Band Plans to Shake a Sound System to Death. Literally.

The guys in Napalm Death aren't exactly shy wallflowers.  They've blow up their share of PAs over their career, but never quite like this.

Next Friday, ND has a gig at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London that will incorporate a sound system made entirely of ceramics by artist Keith Harrison.

The goal is to play so, er, enthusiastically, that the PA will literally disintegrate during the performance. On purpose.  From Metal Storm:

Mark "Barney" Greenway, vocalist of Napalm Death, states: "Sound as a weapon - or a weapon of change - is a very interesting concept and I think that the whole process of our sound gradually degrading clay sculptures is captivating. The noise element of music should never be understated and this exhibition at the V&A will hopefully demonstrate that music can do interesting things beyond the realms of clipped production techniques.

"On a personal level, particularly of interest to me is the fact that the sculptor Keith grew up around the very same area as me in Great Barr, Birmingham, and basing his sculptures around the tower blocks in that area brings back a lot of quirky memories mixed with the impressions of shameful deprivation in some of those places."

Cool, huh?  Nothing like seeing a grindcore band grind something to oblivion.  That's art, man.

New Book on Cool Jobs in the Music Industry

That's what it's called:  Cool Jobs in the Music Business! (and yes, there's an exclamation mark at the end).

Written by Jeffrey Raban, an industry veteran and chair of the Clive Davis Recorded Music Program at NYU, it goes through a bunch of career options:  journalist, manager, producer, publicist, DJ, music supervisor and more.

Find it here.

The Tao of Bowie

With David Bowie's The Next Day heading for a #1 debut in the UK tomorrow (and perhaps the US, which, incredibly, would be his first American #1 album), he's getting a lot of attention.

Flavorwire has collected some of Bowie's best quotes from over the decades.  Example:

“As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going onstage and being myself. I continued designing characters with their own complete personalities and environments. I put them into interviews with me! Rather than be me — which must be incredibly boring to anyone — I’d take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do.”
[from Musician, 1983, via Exploring David Bowie]

There's plenty more here.

Hysterical Complaints Still Coming in About Beyonce's Super Bowl Halftime Show

Haters gonna hate.  Wouldn't you love to be the person at the FCC who had to respond to stuff like this? More fun at Deadspin.

Morrissey Responds to a Fan's Suicide

A hardcore Morrissey/Smiths fan named Margaret Dale recently took her own life.  Morrissey had this to say via the Mozzer news site, True to You.

I did not know Margaret on a personal level, but she was always there on the front row - the UK, the US, Israel - wherever we'd go, she'd go. Last week Margaret drove behind the tour bus all the way from Davis to Seattle, and managed to get onstage at Davis. I had signed her arm and it was now a tattoo.

This week she is dead. I can only hope, for Margaret, that death yields the profit of rest, and somehow provides her with a listener. We all weary of living in the same skin day after day, in a world where only the blandly trivial are allowed to be heard, but there is nothing wrong with taking your destiny into your own hands, just as there is nothing wrong in understanding what is meant for you and what isn't.

We are plonked into life without ever choosing to be, and we are despised if we fail to find a paralyzed spot in which to keep still and shut up. Margaret was a woman of action, who now knows the soul of the world.

Meanwhile, on today's AOL News Page, headlines tell us that Victoria Beckham has reportedly dropped her "fake" look, and William and Kate are in search of yet another home - the constitutional frigidity of a media world now openly obsessed with zombies and morons.

Rest well, Margaret.

Morrissey

Mexico

13 March 2013