What’s in Prince’s secret vault? Enough music for our entire lives

Mar 20, 2015

Prince puts out in a decade what most musicians couldn’t put out in a lifetime. Prince may not want to talk about the vault, but there’s a whole bunch of Purple people who do.

Susan Rogers, Prince’s former sound engineer, tells me the vault predates the superstar status Prince attained with the movie Purple Rain in 1984. “I started the vault!” she says. “I joined Prince in 1983 when he was preparing to do Purple Rain. I realised it would be smart for me to get his tapes together in one place. I was aware there were a lot of pieces missing. It became an obsession. I wanted us to have everything he’d ever recorded. I called up the studios he’d been using and said: ‘Have you got any Prince tapes’? This is his legacy. We need to protect these things. It’s an actual bank vault, with a thick door. It’s in the basement of Paisley Park. When I left in 87, it was nearly full. Row after row of everything we’d done. I can’t imagine what they’ve done since then.”

The pattern of consigning songs – and sometimes entire albums – to the vault swiftly became a staple of Prince’s working method. Brent Fischer is a composer who has helped add orchestration to Prince’s work for 30 years, beginning with 1985’s Parade album; his studio heaves with reams and reams of sheet music for his work with Prince. I recognise some of the titles, but others look like songs that must be sitting in the vault – The Streets of Panama and The Fat Lady Sings. “I think over 70% of the music we’ve worked on for Prince is yet to come out,” Fischer says. “There are a lot of songs that were sent to us clearly with the idea that they would never be released. They were almost comical songs that he would work out with his horn players. There was lot of wild horn parts and experimentation with samples. I’d like to see All My Dreams come out. We enjoyed that song so much. I think it’s nine-and-a-half minutes. It’s this epic journey.”

Producer Chris Hughes on the making of Tears’ For Fears “Shout”

Mar 20, 2015

I distinctly remember the making of “Shout.” I came to the studio on a Monday morning after the weekend, and (keyboardist) Ian Stanley walked in and he said to me, “I went over to Roland’s (Orzabal, Tears For Fears’ singer) house on the weekend, and he played me a little demo with a drum box and a little synthesizer. I don’t think he has recorded it yet as a demo, but you got to get him to play it for you.” So when Roland arrived, I said to him, “Ian tells me that he heard a new song that you got. Play it for me.” He set up a little drum box and a little synthesizer with a bass tone. He pressed the button on the drum box, and he programmed this little beat and it had these little chimey bells and a clapping drum beat. He pressed one of the keys and started singing, “Shout. Shout. Let it all out.”

It was astounding. I said, “Guys, we have to stop what we’re doing and record this now.” We spent months building that song from Roland’s original, unrecorded drum box and synthesizer idea. We spent months looking at rhythm, adding other drums, I played drums on the track, there were two drum boxes running, there was a Fairlight computer doing electronic stuff in the middle playing flute parts… That song was arranged by Roland, Ian, and I. It was essentially a Roland song, and Ian wrote, quite quickly, a medley which was a power piece in that song. Getting this track written, arranged, recorded, and mixed took months and months. Day in and day out we were working on it. It was a long slog to get that as great as we could get it. It was a long piece. The original recording was seven minutes long, but it got chopped down a bit. There were guitar solos in it. Up until then, there weren’t many synth bands putting in guitar solos. It was a long track that we built piece by piece by putting another verse on it and expanding the middle section. There was another little synthesizer break thing which Roland came in a few days later and said, “We need to put this in, we need to punctuate it, and break the track up.” So – we would come in and do bits and pieces for months.

While that was happening, every now and then, Roland would pick up a guitar, and he would be strumming two chords. I remember asking him, “Do you have something? What is it?” He replied, “Oh. It’s nothing. It’s just a couple of chords.” So I wrote the chords down and programmed the little drum box and these two chords. Every now and then, when we had a break, I would sit there listening to this programmed beat and these two chords. I kept saying to Roland, “You really, really must write a song with these two chords. It’s so great.” He wasn’t interested. One afternoon, his wife came into the studio and she heard me playing it, and she asked, “What’s that? What’s that? It’s great! It’s great!” I said, “Tell your husband because I’ve been telling him for two weeks now that he needs to write a song to it.”

Anyway, he came back a couple of weeks later, and he said, “Well, I haven’t got the song, but I have the two chords and I have a melody which goes, ‘Everybody wants to rule the world.’” I said, “Let’s write it now. Let’s make that song.” So Ian, Roland, and I sat down and wrote, recorded, and finished that track within a week. It was super quick. It didn’t take any time at all. It kind of built itself, meanwhile “Shout” was still waiting to be finished. [laughs] Those were two songs that were successful songs, but one took forever and one was done super quickly. I worked on those two tracks in my sleep. [laughs]

Via Red Bull Music Academy

MOJO Magazine Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti Vinyl Edition… Unboxed!

Mar 20, 2015

It looks good. You can tell from the pictures. And it sounds good, which you can tell from the tracks we’ve already posted online. But neither quite emulate the tactile experience of MOJO’s new Vinyl Edition.

Their homage to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti – celebrating the landmark 1975 album’s 40th Anniversary – pays tribute to the iconic packaging of the original, with a die-cut album sleeve housing two slices of fabulous vinyl, grooved with Physical Graffiti cover versions by Laura Marling (Bron-Yr-Aur), Blackberry Smoke (The Rover), Michael Kiwanuka (Ten Years Gone), Sun Kil Moon (Sick Again), White Denim (Custard Pie), Songhoy Blues (Kashmir) and more. Plus a replica of the Led Zeppelin Express 1975 Poster and the latest MOJO magazine boasting a Jimmy Page signature cover.

Sit back while our gorgeous hand models (actually, MOJO’s Editor-In-Chief and Art Editor) delve in and show you the goodies…

Singing: The Key To A Happy Life by Brian Eno

Mar 20, 2015

Today is International Day of Happiness 2015, which invites everyone to focus on their connections with others.

This campaign is a global celebration to mark the United Nations International Day of Happiness. It is coordinated by Action for Happiness, a non-profit movement of people from 160 countries, supported by a partnership of like-minded organisations.

Brian Eno, for one, understands that singing is the key to a long, healthy, and happy life.

I believe in singing. I believe in singing together.

A few years ago a friend and I realized that we both loved singing but didn’t do much of it. So we started a weekly a capella group with just four members. After a year we started inviting other people to join. We didn’t insist on musical experience — in fact some of our members had never sung before. Now the group has ballooned to around 15 or 20 people.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness and a better sense of humor. A recent long-term study conducted in Scandinavia sought to discover which activities related to a healthy and happy later life. Three stood out: camping, dancing and singing.

Well, there are physiological benefits, obviously: You use your lungs in a way that you probably don’t for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call “civilizational benefits.” When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Well here’s what we do in an evening: We get some drinks, some snacks, some sheets of lyrics and a strict starting time. We warm up a bit first.

The critical thing turns out to be the choice of songs. The songs that seem to work best are those based around the basic chords of blues and rock and country music. You want songs that are word-rich, but also vowel-rich because it’s on the long vowels sounds of a song such as “Bring It On Home To Me” (“You know I’ll alwaaaaays be your slaaaaave”), that’s where your harmonies really express themselves. And when you get a lot of people singing harmony on a long note like that, it’s beautiful.

But singing isn’t only about harmonizing pitch like that. It has two other dimensions. The first one is rhythm. It’s thrilling when you get the rhythm of something right and you all do a complicated rhythm together: “Oh, when them cotton balls get a-rotten, you can’t pick very much cotton.” So when 16 or 20 people get that dead right together at a fast tempo that’s very impressive. But the other thing that you have to harmonize besides pitch and rhythm is tone. To be able to hit exactly the same vowel sound at a number of different pitches seems unsurprising in concept, but is beautiful when it happens.

So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you.

Via NPR

Adele’s 21 is the U.K.’s best-selling artist album of the millennium so far

Mar 20, 2015

Adele’s 21 is the biggest selling artist album of the millennium to date, the Official Charts Company can reveal. The singer-songwriter’s second studio album – which spent an impressive 23 weeks at Number 1 – has sold nearly 4,740,000 copies in the UK to date.

Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black earns the Number 2 spot with sales of over 3,560,000 since its 2006 release. The former Official Albums Chart Number 1 spawned five Top 40 singles including Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back To Black, Tears Dry On Their Own and Love Is A Losing Game.

In at Number 3 is James Blunt’s debut LP Back To Bedlam, which counts 3,310,000 sales this millennium. The album spent 10 weeks at the Official Albums Chart summit, racking up a total of 40 weeks in the Top 40.

Rounding out the Top 5 are chart debuts Leona Lewis’ Spirit with 3,130,000 UK sales and Dido’s No Angel with 3,080,000 sales.

Robbie Williams and Take That tie for the most entries in the Top 50 with four each. Robbie’s Swing When You’re Winning (21), Greatest Hits (25), Sing When You’re Winning (31) and Escapology (35) feature on the list alongside Take That’s Beautiful World (13), Progress (22), Never Forget – The Ultimate Collection (24) and The Circus (30).

Other acts with multiple entries include; Coldplay (3), Adele (2), Dido (2), Ed Sheeran (2), Michael Buble (2) and Rihanna (2).

Of the Top 50 Official Biggest Selling Artist Albums of the Millennium, only two were released before the year 2000 – David Gray’s White Ladder and ABBA’s Gold – Greatest Hits, which sit at Numbers 8 and 19, respectively.

Only 39 albums have passed the 2 million UK sales mark this millennium, with the latest addition to the list, Ed Sheeran’s X, tipping over just this week.

50 Biggest Selling Artist Albums of the Millennium in the U.K.

NO. TITLE ARTIST LABEL
1 21 ADELE XL RECORDINGS
2 BACK TO BLACK AMY WINEHOUSE ISLAND
3 BACK TO BEDLAM JAMES BLUNT ATLANTIC
4 SPIRIT LEONA LEWIS SYCO MUSIC
5 NO ANGEL DIDO ARISTA
6 1 BEATLES APPLE CORPS
7 CRAZY LOVE MICHAEL BUBLE REPRISE
8 WHITE LADDER DAVID GRAY EAST WEST
9 THE FAME LADY GAGA INTERSCOPE
10 A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD COLDPLAY PARLOPHONE
11 LIFE FOR RENT DIDO CHEEKY
12 ONLY BY THE NIGHT KINGS OF LEON HAND ME DOWN
13 BEAUTIFUL WORLD TAKE THAT POLYDOR
14 HOPES AND FEARS KEANE ISLAND
15 SCISSOR SISTERS SCISSOR SISTERS POLYDOR
16 X&Y COLDPLAY PARLOPHONE
17 PARACHUTES COLDPLAY PARLOPHONE
18 COME AWAY WITH ME NORAH JONES VIRGIN
19 GOLD – GREATEST HITS ABBA POLYDOR
20 THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP EMINEM INTERSCOPE
21 SWING WHEN YOU’RE WINNING ROBBIE WILLIAMS ISLAND
22 PROGRESS TAKE THAT POLYDOR
23 EYES OPEN SNOW PATROL FICTION
24 NEVER FORGET – THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION TAKE THAT RCA
25 GREATEST HITS ROBBIE WILLIAMS ISLAND
26 NUMBER ONES MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC
27 19 ADELE XL RECORDINGS
28 CHRISTMAS MICHAEL BUBLE REPRISE
29 ROCKFERRY DUFFY A&M
30 THE CIRCUS TAKE THAT POLYDOR
31 SING WHEN YOU’RE WINNING ROBBIE WILLIAMS ISLAND
32 OUR VERSION OF EVENTS EMELI SANDE VIRGIN
33 HOT FUSS KILLERS VERTIGO
34 AMERICAN IDIOT GREEN DAY REPRISE
35 ESCAPOLOGY ROBBIE WILLIAMS ISLAND
36 EMPLOYMENT KAISER CHIEFS B-UNIQUE/POLYDOR
37 SONGS ABOUT JANE MAROON 5 A&M
38 BY THE WAY RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS WARNER BROS
39 X ED SHEERAN ASYLUM
40 STRIPPED CHRISTINA AGUILERA RCA
41 JUSTIFIED JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE JIVE
42 THE GREATEST HITS TEXAS MERCURY
43 I DREAMED A DREAM SUSAN BOYLE SYCO MUSIC
44 + ED SHEERAN ASYLUM
45 LOUD RIHANNA DEF JAM
46 GOOD GIRL GONE BAD RIHANNA DEF JAM
47 CALL OFF THE SEARCH KATIE MELUA DRAMATICO
48 BORN TO DO IT CRAIG DAVID WEA
49 UNBREAKABLE – THE GREATEST HITS – VOL 1 WESTLIFE S
50 GREATEST HITS GUNS N’ ROSES GEFFEN

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino On Why Rock Stars Are the Best Marketers in the World

Mar 20, 2015

Live Nation launched a channel on Yahoo last year that shows one live concert every day. What’s the response been?
Michael Rapino: We think that we have put together a very exciting slate of artists, and we’ve been very, very overwhelmed by the amount of viewers that are tuning in for the live performance of this high-quality production.

How has the role of the artists changed in all of this?
I’ve met plenty of CMOs in life, and I always say that I’ve never met any that can hold a candle to rock stars, who I truly believe are the greatest brand managers in the world. You look at the Rolling Stones. It had the lips, the logo and the style. You look at Jay-Z, who I think is probably the smartest brand marketer I’ve ever met. These people understand the core of what their brand is and what their fans want.

Via AdWeek

New research provides insights into what UK consumers think about music

Mar 20, 2015

From CMU:

Media Insight Consulting, the consultancy business set up last year by former Universal Music Global Insight Director Chris Carey, has released some top-line data from a consumer research initiative titled ‘What Music Means To Me’, based on a survey of 2650 consumers.

Among the findings in the first batch of results to be released (more will follow focused on live and merch) are…

• Over half of consumers place a high value on music, with 30% of those surveyed, and 44% of 16-24s, saying that “music is my number one passion”.

• 43% of the 16-24s surveyed had used a free streaming service in the last year, though the 25-34 age group was most inclined to pay to access streaming music.

• 60% of consumers overall said they were still interested in purchasing physical product, and while that figure declines as people get younger, 44% of 16-24s still expressed an interest in non-digital releases.

• And when it comes to ownership of music – physical or digital – unsurprisingly under 25s are less obsessed with owning copies of their favourite tunes, with 48% saying it’s not necessary because music is so readily available online. Though that still means half are attracted in some way to permanent copies.

– See more at: http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/new-research-provides-insights-into-what-uk-consumers-think-about-music/#sthash.fUMghFCt.dpuf

Blissdom Canada is coming to British Columbia

Mar 20, 2015

BlissDom Canada is one of my favourite conferences, drawing more than 400 of Canada’s top social media influencers for a weekend of professional development, networking, opportunity and FUN. This is THE premiere event to engage and build relationships with the women’s market in Canada. This year’s event run October 15-18th somewhere in Ontario (yes, the suspense is killing me, too, but you’ll just have to wait for the location a little while longer, say the organizers.

Quite apart from the usual conferences, the team at BlissDom Canada is cutting edge. They think and plan and work hard to bring delegates inspiring experiences that will change their lives – and they have. Ask anyone who has attended, and they’re evangelical about the weekend.

Over the last months, they have been working hard to bring a taste of BlissDom Canada to Western Canada – a mix of all the amazing experiences and learning they provide at BlissDom Canada, but in a whole new way.

Called The ROAM Experience , Blissdom will be in Kelowna, BC to the Delta Okanagan Grand Resort, May 31-June 2, 2015. You can get your tickets here.

British Columbia? Blissom? Twice as nice.

Luminaries from the Canadian music industry reflect on the state of the industry

Mar 20, 2015

Alan Cross; Murray Foster, Paul Morris from HTZ FM, Noah Mintz and I gathered at Brock University last night to reflect on the state of the industry. We could have talked for hours, and might have, if we weren’t stopped about 2 hours in.

Producers, Mixers and Engineers to Get Digital Royalties in New House Bill

Mar 20, 2015

From Music Times:

A new bill in the U.S. House of Representatives is being introduced in Congress this week that would give producers, engineers and mixers — often times the unsung and forgotten heroes in the whole song-making process — a piece of the digital royalty pie. The Allocation for Music Producer Act, or AMP Act (H.R. 1457), is being formally introduced by congressmen from both sides of the aisle: Reps. Joe Crowley (D-New York) and Tom Rooney (R-Florida).

In the past it has been up to the producers, engineers and mixers to negotiate their own splits on royalty payments. The AMP Act would create a statutory right for producers to receive royalties that would be managed through SoundExchange. This would give the producers, engineers and mixers the right to a piece of the digital royalties pie when this is becoming an increasingly important revenue stream with streaming.

This new framework will also give studio warriors the ability to negotiate with artists on works older than 1995, when the 45 percent digital royalty rate for artists was established. If the request was for more than four months, a collective will weigh in on the request and, if approved, give 2 percent of the 45 percent to the mixer, engineer or producer. The 2 percent would be split evenly if there are multiple requesters.