Wax Atlas is a show space in Baltimore, and it’s put out a call for help with raising cash, posting on Instagram that the space is having trouble with keeping the lights on and making repairs. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Wax Atlas yet, but the space has put up a GoFundMe.
When he’s not on the road, Joe Lally, of Fugazi et al., has been offering bass lessons. The social media advert is above.
Lyria joined the ranks of other AI-powered music-creation apps such as Udio, Stable Audio 2.0, Suno, Music AI Sandbox, AudioCraft, and Ripple. In Lyria’s case, a group of of musicians and producers is suing its maker Google over the training of the model on unlicensed material. Stuart Dredge has some details at Music Ally.
Wixen, a publishing company, sued Meta, claiming its songs are being used on the platform after a licensing agreement expired. “Meta’s reason for slashing payments to songwriters is to replace human-generated, royalty-bearing music with royalty-free AI-generated music,” Wixen also said. James Hanley has the story at Music Business Worldwide.
Vinnie Vincent is offering the latest and completed Vinnie Vincent Invasion album for sale, for someone to release or, I suppose, keep for themselves. Vincent is asking $2M for the whole record or $200K a song, and the bonkers details are at the band website.
While we’re talking about that, six of South Korea‘s “major music industry organizations have joined forces to form a coalition, declaring a ‘state of emergency’ and making what they describe as a ‘declaration of war’ against AI copyright infringement,” Mandy Dalugdug writes at Music Business Worldwide. That sounds pretty awesome to me.
Rest in Peace
Phil Campbell was the guitarist for Motörhead. He died at 64 in March after a hospitalization. Readers of D.U. will agree that Campbell and the band’s contribution to and influence on hard rock and metal cannot be overstated. Gavin Thomas has the story at BBC.
Eric Clarke was an artist and drummer who played in Delvic. He passed away in March after living with cancer. Drummer Andrew Hernandez posted a tribute on Instagram.
Bo Lueders, guitarist of the band Harm’s Way and podcaster, passed away in April. He was in his 30s. Gregory Adams has details at Revolver, which, along with many other stories about Lueders, doesn’t name a cause of death, but like many others includes a suicide and crisis hotline.
James Lollar of the band Gost died in April. He was 46, a multi-instrumentalist and producer in electronic music such as darkwave. There’s some details from Paul Brannigan at Louder Sound.
Ross “The Boss” Friedman, ex-guitarist for Manowar and The Dictators, passed away at 72 in March. Friedman had previously shared his ALS diagnosis. His musical career stretched back to the 1970s. Chad Childers has the story at Loudwire.
Len Garry was a guitarist in The Quarrymen, the skiffle group that preceded The Beatles. He passed away in March at 84, Geoff Herbert writes for Syracuse.com.
Gabba (Robert Gregory), best known as a guitarist for the old-school hardcore punk band Chaos UK, died in March after health issues. A GoFundMe was already set up to help with his bills before his passing and is still running.
Dot Rotten was a U.K. rapper and producer who passed on in March at 37, Fran Winston writes for Daily Express. Also known as Zeph Ellis (Joseph Daniel Joel Ellis-Stevenson), Dot Rotten was a star of the grime subgenre.
Lord Sear (Steve Watson) died in March at 53. The rapper and longtime radio show host had toured with Eminem and was a voice in New York’s hip hop scene. Okplayer has a tribute on social media.
Walter Martino, the co-founder and former drummer of Italian progressive band Goblin, passed away. The group is famous for composing and performing horror movie soundtracks. Valeria Campagnale has a few details at Truemetal.
Éliane Radigue was a minimalist and musique concrète innovator. As Hattie Lindert writes in a tribute at Pitchfork, the composer died at 94 in February. “I’ve always done what I wanted to as an artist,” Radigue once said.
Further reading:
I’ve posted about AI in music before; browse through it here at the blog.
JR Hayes interviewed Joe Lally for the D.U. ‘zine back in 2006. Read it here on the blog.
There’s more of these music news roundups here at the blog, and my old email newsletters where I also rounded up music news have their own section of the blog.
Photos: Gabba, shared by needle.chaos77 on Instagram; Joe Lally, from a Messthetics tour poster
