Dartmouth Soundoff
First off, anyone who has ever streamed music from the Internet should go read Eric Harvey's Pitchfork'scover story from last week. Questions like "In what ways are the non-stop interactions between databases and algorithms shaping our musical tastes?" and "Should speculative capitalism be the driving force for large-scale innovations in music technology, and is there a feasible alternative?" are posed and unpacked in the article. Thought-provoking, I know. The design team also did a really awesome job, so avoid the plain-text version (unless your computer is older than my car).
If you made it all the way through that Harvey article and you still want to ponder another question, here's one: What do Sunny Day Real Estate, Prince, The Pixies and The Distillers all have in common?
As you sift through this week’s headlines past the Coachella drama and rerun features on Nirvana, you’ll see a few old names that are being thrown around for the first time in a while.
Sunny Day Real Estate: In the 1990s, Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate had some membership overlap with the Foo Fighters (literally, everything is tying back to Nirvana this month). In the 2000s, emo came along and they all cited Sunny Day Real Estate as an influence (sigh). This past Saturday, the band released “Lipton Witch,” their first song in 14 years in honor of this year’s Record Store Day on a 7” vinyl split with some generic alt/prog-rock band (I guess that’s they’re calling themselves these days…) that probably grew up listening to Sunny Day Real Estate.
The Pixies:Also a Record Store Day release, The Pixies dropped “Women of War” along with a limited number of vinyls of“Indie Cindy,” which is set for wide release on April 28. Though they officially broke up in 1992, the band reunited in 2000 and have been sporadically playing shows ever since. While a handful of B-sides and singles have satiated fans for the past decade, this is their first studio album since 1991.
Prince:Twenty years ago, Prince started running around with “Slave” written on his face and changed his name to some unpronounceable symbol causing the media to refer to him as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Was he promoting a humanitarian cause? Undergoing a religious conversion? Having a Britney-level meltdown? No, he was just pissed at his label! After he left Warner Bros., Prince didn’t exactly fall off the face of the earth — he continued touring, writing and receiving Grammy nominations. Last week, a reconciliation between Prince and Warner Bros. was announced, with the label set to release an exclusive re-mastered 30thanniversary edition of“Purple Rain.”Also, Prince and I have the same last name.
The Distillers:A West-coast staple of the punk scene — we’re talking late ’90s with studded combat-boots here — The Distillers disbanded in 2006. However lead singer Brody Dalle, now a mother and Queens of the Stone Age wife, continued writing and will releaseher latest album “Diploid Love”next Tuesday. The Rolling Stone reported that the album has all sorts of implications on post-millennial motherhood and feminism.