The people behind the one-day indie-music-retail blowout Record Store Day are hoping so; they’ve declared the third Saturday of every month Vinyl Saturday, on which limited-edition vinyl releases will be available at participating indie shops. The first installment is Saturday, June 20, and there will be four special releases on shelves that day: MORE »
Search Results
the biz
Will “Vinyl Saturday” Drag People Back To The Record Stores?
100 and single
Fergie Power: How the Spun-Off Diva Dragged Her Homeboys to No. 1
Let’s imagine that in 1992, just after Nevermind peaked, Dave Grohl took a break from Nirvana to form Foo Fighters. I mean, why not? Grohl was a gun for hire, at least the sixth drummer to sit in with the band before they finally broke big. And let’s say he scored some of those juicy Foos radio hits right away: “This Is a Call,” “Big Me,” maybe “Monkey Wrench” too.
And then imagine he came back in ’93 to Nirvana in time for In Utero, making them even bigger than they already were—not just reliable album-sellers but the kind of band able to score regular Top 40 radio hits. Grohl would be transformed, from Kurt Cobain’s potent-but-silent sidekick, to coequal band focal point.
It’s a little hard to imagine for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that Grohl was too respectful of Cobain to form his own project until both Kurt and the band were dead and gone. But the scheduling is also fanciful—who has that kind of time, to get a successful solo career going while keeping up with a best-selling group?
The fact is, it’s exceedingly rare for a successful side project to not only coexist with the original group but bring that stalwart act to new pop-chart heights. In fact, in chart history, it’s only happened three times (really, more like two and a half).
The third of these three acts is this week sitting atop Billboard’s Hot 100, in the form of the Black Eyed Peas*. “Boom Boom Pow” is, oddly, the act’s first No. 1—but it’s gun-for-hire Fergie’s fourth. MORE »
Idolator Goes To Mexico
La Búsqueda De La Música Mexicana: Part 1
Recently the New York Times ran a feature about working-class Mexican immigrants using their cell phones rather than iTunes to buy and listen to music, which, as you can imagine, has sent both music and telecommunications types into a tizzy. The poster children of this new era of regional Mexican cell phone music are the members of Los Pikadientes de Caborca, a ragtag group of musicians from rural Sonora whose song “La Cumbia del Río” went viral via cell phones and eventually landed them a record deal with Sony. The song is fun and bouncy and exactly the kind of thing that one should play through a cell phone, but Mexico is a huge country of almost 110 million people and it’s, you know, right next door. So I figured it was high time that coverage of Mexican music delved a little deeper than business models built on novelty songs. MORE »
listening station
No Doubt Is Sick Of Easy Fashion
Gwen Stefani and No Doubt are getting back together for a tour this summer, and in preparation for that they’ve decided to cover another song from the 1980s. Adam and the Ants‘ olde-tyme ode to highway robbery “Stand And Deliver” gets the honors, in a cover that makes the “band” part of No Doubt kind of irrelevant; really, this song could have slid into a platinum edition of Love. Angel. Music. Baby. pretty easily. Original after the jump. MORE »
100 and single
Lady GaGa Takes Slow And Steady Route To The Top
“Lady GaGa Scores Hot 100 Milestone,” a Billboard headline trumpeted yesterday upon the release of the new Hot 100.
What could this milestone be? you might ask yourself. Biggest self-aggrandizer since 50 Cent to reach the top slot? Most similar-sounding pair of hits since Rick Astley? Most successful pantsless act?
As it happens, GaGa’s achievement has to do with her Billboard batting average: two chart hits, two No. 1’s. This week, “Poker Face” follows January’s smash “Just Dance” into the top slot. She’s the first act to step up to the plate, swing just twice, and hit two homers since Christina Aguilera’s first pair of hits, “Genie in a Bottle” and “What a Girl Wants,” topped the Hot 100 in 1999–2000.
That’s nice for the Lady and all, but it masks a more notable achievement: her slowness in achieving those hits. The amount of time “Dance” and “Poker” took to reach No. 1 is literally unprecedented in recent chart history.
In a sea of hits that explode up the charts based on faddish bursts of iTunes sales, GaGa’s chart pattern is contrary to everything going on in pop music promotion right now, recalling the more languid runs by songs in the ’70s through the mid-’90s. It’s almost enough to make an old-school chart geek like me root for her. MORE »
the biz
Ticketmaster Is Not Having A Great Week, But Neither Are Ticket Buyers
A few weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen fans were up in arms after tickets to his hotly anticipated homecoming shows appeared on Ticketmaster’s “secondary market” site TicketsNow suspiciously close to their onsale time. But somehow, the ticketing behemoth managed to top itself, faux pas-wise, with the No Doubt reunion shows in the band’s homeland of Orange County, Calif.: Tickets to those shows were listed on TicketsNow some 24 hours before they went on sale to fan club members, and more than a week before they were available to the general public. Bet you Irving Azoff is hoping that the local Congressional representatives aren’t big Gwen Stefani fans. MORE »
videodrone
Madonna Finances Her Divorce On The Road
Though I have gone to great pains here to debunk the idea that “making your money on the road” is a viable option for most independent artists, it ain’t so bad if you’re a hegemonic musical force like Madonna. Billboard’s Top Money Makers list is out, and the trade pub rightly notes the correlation between big-time tours and the top moneymaking acts. Recall that Madonna only had the 50th-best selling album in 2008, and you won’t be so surprised to find out that the artists with the biggest bankrolls are the same ones who have the hugest tours. The top 20 artists, and their 2008 grosses so you can feel even poorer than you already do, after the jump, MORE »
the new model
This Just In: Artists Who Don’t Sell Many Records Even Less Likely To Sell Lots Of Clothing
Ad Age reports that celebrities trying to earn some extra scratch from their name’s wattage might want to start looking somewhere that isn’t a fashion “partnership” with a retail outlet, what with the economy continuing its long, slow swoon and chains all over the country struggling to keep their lights on. Tough break, musicians who want to avenge those rejected FIT applications! MORE »
top
Our “Now!” Comps Have So Much Growing Up To Do
Britain’s The Independent celebrates the 70th incarnation of the pop-comp series Now! with an extensive list of the hits and misses among the compilation’s selections, which number 2,701 songs over the last 25 years. While the quality level of our Stateside counterpart doesn’t nearly reach the heights of the original (the first volume of the UK series featured “Love Cats,” after all), surely I could do the same for the 28 volumes that have shown up on our shores, and in our stores. MORE »
