Hard News: Friday Music: History, motherfuckers
316 Responses
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Robyn Gallagher, in reply to
#FirstWorldProblems
I'm sure popular singers in developing countries have the same sort of issues.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Indeed. Bob Marley even had gunmen storm his home attempting to kill him.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Was that about his music?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
#FirstWorldProblems
Yeah, nah... Folks who insist on being arseholes are everyone's problem. And if you ever come across someone who's been on the receiving end of cyber-bullying/harassment please don't snark it as "first world problems".
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Beatlemania garnered much more hysterical crowds in its day, and Beatlemaniacs didn't seem petty about it back then. So what's changed? I suspect a lot more than just the Internet becoming accessible to the masses.
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"chris", in reply to
When John Lennon compared their popularity to that of Christianity, records were burnt and death threats were issued. Then when John Lennon married Yoko Ono...
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Was that about his music?
Probably not. Jamaica was a political mess at the time, lots of violence between supporters of two parties. It happened a couple of days before he played a concert organised by Michael Manley, then he went into exile in London, returning to play the One Love Peace Concert, the one in which he invited Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage and joined their hands.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Was that about his music?
Are you saying he never did shoot the sheriff?
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Surely we're talking about stars being on the receiving end of death threats and bullets? Still, he does claim to have shot Sheriff John Brown in a kind of pre-emptive self-defence.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Surely we’re talking about stars being on the receiving end of death threats and bullets? Still, he does claim to have shot Sheriff John Brown in a kind of pre-emptive self-defence.
In Marley's case, no one's quite sure who shot up his place, but it seems to have been related to the murkier end of Jamaican politics. Marley cleared out to Florida with his family for a while, and made Exodus, the second side of which is some of the sunniest most at-peace music you could hope for.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
..and Westwood got shot in a drive-by.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
In Marley's case, no one's quite sure who shot up his place,
Well, yes, but Ben referenced I Shot the Sheriff, which predates the attack by a few years. But given the time and place he grew up in, I suppose that could easily refer to some much earlier incident in his life - I seem to recall hearing a story that when Eric Clapton called to ask if he could cover it, he asked Marley if there was any real life basis to the story in the song, and got a rather non-committal answer.
Incidentally, I always associated Iron, Lion, Zion with the attack on his house, partly because of lyrics like "I had to run like a fugitive/Just to save the life I lived", partly because of footage in the video of Marley pointing out bullet holes in the walls of his house and joining Manley and Seaga's hands over his head at the One Love Peace Conference, but I just discovered that that, too, predates the attack by a few years. And was apparently released post-humously. So now I've refiled that in the slightly creepy section along with Bruce Lee's Game of Death.
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Back in the land of Lorde, I was browsing the #lorde tag on Tumblr. As well as dozens of covers of "Royals" (and general declarations of adoration) there are also make-up tutorials to recreate the looks in her music videos. Lorde is a style icon!
But the best comment I saw was from a teen thrilled to bits that Lorde was a fellow curly-haired girl, embracing her natural hair texture. That stuff matters.
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As a pleasing postscript, Duncan Grieve's longform profile on Lorde in the October Metro is well worth a read. Partly he wonders the same thing that Sweetman wondered - is it really possible for a 16-year-old to have achieved all this without being a puppet? The answer: hell yes. There's also a delicious description of Lorde's reaction to the Sweetman 'review' - which I won't spoil. The girl is on top.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
when Eric Clapton called to ask if he could cover it
That would have been before Clapton came out as a nazi?
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
That would have been before Clapton came out as a nazi?
Wow, I was completely unaware of that.
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