Friday, October 26, 2007

The Money Shot: Johnny Rotten, Video Games Sell Music (DUH!), Buzz Bands and Americana

The latest headlines...

Johnny Rotten sounds off on the Sex Pistols return (OC Register)
MS: Everybody's trying to claim the credit for inventing punk. It is utterly ridiculous, utterly insane. And that Ramones nonsense going on and on and on – how on Earth are the Ramones anything at all like the Sex Pistols? We came from a culture facing some serious challenges when we were young. We were the complete bottom line – the poorest of the poor. We come from squalor and fought our way up tooth and claw. Mommy and Daddy didn't buy us no guitars.


Bands find video games a ticket to fame (Reuters)
MS: "Every gamer wants the feeling that they've personally discovered a song that's going to be big ... and then, a month later, they hear it on the radio," Schnur said. "They will always associate that music with their gaming experience. Gamers want to feel they're in the know before anyone else. Around the world, this is what the cool kids and trendsetters crave, and that's why they are loyal to us," he said.


Americana Dream (Nashville Scene)
MS: “From my perspective at the independent record store, one of the absolutely hottest trends going in indie music is singer-songwriters,” he says. “I mean look at Sufjan Stevens and Iron and Wine, and even outsiders like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. There’s certainly nothing remotely twangy about those people. I think if you sat somebody down and put the blindfold on them and played them an Iron and Wine record and asked them to name the genre, they’d be just as likely to say Americana as anything else.”


Could The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Be Number One Today? (MTV)
MS: The problem seems to be that we're propping up a whole host of bands too early, giving them their moment before they're even remotely ready for it. In my opinion, acts like the Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah scuffled with album #2 because they were given too much, too soon.

No comments: