On Fidlar’s latest album “Almost Free,” released in 2019, the title track is an entirely instrumental blend of funk and big band music. A track like this seems to contradict the Alt Rock angst they call back to however it seems to fit into the album perfectly. Similarly, SWMRS “Berkley’s on Fire” and “Lose Lose Lose” use groovy basslines and interesting rhythms that separate them from the standard order Alt Rock, but still have enough attitude and Punk guitars to be described as anything else. It feels almost disrespectful to compare these bands with each other because of their undeniable individuality.

Armstrong’s dual career as a jazz player and vocalist continued through the remainder of his life. He sang with other jazz legends, such as Ella Fitzgerald and in cameo music roles in movies. He continued performing with his group and core members, Barney Bigard, Jack Teagarden, and Earl Hines into the 1950s. Armstrong was also immensely popular in Europe, often referred to as America’s Jazz Ambassador. He is said to have considered himself a “performer of music.”

MacLeod himself is heavily featured as he provides insight on the music business and why he works so hard to create free music. After a while into the film, you get a good inkling of the kind of person he is: a selfless workaholic who is plagued with bouts of anxiety, depression, and imposter syndrome. It’s funny to see how much of an impact he’s had in the world unintentionally and even when he thinks about it, he doesn’t seem fazed. He’s so strangely endearing that even Hollywood would have trouble creating a character like him.

Charlie Parker was a legendary soloist, inspiring bandleader, daring composer, ingenious innovator and a source of inspiration for many generations still. A jazz idol, full stop. But his off-stage personality revealed a more tragic figure: a drug addict and alcoholic. Bird lived hard and lost his performance license, several jobs and attempted suicide twice. All in all, his physical and mental health were already waning at an early age.

So, while I might play entire albums at home, the only way to fill a dance floor was to pick the “hits” that most people wanted to hear. You might say, I – as a DJ – was an early form of streaming. Because of this, I embraced CDs and the ease with which I could cue the best tracks, sometimes even starting them after the self. -indulgent introductions that nobody dances to. You can do the same things, of course, with records, but it is infinitely harder. Cueing tracks on LPs is more difficult than pushing a button or two, and hauling hundreds of 45s around is work.

Eventually, Hodges left for the money and the opportunities in New York.  In the City That Never Sleeps, bars could serve liquor until 4 in the morning, while last call in Boston was a puritanical 11 p.m.  With so many more hours in the day to play, it is no wonder that New York pulled jazz musicians away from Boston like an outgoing riptide. After stints with Bechet, Chick Webb, Willie “The Lion” Smith and others, at the age of 20, Hodges was hired by Duke Ellington, with whom he would be associated for the rest of his life. 

Every generation seems to reinvent the tenor as something closer to a pop star than an opera star. The Three Tenors were among the late 20th century’s great musical marketing successes, and the brightest star that they acknowledged in the tenor firmament was cinema heartthrob Mario Lanza. Lanza himself claimed Enrico Caruso as his greatest influence and famously played him on screen, reminding a wider audience that there was nothing incompatible with classical tenors and genuine popularity, whatever they were singing.

Much like American Hip-Hop, reggaeton was first an “underground” genre that came from urban, predominantly black, working-class communities. In the Puerto Rican context, reggaeton’s emergence in the 1990s is tied to public housing developments that were part of anti-crime initiatives in the island. Dubbed Mano Dura contra el Crimen (Iron Fist against Crime), it was enacted in 1993 by then governor Pedro Roselló (the very same one who danced to the Macarena in his campaign rallies). 

Few alternative rock bands from the 1990s should still honestly be described as “contemporary” artists, but at least Radiohead can be safely counted among them. Their May 2016 release and ninth studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool, once again showcased the band’s continuous refusal to become irrelevant, despite the usual statutes of popular culture regarding people over 40. The record explores new landscapes sonically, but its actual release proved, yet again, that the band knows how to take advantage of the Internet.

The decision by the Swedish Academy to award Bob Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition" was lauded by many and lamented by a few. But there was universal acknowledgment that the Academy had broken new ground by awarding the Nobel “for the first time” to a singer-songwriter since the French poet and essayist Sully Prudhomme first won it in 1901.