Greed and contractual disputes kept one beloved jazz singer’s masterpiece off the shelf for 40 years, and sent him into retirement.
music industry
Falling in Love with Chicago at Night: An Interview with Jessica Hopper
In “Night Moves,” Jessica Hopper is 80% on her bike and 20% at a show, memorializing a young adulthood spent in just one of “a million Chicagos” — but one that shaped a wide network of artists and writers.
The Last of the Live Reviewers: An Interview with Nate Chinen
Nate Chinen may have been the last full-time jazz reviewer at any American newspaper. He says jazz hasn’t been in a better place since the ’60s — but the commercial infrastructure is broken.
Weird in the Daylight
The story of Sadlack’s Heroes, the Raleigh dive bar that helped galvanize the alternative country scene in the 1990s.
Tearing the Heart from the Music Industry
Digitization has removed the humanity from the music business, from collaboration to mutual respect.
Destroying Music, One Playlist at a Time
Spotify’s corporate-branded playlists are not the solution to the music industry’s problems. They’re a new problem.
Where Have All the Guitar Heroes Gone?
Where’s the next generation of guitar heroes? The guitar industry misses you.
While They Were Creating the Album, the Beastie Boys Were Also Creating Themselves
A look at how the Beastie Boys invented themselves with their 1992 album Check Your Head.
What Good Is a Major Record Label Now?
“An artist gets it to a point where they’re already self sustainable and then labels swoop in and there’s going to come a point where these artists realize the reason why they’re swooping in and giving them all this money is because they can make ten times as much if they just keep doing what […]
The Big Business of the Grateful Dead, Circa 1974
Since the early days, the Dead have also grown into a corporation and an independent record company with well over thirty people on the payroll. Their hardcore San Francisco audience may still be locked into a 1967 consciousness, but the Grateful Dead operation is Big Business and strictly 1974. Why, Weir and Garcia have even […]