Archive for March, 2009.
In 1995, a new band came to national prominence through some appearances on national TV. 311 came into the music world with their combination of Alternative, funk, hip hop and other music and surprised people with their new sound. If you get 311 tickets, you too can hear their new sound. It’s quite a bit of fun hearing their music every time, because it’s never quite the same. It is easy to imagine that the band will give you some of the best concert experiences. They have 13 CDs out and have produced DVDs and other platforms for their music which have gotten the word out to the thousands upon thousands of fans that love them. See P-Nut, Nick Hexum and the others in person by getting your tickets today!
Christopher O’Reilly is working on something big and it’s going to be a fun show. He’s writing his own arrangement of Radiohead’s music, which he will perform alongside the usual Shostakovich and a bunch of other normal classical piano pieces. It’s a great idea, trying to bring pop music together with classical music. We really enjoy it. They don’t usually do this kind of work otherwise. It’s not a particularly normal show and it’s not the usual way of presenting classical music. But it’s innovative, in the sense of doing the music the way it was a long time ago. Improvisation, crossing the musical lines. People don’t do this anymore. Many more people try to play the music in exactly the way the composers wrote it, rather than putting their own feel on it. So this kind of oddness is unusual, and remarkable.
Posted on March 20th, 2009 by Naomi in
knaan 
One of the real up-and-coming rap artists of the current generation is a guy who goes by the name K’NAAN. His real name is Kanaan Warsame and he is from Somalia. He just recently came out with an album called Troubadour, which is, in part, biographical in nature. One of his claims is that he’s from the worst ghetto of all. And this seems to be pretty true, since he’s from Mogadishu circa 1993. The neighborhood he grew up in is now known as the River of Blood. During the Civil War. So his lyric “So what’s hardcore? Really are you hardcore? Hmm…” is really fitting. This gives him much leverage over those wannabe “gangstas” and such like that you sometimes find in the music world, the ones with the limos and expensive clothes. He’s just a different kind of artist.
The music industry in America is flailing. It isn’t failing yet, but it is having a lot of trouble. CD sales have dropped about 50% since 2000. For example, U2’s new album has sold about 480,000 to put them at number 1 on the charts. But a few years ago, they had to sell 880,000 CDs to hit number one. For one reason, this is just about latent economic fears and fallings-off. But it’s also about digital music and the ability of distributing media through the internet, for free or for a reduced price. Now there are lots of people discussing the issues of digital ownership and fairness of the distribution there. This shifts the blame away from the fact that some of the music might not be good, and so they will be working on contracts that help the industry regain the control over the market.
Depeche Mode is still going strong! This band is one of the longest-lasting groups to come out of the New Wave era of the early 1980s. They are also by far the most successful so far. It is thought that they may have sold more than 75 million albums since their debut in 1980. This year, they will release their first album since 2005, called “Sounds of the Universe” which is expected to be a great disc. They have a talented recording crew helping them too. Get your Depeche Mode 2009 tour tickets to hear them in person! The electronic music that they produce is still very popular, even after all these years, and the album will be released on April 20 and 21. In order to promote and play some of their music from the album, they will be on their Tour of the Universe, which takes them first through Europe and then to North America during the summer. It’s going to be a great tour, so don’t miss it!
Michael Jackson will be hanging up his glove. The one glove that he used to wear. He has released a press statement that he will be retiring from the music business this year, playing his last concerts in London this summer. It doesn’t sound like he’s coming back to the US to play any dates and it’s kind of sad. It’s the end of an era, although Jackson hasn’t been quite the same all these years. He was big in the 80s and early 90s, but he sort of went off the rails at some point during the 90s and he lost some of the cache that he had gained with lots of people back then. But he will be playing this summer and many great people will be with him along the way.
Chris Brown has now been officially charged with assault and some other things, apparently relating to an altercation with girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, Rihanna. She hasn’t really been seen for the last few weeks, since right before the Grammy Awards, when the altercation apparently occurred. Then there are the other reports that Rihanna has gone back to him over the last couple of weeks. Apparently she wants to be with him despite everything that reportedly happened. What is the report? She was hit, told someone to bring the police to her home before she got there and then he slammed her into the car window, threatening her. This is bad and we’ll have to see what’s on the way for both of them. Good luck to them!
Gershwin’s “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” is being produced in London, and it’s a fun show. It is the sequel to “Of Thee I Sing”, a musical in which a man rises to be president by appealing to people’s hearts rather than their heads. In the second part of this series, the man loses his reelection bid, and ends up in the shirt making business. This doesn’t last very long and so he ends up staging a proletarian uprising and starting a dictatorship. It sounds like a depressing show, because it’s kind of a distressing subject. But it was written by George S. Kaufmann and Morrie Ryskind, so you know right off that it’s going to be very funny and have a great satirical feel and fun patter! See it if you can!
