HOT: Ringtone Revival?
A decade ago, some speculated (jokingly and not) that the future of music would be ringtones, those sounds phones made when people still used them to make phone calls. Music industry legend Jac Holzman — who founded Elektra Records and is a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer — seems to belatedly agree, releasing a new album titled Cosmic Ringtones & Sonic Realms… Your Universe Is Calling, a collection of 17 short electronic soundscapes that resemble the Stranger Things soundtrack. Holzman actually has some ringtones history — in the ’60s he released several sound effect records, many of which were mined for ringtones in the digital age. Holzman’s new tones are inspired by cosmology and astronomy and can be purchased on CD and streaming (which seems like a lot of work to get a ringtone on your phone).
WARM: Producing a Big Poker Win
Steve Albini is notorious for charging a flat rate for production work in his recording studio and for refusing to take post-release money from albums he’s worked on. That means he hasn’t banked big bucks, despite working with the likes of Nirvana, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, Bush and Pixies. To make ends meet, he’s had a side gig for several years playing online poker, as well as real-life poker, which is how he just added more than $105,000 to his bank account. Fresh off of a tour with his band Shellac, Albini won the top prize at a 2018 World Series of Poker event, defeating surely pissed veterans and former champs.
COLD: Hardly Savage
Australian ’90s Pop duo Savage Garden hinted at possible legal action against a new London bar called Savage Garden, tweeting that the name “had been used in a pretty public and global commercial way.” The twosome then got some unsolicited but wise legal advice from Twitter commenters, who noted that Savage Garden was lifted from an Anne Rice book and the street on which the bar is located is named Savage Gardens, its name for centuries. But if they want to get petty, there’s precedence — in January, a hotel in Mexico called Hotel California settled with the Eagles and dropped its trademark pursuit after a lawsuit, despite the hotel first using the name in 1950.
This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2018.