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Tag: talking heads

  • Handicapping the odds of seven beloved bands reuniting for one last rodeo – National | Globalnews.ca

    Handicapping the odds of seven beloved bands reuniting for one last rodeo – National | Globalnews.ca

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    Before the internet, a band could break up, its members retire, and still be a profitable venture.

    The Beastie Boys, for example, sold so many records that they could count on albums like Licensed to Ill and Ill Communication to each sell a million or two copies a year. The Doors’ catalogue went gold again and again. Same with Led Zeppelin and scores of other heritage acts. All the members had to do was cash fat the royalty cheques that showed up in the mailbox like clockwork. It was like having an annuity or an RRSP that paid handsomely and reliably.

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    Those days are gone. Physical sales are a tiny fraction of what they used to be and that lovely mailbox money has dried up. Meanwhile, streaming doesn’t pay like physical sales. If you’re an artist of a certain vintage, what do you do?

    Two options: (1) Sell your catalogue to a company like Hipgnosis Song Fund, Primary Wave, or the dozens of other entities buying up the publishing rights of successful composers. And (2), get the band back together, go on tour, and top up the retirement fund for everyone involved.

    There’s a lot of money to be made in taking nostalgia on the road. Anytime Bruce Springsteen regroups with the E Street Band, that’s good for another couple hundred million. Even though only 60 per cent of the classic lineup is participating, Guns N’ Roses continue to rake in cash that started with the Not in This Lifetime tour in 2016. By the time the current global road trip ends later this year, the band will have raked in a gross somewhere around US$1 billion since that reunion. And The Rolling Stones have grossed over US$1.2 billion this century alone. Even the death of founding member Charlie Watts hasn’t slowed them down.

    Amphitheatres and arenas need to be filled. Boomers and Zoomers have shown that they’re prepared to part with their money to relive their youth. Younger people consumed with FOMO want to see these great acts before too many of them die off. Promoters are willing to offer heritage bands sweet guarantees if they will get back together.

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    These groups are on so many wish lists. What are the chances of them putting aside any past differences or reservations for one more go-round?

    1. Oasis

    Oasis broke up and reconciled half a dozen times between 1994 and 2009 before Noel Gallagher walked out for good just before the band went onstage for the Rock En Seine festival in Paris on Aug. 28, 2009. The last straw came when Liam threw a plum at his brother backstage (he missed). Since that splat, Liam and Noel have been chirping at each other, much to the chagrin of their mother, Peggy, who really wants her boys to make up while she’s still alive.

    Every six months or so, stories surface — usually from a less-than-reputable U.K. tabloid — about a possible reunion. We’re in the midst of such a silly season right now. But to some, this round of rumours feels different. Peggy Gallagher is getting old. Noel continues to see plenty of songwriting royalties but his marriage to Sara MacDonald has ended after 22 years. That’s going to cost him. Liam doesn’t see much in the way of royalties from Oasis (at least compared to Noel) and while his current solo career pays fine, it’s not Oasis money.

    While Liam has been periodically up for a reunion, Noel has remained against it. Then again, in 2021, he publicly stated that he’d reform the band for £100 million. Then again, he dropped that price last week to £8 million “delivered in an Adidas bag.” And lately, I get the feeling that he might be leaning towards … something. These latest rounds of rumours say that dates are already being organized for four nights at Knebworth in June 2025 (yes, two years from now). There are also rumours about a hometown gig being planned for Etihad Stadium in Manchester. So is this for real?

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    Odds of a reunion: 25-75 at best. I’ll believe it when I see both brother step onstage and start playing.

    2. The Sex Pistols

    Back in 1995, they did it for the money with the aptly-named Filthy Lucre Tour, reconciling (barely) for the first time since January 1978. Since then, Johnny Lydon has maintained a great distance from Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock, occasionally battling them in court over one thing or another.

    Then again, Johnny says he’s now “seriously in a state of financial ruin.” Touring has been tough for him because he was a constant caregiver to his wife Nora who suffered from dementia. But now that she’s gone — she died on April 6 — maybe Johnny will want to leave the house. Then again, Nora was the heiress to a German publishing fortune, so…

    Odds: 10 per cent at best. The animosity runs pretty deep.

    3. The Jam

    The Jam was one of the most successful English singles bands of the 1980s and singlehandedly made being a Mod a thing again. But in 1982, Paul Weller bailed and has since worked mostly as a solo artist. Meanwhile, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler have stuck together, performing Jam songs but remained estranged from Weller, apparently not even speaking for 20 years. There was a thaw between 2006 and 2009 which resulted in Foxton appearing with Weller on his albums and even onstage at least once.

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    Odds: Zero. If it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to happen.

    4. Talking Heads

    Talking Heads never really formally broke up. They just kind of faded away after their 1988 album, Naked. There was no announcement, no farewell. David Byrne went off on a world music jag before getting into stage productions and writing books. Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth had the Tom Tom Club and their producing gigs. Jerry Harrison has been busy producing records for other people.

    Few bands achieved such artistic quirkiness. Would they be interested in revisiting that? I don’t get the sense that Byrne does. Franz suffered a heart attack in 2020 and now has three stents. Then both he and Tina were in a bad car crash with a drunk driver in 2022. Harrison is happy with his wife in Mill Valley, Calif.

    Odds: Zero. There was a buzz about something in the spring of 2016, but nothing came of it. As much fun as a Talking Heads reunion would be, it all hinges on Byrne. He’s never been a guy who looks back.

    5. R.E.M.

    Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Peter Buck kept the lights on after original drummer Bill Berry retired in 1997 to become a hay farmer outside of Athens, Ga. But in 2011, they realized that it was time to hang things up. Stipe got deeper into photography and activism. Both Mills and Buck continue making music on their own with friends. Berry continues to farm but in 2022 dug out his drums to play in a band called The Bad Ends.

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    I’m not sure how well R.E.M.’s back catalogue is doing in terms of generating income. Where, for example, are all the big expansive box sets like we’ve seen from some of their contemporaries? A reunion tour is probably their best route to topping up the bank accounts.

    Odds: Close to zero. I quote Michael Stipe: “We decided when we split up that that would just be really tacky and probably money-grabbing, which might be the impetus for a lot of bands to get back together.”

    6. The White Stripes

    Jack White’s solo career is doing well. Money keeps rolling in from the use of Seven Nation Army all over the world. And as an entrepreneur, he’s also just fine. Meg White, however, was always a shy and very reluctant rock star. Nothing much has been heard from her since the band’s breakup in 2011.

    Odds: Zero. In fact, less than zero. Jack is fine (“Absolutely no chance,” he told The NME in 2012) and Meg is the introvert’s introvert. As far as anyone knows, the two haven’t been in regular contact for years. And despite serious attempts to track her down for an interview, she’s refused all requests with Elle magazine being recently disappointed.

    7. The Smiths

    The band’s famous Morrissey-Marr nexus fractured spectacularly in the fall of 1987. Since then, many, many efforts have been made to put the pieces of the Smiths together again, including a rumoured offer US$75 million to play Coachella. No one took that bait.

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    Odds: So much less than zero that you’d have a better chance of calculating the square root of -2. Given Morrissey’s mercurial disagreeableness, who would underwrite such a thing?

    —

    Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.

    Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play

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    Alan Cross

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  • WATCH: 5 Tracks That Inspired K.Flay

    WATCH: 5 Tracks That Inspired K.Flay

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    On April 28, K.Flay performed in front of a jam-packed house at Hard Rock Live Las Vegas. The show, part of The Gathering music conference, included the live debut of the new single “Raw Raw” and a cover of “Bulls on Parade” by Rage Against The Machine.

    The concert was the singer-songwriter’s first headlining appearance since losing hearing in her right ear last fall. It also served as the kickoff for her current US tour (see May dates below). Fans worried about how the hearing loss affects performances can relax. Simply put, you’d never know the difference.

    Before the Vegas show, we met up with K.Flay to shoot an episode of 5 Tracks That Inspired Me. Watch her discuss songs by Talking Heads and Muse, and stream “Raw Raw” below.

    5 Tracks That Inspired K.Flay

    K.Flay Spring Tour Dates
    April 28 @ Hard Rock Live in Las Vegas, NV
    May 12 @ House of Blues in San Diego, CA
    May 13 @ Orpheum Theatre in Flagstaff, AZ
    May 14 @ Sunshine Theatre in Albuquerque, NM
    May 16 @ Warehouse Live in Houston, TX
    May 17 @ Boeing Center in San Antonio, TX
    May 18 @ House of Blues in Dallas, TX
    May 19 @ The Joy Theater in New Orleans, LA
    May 20 @ Zydeco in Birmingham, AL
    May 22 @ The Ritz Ybor in Tampa, FL
    May 23 @ The Masquerade in Atlanta, GA
    May 24 @ Skydeck in Nashville, TN
    May 26 @ The National in Richmond, VA
    May 27 @ The Fillmore in Charlotte, NC
    May 28 @ Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh, NC
    May 29 @ The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD
    May 31 @ House of Blues in Boston, MA

    For more from K.Flay, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

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    Staff

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  • Seymour Stein: The Last of a Dying Breed

    Seymour Stein: The Last of a Dying Breed

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    Seymour Stein was of the old school in every way. Someone who ascended the ladder of an industry by starting at the bottom and pulling himself up by his proverbial bootstraps. Perhaps he could see something of that quality when he first laid eyes on Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone in a hospital room in 1982. This was sixteen years after Stein had thrown in his own money into co-founding Sire Productions with producer Richard Gottehrer. This, eventually, would become Sire Records. Cashing in on signing British acts to showcase in the culturally bereft U.S., Sire’s success led to its acquisition by Warner Bros. Records in the late 70s, right as Madonna was arriving in New York with nothing more than a dream and that fabled thirty-five dollars in her pocket. Roughly four years later, her path would cross with Stein’s in Lenox Hill Hospital. Laid up after having open heart surgery, Stein seemed just as eager as Madonna to be seen as someone with power.

    And the power Stein held in that moment was something that even he couldn’t fully understand. After all, Madonna was a “fluke” act for the Sire brand, more known for signing New Wave groups like Talking Heads, The Cure, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode. But something about Madonna evidently spoke to Stein’s own inner hustler. Seeing her hunger and raw ambition, Stein was endeared rather than put off by it, likely sensing a kindred spirit. For, in addition to being a gay man trapped in a woman’s body, Madonna is also a New York-born Jewish man at heart. Mark Kamins, another personality from Madonna’s early rise that kicked the bucket, was integral to arranging this meeting (just another reason she wrote “Lucky Star” with him in mind). As one of the “hottest” DJs in New York, he had a certain clout with record execs like Stein. And, of course, as is the case with most people living in New York, he wanted something in exchange for his “good deed”: “giving” him Madonna. What he ultimately wanted from that “trade” was to be a producer. Per Stein, however, “I told him flat out that no big artist would ever risk working with an unproven producer, even if he was New York’s hippest deejay. Like everyone else, he’d have to earn his stripes by finding nobodies and making them sound like stars.” Madonna was going to fit that bill perfectly. Especially since her real name already carried such stage name weight.

    Kamins was determined to produce Madonna once she got signed, making it all the more important to him for this hospital room meeting to go well. Maybe it was the drip-drip-drip of the penicillin into Stein’s heart that warmed it so much to the sound of Madonna’s voice, or maybe it was the fact that Stein was actually a gay man (even if closeted for a long time about it). Either way, he recalled thinking upon his first listen to the “Everybody” demo, “I liked the hook, I liked Madonna’s voice, I liked the feel and I liked the name Madonna. I liked it all and played it again. I never overanalyze or suck the life out of whatever I instinctively enjoy.” An explanation such as that, of course, would never be heard among the halls of today’s record labels. Whose operational practices seem to be based entirely on what’s “trending” as opposed to using one’s own instincts and emotional reactions to set trends. Gone are these Steinian days of taking a chance on an artist based on instinct, having faith in a musician’s “raw material” to grow and evolve into something truly special (as Madonna put it, “Not only did Seymour hear me, but he saw me and my potential!”). The lack of gambling in art in general and music in particular these days is most manifest in how everything “old” is repackaged as something “new” for bite-sized consumption on TikTok. This complete with the “sped-up version” trend that makes every shortened song sound like Mickey Mouse is singing it.

    With the Stein hospital room signing being one of the many mythological stories adding to the narrative of how Madonna rose to fame, one myth that never endured was M being controlled by any kind of Svengali figure in her early career. If anything, Madonna herself was the Svengali to all the music men (and women) she orbited (from Stephen Bray to Kamins to Jellybean Benitez), getting them to do her bidding with her unbridled powers of seduction. In contrast to most female pop stars, Madonna was never “groomed” by any man behind the scenes, but entirely self-made. Stein’s ability to intuit something special about her without worrying if she was going to contribute to the label’s bottom line is why we have Madonna. In the decades since, this overall lack of a combination of risk-taking and intuition is what has contributed to the deterioration of popular music’s quality. For, like every industry, music has been subject to the merciless tenets of neoliberalism (which was just taking flight at full-force as Madonna eked by the cutoff for pre-Reaganism and Thatcherism). A “philosophy” that really only has one tenet: make more money.

    Artistic experimentation isn’t conducive to that, and as such, Stein might never have signed Madonna in such a climate as the post-1985 one. While some have maintained that the “democratization” of music through early internet mediums like MySpace is what has actually improved things for artists by cutting out the “middle man,” in so many ways, that middle man was an artist unto himself. For it takes a certain kind of talent to recognize talent (with Madonna also remarking of his death, “Anyone who knew Seymour knew about his passion for music and his impeccable taste. He had an ear like no other! He was…deeply intuitive”). And without people such as Stein, we wouldn’t get Madonna. Tellingly, there hasn’t been a similar artist of her impact to come up in the world since, maybe, Britney Spears.

    So sure, Stein might look faintly like Harvey Weinstein, but he was no predatory prick when it came to his music industry cachet. For him, it really was all about the music. As Sid King told Stein’s father, “Your son is good for one thing and one thing only, and that’s being in the record business.” Madonna would tend to agree.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Datarecovery.com Restores Rare 1979 Interview With Talking Heads

    Datarecovery.com Restores Rare 1979 Interview With Talking Heads

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    Award-winning producer/director Greg Crutcher finds lost video reels, has them restored in a clean-room video restoration lab

    Press Release
    –

    Feb 14, 2023 09:00 EST


    ST. LOUIS, February 14, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    With help from Datarecovery.com, an award-winning filmmaker and television producer has digitized some of his earliest work — including a rare 1979 interview with Chris Frantz, then-drummer for the Talking Heads.

    Greg Crutcher has had a storied career, serving as producer or director on six cable network series and nine specials. His credits include directing CMT Showcase for Country Music Television (CMT), Billy Ray Cyrus: I Give My Heart to You for TNN, and more than 100 music videos for legendary musicians such as Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, and Steven Curtis Chapman. 

    In late 2022, Crutcher set out to digitize eight Sony U-Matic ¾-inch tapes from the beginning of his career. He’d worked as a reporter for several local stations in Kansas and Missouri in the late 1970s.

    “The tapes were from my first two jobs in television,” Crutcher says. “I was a news reporter, feature reporter, and I also produced weekend shows. [The tapes] had been sitting in a box for years — I took them with me every time I moved, but I never did anything with them. 

    “These were working tapes that had probably been recorded over multiple times, and they’d decayed for 40-something years,” Crutcher explains. “The condition worried me. I wanted to find someone who really knew what they were doing.”

    While looking for a U-matic digitization service, Crutcher found Datarecovery.com and filled out an info request form. “Someone called me back immediately,” he says. “The thing I was most impressed by is how everyone seemed so eager to help.”

    The digitization process was mostly straightforward, but oxide loss had affected some of the tapes, diminishing their audio quality. By treating the tapes in a specialized clean-room environment with controlled heat and humidity, Datarecovery.com was able to restore most of the missing audio. 

    In the recovered interview, Frantz discusses the “wholesomeness” of the Talking Heads relative to other rock groups of the era. He mentions that “armed guards” in Joplin, Missouri, poured out the band’s beer backstage prior to a show, and discusses the Talking Heads’ relationship with legendary producer Brian Eno.

    Crutcher has some advice for other video professionals with decades-old U-matic tapes: If the footage is important, digitize it. “If you’re sitting on those tapes, get them to a professional,” he says. “I’ll be recommending Datarecovery.com to my colleagues.” To see the full interview, visit datarecovery.com.

    Datarecovery.com is a worldwide leader in professional video digitization, data loss prevention and data recovery services. With four locations in California, Illinois, Arizona, and Toronto, the company provides a variety of services to thousands of clients each year. Visit https://datarecovery.com for more information.

    Source: Datarecovery.com, Inc.

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