Just like Trevor Horn owned the world of pop with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Prince owned the world of pop for a few years and left a trace that will never vanish.

What should we call the man who owned pop music between 1984 and 1989 ? Jamie Starr ? Christopher ? Alexander Nevermind, Joey Coco, The Artist Formely Known As Prince, The Artist or just Prince ?
Fact is, very few artists have had so much influence on pop music and the fair proof to that is how e-ve-ry-one was trying to have that Minneapolis sound back in the mid-eighties. Prince was then extremely productive, often working round the clock in the recording studio and rehearsing new songs with his band, The Revolution, and a new song would take him...one day to do from the moment he dreamt it to the moment he would finish recording the instruments (all of them, thanx to the Linn Drum and the Oberheim 8 voice synth) and mix it (often ending up not using one instrument or more in the final mix: songs like Dove don't have a bass, Kiss doesn't have reverb....).

If you can bear the bad synchro, the video (unauthorized by Prince but then he's putting a "cancel" on everything that doesn't come directly...

The crowd may only concentrate on the singer or the cutest band member, but one key to commercial (and artistic) success is often a great producer, someone (it can be a team sometimes) who takes a rough gem and tailor it to make it shine and rise. There always were such individuals that could take a song and make it sound crisp and tantalising and thru history we can pinpoint some names: Phil Spector, Benny Gordy, Georges Martin, Holland Dozier, Brian Eno, Butch Vig, Rick Rubin...

One of these producers who really owned his time in pop history was Trevor Horn. He came to the attention of the public early 80's as the Buggles bass player of an embarrassing and huge hit "Video Killed The Radio Stars" (actually, in the video of that song, you can see the ubiquitous movie soundtrack maestro Hans Zimmer and his gigantic Moog) and later on did set up a label that would become iconic of his sound and vision: ZTT.

One of his signing was Frankie Goes To Hollywood and their anthem called "Relax" was going to be the soundtrack of many, many clubs in 1984 despite being banned by the BBC: as a revenge it went to top the charts for five consecutive weeks and their following...

It starts out like yet another rock music documentary where the band obviously believes he's the greatest thing since The Beatles but you soon cannot help to feel something is about to burst open...

And it does. Rebel Scum is an extraordinary documentary that begins with a Bible Belt punk band called "The Dirty Works" performing and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, his singer Christopher Scum starts to violently hit himself on the forefront with the microphone and obviously starts to bleed intensively while continuing to sing...You know this is not going to be an average movie...

And from then on, it's a deep dive into an abyss of addiction, delusion, bad times and even worst times again and again. But you cannot stop watching it cos it's one side of reality few music documentaries show: there's the glitter and the strass with Pop Idol where everything is just about how well the singer re-sang that Wilson Pickett song and how it looked good with that Armani suit on and then you have the sad reality of people stuck in a system where drugs, alcohol, family disfunctions, religion and hopeless hope just drive people in the gutter...

I watched Rebel Scum with...

In a market which is schrinking everyday, one needs to find new ways to get exposure and revenues and we've been long advocate of bands trying to break thru with the licencing of tneir songs for commercials, videogames and movies.

Of course, it's easy to say but harder to do but this should be on the to-do list of every band who wants to make a revenue these days: send your works to supervisors who deal with commercials, movies and videogames.

An example ? The sweet-sounding Jezabels: without a label but their own, this aussie band has succeed in opening many doors thru intensive touring to build up an audience and airplays on a specifically indie-oriented state-funded Triple J radio. That landed them support which eventaully climaxed with a few pretigious australian awards.

But what was really the push to more exposure, and paving the road to international tours and festival bookings was the inclusion of one of their song as the soundtrack for the Red Bull backed BMX rider Danny MacAskill video: it started at 20.000 views the first day and topping more than 20 millions in 18 months...

So, bands and artists: when you have new material ready and if...

Sabina England, multimedia artist, poet, filmmaker (see her excellent short movie on the left hand side) and playwrighter is going to hate me for this, but under her punk stance and fierce eyes that say fuck-you-world she's in fact a deeply romantic artist and her work embodies all the hopes, sorrows, violence, prejudice, desires, lust and envies, macaber angles and sunny moments that we all have inside ourselves when we haven't been eaten out alive and spit out on the pavement by The System.

At the same time, she doesn't play the game right: as a Desi (in Wiki, Desi refers to the people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and, increasingly, to the people, cultures, and products of their diaspora), some might expect a docile woman, waiting to fill in the shoes that have been carved for her by traditions, centuries of ways of doing/being. No way, no way, she's a strong opiniated woman with ideas, dreams and behaviors that will set your world and hers in fire if you don't look twice and see all the superb humanity, the warm Understanding and the Love behind it all.

As a brown skinned woman living in the West, she has to suffer being an outcast even...

You've got to hand it to Noël Gallagher, ex-Oasis, he has a big mouth, knows how to use it and how to give plenty to the medias, but this interview he gave at Coachella 2012 is filled with some interesting thoughts and many, many four letter words starting with f. And even a clean shaved gesture to the camera of his middle finger. That's our Noël :)

His comments about the state of the music industry, or what's left of it, replaces the artist at the middle of the equation.

(Manchester accent ON) "The consumer gets more powerful now and the consumer is king so the consumer gets what he wants. But as I understand it, the consumer didn't f*** want Jimi Hendrix but they got him and it changed the world. And the consumer didn't want Sergeant Peppers, but they got it and they didn't want The Sex Pistols and they got it. And now there's an attitude in the music business where it's like "let's keep the consumer happy" cos that's f**** what keeps the music business go around. (...) F*** the customer, the customer doesn't know what he wants, you f*** give it to him".(Manchester accent OFF)

Well, you can say whatever you want about the Gallagher brothers but this is...

Who would have think that Kraftwerk, the elegant german band initiated by the two rich kids Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider (soon join on percussion by the two middle class workers Wolfgang Flür and classically trained Karl Bartos) would have sold out 8 consecutive shows at the Moma museum in New York City in less than an hour ?

There's no doubt that Kraftwerk is one of the most important group in the history of music, period. But one can doubt about its real actual legacy when, 50 years after it's been created, Kraftwerk is now the sole lawyers-powered trademark of Ralf Hutter who shows himself on stage in his fluo pyjama and three rather anonymous musicians. We're a far cry from the uber creative nucleus that were Hutter-Schneider-Bartos-Flur between Radioactivity (1975) and Electric Cafe (1986) before Kraftwerk somehow began to slide down in a different mode punctuated by the immense love of cycling that was Hutter's addiction. Back then, a normal day at Kling-Klang studio (their Dusseldorf hide-out) would see them cycling during the afternoon, going to have an ice-cream at daybreak and start long, loooong nights in the studio. Somehow, this immensely slow...

Mute is an extraordinary label I can't help falling in love with again and again.

After spending my youth dancing to the sounds of Depeche Mode or Fad Gadget, after questioning Daniel Miller's sanity when he signed Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds on a label previously only dedicated to the Love of Synths (and soon realizing he was right, of course), after seeing Mute fall into the arms of EMI but successfully bouncing back to independence again, this exoskeletal ear and heart of Daniel has recently seen new crops emerging and these are true discoveries and brilliant artists. And, once again, Mute cuts all codes by signing amazing people who make amazing music you wouldn't think could fit in with Mute because they don't correspond to the old electronic label image. But they do because... they are extraordinary artists on an extraordinary label.

Beth Jean Houghton is "just" that.

She started playing guitar relatively late, around 16, and her first musical offerings were very folk indeed and somehow that tag follows her, but the latest album from Beth Jeans Houghton And The Hooves Of Destiny “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose" is definitely not folk, nor innocent or...

While the music industry is looking for better days and the live market is saturated (some huge festivals are even forced to call it a day), there's a brand new sector which is booming above all expectations: cruise ships linked to music !

In recent years, promoters have merge together vacations and music in a newest form: embark on a cruise, the Carribeans is a must, and see your favorite band, surrounded by roughly 30 other bands sometimes, during 3 or 4 days of musical nirvana. It's all there: the music, the drinks, the food, the fun...just add some sun, a very specific festival site (the sea, with the stage often build over the swimming pool on deck A), the feeling of being a respected customer (bar people are here 100 times more pleasant than your usual festival beer tent attendee and they are never miles away), the specificity of the location, the let-go attitude one gets into...

And it's a definitive success as points it out a good article in The New York Times. Reasons of the success ? They are several but somehow the link between enjoying a holiday while seeing bands you love is a golden one: everyone feels it is a special place and bands love it as...

Acrassicauda was the first Iraki heavy-metal band and as such it has been thru hell...They kinda could play gigs under Saddam's regime but headbanging wasn't authorized as it was too reminescent of the orthodox jews headmoves when praying (!) and they had to compose a song to the glory of the ex-dictator.

Vice magazine, a Montreal-born pop cutlure mag, wrote about them back in 2004 and that started interests from readers everywhere, and maybe too much interest from islamic factions which started to persecute Acrassicauda, thinking they were Saddam's protegees or, wost, US Forces protegees. Life began to be extremely difficult for them and they had to flee Irak and went to Syria. In 2007, the documentary "Heavy-Metal In Bagdad" (with Spike Jonze as exective producer !) started to be filmed and that angered the Syrian authorities who threw the band out of visa. They had to go to Turkey and sell all their equipment to be able to survive.

The Vice Magazine somehow felt guilty of such troubles as they were the ones behind the exposure of Acrassicauda to the world, and the documentary was their project. They decided to give 40.000 us $ to the band and relocated them to...

Bram Stoker, the man who wrote Dracula, was a clever and educated man (he graduated with honors in...mathematics) and the contract he dealt with the publishers of what was originally called "The Un-Dead" and later became Dracula when first published in 1897 was a tough one for the publishers and got Bram a very good royalties deal.

At the times, authors would received about 10 to 15 cents top from the sales of a book, while dear ol' Bram got 20% (altho he wouldn't get anything from the 1000 books sold). We all know what happen after that: Dracula became a hit (and Bram lost the rights on his book for the USA, the reasons for that are still unknown...)

This is the perfect moment to once again state that artists shouldn't sign anything just because a label manager in a record company, or a manager, or a publisher, or a record producer, tell them they are the best thing since sliced bread. If your work excites someone enough to the point of handling you a contract, chances are your work could excite some other people as well and you'll have the choice to sign up something better by making them altering the contract the way you want them.

Of course, we're a...

The US Congress passed a Copyright law, back in 1978, stating that after 35 years, songwriters will be able to reclaim publishing rights from record labels and publishers if they introduced termination notices at least two years before the recoup date. This means that, on january 1st 2013, many artists will have back the publishing rights on songs they wrote, or co-wrote. And we're talking artists as important as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Pink Floyd (for recordings done in 1978) but the list will go on and on as years go by.

That sounds good, no ? But not so fast: some major labels, EMI USA at the forefront, are arguing that the artists were by contract their employees and therefore all works performed as employee belongs to the company (corporate authorship). Which means that EMI USA, along with other labels and publishing companies who did have artists as employees, are fighting to retain copyrights on songs written by the artists who were signed with them...Without getting into the nitty-gritty of things, one-sided unbalanced contracts are already the norm for most contracts, the artists being all too eager to quickly sign a deal, so 35 years seem...

Sometimes, a song is just good enough and it's better not to reach out too much to discover more about the artist. You're getting caught by the sounds and the melody, and maybe the video hits the right chord but sometimes, it's only skin deep: there's nothing behind the song...Or worst: the band is hollow and vain and all they wanted was those 5 minutes of fame.

And sometimes, the song touches you, and the story behind the artist or the band just makes it shines specially and the deeper you go, the more interesting the artist is. Baloji is that. And more.

Born in Congo but raised in Belgium, Baloji ("sorcerer" in Tschiluba language) was a slam artist in a band called Starflam and he could have stay that way, rhyming the nights away with his rich and witty lines, but he decided hip hop wasn't somehow enough. A letter from his mum which he hadn't seen or heard of for the last 15 years after he ran from home, led him to undertake a journey back to his roots, back to Congo but also back to Ostend where he could feel common vibes with Marvin Gaye, another man in exile who took cover in the belgian city-by-the-sea. And an album was born from the incredibly emotive...

It's not that long ago that Myspace was the absolute place-to-be and no band could do without having a Myspace page. Then, in 2008, numbers began to fall and Facebook took over as primary social network. What happened ? Where is Tom ?

Launched in 2003, Myspace quickly became an indispensable tool in every band's promokit and it was even neck-to-neck with Google as the most visited US website in 2006. Bands and fans were coming in flocks and Myspace was flooded with zillions of profiles and everyone was Tom's friend.

The company was acquired in 2005 by News Corp, a Rupert Murdoch's company for 580 millions $ . They had huge ideas to make this profitable, and initiated a deal with Google for online ads, making their purse heavier but also making the user experience slower and filled with even more ads here and there. Then, contrary to Facebook, they kept the door closed to outside developers, where Facebook open themselves up (and everyone remembers how free games and apps on Facebook really made it go up and up and up). Then, for no reasons at all, people started to migrate from Myspace to Facebook, and Myspace has not been able to cut that flow.

In 2011...

We have it good here, in the West. We can safely make music and while the production tools costs are going down every day, we still can complain about bad sales and piracy and Spotify paying artists 0,002€ per song streamed. And we have shows like Pop Idol or The Voice mis-educating people about what's an artist and what it takes to become one...

While we're doing these things confortably (I mean, the more upset we are is when the broadband access is down, right ?) other artists and musicians are confronted to far worst situations. Take Tinariwen, the "african tuareg blues" band from Mali who just won a Grammy Award: they are as far from your basic top 40 music band as it can be....

The core members of Tinariwen actually met in 1982 and are quite the focus of attention on the Tuareg movement as this used-to-be-but-not-anymore forgotten (rather desertic) region of Africa is wanted by many people; multinational corporates (the region is rich in petrol and uranium), drug smugglers (very useful platform to Europe for the South American cocaine cartels), AQMI terrorists (the north african leg of Al Qaida) and diverse people, communities and countries wanting a piece...

Just when the West seems to slowly fall into boredom yet again, and with a music scene as dangerous as a sunday afternoon you would spend at home, Russia comes up with good news: yes, some people are also using the music media to pass on feelings and opinions that are a long way from your everyday "girl meets boy" love song.

Pussy Riot, a feminist punk band from Moscow, famous for their situationist protests and invasion of public spaces, is seeing some of his members being jailed and risking up to 7 years in prison for various "crimes" or, as the State puts it: "suspicion of committing a crime and violation of public order" mixed with a good dosis of "inciting people to hate religion" in a country where the bishop wears a 40.000 Euros watch...That's enough to have them stuck in a prison cell up to the hearing in late april...Two members of the band, both mother of young children, are on a hunger strike to protest their arrest.

Organised like a art movement that would have a 360 set up in order to strike flash gigs fast and move up qucikly, with up to ten band members and people gravitating around them, editing videos, releasing songs, organizing protests against...

Tim Burton, the man who goes filming with all his friends, wife, music composer, monteur, Sisters Of Mercy record collection, dog trainer et all, got fired from Disney in 1984, days after they released his short film "Frankenweenie", on the sole excuse that it was too scary for kids and Disney was an all-family entertainement company. What did they expect from a frankly gothic moviemaker like Tim Burton who's first movie was "Vincent", a six minute black and white stop motion movie about a boy fantasizing he was bloody Vincent Price ?

The talented man, who after all did gems like "Edward Scissorhands", "Beetljuice" and "Mars Attack", must feel like Karma does well as Disney has resign him (for two movies, the first one being the terrible terrible and it's not a typo if I repeat terrible "Alice In Wonderland") will release in october a 3D full feature remake of the movie that saw them fired him. It surely must feel good to have this gentle revenge on The Establishment. It's just a shame Disney doesn't seem to know how to work well and creatively with Burton as their latest co-work, "Alice In Wonderland", is nothing but a giant druggy nothing.

In Burton's version of...

When we thought it was all clear and simple: banks owned the world, the financial crisis is their fault, the music industry is hurt but not dead and a new business model is on its way...But no, nothing is sure no more as The Sex Pistols have signed a new record deal with Universal for the re-release (35 years after the original) of an expanded version of "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here Are The Sex Pistols".

John Lydon, a very clever and articulate man when he thinks it's worth it, has these great words about the new deal: "Music can be great, when done by the great. The Sex Pistols are the greatest. Universal now has a trophy room, music is the imitation of nature, the Sex Pistols are nature, so please give generously. Thank you."
To which the Universal PR replies: ""To be given the opportunity to re-evaluate the Sex Pistols catalogue is every music lover’s dream. We’re looking forward to working with the band and celebrating their impact on worldwide culture."

My oh my, no doubt this signature is going to be blessed with a few funny ups and downs as these two are made to get on well !

When Punk came about, music in Europe was all about progressive...

It's not easy to be the ex-guitarist and founder from The Smiths (especially when the ex-singer Big Mouth can't stop act like one) or to look like a slimmer and healthier version of Trent Reznor, but Johnny Marr does very well these days and his brain is evidently clear and sharp.

A bit of history: Johnny Marr is a brilliant guitar player/composer, he put together one of the best rock band in history (The Smiths), then went on to play with one of the most underrated UK songwriter who's new work we miss a lot (Matt Johnson from The The), formed and played in the superband Electronic (Bernard Summer from New Order/Joy Division, joined by Karl Bartos (ex-Kraftwerk) for some songs) and has more recently enjoy success with Modest Mouse and The Cribs. He's currently working on a solo album but do find time to make very interesting university lectures and this is where we join him thanx to an article that came out in the Irish magazine Independent News.

In his lecture, Johnny (who i played soccer table against a few years ago and he did beat me, bastard ;)) goes back in memory lane to serve his point: if you want to have a real success (in my book it means being able...

Little did Steve Jobs know back then that Itunes would somehow sound the end of the album per se and having it digitalized, cut down into all its separate parts and sold on a track per track basis or as a full album, pushed people to alter their way of enjoying music by just buying a couple of songs off the album. It has to be said that, too often, albums are made with fillers holding together a couple of singles. Artists, you can do better. No, you NEED to do better !

This of course is a giant loss for artists and the music industry as we go from a system that sells singles taken from full album you would buy if enjoying the single to a system where you buy only the tracks you like...And this is like saying a movie should be cut to the only essential scenes (let's take away all the slow parts and concentrate on the action moments or the romantic gatherings). Might work for some movies tho, but in most cases one would lose the plot, the feel, the mood and end up watching nothing but a 10 minutes action pack trailer.... Albums in music are like that: you need the ups and downs, the slopes and the main straight to enjoy at full capacity all the assets the music comes...

We had a little column on monday about the musical intermezzo from the 2012 Superbowl and how empty, hollow and ego-histerical were the performances of the two entertainement divas on that stage. There are ways to make yourself heard in 2012, but maybe there are more important things to do than just piling up another million dollar in a secret bank account in Caymans Islands, no ?

Artists, musicians in particular, have always been at the forefront of mass movements and (r)evolutions. One cannot deny the latest crisis on the planet, with the 2008 demise of some US banks being the iceberg tip of a worldwide financial domino catastrophy, has taken its toll on all aspects of the economy, and the music industry really didn't need that. But there you go: one can pretend all is well and parade like nothing happens and some others, like Tom Yorke from Radiohead, can go out and use their fame and public side to emphasis on issues that are socially and humanly important.

In an interesting interview in superb internet mag Dazed, Robert Del Naja (of Massive Attack fame) explains how the attitude to revolts and mass manifestations have changed recently, especially in the...

Making a video can go multiples ways...but all of them are time-consuming and most of them imply a rather large amount of money that needs to be spend in order to get something of good technical quality. There are enough rather technically unacceptable and very, very low-fi looking videos around and if you want yours to come across the ambiant deafening noise, you need something that will touch your fans, make them fall in love with your song, make them buy the song, or the album it's on, having people talking about your and your music and attracts new fans as well

There's now a new possibility to have great looking videos made by technically savvy image people: outsource them to the biggest movie industry on the world: Bollywood !
Drew Smith, a canadian artist, did just that: he commandeered a Bollywood director to shoot a video on his latest song and the result is of very good quality, whether you like it or not: images and sounds lare top notch, and while the plot is frankly derivative from the idea of the song in the first place, the end result is charming, pleasing to the eye and the mind and..Drew has people talking about him! And frankly i don't see...

There's no doubt we need music as much as we need artists that are above us mere mortals. When confronted to the boys next door's band or to the Pop Idol of last year, we can only gasp and ponder what it is all about...People can dance to a great tune on saturday night, but ultimately what they want is gaze the entire week on a great looking picture of a REAL artist, someone who has things to say and say them loud, someone that will frankly makes us travel much further than the cash-out page on Amazon or Itunes: artists that makes us dream, us humans, that we're better than what we really are.

Undoubtedly, Lana Del Rey has been the mystery artist of 2011. Everyone has heralded her as the Indie Comet of the year, that she made it on nothing but a great song and an eerie video. That she didn't need a major to succeed or agents with zillions of network to make it. We're all so wrong. To make it clear: no, she didn't make it overnight, no, she isn't an indie dazzling phenomena coming from nowhere, and no she isn't even indie. So what ? She is a hard working artist who slowly but surely made it cos she successfully added up all the right ingredients (whether you like her...

So, you're online, gently browsing thru the Disney Store, looking for a gift you need to buy to your sister-in-law's children and gee isn't it hard to choose between all these pink tshirts and princesses outfits. Well, there are a few branded tshirts with The NightMare Before Christmas and that's a success among many, many Disneypark fans but that was as far as it went for Disney in terms of brutal originality... Until now as Disney has just released a Tshirt direclty inspired from Joy Division's iconic sleeve "Unknown Pleasures".

Most of the alternative music websites are going awol about it and while i'm sure Disney's lawyers have prepared themselves to return Joy Division's lawyers phonecalls any moment now, one can wonder about the rather distateful feel behind it. It is one thing to name a gloomy rock band after what if historically a group of enslaved jewish women forced to have sex with german offciers in the concentration camps, it is a totally different matter to use that specific cover design to make a commercial tshirt one hope to sell a lot to keep the investors happy and see many young, and less young, visitors of the Disney Parks gently stroll around in...

Where is David Jones ? Where is The Thin White Duke ? Where is Ziggy ? Decades of music fans can indeed wonder where their favorite workalcoholic singer is, and what he does these days...The thing is: David Bowie turned 65 yesterday and while even older stars like Keith Richards plan to go on tour yet again, the thin chameleon hasn't been seen or heard in ages. His last works were an album in 2003 and a song in 2005, a couple of commercials (one with...Snoop Dog), some apperances on stages with bands like Arcade Fire or Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters, some awards and discreet chanting here and there but nothing like the Bowie we're used too...

And it's missing. The Man had different periods (psychedelic folk/glam rock/white soul/Berlin/Mainstream Bowie/Tin Machine/electronics-bass and drums), he also had true visionnary moments and his music did capture most of the Zeitgeist indeed: no one can forget his Ziggy days nor his Berlin stance which probably launched a new musical genre by itself (New Wave is at least 5 pages off David Bowie's attitude and music/vocals cues). Now, in 2012, one wonder: what is Bowie doing ?

David Bowie also did something totally unique by...

After the excellent "The Wilderness Downtown" video which went viral by incorporating a cooler than cool Google Maps integration, the great canadian band Arcade Fire is doing it again !
With the help of Vincent Morrisset, they propose a specially dedicated website where you can watch a clip for their song Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) but also have a go at interacting with it.

On http://www.sprawl2.com/, you can choose between watch the normal video but also interfere with it with your own webcam or with your mouse. You can somehow intervene with the way the characters in the video move, it's funny and will no doubt benefit from quite a buzz.

Now, there are a few things one can deduct from this, besides the fact that Arcade Fire is indeed a great band...
1/ one need to multiply the offerings to fans, make something happen, build something with consistency.
2/ a dedicated website per operation has the advantage to make things less crowded on the band's main website, it's easier to understand (and another website with good links and can no doubt up your Google ranking).
3/ don't be afraid to...

There was a time where it seemed having a song being played on radios and a video on A rotation at MTV was all you needed to have a hit or a song that was doing well...

Now, things have changed, the pie that's the music market has to be shared with other ways of entertainment: videogames and smartphones have eaten up the largest part of it. So, bands have to find new ways to attract fans, and make them superfans: those are the ones who don't just click on "Like" on Facebook but actually love the band enough to buy the records and, maybe, the merchandising.

Manchester Orchestra, a band from Altanta, has come up with a neat idea to put the fans in the middle of the game: they want them to sing the chorus on their song "Virgin". They built an entire website around this project (http://www.webuiltthishouse.com), allowing you to sing the song, record it (there is even a clik at the start of the song, with the lyrics and all) and send it automatically to Soundcloud where an avatar is being created for you. Later on, after one month, Manchester Orchestra takes all the voices (excluding mine cos I sing like a crow on Prozac...

The most elegant man in rock music, Nick Cave, has, again, decided to move on.

After having been frontman in iconic bands such as The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and, more recently, Grinderman, after achieving multiple awards and even mainstream charts success with the murdorous ballad "When The Wild Roses Grow" (with Kylie Minogue), the australian artist has declared, right in the middle of a concert, that Grinderman will no longer exist...

Where will he go from here ? Inspired singer and lyricist, Nick Cave is also a writer and has released books and novels since 1988. His latest novel, "The Death Of Bunny Monro", makes Bret Easton Ellis' books look like roses in a spring garden: Bunny Monro is dirty and depraved, highly immoral and violent. It's the works of the best to make us shiver and shake when sharing experiences, especially when written with such talent. "The Death Of Bunny Monro" also came out as an audio book, and an Iphone app, which was carefully scored by Cave (and Warren Ellis, his musical partner) like a movie soundtrack: slow, emotionnal work that takes you by surprise...

Where will Cave go from here ? Another band ? Another book...

The Chemical Brothers are one of the longest living electronic band around, and man didn't they survived a few trends, always at the tip of the latest dance fad.

Starting in 1993, at the peak of the sampling wave, they went from being Big beat to full electronica, techno (of course) , and seem to now embrace neo-psychedelia. Very agile and always with a finger on the pulse of clubs, they are one of the only arena electronic bands, swimming with ease when crowds numbers are huge.

The Chemical Brothers will release the concert film "Don't Think" in early February. It was shot at the Fuji Rock festival in Japan and promesses a full experience of sounds and psychedelia. The soundtracks has been mixed in 7:1 and I didn't even know I had enough ears to listen in that format...

the website: http://www.dontthinkmovie.com/

You know at Kollector we're very much into people taking pride in their work as artists and while mainstream music rules fine in most cases, there's nothing like someone standing up from the crowd and being the voice of a generation, or a cause, or a movement, (or just for himself) but with a difference: a unique individual who never takes NO for an answer.

And Joe Strummer, who sadly passed away December 22 2002, was that: a loud, opiniated but charming man, very politically aware that stood up for the rights of the People, but also an exceptional artist : he was member of the iconic band The Clash and helped give Punk its best letters. He was also very involved in politics and took part in many Rock Against Racism concerts, AIDS campaigns, and his last records were actually pressed carbon free as Joe Strummer had trees replanted to offest the carbon foot of his releases...

Together with The Clash, they released two of the best rock albums ever: Sandinista and London Calling.

Julian Temple, an excentric and adorable english movie maker, has made a magnificent documentary on Joe Strummer http://www....

We had a blog entry the other day about how the Y Generation sees very little evil at all into corporates funding artists. And maybe this is one of the ways Music can expand and grow: commercial companies seeing the benefits of being a sponsor. Just like in the Renaissance where artists were being able to survive and do their work thanx to rich benefactors...

In this case, Rolex his a sponsor for the Arts since 2002. More than 170 artists from different fildls (dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts) have been assembled into doing a one year project between a mentor and his protege. People like Youssu N'Dour, Martin Scorcese or Peter Sellars have teamed up with youngs gifted artists and have interact with them for a period of at least 6 weeks, assembling new pieces or just communicating together...A bit like If Yoda a swiss watch was wearing to Jedi Padawan lessons to give :)

Brian Eno (universally known as a musical genius since Roxy Music to his work with U2 and others) has mentor Australian born artist Ben Frost (a post rock musician now living in Iceland) and together they made music, talked philosophy and arts....Here is a very interesting 5...

If you're a little bit serious about the music biz, or if you are "simply" a music lover, you cannot ignore the phenomenom that's Lady Gaga. In a few years, she has grown out of being a rather obscure indie musician to a planetary status of POP STAR, with no less that 25 millions album sales and 70 million singles sales plus a media coverage that's about permanent.

Now, we can ask ourselves how worthy she is, but we all know the charts align good artists or terrible but successful business coup without second thoughts, and the most flamboyant and creative artist can share the Top Ten with horrendous copycats, bad singers equipped with AutoTune or lavish singers who sell their physical assets more than their dubious songs. We cannot ignore the fact that the mass is often ill driven and it will buy a marvellous piece of music one week and fall down for a vicious marketing trick the week after.

So, what's the deal with Lady Gaga? This little video-clip "deconstructs" how she succeeds so well: simply put, everything is being taken care of. The songs are good more often than not, her looks are great and polarizing, the PR approach is intense but...

Interesting inside view on how David Bowie recorded one of his best song ever: Heroes.
The place ? Hansa Studio in Berlin, the year is 1977. Bowie is very busy indeed, he has just released one of his greatest, but rather uncommercial, album with Low but also produced The Idiot and Lust For Life with Iggy Pop.

Bowie's method and unorthodox ways were conforted by the presence of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. While the basic backing tracks are often resume of jamming done with a "normal" band playing around some chods structures, everything else is very experimental: Brian Eno fiddles with an EMS Synthi while Robert Fripp delights himself in discipline and feedback. All that with the limitations of recording in these days: you can't really sync two multitracks machines and you are down with what's in the studio: nothing less, nothing more. And this is where David Bowie's personality comes into play: while the recording process is laidback, David gets very tense when writing lyrics and often picks up subjects commended by the Gestalt...or outside the window.

Riveting stuff from an amazing album.

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The problem with myth is that they sell something foggy and mysterious, which makes the crowd go bezerk for them, but that stop us from seeing the truth, what's really beyond the things we think we know...
Let's try with a simple test, on a musical genre most music lovers (that's you and I) think they know...You'll be amazed how far from the facts we sometimes are...

1. Grunge began in Seattle
2. Grunge was overwhelmingly male
3. Nirvana came from Seattle
4. Kurt Cobain was murdered
5. Cobain didn't want to be famous
6. Cobain wrote most of Hole's second album, Live Through This
7. Nevermind was actually crap
8. Grunge was all dark, gloomy, woe-is-me music
9. Cobain was grunge's only casualty
10. Grunge had a great legacy

Write down the answers, and then go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/24/grunge-myths-nirvana-kurt-co... and discover what THE TRUTH really is :))

Let's try to not be patronizing, but some artists do concentrate a lot on the music, which is totally fine of course, but step 2 (making it known) is often forgotten or, at best, badly handled.
Jess Boyer, from Blog Zimbaland, has been putting down some interesting notes about it.

Basically, these 10 points are:

Not providing basic information: your mum knows you and loves you dearly, but you need to think larger and tell the world who you are and how great your music is.
Not creating connections: whether we like it or not, being on the grid is necessary to make your music known and appreciated.
Not writing about yourselves: come on, now you can let your ego run free :)
Not replying quickly: you still need the time to think about what to answer but, please, do reply.
Not having a consistent online persona: don't scare away your public !
Being scared of other bands: on the contrary, a comparative watch can make you learn you a lot.
Not linking: interaction is vital.
Not tracking social media success: it all adds up. you need to know where it's happening for you.
Not capturing fans data: in this age of one-to-one...