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March 26, 2007
Shorties
Billboard reports that Alexandra Patsavas, the person behind the soundtracks to The OC and Grey's Anatomy, is starting her own record label.
The Guardian examines the digital sales of artists' back catalogs to younger consumers.
Top selling back catalogue artists
1 The Beatles
2 AC/DC
3 Muse
4 Rod Stewart
5 Metallica
6 Pink Floyd
7 Oasis
8 Madonna
9 Michael Jackson
10 Eagles
Source: HMV
Top selling back catalogue downloads
1 Take That
2 Kylie Minogue
3 Pink Floyd
4 Michael Jackson
5 Linkin Park
6 Eminem
7 Queen
8 Guns N' Roses
9 David Bowie
10 Abba
Source: hmvdigital.com
Pine magazine interviews Kelly Crisp of the Rosebuds.
HL: Do you guys have day jobs anymore? How often do you tour?
KC: It's a full-time job being in the band. Today, for example, we aren't writing or recording or touring but there are a million business things to attend to. It's like any business that way. Except it takes over. There is no non-band time. I can't even keep the house like I used to. But the guys are in town because we are about to leave for tour and yesterday Justin put all the dishes into the dishwasher and cooked up a f*cking fabulous dinner. And this morning, Giorgio emptied the dishwasher and made his famous espresso. So it is nice to have them here because they're more like family than guests, you know?
Stylus lists the top 50 one hit wonders.
Panda Bear talks to Popmatters about his new album, Person Pitch.
“With Young Prayer I kind of did it for my father who was dying at the time. So the subject matter, obviously, was really, really heavy and kind of serious. Even despite that, I was still trying to be as positive as I could be,” said Lennox by phone, on a break from recording with Animal Collective. “After doing that, I was like, I definitely don’t want to do something even approaching that mood again. So I tried to write music that felt more casual and relaxed and that made me feel good more than anything else.”
The Guardian examines the healthy state of UK music festivals.
"It is a total boom time for festivals," agrees Paul Stokes, news editor of the NME. "They are as much a part of the summer now [for young people] as going on a Club 18-30 holiday."
How does he explain the surge in demand? "The British music scene at the moment is incredibly healthy, and the appetite for it is massive. Five years ago, going to gigs was seen as a bit of a minority interest. Now bands can sell out arenas after one album. And if you go to a festival, you can see your entire record collection in one weekend."
The San Francisco Chronicle profiles local independent record stores.
The New York Times offers yet another article about the demise of the album.
Because of this shift in listener preferences — a trend reflected everywhere from blogs posting select MP3s to reviews of singles in Rolling Stone — record labels are coming to grips with the loss of the album as their main product and chief moneymaker.
Author AL Kennedy talks to the Guardian.
Her short stories and novels, the latest of which is Day, are often mordantly funny and teeming with startling images. Like her approach to interviews, though, they make no concessions: her writing is linguistically and emotionally demanding. 'It's like anal sex,' she explains when I ask her about her fiercely literary attitude to her work and her correspondingly confrontational presentation of it. 'If that's what I want to do to you and you're not into it, then go away, because that's what will keep happening.'
The Guardian challenged contemporary authors to write six-word stories.
"It can't be. I'm a virgin."
Kate Atkinson
Set sail, great storm, all lost.
John Banville
Defenestrated baby, methamphetamine, prison, rehab, relapse.
Jeffrey Eugenides
This week, Five Chapters is serializing Margo Rabb's short story, "The Healthy Heart."
Journalist Matt Rees talks to NPR's Weekend Edition about his novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, which is based in the Middle East.
"I wanted to have the novel begin in a place where there was real violence," Rees says. "Not just the violence of a murder in a murder mystery, but real violence that would give the political context for everything that's to come later in the novel."
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