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By Drew Grant 8/07/12 1:53pm

Music

"Pussy Riot" Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (L), Maria Alyokhina (R) and Yekaterina Samutsevich (C) (Getty Images)

Madonna Supports Russia’s Pussy Riot

In February, a punk riot band from Russia with the very late-90s name Pussy Riot were arrested when they desecrated one of the most powerful cathedrals in Moscow. The trio infuriated the Orthodox Church by staging a “prayer” of profanity-laced, anti-Putin sentiment. The three women were charged with “hooliganism” (which is a thing), and have yet to be released on bail.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich could be looking at anywhere from 3-7 years of jail time, even though President Putin himself said that he did not agree with the severity of the sentence.

The whole tale is long and sordid, and as much about Russia’s own hooliganism over its citizens as it is about censorship, but hey look over here Madonna’s shown up! Read More

By Michael H. Miller 8/01/12 9:30am

Music

Mr. Tyler.

Dude (Looks Like a Poet)! Backstage with Aerosmith and Paul Muldoon

Two summers ago, I went to a reading that the poet Paul Muldoon was giving in a black box theater on the third floor of a nondescript building in Hell’s Kitchen. He read from a galley of his 2010 collection of poems, Maggot, and marked copy errors with a pen as he went along. John Ashbery joined him, reading handwritten translations of Rimbaud scrawled out on a yellow legal pad. There were mice scurrying around and about 20 people in the room, who were polite and subdued. A month later I interviewed Mr. Muldoon, who has been The New Yorker‘s poetry editor since 2007, over the course of two days, at Robert Frost’s farm in Ripton, Vt., where he summers. On the second night, we attended a bluegrass festival at the foot of a mountain, which attracted the kinds of backwoods crowds that drive to concerts in beat-up RVs and all-terrain vehicles. We must have heard four renditions of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Mr. Muldoon heckled the bands by shouting, “Go electric!”

I was only vaguely taken aback, then, when I received an email from him in June that read: “I think we need to continue our tradition of going to cheesy shows. Aerosmith and Cheap Trick on July 24? P.” Read More

By Drew Grant 7/31/12 1:57pm

Music

Video

Sing a song about the G, get sent to Sweden! (Brooklyn Brewery)

Songs in the Key of G (Train)

The G train gets a bad rap sometimes. Residents of Brooklyn and Queens often grumble about the train’s sporadic service, long waits, lack of weekend service, and its general uselessness. But there’s at least one champion of the G out there (which will be extending its service thanks to the MTA’s new budget allotment), and they want you to show your love as well.

The Williamsburg beer factory/garden Brooklyn Brewery is holding a contest for songsmiths to pen a tune about their experience riding the green rails, which, as they point out, is statistically a pretty decent train. The winning band will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden, where the hops palace has teamed up with Debaser to hold the first ever Brooklyn music festival in Stockholm. (Why? Who knows.) Read More

By Drew Grant 7/17/12 5:00pm

Music

Imagine this...on a boat! (Getty Images)

S.S. Coachella: California Concert Promoter Brands Cruise Lines

Big news this evening from Goldenvoice, the promoter of the annual three-day music festival in Indio, CA.: Get ready for S.S. Coachella, two theme cruises that will take sea-faring hipsters from Florida to the Caribbean beginning in December.

Because that’s exactly what Coachella was missing, right? An inability to escape the hoards of drunken hipsters, quasi-celebrities, and obnoxious music bloggers, maybe combined with some Activity Coordinators from Carnival Cruise lines and the decor of Austin Power’s penthouse? Read More

By Michael H. Miller 6/27/12 10:15am

Music

The Band on the Ed Sullivan Show. (CBS Photo Archive)

Feeling About Half Past Dead: Down in the Basement With What’s Left of The Band

Earlier in June, two months after the death of Levon Helm, the drummer and strongest singer in The Band, I received an email with the subject line, “The Band Reunion.” This was curious because they were a five-piece—Rick Danko, Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson—and there’s very little left of them now. Mr. Hudson and Mr. Robertson are the only surviving members and, aside from an appearance at the 1994 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, the two have rarely played music together since the Band’s full line-up performed their final show in 1976. This reunion, at the Iridium Jazz Club last Friday night, would be no exception. Mr. Hudson was sitting in on a set with Jim Weider, who replaced Mr. Robertson as lead guitarist when The Band reformed in the ’80s, but that was good enough for me: there’s enough of a legend to The Band that simply being in the same room as the man who played accordion on “When I Paint My Masterpiece” feels downright significant. There’s a lot of history, too, most of which has ended in tragedy. Read More

By Jonathan Liu 6/19/12 7:10pm

Music

Apple. (Courtesy Susan Goldman/AFP/Getty Images)

Tangy Apple: The Anti-Gaga Bad Girl Returns

Fiona Apple is not a girl. Come to think of it, she never was.

In our present cultural moment—when, out of opposite corners of YouTube, the two indomitable pop breakouts of the year are a quasi-teenager (Carly Rae Jepsen) discovered by Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez and a real teenager (Kitty Pryde) who raps about marrying Justin Bieber (and running over Selena, twice); when the one popularly unassailable part of Obamacare is the provision that allows keeping offspring medical dependents till age 26—that may be the most incongruous thing about her. Read More

5/16/12 4:18pm

Music

Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_official_SCOTUS_portrait

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Good Taste In Music

We direct your attention to the New Yorker, where Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has told the magazine’s classical music critic Alex Ross about her favorite records. Bow howdy is there some good music here (it’s all opera, so stop reading if you don’t care about that). Read More

By Drew Grant 5/03/12 11:50am

Music

Courtney Love and Frances Bean in better times (Getty Images)

Frances Bean Cobain Now Owns Father’s Likeness; Pulls Rug Out From Wobbly Courtney Love

The tempestuous relationship between Frances Bean Cobain and her mother Courtney Love have been making headlines for as long as the now-19-year-old has been able to talk. (Her first word? ‘Adoption.’) Though the two have been able to occasionally set aside their differences and smile for the press, much more often we hear about the skirmishes: the hotel fights, the custody battles, and most recently, a Twitter skirmish in which Ms. Cobain asked the creators of micro-blogging platform to ban her mother once and for all.

But now the only daughter of Kurt Cobain finally has gained what might be the ultimate leverage on mommy dearest: the rights to her father’s likeness. Read More

By Drew Grant 5/01/12 4:01pm

Music

Darren Criss as Harry Potter (Wikia.com)

Glee’s Darren Criss to Perform Selections From A Very Potter Musical at Roseland Ballroom

Darren Criss, the only real reason to watch Glee anymore, has quite the solo career. Not only did he recently step out in D.C. for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a guest of The Huffington Post, but his short stint on Broadway–taking over for Daniel Radcliffe for three weeks in How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying before Joe Jonas stepped into the lead role–proved that the 25-year-old has the chops for both stage and screen.

Now, the actor who first made waves by singing Disney songs on YouTube will be going on the road with Team StarKid, a theater group he helped found, for a show called Apocalyptour. Read More