There were dozens if not hundreds of bands like Giants Chair kicking around the U.S. in the early Nineties: underground acts that were too intense to fit an indie-rock template yet too refined and melodic to be slotted into punk or hardcore. But something about the raw vulnerability in singer-guitarist Scott Hobart’s voice and the streamlined wallop summoned by bassist Byron Collum and drummer Paul Ackerman set this Kansas City band apart.
Growing up in KC, this writer was lucky enough to catch Giants Chair often; they were local heroes with the talent to make a national impact. That never quite happened, but the two excellent albums they made for the Lincoln, Nebraska, indie label Caulfield are highly prized among devotees of the so-called second-wave of emo that also gave rise to fellow cult faves like Braid and Mineral. (If you’re new to Giants Chair, Red and Clear, their 1995 debut, is a great place to start.) And in the early 2000s, influential math-metalists turned space-rockers Cave In tipped their cap to the band with a cover of an obscure 1996 7-inch track.
We pair up musicians and chefs in four cities across North America to share their individual artistries and craft their perfect Lightlife Plant-Based Burger
Giants Chair have reunited sporadically throughout the 2000s, and on December 6th, they return with Prefabylon, their first new LP since 1996. Recent single “Kids Running” showcases all the band’s strengths in under three minutes: chiseled riffing with a hint of twang — Hobart has spent much of past two decades playing country music under the alias Rex Hobart — Collum and Ackerman’s unfussy drive, and Hobart’s raw, emotive vocals, rounded out by elliptical, evocative lyrics (“Dream-tangled sky behind the cold rust/Torn up Amerikaleidoscope lust”).
In a Talkhouse piece a couple weeks ago, Hobart wrote beautifully about his “unease with nostalgia” for the “good ol’ tour days” — revisited in the new “Kids Running” video, which juxtaposes vintage road footage with new clips of the group performing — as the band prepares to unveil its reunion LP. And in a recent episode of the Washed Up Emo Podcast, Hobart spoke about how fatherhood and his day gig building sets for a children’s theater were his focus these days and that the likely band would be limited to weekend-warrior missions at this stage of the game. But given that their music always felt wise beyond its years, Giants Chair make perfect sense as a middle-aged passion project. Never fashionable to begin with, their approach sounds perfectly at home in 2019.
Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett is going to perform the band’s 1977 live album Seconds Out in its entirety on a 2020 European tour. “I’m thrilled to bring Seconds Out back to life, featuring Genesis material at its most exciting and virtuosic,” Hackett said in a statement. “This time with all numbers played in full plus additional surprises!” he added.
Hackett left Genesis in 1977 and has recorded 24 solo albums since then, but in 2012 he began a series of highly successful Genesis Revisited tours during which he plays songs from his tenure in the band with Swedish vocalist Nad Sylvan. The guitarist is the middle of a tour right now in which he plays the 1973 Genesis LP Selling England by the Pound straight through along with selections from his solo career. He’s touring that across Europe and bringing to back to North America in March 2020.
The Seconds Out shows begin November 1st, 2020 at Brighton Dome in Brighton, England. and wrap up December 1st at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, Scotland. It’s hitting five of the same venues that Genesis played on the 1977 tour where they taped Seconds Out.
There are no American shows booked at the moment, but Hackett’s website says that “more dates will be announced” and a 2021 U.S. run seems like a safe bet. Every song on Seconds Out has been played live by Hackett at some point over the the past few years with the sole exception of 1976’s “Robbery, Assault and Battery.”
Earlier this year, we asked Hackett about the possibility of playing another Genesis album on tour. “I think the album I have attacked most is Foxtrot,” he said. “I have played most of those songs live, probably with the exception of maybe one tune. I have never played ‘Time Table’ live, but at various times I have played the whole of it, though never in its entirety. So I think that’s probably the other album that fans think of as a continuum. I think that’s probably because of the journey that is ‘Supper’s Ready’ because that takes up most of Side Two.”
The most beloved Genesis album from Hackett’s time in the band is 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but he said he wasn’t very interested in reviving that one. “Believe me, it’s been suggested to me by fans, by musicians, by promoters and they’re all prepared to put it on,” he said. “But I tend to think that it’s very much Peter Gabriel’s baby.”
Hackett hasn’t played with Genesis since a two-song appearance at their 1982 reunion show with Peter Gabriel. He was joined by Mike Rutherford and Gabriel at one of his solo shows the following year, which marked the last time that Gabriel has played a complete Genesis song in public.
Genesis hasn’t played in any capacity since the end of their 2007 Turn It on Again reunion tour. At the end of his 2019 Still Not Dead Yet solo tour, Collins hinted that another reunion is possible. “We’re still great friends,” he told the audience most every night. “So you never know…” If they want Hackett to join them this time, however, he’s pretty tied up with Genesis Revisited shows over the next year.
Here are the dates for Steve Hackett’s 2020 Seconds Out tour.
November 1st – Brighton @ Brighton Dome November 2nd – Cardiff @ St. David’s Hall November 3rd – Stoke @ Victoria Hall November 5th – London @ Palladium November 6th – London @ Palladium November 8th – Edinburgh @ Playhouse November 9th – Dundee @ Caird Hall November 10th – Carlisle @ The Sands Centre November 12th – Newcastle @ 02 City Hall November 14th – Scunthorpe @ The Baths Hall November 15th – Bradford @ St George’s Concert Hall November 16th – Southampton @ Mayflower Theatre November 17th – Cambridge @ Corn Exchang November 18th – Oxford @ New Theatre November 20th – Guildford @ G Live November 21st – Bexhill-on-Sea @ De La Warr Pavilion November 23rd – Birmingham @ Symphony Hall November 25th – Manchester @ 02 Apollo November 27th – Leicester @ De Montfort Hall November 28th – Basingstoke @ Anvil November 30th – Liverpool @ Philharmonic, December 1st – Glasgow @ Royal Concert Hall
The Flaming Lips unveiled a kaleidoscopic new video for their performance of “What Is the Light?” with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. The song comes off of their upcoming live album, The Soft Bulletin Recorded Live at Red Rocks With the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, out November 29th via Warner Records.
The live album comes from a May 2016 concert at the famed Colorado venue, where the Flaming Lips recreated their acclaimed 1999 LP, The Soft Bulletin, with a 68-piece orchestra and 57-person choir conducted by Andre De Ridder. Such a collaboration is particularly apt for a full performance of The Soft Bulletin, with its symphonic flourishes. The new clip for “What Is the Light?” highlights how seamlessly the Lips teamed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and the video — directed by George Salisbury and Wayne Coyne — provides the perfect vibrant and hypnotic accompaniment.
Along with releasing Live at Red Rocks, the Flaming Lips celebrated the 20th anniversary of The Soft Bulletin with a limited edition vinyl reissue that arrived in October. In July, the band fully released their 15th studio album, King’s Mouth, after previously printing just 4,000 vinyl copies of the LP for a Record Store Day exclusive.
Tons of songs become baseball stadium classics, even if they don’t start out that way: Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Roll Part 2,” the list goes on. Harry Nilsson aimed to go straight to the ballgame with his own sports anthem, “Yo Dodger Blue.”
“Dad was devoted to this team ever since they were the Brooklyn Dodgers,” his son Kiefo tweeted of the track, which was included on the singer-songwriter’s posthumous album, Losst and Founnd, a collection of material Nilsson recorded at the end of his career. It’s the first new music we’ve heard from Nilsson since 1980’s Flash Harry; he died of a heart attack in 1994.
“Yo Dodger Blue” is almost heartbreakingly straight-forward and pure: an unadulterated pump-up song that can only really serve one purpose: stoke the fires in the hearts of Dodger fans. No audience required: The cheers of the crowd are right there in the track. It fits well within an album that refuses to take itself too seriously: The edge-of-sanity bedtime song “Lullabye,” the stomping, extremely literal “Animal Farm,” the hilariously tender “What Does a Woman See in a Man.” It’s The Point! soaked in liquor — all with a hefty sheen of delightfully Eighties production.
Lightlife and Rolling Stone present Burgers & Beats video series
POSTED IN:BRANDED CONTENTPresented by
We pair up musicians and chefs in four cities across North America to share their individual artistries and craft their perfect Lightlife Plant-Based Burger
“There’s a sense of him pulling away from the world of pop,” journalist Joe Levy told Rolling Stone in a previous interview. Levy hosts a four-part podcast about Nilsson titled Final Sessions. “He’s climbed the mountain, and once you climb the mountain, you got two choices. You can decide there’s a bigger mountain out there, or you can go down the other side. And I think Harry went down the other side. He didn’t really care about making another album as perfect as Nilsson Schmilsson. He indulged his sense of humor, he laid certain booby traps in his best songs.”
Losst and Founnd was produced by Mark Hudson (Ringo Starr, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne) and features the likes of arranger Van Dyke Parks, drummer Jim Keltner, songwriter Jimmy Webb and Kiefo Nilsson on bass.
A couple of lizard people seemed fated to never meet in the bizarre new video for Iggy Pop’s “Sonali,” directed by Mac DeMarco.
The video stars musician Tommy Midnight and DeMarco’s girlfriend Kiera McNally, both of whom are outfitted with some extremely elaborate lizard makeup while otherwise dressed in regular human clothes (DeMarco was done up similarly in his music video for “Nobody”). The clip opens with McNally’s character lighting some candles and preparing for a fancy evening, while Midnight’s character finds himself stuck at a gas station and struggling to make it home in traffic.
The video is peppered with surreal flourishes that further delay Midnight’s journey, even though they seem fully avoidable. At one point, he pulls over to the curb to take a phone call with McNally that consists solely of the two saying “I love you” back and forth. Later, he pulls over again so he can pantomime a sax solo in his fuzzy pink convertible even though “Sonali” features a trumpet solo.
“Sonali” appears on Iggy Pop’s latest solo album, Free, which was released in September and followed his 2016 LP, Post Pop Depression, which he made with Josh Homme. Iggy Pop recorded Free with jazz trumpeter and composer Leron Thomas and Novella, the solo project of guitarist Lipstate.
Are you dead? Let’s find out: Watch this video, which went viral on TikTok this week, and see if you don’t chuckle.
For those skeptical types who refrained from clicking the link above: It’s a human, clad in a dinosaur costume, petrifying members of the public. What can I say? It’s an oldie, but a goodie.
What’s it doing here, in a business-focused column about TikTok’s threat to Spotify’s dominance in music? Well, for one thing, I thought it might put you in a cheery mood. Plus, more pertinently, it demonstrates that what you’re about to read should be consumed with the following caveat: not every sensation on TikTok today is about music, despite the fact that most top TikTok influencers — whether via lip-sync or dancing — use music as a vital component of their appeal.
Meanwhile, theFinancial Times revealed more details last week about Bytedance’s upcoming on-demand audio streaming service – a.k.a its direct new rival to Spotify (which we reported on in this column last month). According to the FT, this TikTok sister product will arrive as soon as December 2019 in three key emerging markets — India, Brazil, and Indonesia — with a U.S. launch to follow. It will apparently differentiate itself from Spotify, Apple Music, et al., with a focus on “encouraging sharing and virality,” including the use of short video clips.
Popular on Rolling Stone
At least one senior Spotify exec has already seen the service, or at least some screenshots of it, and was impressed. Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy remarked that the yet-to-launch Bytedance app has “some really clever social features” while speaking at the RBC Capital Markets Conference in New York on November 22nd.
Here are some key reasons why Spotify may soon be talking about TikTok, and Bytedance’s music app, in rather less jolly terms.
1. TikTok is (probably) already more popular than Spotify — especially in vital emerging markets like India
Sensor Tower has provided Rolling Stone with new data regarding both TikTok and Spotify’s popularity to date — although its numbers for Spotify only go as far back as January 1st, 2014. Since that date, estimates Sensor Tower, Spotify has been downloaded globally across iOS and Android some 864.3 million times; in the same period, TikTok has seen 1.52 billion downloads.
In the first nine months of this year, says Sensor Tower, TikTok was downloaded 519.7 million times worldwide; Spotify, meanwhile, was downloaded 158.1 million times, one-third as much as TikTok.
It’s important to reiterate that TikTok is not a music app per se. But if, as the FT article hints, Bytedance can build a strong link between its new music offering and its existing social-video empire, TikTok’s global reach and brand strength could cause Spotify real headaches.
That will be particularly true in India — a market where Spotify launched in February, and which has been earmarked as an essential territory for growth by Spotify boss Daniel Ek. According to Sensor Tower stats shared with Rolling Stone, TikTok’s popularity is miles ahead of Spotify’s in India: In the past quarter (Q3, to end of September), TikTok was downloaded 76.2 million times in the market; Spotify’s India-based download count was an eighth of this size, at 9.3 million.
Boasting of Spotify’s current market leadership versus Apple and Amazon, incoming Spotify CFO Paul Vogel said last week, “[Rule] number one: You need to break first on Spotify.” Bytedance might have something to say about that.
In addition to driving the early popularity of global hits like Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up” and Regard’s “Ride It,” TikTok has also fueled the popularity of viral breakthrough tracks in recent months like Ashnikko’s “STUPID” — which ended up with over 26 million plays on Spotify and topped its Global Viral 50 chart. This pattern — TikTok igniting virality of a track, which is then manifested in Spotify plays — is good news for Spotify in the short term. But it is also a clear indication of Spotify losing control of the “demand curve” for new music… to a fresh competitor.
Don’t forget what the FT said about Bytedance’s upcoming music app — that it will “encourage sharing and virality.” This suggests that lessons have been heeded from TikTok’s huge impact in setting recent entertainment trends.
3. TikTok is the future of music (if you believe Facebook)
Tamara Hrivnak, head of Music Development & Partnerships at Facebook, is a very smart executive. Earlier this month at the Paley Center in New York, as quoted in this column, she predicted that the future of digital media would be “video-first and interactive.” She then suggested that “it makes a whole lot of sense for Facebook and music to build that version of the future together.”
And there is no doubt that Facebook, with its 2.47 billion monthly active users, will play an enormous role in shaping the music business of tomorrow. But, according to Hrivnak’s rules, so will TikTok.
TikTok’s popularity to date has largely been propelled by the fact it combines the thrill of new-music discovery with elements of interactivity, involvement, and community. It sounds as though Bytedance is working carefully to ensure that this winning combination also comes across loud and clear in its new Spotify-rivaling music app.
Further evidence is now coming to light that Bytedance also wants to bring these elements into real-life scenarios: The Bangkok Post reported on November 21st that TikTok has expanded into selling concert tickets direct to fans in Thailand, as well as promoting local live events.
As one senior music exec who has seen elements of the yet-to-launch Bytedance music app told me the other day: “It’s not exactly Streaming 2.0, but it’s definitely something close to Streaming 1.5. For the first time, we’re seeing something that, if Bytedance gets the launch strategy right, might give people a real reason to cancel their Spotify subscription and switch to another service.”
Tim Ingham is the founder and publisher of Music Business Worldwide, which has serviced the global industry with news, analysis and jobs since 2015. He writes a weekly column for “Rolling Stone.”
