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Posts Tagged ‘music’

When the Rolling Stones Hit the Laffer Curve

A recent interview with the Rolling Stones reveals some of their business and wealth-protection strategies. “The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws,” said Keith Richards. “It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. [This may sound like an exaggeration, but likely isn’t.] We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don’t want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out.”


Quotes Uncovered: Most Memorable Song Lyrics

Two years ago, I asked for suggestions for the most memorable song lyrics of recent years, to help with the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations. Let me repeat my “bleg” from that time, and ask again for suggestions.


Profits From Prison

How’s this for working overtime? Forbes estimates that hip-hop artist Lil’ Wayne will make more money behind bars this year than he did last year.


Wagner for Baby

Scottish Opera will soon launch Baby O, a series of concerts for infants.


The Piano Matters

History’s greatest composers wrote for their pianos, and a new Slate article by Jan Swafford argues that only an old piano can play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as Beethoven intended it.


Vote for Our Songwriter

Jonathan Mann, the resident Freakonomics songwriter, is currently a finalist in mobile query service ChaCha’s music video contest.


Our Song-Request Contest Has a Winner

What he hadn’t written yet, however, was a Freakonomics theme song. That’s the request Mann decided to fulfill. It came from a reader named Spencer, who’ll get his choice of Freakonomics schwag for winning the contest.
So here it is, the theme song we never knew we needed but now wouldn’t want to live without. Thanks to all for participating, and especially to Jonathan Mann for lending his talents to our cause:


From MTV to the Stanky Legg

YouTube may become the digital generation’s replacement for MTV, reports NPR’s All Things Considered, as musical artists use it as a cheaper way to be discovered, promote their albums, and post music videos that would never have made the cut at MTV. Getting a video noticed on YouTube, meanwhile, requires a different set of “tricks” than MTV, which may produce a new generation of videos that forgo bling and fancy production for dance crazes and badly shot paparazzi videos.


Let's Hope They're Not Swan Songs

Even in the days of Woodward and Bernstein, writes Mark Kemp in Paste magazine, print journalism “wasn’t ever entirely noble” — but today, it’s “crumbling faster than week-old bread.” With “fond memories” of what the newspaper industry once was, and hope that it has a future, Kemp put together a list of the top 10 songs about newspapers and journalism.


Contest: The Request Line Is Open

Now even better, the original song-a-day man, Jonathan Mann, has agreed to take a request: he’ll write a song about whatever you want. Leave your suggestions below. It doesn’t have to be about the recession — just make it clever, entertaining, wise, witty, etc. Jonathan (maybe with our input) will pick the best suggestion — and the winning suggester will get a piece of Freakonomics schwag. And, of course, a song. We will, of course, post the song here once it’s recorded.
Good luck.


When Is a Blank CD Worth $50?

When it’s paired with a book of photographs by filmmaker David Lynch and an invitation to fill the blank CD with tracks from an illegally downloaded album. That’s the weird new distribution scheme being floated by musicians Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse.


The "We're In The Money" Blues

Listeners of “The Numbers” segment on NPR’s Marketplace, a daily recap of the stock market’s action, thought its upbeat version of “We’re in the Money” as background music is inappropriate for the times.


I Had No Idea I Sounded Like Axl Rose

We recently posted a noisy song, “The Final Day,” by an unnamed artist, and ran a contest asking you to identify the performer. It sounded like it might be the latest in our series of recession songs, or maybe an outright apocalyptic number: Click Below to Listen The singer was me. Yeah, it was a song from my old band, . . .


A Record Label in 140 Characters or Less

We’ve written before about musicians giving away their work for free online. Now you can add Mike Skinner (a.k.a. The Streets) to the list. He’s giving away new songs using Twitter because, he writes, “all this trying to sell you music … wastes valuable time.” A new study out of Norway suggests Mike‘s business model may be a good one, . . .


Recession Rock or Apocalypse Pop, and By Whom?

In recent months, we’ve posted a few examples of music written about the current recession. Now it’s time to see just how sharp you are with a pop-music quiz. This song is called “The Final Day”: Click Below to Listen Caution: it is very loud. The lyrics are nowhere near as straightforward as, say, “Hey Paul Krugman.” It might be . . .


Ten Thousand Dollars for a Music CD?

If Josh Freese‘s music exhibits as much creativity as his marketing, he should have a hit record on his hands. Freese, who was part of Devo in a previous life, has just released a new album. While $10,000 might sound like a lot to pay for a copy of the CD, at that price he will also go on rides . . .


Workers of the World, Dance!

| A Shanghai theater company has announced that it will produce and stage a musical adaptation of Karl Marx‘s Das Kapital next year. Its creators say their project was inspired by a recent Japanese manga adaptation of Marx’s anti-capitalist tome. Does this mean we’ll have to sit through an operatic adaptation of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money . . .


The Kenny Rogers Effect

| Music has power. We’ve blogged about David Gray‘s “Babylon” being used as a tool of torture, and how Barry Manilow records were played in Sydney, Australia, to flush teenage loiterers from its parks. But music can also heal, of course. A team of London neuroscientists is claiming that playing Kenny Rogers songs for stroke victims speeds their cognitive recovery. . . .


Hey, Paul Krugman

As noted here earlier, this recession (depression? repression?) is inspiring some pretty decent pop music. I think the apex has been reached. Listen for yourself to “Hey, Paul Krugman,” by Jonathan Mann: It’s a pretty great song, and not just because of the lyrics:


Kid Rock

Saw this poster taped to a lamppost in my neighborhood last weekend. There is so much to admire about it. My first thought concerned the talent/practice angle as espoused by Anders Ericsson.
I played in a bunch of bands when I was a kid. Although we were generally dreadful, playing clumpy versions of bad cover songs at poorly attended basement gigs, it was hard to deny that all that very deliberate practice paid off.


Something for Nothing

The streaming music site Muxtape has returned as a free platform for musicians to promote their music.
Emerging in a time when cassette tapes had long been an anachronism, Muxtape became a go-to site for music fans to string together their favorite songs and share the virtual mix tapes with friends and internet passers-by. Founded in early 2008, the site quickly became ensnared in licensing disputes and was shut down last August.


Are Record Labels the New Realtors?

The Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.) has quietly ended its campaign to sue illicit digital music sharing into oblivion, the Wall Street Journal reports.


The "Guitar Hero" Answers Your Questions

Last month we solicited your questions for Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix, the video-game development company best known for its Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Alex Rigopulos One of the most-asked questions was whether his games discourage players from learning to play real music. Rigopulos doesn’t think so; the games, he says, give people “a taste of what lies . . .


The Latest in Recession Pop

If things keep going as they are, Billboard is going to have to start a new Hot 100 chart just for songs about the Great Recession. Earlier we posted a music video of “Fannie Mae Eat Freddie Mac and Cheese.” Here now are two more recession blues: “Credit River,” by Constantines: Constantines – Credit River And “Everybody’s Getting Bailed Out . . .