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A curious — and fascinating — listening experience. In some ways, the band is almost unrecognizable. Tempos are decidedly fast paced, even on laments like “He Was A Friend Of Mine.” Some tunes are dominated occasionally by the garage-y buzz of Pigpen’s Vox Continental organ. Vocals aren’t fully figured out yet. The Dead in the summer of ’66 was one of many similar Bay Area groups, wearing disparate influences on their sleeves, figuring things out, operating in a space where the rulebook hadn’t really been written. They were also first and foremost a dance band, which partly explains the aforementioned tempos.

The post The Grateful Dead :: Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66) first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.

Welcome back to Transmissions with Jason P. Woodbury. This week on the show, another talk that spun out of our Big Ears hang out, a conversation with a journeyman musician Fred Thomas. Even if you don’t know Thomas’ name, you’ve heard him: In the ‘90s, he was responsible for the math rock band Chore; from there, he joined up with Warren Defever’s genre bending indie rock outfit His Name Is Alive, alongside groups like Lovesick and his own band Saturday Looks Good To Me, who melded Detroit R&B and soul to twee indie pop.  From pre-fame adventures with Andrew WK to his work as a music writer, from Ethio-jazz to house music, this conversation runs a wide game.

The post Transmissions :: Fred Thomas first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.

While his band Shearwater shares its name with a seabird, Jonathan Meiberg’s latest album has us thinking about The Birds – the 1952 short story Daphne du Maurier famously-adapted by Alfred Hitchcock. Meiberg’s forays in ornithology and climate change are well-documented, and his musical projects reflect the feelings of those concerned about the influence and future of humankind. It is not heavy handed sloganeering, but nuanced and beautiful. The Romantic result of deep study and research.

The post Shearwater :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview first appeared on Aquarium Drunkard.

For the last few years, musicians have been asking the wrong question about artificial intelligence. Can AI write a song? Of course it can. Can it compose music, imitate a voice, generate an orchestral cue, a techno track, an ambient soundscape, a country song, a film score, a jazz approximation, or something that sounds suspiciously […]

Following “two years of close collaboration” on artist campaigns, Universal Music Group (UMG) and authorized-remix platform Hook have finalized a “landmark” licensing deal. The major and the self-described “social music app” reached out with word of their agreement this morning. And overall, the pact means Hook users can now remix participating UMG artists’ recordings (with […]

Cruz Beckham introduces his bandmates — also known as The Breakers — and takes Billboard behind the scenes to show how he gets ready for his final show of his North America tour at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Cruz Beckham: We’re in L.A. We made it. Very excited. Dan Ewins: You know […]

The album joins five albums — including another by Drizzy — with at least four No. 1s.

Nearly 30 years after the rap legend’s death, the murder trial began earlier this week.

As millennials await the recently threatened relaunch of Myspace, tomorrow sees the launch of a new social media service that looks (and sounds) like another defunct social platform. Divine is a video-sharing app where users can post six-second loops, essentially making it a revamp of Vine, which shuttered in 2017. Though it has no affiliation Read More