Grammy Awards telecast was watched by 17.5 million people.

Nielsen Media Research said Monday that would make it the third least- watched Grammy Awards ever if later estimates confirm those numbers.

And this during the 14th week of the writer's strike, when the only new content broadcast was this pallid corpse.

Fueled by dwindling but still significant profits, corporate tunage will continue a few years yet, but it's Cheyne-Stokes respirations at best. Available cultural channels, reimagined along digital domains, have multiplied and as yet cannot be controlled by central agencies. And as long as that remains the case, the music will be free.

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