This week's birthdays include the impeccably funky Sly Stone and Wilson Pickett, manic Chopin played by the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, lush orientalism from Rimsky-Korsakov, classic jazz from Bix Beiderbecke, and annoying pop from Clare Grogan.
new music buzz
Peter Culshaw
Our ongoing series celebrating musicians’ birthdays. This week’s include Lou Reed, in action in a stupendous version of "Venus in Furs" with the Velvet Underground, Chopin played by the wonderful Martha Argerich, archive footage of Miriam Makeba, Brian Jones and bottle-neck blues maestro, Furry Lewis. Videos below.
Peter Culshaw
The blogs are alive with the sound of Thom Yorke of Radiohead's new band, which he told us today had the name Atoms For Peace. "It seemed bleedin' obvious," said Yorke of the name on the Radiohead website Dead Air Space. Nerdy, pacifist, retro, ironical: the name ticks all the boxes. An antique phrase of "super-group", once used to describe bands like Blind Faith, has been dusted down to describe the band which includes Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Flea and percussionist Mauro Refesco. "Atoms For Peace" was also a song on Yorke's solo record, The Eraser.
joe.muggs
Two London clubs currently appear to be under threat. The Ministry of Sound, one of the most successful brands in club music's history, is kicking up a fuss because new housing block planned opposite it may make it vulnerable to noise complaints. Meanwhile, rumours have flown around over the last 48 hours that police are lobbying Hackney Council against Plastic People in Shoreditch whose licence is currently under review for reasons of “prevention of crime and disorder and public nuisance basis”.
Peter Culshaw
A new report from Freemuse, the organisation which campaigns against music censorship, describes the oppression of heavy metal musicians in numerous countries. From the underground to the mainstream, heavy metal is a global phenomenon attracting millions of fans – but along the way it has gained many enemies too. “Long-haired music”, as it has been described in Malaysia and China, has been banned by both governments.
Peter Culshaw
This week’s birthday videos include guitarists Andrés Segovia playing a fandango, Japanese heavy metal hero Akira Takasaki and George Harrison. Then there’s Johnny Cash and murdered Afghan singer Nusrat Parsa. It's also the birthday of the mighty Handel. Videos below.
Adam Sweeting
And so to the windswept hangar of Earls Court, and the 30th Anniversary Brit Awards. Except it wasn’t, because as any pedant knows the very first Brits (then mystifyingly entitled the British Record Industry Britannia Centenary Awards) occurred in 1977. No matter.
joe.muggs
It has been reported today that Google - via its Blogger and Blogspot services - has been closing down popular music blogs and wiping their archives without warning, citing copyright violation by those blogs who post downloadable mp3s of the tracks they review. While hosting copyright material may not by the letter of the law be legal, it seems that this heavy handed approach completely ignores the subtlety of the "grey economy" that exists between bloggers and a music industry which knows full well what a valuable promotional tool they can be - and it appears to be yet another example of how far we are from a coherent approach by copyright holders and internet service providers to dealing with distribution of music and protection of copyright online.
Peter Culshaw
Should we be silent in classical concerts? Alex Ross, the classical critic of the New Yorker and writer of the superb panorama of 20th Century music The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, an “unlikely mass-market proposition” which has been a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic will be giving this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society Lecture. His talk is entitled Inventing and Reinventing the Classical Concert and will be given on 8 March at the Wigmore Hall. In the lecture Alex Ross will address concert culture - what has changed since the 18th century and what can we take forward into the 21st?
Peter Culshaw
Mine's a Strawberry Mivvi, if you are buying, thanks. Suburban Counterpoint: Music for Seven Ice Cream Vans is a deliciously intriguing work by composer Dan Jones that does what it says on the tin. It will be performed as part of this year's Norfolk and Norwich Festival in May, before being reprised in London.