adri2-brgr

[adri2-brgr]

Festivals and Concerts, or why Music is more than just Sales

Hello everyone, hope you are all doing okay ! Today, I'll be presenting my final project.

While the title may have given you an idea already, I'll focus mainly on events like festivals, concerts and everything that's got to do with an artist's more direct involvement with their audience rather than a specific artist themself. I decided to have this approach in order to underline the importance of real life events when it comes to shaping the musical landscape.

The main chapters of the Negus I'll be referncing will be the ones on mediation, as events like these can be seen as a way to extend the reach of an artist's songs and influence, and on georgaphy as the specific location of each event (more specifically festivals) can help us learn a bit about the popular music of their respective areas and about some rivalries in the industry.

In order to do so, I'll focus on three specific events : the Up In Smoke Tour of 2000, the Astroworld Festival of 2021 and the Altamont Festival of 1969 (which I've already briefly presented in an earlier post). Putting the spotlight on those specific three events will allow us to see events which netted ''positive results'' to their participants, negatively impacted their participants or had an impact on the industry as a whole.

As for my sources, I'll mainly be using documentaries as secondary sources (and one other as a primary source in the part dedicated to the Altamont festival) and contemporary news articles as primary sources.

I wish you good luck in your final projects and see you next week :) !!

[adri2-brgr]

Frank Sinatra - A Legend shrouded in Mystery : Music and Organized crime

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoyed your holidays ! It's a new week so it's time for a new post ! Today I wanted to talk about one artist I really like, one that I don't think needs that long of an introduction...

... Frank Sinatra ! (Pretend that you didn't read the title so you can be surprised)

In case you don't know, Sinatra was a blues, swing and jazz singer and music producer from the middle of the 20th century. He was considered as ''one of the greats'' of his time, being met with incredible success during his carreer. However, such fame doesn't come without its fair share of rumors and controversies.

In the case of Sinatra, a lot of accusations fell on him regarding his ties to the mafia. Sinatra was known to frequent a lot of infamous mobsters, most notablly being described as a ''close friend'' of Sam Giancana, a well-known mobster from Chicago. Moreover as revealed by declassified FBI documents, in 1960 Sinatra introduced Giancana to JFK in order to cut a deal to bolster the votes of the would-be president. He was often seen taking pictures with mobsters. Furthermore, he was once seen carrying 50 dollar bills amounting to a total of 3.5 millions of dollars in a suitcase at the customs. Although he was suspected of being a carryier, but while the customs officiers wanted to inspect his suitcase they eventually gave up because of the crowd that the singer's presence attracted.

In here, for example, you can see him with some infamous figures of organized crime, like Paul Castellano, members of the Gambino crime family or Thomas Marson.

Despite that, Sinatra always denied these claims that he was involved with the mafia. He never ended up having to face legal action regarding his ties with organized crime, despite the FBI having monitored his every action for 40 years.

Today, the story of Sinatra's involvement with the mafia has become something of a myth surrounding this peculiar character. Untangling truth and romanticization can prove to be rather hard but one thing is certain, Sinatra and the gangsters of his time were definitely more than simple Strangers in the Night.

[adri2-brgr]

The Altamont Festival : the day the hippie era died

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well despite all of the exams. For this week's post, I wanted to share a story I recently came across : the Altamont Free Concert (or Altamont Festival).

So, what exactly was the Altamont Free Concert ?

It was a festival originally created by the Rolling Stones in 1969. Their goal was for it to rival the Woodstock festival, which was already hailed as one of the greatest and most important rock festivals of the time. The particularity of the Altamont Free Concert was that, well, it was free (shocking I know). This was done in order to respond to the critics about their albums being overpriced.

As you can see on the poster, some rather big names were scheduled to play : Santana, the Grateful Dead, CSN&Y and of course the main event, the Rolling Stones themselves, to name a few. This impressive lineup seemed to prove quite promising, as around 300.000 people were reported to have attended the concert. The problem, however, came from the security of the event. The people to ensure that the festival went along without any hiccups hired weren't trained staff, far from it, as security was assured by non other that the infamous Hell's Angels.

The Hell's Angels were (and still are) a gang of bikers that were reputed for their violent tendencies. Second indicator of the mayhem to come, they weren't paid with money but with free beer. Now, I'll give you some time to think about why giving a role of authority to a gang of drunk bikers known for being really short tempered people who aren't afraid to pick a fight with anyone. If you figured that it was the perfect recipe for a disaster, then congratulations for having more foresight than the organisators of Altamont.

As it was to be expected, while the festival seemed to begin just fine, after Santana's performance things seemed to go downhill very quickly. The crowd began to become more and more riled up, and the increasingly drunk Hell's Angels did nothing to quell their excitation, being all too eager to beat people up. Cars were stolen, drugs were taken and fights broke out left and right with the performers and organisers being none the wiser. Tragedy struck during the Rolling Stones' performance, as during their third song a man by the name of Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by one of the bikers.

Moreover, three more deaths are to note : two people were run over in their sleeping bags by a driver under the infuence of various drugs and a man drowned in a nearby canal.

Even today, this festival holds a lot of infamy for being one of the prime exemples of an event going completely haywire. It is considered by many as the final nail in the coffin of the hippie ''peace and love'' era.

For the sake of brevity I omitted a lot of details, but if you're interested two documentaries exist about this particular event, one from 1970 (''Gimme Shelter'') and a more recent one, who came out around 2020 (''Days of Rage: the Rolling Stones' Road to Altamont'').

[adri2-brgr]

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Otherside : when music and video blend together to craft an harmonious story

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well today !

For this week's post, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite music videos (coincidentally also from one of my favorite bands) ...

... Otherside from the Red Hot Chili Peppers ! (god that thumbnail just reeks of the early 2000's, I love it)

So, for a little bit context, Otherside is a song from the 1999 album Californication. It is one of their most well known songs, having over a billion (yes, billion with a b) listens on spotify and around 800 millions views on YouTube. Because of this popularity, a lot of speculation regarding the meaning of the lyrics have sprung up but the one I'll first be focusing on is the idea that this song is about the struggle of drug addiction. This interpretation of the song didn't spring out of nowhere, as the lead singer (Anthony Kiedis) was known to have an history of drug abuse, trying to get sober and falling into his addiction again.

The clip uses a very surreal imagery, putting its protagonist in a surreal black and white landscape where nothing makes sense. The visual aesthetic can certainly bring to mind the bizarre buildings and landscapes of painters from the surrealist movement.

Typical surrealist landscape (made by Marcel Caram)

Screenshot from the clip

These abstract and impossible landscapes serve to invoke the idea of a dreamlike world, a place made to represent the inner mind of the clip's protagonist. The use of towering buildings, ensnaring vines and really sharp and angular shape can be seen as a way to show that the protagonist's mindscape is far from being a healthy one. Furthermore, in many occasions the protagonist has to battle monstrous creatures, which can be seen as representations of his inner demons, i.e here his addictions.

However, and that's what I think makes this clip so powerful, is that it's abstract nature can (and has been) a source of boundless interpretations. By creating such a particular athmosphere through abstract and surrealist imagery, interpretations can be varied and go beyond the original anti-addiction undertone of the song. The universe and actions depicted in this clip can in turn serve as a set-up for any viewer to project their own mindscapes and inner monsters onto those depicted in the clip, which is why I believe that this particular music video became as popular as it is today.

[adri2-brgr]

Hi everyone ! My name is Adrien and first of all, welcome to my blog !

Music has, for as long as I can remember, always been a part of my life. My dad loved (and still loves) to just sit down and take time for him to just enjoy his favourite songs, which is an habit I share with him.

I know it sounds really cliche but I do mean it when I say that I try to listen to everything. If I had to narrow it down tho (which is the case), I would say that some of my favourite artists as of right now would be the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kaffetorsk, Nujabes, Luv Resval, Snorunt, Ziak, Saez and Aoraki.

As for what I want to talk about for my first blog, I decided to share a little tip with all of you (I'm amazing I know) !

So today's subject is...

...about the concert hall ''La Laiterie'' in Strasbourg !

Most of you have probably been there once or twice to experience a concert or two, given than some rather big names already performed in there (Muse, Radiohead and, more recently, Fave or Ziak to name a few). What you may not know, however, is that sometimes some concerts are free ! Yes, you read that right, free ! As in, cheaper than cheap ! Obviously most of the bands you'll be able to see for free aren't really well known, but it can lead to some amazing discoveries !

If you enjoy discovering smaller bands and listening to music you might have never discovered before, it can be a good idea to check La Laiterie's website from time to time to see if any free concert catches your eye.

For exemple, I think it was in May of this year, some of my friends and I went to check out a band named ''Howlin Jaws''.

We knew nothing about those guys except that they made rock music... And what a good surprise ! This post is already long enough as is, so I'll try to keep it short. Their music has a 2010's garage band aesthetic that I personally really dig. They also take a lot of inspiration from The Beatles in regards to their musical universe. I highly recommend listnening to their album Half Awake Half Asleep (specifically Blue Day and Lost Songs) and their EP Burning House (particularly She's Gone).

Discovering this group was a really good surprise, so if you like to discover smaller artists I highly recommend checking La Laiterie's announcements from time to time !