By Lyle Greenfield
If someone could apply an icepack to my forehead for a few minutes, that would be great. I’m not sure what I’m feeling just now, about the state of music in our culture at this moment. The state of our culture in general. Just feeling slightly dizzy.
I think it’s in my nature to try to find our common ground—the place where we all get together and sing along with the same song. Dance to the same rhythm. I promise you’ll be dancing to “Happy” and “Blurred Lines” at the next wedding you attend.
But I’m not so sure about Drake’s ubiquitous hit “One Dance," with its hypnotic reggaeton & kizomba rhythm (which is becoming the default rhythm for so much pop music right now…enough!).
You move to it, but there’s something introspective, even melancholy in the lyrics and vocals. Even in Charlie Puth/Selena Gomez’s sweet “We Don’t Talk Anymore”…I could just cry….
Sure, I celebrate the crazy success & machine gun sound of the duo 21 Pilots. Yet, again, there’s an undercurrent of darkness in the lyrics. “Ride”
Ok, maybe it’s in my head. And yet…we’re driving along, I see you in your car, windows down, but we don’t know what the other is singing along to. I never heard that before. Who’s the artist? So lonely in here.
Is this musical isolation somehow a reflection of our national discomfort? Look at us, in the middle of the final period of a presidential election…where’s the joy, anticipation, exuberance? Only the individual tribes are speaking among themselves—on the internet, at rallies, talk radio, blogs. And our collective excitement and hopefulness? We don’t talk anymore.
So much of popular music has gone tribal in some similar if more peaceful way—a thing we share within our group, but not the world—thanks to the myriad of personalized choices we make with our streaming music outlets, YouTube channels, etc. Billboard now posts over 90 individual charts, from the traditional ‘Hot 100’ to ‘Digital Songs,’ ‘Streaming Songs,’ ‘Twitter Top Tracks,’ ‘On-Demand Songs,’ ‘Vinyl Albums,’ ‘Social 50,’ ‘Heatseekers Albums’…plus the sub-genres within the hearing/buying categories (Rock, R&B, Pop, Rap, Dance, Rhythmic Songs…). Where do we all come together now? I don’t know—bring your earbuds a little closer.
A few days ago I met with one of the founder/partners of Mercury Lounge and Bowery Ballroom in NYC. He told me Mercury is open 361 days a year, with four bands booked almost every night. That’s maybe 1,200 acts each year, give or take—in one venue! If you want to have a career in music you gotta perform live, build your own fan base, sell some merchandise, promote yourself through social media. With or without label support. Keep your day job. Hope for the best.
So let us ponder what I’ll call The Last Crusade—multi-generational gatherings (concerts) around the musical legends and Hall of Famers who still walk the Earth, and whose songs remain the earworms of the masses.
Bruce Springsteen’s “River” tour has been one of the biggest of his career, filling stadiums around the world with 3-4 hour concerts, dovetailing with the release of his best-selling memoir “Born To Run”—written entirely by The Boss.
And just starting as you read this (ha!) is the Desert Trip music festival in Indio, CA.—a 2-weekend event headlined by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, The Who, Roger Waters and other legends of the Fall whose average age is 72. They’re expecting attendance of 150,000. And it’s selling out (as reported in The New York Times, click here). With 3-day passes starting at $399 and jumping to $1,599.
Finally, with apologies for going back to the future for sonic comfort food, Ron Howard’s “The Beatles: Eight Days A Week” is a reminder of a time when music—and an artist—could be the singular voice a majority of global citizens could share, sing along to, argue about.
;Ah, simpler times! A few radio stations, boom boxes, no internet blah blah…we’ve covered that before.
Shall we meet up in 2046 for the long-awaited One Direction reunion? Okay, nevermind….
A TV as big as a bed? With the holidays approaching, stores stock more supersize sets
For some television viewers, size apparently does matter.
Forget the 65-inch TVs that were considered bigger than average a decade ago. In time for the holidays, manufacturers and retailers are rolling out more XXL screens measuring more than 8 feet across. That's wider than a standard three-seat sofa or a king-size bed.
Supersize televisions only accounted for 1.7% of revenue from all TV set sales in the U.S. during the first nine months of the year, according to market research firm Circana. But companies preparing for shoppers to go big for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have reason to think the growing ultra category will be a bright spot in an otherwise tepid television market, according to analysts.
The 38.1 million televisions sold with a width of at least 97 inches between January and September represented a tenfold increase from the same period last year, Circana said. Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics chain, doubled the assortment of hefty TVs — the 19 models range in price from $2,000 to $25,000 — and introduced displays in roughly 70% of its stores.
"It's really taken off this year," Blake Hampton, Best Buy's senior vice president of merchandising, said.
Analysts credit the emerging demand to improved technology and much lower prices. So far this year, the average price for TVs spanning at least 97 inches was $3,113 compared to $6,662 last year, according to Circana. South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung introduced its first 98-inch TV in 2019 with a hefty price tag of $99,000; it now has four versions starting at $4,000, the company said.
Anthony Ash, a 42-year-old owner of a wood pallet and recycling business, recently bought a 98-inch Sony for his 14,000-square-foot house in... Read More