Welcome back to the newsletter, in which I share music-related news that’s brief enough that I didn’t post about it on my blog. Enjoy!
Hearing loss is real and the “Smarter Living” newsletter from the New York Times had some information about it last month, like for instance a rock concert is about 106 decibels. There’s links to reviews of earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones.
Interesting covers file: in a previous newsletter I shared an awesome music video of a pop cover of a Cro-Mags song, and now we have a Bananarama cover of “No Feelings” by the Sex Pistols from 1983. It’s got the sound from that time and the band did something cool with the track.
Björk is always reliable for interesting content, and late last month she was overjoyed when an Icelandic volcano erupted for the first time in over 700 years.
Livestream show news: Decibel Magazine is celebrating its 200th issue with a free livestream show this month.
RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, posted its 2020 music industry revenue report in February. Over at Music Business Worldwide, Tim Ingham bottom-lined it for us: “The number of paying subscribers to music streaming services in the United States grew by its biggest-ever margin in 2020, yet the amount of money being paid by the these subscribers fell considerably.”
The band Nomeanso has announced on its Facebook page that doesn’t want its fans to buy Nomeansno records on Bandcamp or on Discogs. In the former statement, the band said that it doesn’t get paid for Bandcamp sales. Speculation in the post thread suggests that this is because the label that released their records set up the Bandcamp page and isn’t paying Nomeanso.
Body Count won the best metal performance at the Grammys in March for the song “Bum-Rush.”
Rest in peace:
L.G. Petrov of Entombed A.D. (and before that Entombed) died in March, his bandmates announced. Petrov was an influential voice in death metal, especially on Entombed albums such as Left Hand Path and Wolverine Blues.
Louis Ottens, the engineer who invented the cassette tape, died in March at the age of 94. Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone has the story and included the trailer for excellent film Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape about Ottens’ work.
Bunny Wailer, Grammy winner and founding member of The Wailers, died in March at the age of 73 in Jamaica. Alex Young has the details at Consequence of Sound.
Talk to you next month.
