Interesting
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The Aztec Death Whistle Will Give You Horrific Nightmares
The Aztecs made countless types of noisemakers and musical instruments. Using clay, sugar cane, turkey feathers, ores, frog skins, and much more, they were able to create sounds to be associated with many life events, but most jarringly, the Aztec death whistle. They had conch shells for ceremonies, ocarinas for making animal grunts to attract deer, flutes for traditional music entertainment. Some researchers even believe […]
Weird Instruments - 21 Musical Monstrosities That Actually Work
Weird musical instruments abound. Strings, brass, percussion... even ones with animals in them exist in the present, and that's not even counting the theoretical ones throughout history that got a little too bizarre. 21 Weird Instruments Let's take a look at the strangest and most unusual instruments out there, in no particular order. Now, there are some crazy choices we could include, like the bagpipes […]
CD Baby celebrates 20th Birthday & $600 Million in Artist Payouts
If you're like me, you probably remember the old days of uploading your songs to MySpace and Soundcloud. It was cool to hit the charts and get a ton of plays, but there wasn't a readily available way of monetizing those plays. The best you could do on these streaming sites was link people out to your own shoddily built website and hope people trusted […]
5 True Music Myths People Want to Be False
The history of modern music is draped in the power of music myth and rumor, from the “Paul is dead” buzz to Led Zeppelin’s filthy mud shark incident. Sometimes, the stories that serve as the foundation for such mythos are so fantastic, so cool, or so flat out weird, it doesn’t much matter whether they’re true, they’re false, or they exist in the space in […]
How MTV’s TRL Met Its Slow, But Inevitable Demise
You couldn’t get away from Total Request Live at the turn of the 20th century. Their formula of counting down the day's top videos was the anchor of MTV's programming for years. Even if said videos skewed immensely heavy toward throwaway bubblegum pop or rap-rock/nu-metal that in retrospect hasn't aged too well, TRL still dominated. But by the time it left the airwaves in 2008, […]
A School Boy's Yearbook Ambition to Sell a Million Records (Alice Cooper)
This is one of those stories that has a surprise ending, so stick around for the reveal! Strange and interesting things are happening around us all the time. It used to be that you'd hear about some story that happened to your friend's cousin's neighbor's dad and you'd dismiss it with a chuckle because it was too far fetched. But now, with the internet, these […]
Musical Anhedonia: Deriving No Pleasure From Music
For most people, music is an exercise in catharsis. A snappy tune by The Beatles may bring a smile on our face. Spinning Adele’s “21” after a breakup provides a layer of empathy to our distress. Note that we said, "most people." That's because there are some people that don't like music regardless of artist, style, or genre, because it's like watching paint dry to […]
Chuck E. Cheese's Robot Band is Breaking Up for Good
This is sad news indeed for many of us musicians, old and young. The animatronic band that graced the stages of Chuck E. Cheese locations across America are finally throwing in the towel to enjoy a well-earned retirement. Chuck E. Cheese & ShowBiz Those of us born in the late 70's and early 80's will remember ShowBiz Pizza Place and Billy Bob the Hillbilly Bear. […]
8 Recent Music Publicity Stunts Gone Stupid
Let today's post serve as a lesson on how not to execute a publicity stunt to drum up interest and sales in your new album (while our last 'Lessons' post showed a great marketing example by 50 Cent). There’s no such thing as bad publicity, or is there? It’s a cliché, but it tends to carry gravitas. This is especially the case in music, where […]
6 Forced Music Genres that Should Disappear Like the Dodo
Music is more compartmentalized now than ever before. Not only are we well beyond the days of merely designating music as "good" or "bad," several subgenres have cropped up in recent years to further hyper-categorize certain sounds. While some of these sub-categories like indie folk or trip-hop seem to have staying power, others should head toward the dustbin of history with some luck. This list […]
6 Satanic Songs that Aren’t - The Backmasking Panic!
Rock has been known as “The Devil’s Music” since the first backbeat was laid down. It was bad enough when Elvis swiveled his hips, but things went turbo-stupid a couple decades later. The connection between rock and Satan arguably reached its peak in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when an overly-alarmist religious crowd began accusing bands of inserting hidden Satanic messages into their lyrics; one that […]
Yoko Ono Needed Two Takes to Perfect Her “Dead Rat in a Shoebox” Solo
Nobody in music draws the ire of rock fans more than Yoko Ono. While some of this naturally stems from longstanding accusations that she broke up The Beatles, it’s also derived from the fact that she’s done some weird stuff in the name of music (and attention) for decades. Perhaps nothing is weirder than her insistence on recording a "dead rat in a shoebox" solo […]
Radiohead’s Secret Program Hidden in OK Computer Reissue
Radiohead’s “OK Computer” is 20 years old. While this mark of time is bound to make Gen X'ers that bought the landmark album feel ancient, it’s also a perfect anniversary for a re-issue. Of course, since Radiohead is Radiohead, the band can’t be content with merely re-issuing an expanded album packaged with just demos and outtakes. Instead, Thom Yorke and company managed to sneak in […]
Musicians & UFOs - 15 Close Encounters with Flying Saucers
We've uncovered cave paintings, medieval and renaissance artwork, military radar videos, and have sightings of UFOs even up to this day. It's no real surprise that some of our favorite musicians have had their own close encounters with unidentified flying objects. What is surprising is that they've admitted to it, sometimes on national television, since that usually seals the deal on your career. That's how […]
Russian Meme Music - Where Did We Go Wrong?
Where did we lose our way? At what point did we toss all care to the wind and start admitting that we like some of the most absurd music out there? Like Russian meme music... The Top 3 Russian Meme Music Songs I'd say the answer for most of us is around the time the internet was released to the public, but for the Russians, […]
8 Classic Video Game Songs From the Actual Golden Era
There's countless lists like these out there, where a ton of people who never played an hour of vidya their whole lives try to help you remember the Mario Bros theme or that one Tetris song. I'm not going to do you like that. I'm going to show you the real classic video game songs. I'm going to take you back to the true gems […]
Aerosmith Earned More Money from Guitar Hero Than Their Albums
Aerosmith was one of the indisputable gods of American hard rock in the ‘70s. They also came back from the brink of drugs and despair to have a total renaissance in the late ‘80s. Add these eras together, and you’re looking at a band that made a ton of cash through album sales. At least, on paper. Yet a funny thing happened on the way […]
Nanoguitar, the Guitar Smaller Than a Human Blood Cell!
We’re practically trained to think of guitars as big, shiny instruments meant to capture the eye. Sometimes, a guitar can even call more attention than the person noodling on its neck. And while these weapons of musical extravagance do command attention when wielded upon the stage, the most attention-worthy guitar in existence may be the “nanoguitar;” a fully-functioning six-string that you can’t see without the […]
Top 10 Reasons Being a Pop Star Sucks
You thought this was something you wanted? Do you dream about 100,000 raving fans a night, plus the few throwing water and lighters at you? Well, guess again, because here are the Top 10 reasons being a pop star sucks... 1. Riders & Planes People think it's cute to make fun of us for this, but there's a reason for having a "rider" in our […]
Mozart & Music Piracy in 1770: The Vatican’s Miserere
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the most iconic classical composer of all time. It’s a status not just drawn from the fact that he’s behind some of the most recognizable pieces of music ever written, but also because of the prodigious nature of where these works came from. We’ve all heard the stories; he started composing at around the age of four, he completed his first […]
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