“Widow Unearths Possibly the Rarest Beatles Record Ever Made… Still Sealed…”
A copy of Sgt. Pepper’s with Capitol execs taking the place of the Fab Four is so rare, it is of almost indeterminable value.
Vintage Vinyl News via Daily Swarm

“Merch Masters ICP Cash In On Detroit Music Culture”
Still laughing at the Juggalos? The ICP nets $10 million a year in revenue from music and merch sales.
Via Detroit Free Press

“The Song Remains the Same”
Web music service Lala gets nearly as much money per used per year as iTunes, and is poised to breakout with pending Google and Facebook deals.
Via Forbes

“Cult Musician Mojo Nixon Storms the Web”
Psychobilly artist drop songs on Web for free, looks to reap rewards in increased attention and potential licensing deals.
Via Wall Street Journal

“Scene and Heard: The New Wave of New Age”
Brit paper highlights a new crop of atmospheric analog synth artists without mentioning Neon Indian.
Via the Guardian

It’s John Peel Day today, and in honor of the legendary broadcaster, here are some choice quotes from the reams of interviews he’s done with other broadcasters and journalists. In today’s radically changed music landscape, it’s hard to imagine anyone else looming so large yet staying so grounded and excited about his job.

“It’s rather childish really. I just buy pretty covers, brightly coloured sleeves, interesting names.”
BBC Collective, December 2002

“The thing I like about rock music is the radical changes that happen every 7 or 8 years; that moment when you suddenly wake up one morning and everything looks different. It happened when I heard my first Little Richard record, and then when I heard Country Joe and Hendrix. Now it’s happening again with the Damned and people like that. Music has been through a rather boring patch, but I think it’s getting exciting again now.”
Sounds, 21 May 1977

Celeb 3: Jeff Mills
“What is the most amazing thing (good/bad) you’ve learned from programming music for the public?”
“It’s an interesting question and I could answer it with so many things. But principally, if you try to fake it, they’re on to you straight away.”
Jockey Slut, 2002

“Your show has the highest percentage of listeners under sixteen in the UK. Do you see yourself representing bright geeky teens everywhere, John?”
“To be honest, I see myself representing the kind of bloke who goes round record fairs or stands at the back at gigs feeling a bit too old and slightly uncomfortable.”
Index, 2003

“”I can’t understand this obsession with the past. Radio One and the BBC generally have this anniversary mania. You know in 2007 they’ll be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper on compact disc, and not what’s happening now. They won’t be celebrating A Guy Called Gerald or 808 State. It’s as though the ’60s was some sort of Golden Age and everything else must be considered with reference to it.”
Q, November 1989

“The Clash were perhaps the top UK band that never recorded for you?”
“They did come in actually – they did backing tracks but then said the studios weren’t good enough – not a very punk attitide – though the story from the studio was that they were too out of their heads to do it.”
Interzone Magazine, January 1994

“As I always rather flippantly say, dying for rock and roll at the age of fifty-one shows an appalling sense of timing, So it was something I was reluctant to do. ”
Spiral Scratch, May 1991

“But I was given the O.B.E. for thirty years of service to the BBC. You could see it as selfless dedication to the cause of public-service broadcasting or a shocking lack of ambition. It’s been kind of both, really.”
Index, 2003

“fabric: an oral history”
This extensive look at how fabric arose from an East Market warehouse is telling. Founder Keith Reilly obviously had his head on straight from the get-go: “Every great club I have ever been to has involved descending down a set of stairs.”
Via Resident Advisor

“Set List: Fever Ray at Webster Hall”
“The pallet carrying the lasers from Sweden had fallen over in the truck.” That’s like a haiku for a Fever Ray show, right?
Via the New Yorker

“Innervisions publishes Lost and Found“
This authoritative history of Berlin clubbing will soon be translated into English. Probably too late to include this recent gem of a news item.
Via Resident Advisor

“Do You Drum It, Strum It or Stroke It?”
The Eigenharp, which looks like a computerized bassoon, is the latest electronic instrument meant to bring the studio to the stage. Couldn’t they create something with a more elegant, intuitive interface?
Via BBC

Even when read on a screen, absent his raspy and self-assured delivery, Miles’ words still strike a tone of complete control and confidence. Miles, in this case, being trumpet legend Miles Davis, who successively reinvented jazz by folding in ever more daring influences and visions. Here are some choice quotes from interviews with Miles:

“My troubles started when I learned to play the trumpet and hadn’t learned to dance.”
Playboy, 1962

“About the first thing I can remember as a little boy was a white man running me down a street hollering “Nigger! Nigger!” My father went hunting him with a shotgun. Being sensitive and having race pride has been in my family since slave days. The slave Davises played classical string music on the plantations. My father, Miles the first, was born six years after the Emancipation. He wanted to play music, but my grandfather wanted him to be more than an entertainer for white folks. He made him go to Northwestern to be a dental surgeon. My father is worth more than I am. He’s a high-priced dental surgeon with more practice than he can handle — because he’s good at his business — and he raises hogs with pedigrees. It’s a special breed of hogs with some funny name I would tell you, but I never can remember it.”
Playboy, 1962

“Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ‘em a lot of money.”
Les Tompkins, 1969

“They play different. White musicians seems to lag behind the beat. I don’t know why.”
60 Minutes, 1990

“Nobody can relax at concerts, the musicians or the people, either. You can’t do nothing but sit down, you can’t move around, you can’t have a drink. A musician has to be able to let loose everything in him to reach the people. If the musician can’t relax, how’s he going to make the people feel what he feels? The whole scene of jazz is feeling”
Playboy, 1962

“I roomed with Charlie Parker for a year. I used to follow him around, down to 52nd Street, where he used to play. Then he used to get me to play. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he used to tell me. ‘Go ahead and play.’ Every night I’d write down chords I heard, on matchbook covers. Everybody helped me. Next day I’d play those chords all day in the practice room of Julliard, instead of going to classes.”
Rolling Stone, 1969

Image by exquisitur used under Creative Common Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Funneling the amazing quips and quotes of Tom Waits into a greatest hits list is sort of like trying to drink from the proverbial fire hose – it’s difficult and prone to giving you whiplash. In fact, he’s probably the only artist whose best interview was with himself. That said, here’s an attempt to list some of the more choice quotes he’s uttered in the company of the press corp.

“I don’t like the word poetry and I don’t like poetry readings and I usually don’t like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I’m kind of a curator, and I’m kind of a night-owl reporter. Maybe a little bit of Damon Runyon in me or something… I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I’m a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.”

Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1976

“Naw – I don’t like the Eagles. They’re about as exciting as watching paint dry. Their albums are good for keeping the dust off your turntable and that’s about all.”

NME, 5 June 1976

“I’m a curator, an imagist, a collector of nocturnal emissions, improvisational adventures and inebriated travelogues. I’m a pedestrian piano-player; an unemployed service-station attendant. What I deal with is Americana, man. My environment up until this point is very American; it’s diners, bars, lounges, warehouses, Patty Hearst, Charlie Manson…There’s a wide variety of things that beg to be dealt with in the States, but when it comes down to it the whole creative process is your own neurosis and your own psychosis – it’s hard to pin down, hard to describe.“

Sounds, 12 June 1976

“When I’m recording, I have certain things I have to do. I wet down my hair, I turn my jacket inside out and I undo the first button on my collar. I throw a rock through a window, I tear the head off a doll, I drink a bottle of Scotch and, er, I’m there. For some people to have to watch you go through that it’s a little embarrassing. So you have to work with people you trust, people who won’t turn on you.”

You, 1985

“There’s nothing new under the sun, certainly not in popular music. By its very nature, popular music is repetitive and it’s constantly masquerading and then exposing itself again. If you just keep stirring it, different things come to the surface. So it’s sort of interesting to watch what’s bubbling up. What you recognized from before that you thought had gotten hidden at the bottom is now up at the top again.”

Harp, December 2006

“Q: What’s wrong with the world?

A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made $12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.
”
NPR, May 20, 2008

Photo used under Creative Commons 2.0 license by Hryck

Mastodon/Crack The Skye: Sludge monsters tackle 13-minute prog bloat, like Coheed And Cambria belligerent on warm beer and bad weed.=4.5

Lady Sovereign/Jigsaw: All those tantrums and you honestly have nothing to say?=2.5

Every week or so, I’m going to post some artist quotes that are particularly relevant, inspiring or interesting. I’m going to start it off with some choice expressions from dance legend Frankie Knuckles. These are from a 1987 interview he did with Unique magazine.

“No way! Entertainment is a vital part of life, and I see the disco as a poor man’s luxury. Normal people who can’t afford to do the theatre, shop in Knightsbridge, fly to the Cote D’Azur, get to have their good times there.”

“They try so hard to attract the sloaney fashion victim crowd, which is a big mistake. Music is universal, and it’s the people who support you that are important, the punters who pay, appreciate and come back. The sloaneys get in free and will abandon you like a flash for the next place to be.”