Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Shel Talmy, Who Produced the Who and the Kinks, Dies at 87

      by

      Though he was American, he helped define the sound of the British Invasion after settling in London in the early 1960s.Shel Talmy, a Chicago-born record producer who helped unleash the id of the British Invasion with a raw, grinding sound on proto-punk salvos like “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks and “My Generation” by the Who, died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.His death was announced on his Facebook page, where he had been sharing reminiscences about many of his past recordings with a long list of acts, which also included Manfred Mann, Chad & Jeremy, the Easybeats and a teenage David Bowie, who at the time was using his given surname, Jones.Mr. Talmy’s climb to the top of the British music scene actually began in Los Angeles, where he had lived since his teens. In 1962, he was working as a recording engineer at a studio in Hollywood when he headed for London for what he expected would be a five-week vacation, hoping he might scrape together enough work there to pay for the trip.Before he left, his friend Nick Venet, who produced the Beach Boys for Capitol Records, offered him the acetates of some of his hit records to help Mr. Talmy drum up work. In a 2012 interview with Finding Zoso, a fan site devoted to the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, whom Mr. Talmy used on many sessions, he recalled that Mr. Venet had told him: “Help yourself to my discs, whatever you want to use you can use. You can tell them it was yours.”Once in London, Mr. Talmy passed off hit records like “Surfin’ Safari” as his own in a meeting with Dick Rowe of Decca Records. “I thought, what the hell,” he said in an interview with the music writer Richie Unterberger, “I’m not going to be here long. I might as well be as brash as possible.” By the end of the meeting, he said, Mr. Rowe had told him, “You start next week.”Mr. Talmy had already notched his first hit, “Charmaine,” a country-inflected number by the Irish vocal trio the Bachelors, when his ruse became obvious. But by that point he was on his way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Prosecutors Accuse Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs of Trying to Contact Witnesses From Jail

      by

      The government said the music mogul had been attempting to obstruct federal prosecutors by instructing others to make three-way calls and securing help from other inmates.Prosecutors accused Sean Combs of continuing efforts to obstruct the federal racketeering and sex trafficking case against him from a Brooklyn jail, alleging in court papers filed on Friday night that the music mogul had been trying to evade government monitoring by seeking to arrange three-way phone calls and to buy the use of other inmates’s phone privileges.The government’s account came a week before another hearing to decide whether Mr. Combs would be granted release on bail. Since September, he has been incarcerated at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, inside a special housing unit where high-profile inmates are often assigned.In the court filing, the government accused Mr. Combs of “relentless efforts” to contact potential witnesses, including by attempting to use three-way calls to contact associates whom prosecutors consider part of his “criminal enterprise.” Prosecutors also accused Mr. Combs of making unauthorized calls by using the telephone accounts of at least eight other inmates, instructing others to pay them — sometimes through their commissary accounts — to secure their cooperation.“The defendant has demonstrated an uncanny ability to get others to do his bidding — employees, family members, and M.D.C. inmates alike,” prosecutors wrote.Details of the recipients and substance of the phone calls were redacted in the court documents. The calls generated using other inmates’ privileges were not identified as being directed at witnesses, but prosecutors said they were evidence of Mr. Combs’s disregard for the jail’s regulations and were part of what they described as obstruction efforts.Representatives for Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, did not immediately respond to the allegations about Mr. Combs’s communications. He has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denied the criminal charges, arguing that the drug-fueled sexual encounters called “freak offs” at the heart of his case were all consensual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Shaboozey Seeks ‘Good News’ in Another Bar, and 7 More New Songs

      by

      Hear tracks by Yola, Julia Holter, Angel Olsen and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Shaboozey, ‘Good News’On his new single, “Good News,” Shaboozey doesn’t stray far from the basics of his No. 1, Grammy-nominated hit, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” Once again he leans into his troubles with a guitar-strumming verse, a chorus with hearty male singalongs and a familiar setting; the singer is “the man at the bar confessing his sins.” But this time, there’s no consolation, not even temporary, in whiskey and dancing. The chorus is rowdy but there’s no happy ending; the good news he needs never arrives. JON PARELESYola, ‘Symphony’The English vocal powerhouse Yola spells out her pleasure principle on “Symphony,” a funky, upbeat celebration of sensuality that will appear on her forthcoming EP, “My Way.” “Play my heartstrings with both your hands,” she commands, “and I’ll sing like a symphony for you.” Then, on a passionately belted bridge, she makes good on her word. ZOLADZSalute and Jessie Ware, ‘Heaven in Your Arms’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The 25th Latin Grammys Showed Their Age

      by

      While Latin music looks ahead, its biggest awards show, broadcast live from Miami on Thursday night, looked back.The 25th annual Latin Grammy Awards, broadcast live on Univision from the Kaseya Center in Miami on Thursday night, consciously looked backward. Frequent winners collected more top awards. Clips from past shows bracketed live shots. There were fervent tributes to departed superstars and nods to musical dynasties.In an era when many Latin musicians are experimenting and gleefully warping genre boundaries, the Latin Grammys flaunted the familiar. Perhaps that’s inevitable for an institution marking a milestone. But that earnestness cut back on the old Latin Grammy carnival spirit. The show still had some visual flair — particularly in the surreal, asymmetrical dresses worn by women who appeared as presenters and attendees. But its music held back.The Dominican songwriter Juan Luis Guerra and his group 4.40 won awards for album of the year for “Radio Güira,” a six-song EP, and record of the year for the single “Mambo 23.” “Radio Güira” also won the award for bachata/merengue album and “Mambo 23” for tropical song. Guerra has won 28 Latin Grammys, dating back to two at the first event in 2000.Jorge Drexler, who won song of the year on Thursday night, now has 15 Latin Grammys.Zak Bennett/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe Uruguayan songwriter Jorge Drexler’s “Derrumbe” (“Collapse”) — a brief, poetic ballad with turbulent studio undercurrents — was named song of the year. It also tied with Kany García’s “García” for cantautor (singer-songwriter) song. Drexler now has 15 Latin Grammys.The Latin Grammy broadcast, like the Grammy Awards show, focuses on performances, not presentations. Only nine of the 58 Latin Grammy categories received awards on the broadcast; the others were presented earlier Thursday afternoon on a webcast. Edgar Barrera was named both songwriter and producer of the year, and the Argentine songwriter Nathy Peluso won three awards. The Portuguese-language categories included two awards for the Brazilian songwriter Jota.Pê and a third for the engineers of his album “Se o Meu Peito Fosse o Mundo” (“If My Chest Were the World”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Review: The Philharmonic Gives a Master Class in Programming

      by

      The composer John Adams led the New York Philharmonic in a program of contemporary works that didn’t make a big deal of contemporary music.For a master class in orchestral programming, look to this week’s concerts at the New York Philharmonic.Blink, though, and you might miss them. The program, while the best-crafted of the season so far, opened on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall and repeats only once, on Saturday. Led by John Adams, our greatest living American composer, in his occasional capacity as a conductor, it is a rarity for this orchestra: an evening billed as ordinary yet featuring mostly contemporary work, with the sole “classic” just eight decades old.You could see the concert as parallel halves, each with a brief, spare 20th-century work (Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten” and Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City”) followed by a hefty modern portrait of California (Gabriella Smith’s new cello concerto, “Lost Coast,” and Adams’s “City Noir”).On a superficial level, you could also call it an evening of contemporary music. Of the four composers, three are alive: Adams, Pärt and the young, brilliant Smith. But even that doesn’t seem fitting for works that nod to centuries-old chant music and film noir.Regardless, these pieces have been assembled, as well as conducted, with thoughtfulness and care. And as an audience member, all you need to do is sit back and enjoy. This is contemporary sound to dispel clichéd fears of abrasive modernism while never cheaply pandering to mass appeal. It’s just fundamentally good music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Sophie Straat Fights Gentrification With Folk Music

      by

      Sophie Straat is reviving a style of music once popular in the working-class bars of Amsterdam to protest an increasingly expensive and homogenized city.On a recent Saturday night, the Dutch singer Sophie Straat took the stage before a raucous crowd at Garage Noord, a sweaty Amsterdam club. “Tonight is about a lot of things, but it’s especially about gentrification,” she said as she launched into “Groen Amsterdam” (“Green Amsterdam”) her ironic song about being priced out of the city.The crowd — largely female, young and Dutch-speaking — danced as the singer, dressed in a leather skirt bearing the words “no fun,” sang about the expensive cargo bikes that have become a fixture of Amsterdam’s increasingly wealthy central neighborhoods. “You watch how I took over the city,” Straat sang in Dutch, adopting the persona of a gentrifying newcomer. “It’s not my fault the bakery is closing.”Straat, 30, has gained a following in the Netherlands in recent years for modernizing a genre of folk music known as smartlap, with punk and pop sounds and lyrics about inequality and gentrification. It has made her a voice for a generation of young Amsterdammers fed up with a city they see as increasingly expensive and homogenized.“I was attracted to her music because it was in Dutch, then I realized it was about not being able to find a place to live — which is exactly what’s happening to me,” said Zoë Schaap, 35, a bartender attending the concert. “The music sounds old-fashioned, but it has a real vibe about what is going on right now.”Straat performing at Garage Noord in Amsterdam.Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Kim Deal Is Ready to Go Solo. It Just Took 4 Decades.

      by

      In her pink-tiled bathroom with a sky-blue tub, Kim Deal gripped a wad of cables in one hand and squatted to peer down a laundry chute.She bought this modest Dayton, Ohio, house in 1990 when she was in two of the defining bands of the alternative era — Pixies and the Breeders — and turned its basement into a laboratory of rock. She eventually added recording gear to the main bedroom, and was demonstrating how she’d threaded its wiring up to the second floor.“There’s a snake down there that has many inputs,” she explained, then dashed up a flight of white wooden stairs with the deftness of someone who’s done it a hundred thousand times. She grinned and pointed at the cords’ destination. Wasn’t it great?It was a crisp October night in the unassuming Midwestern city that’s still home to the Breeders, and leaves rustled beneath Deal’s yellow-soled Hokas. The two-bedroom, like Deal herself, is low-key and designed for music-making. A collection of hard drives lay on the floor in front of a bookshelf holding paperbacks and 45s, though ironically, she’s never been good at keeping a record collection. “Supposedly I have some rare ones,” she said, thumbing through a handful. “This is El Inquilino Comunista, a Spanish band, they were good.”Trends and names come and go, but despite living very much out of the spotlight, Deal has had a grip on the popular imagination for nearly four decades with her confounding lyrics, starry nonchalance and a distinctive singing voice that’s like cotton candy cut with paint thinner. “Cannonball,” a crunchy earworm with a slippery bass line from the Breeders’ second album, “Last Splash,” is sonic shorthand for “the ’90s.” Kurt Cobain loved her songs and took the band on tour with Nirvana in 1993; the 21-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo did the same in 2024.This month, at 63, Deal is finally releasing a full album under her own name, titled “Nobody Loves You More,” that is more than a new twist on a familiar aesthetic. It’s a statement of evolution from a fiercely independent artist in maturity — a project that evolved over the tumultuous years as Deal sorted out her sobriety, pried open old band wounds and devoted herself to her aging parents. Her mother and father both passed before she turned these long-gestating songs into an album. After it was finished, the man who helped make it, her beloved co-conspirator Steve Albini, died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 61.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More