Tag: Music
Bon Jovi Comes to Aid of New Jersey Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 04.20.06 | 1:23 PM ET
Where would oft-bashed New Jersey be without its homegrown rock stars? I can’t think of any state that gains more from its association from musicians, namely Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. The latter has donated its latest hit song, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” to New Jersey’s latest tourism campaign.
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Yahoo! BuzzWriting Gig of the Month: Rolling Stone Meets MTV
by Jim Benning | 04.03.06 | 6:21 PM ET
It’s not travel writing, but it’s too good to pass up mentioning. From JournalismJobs.com: “Rolling Stone is looking for aspiring amateur journalists to compete for a one-year staff position with the magazine—while MTV tapes the competition for a new reality series. Working with the magazine’s top editors, competitors will hone their writing skills and secure interviews with major musicians, actors, and politicians.” Rolling Stone has more details. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this: “It’s ‘The Real World’ meets ‘The Apprentice’ meets Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’!” When is National Geographic Traveler going to team up with the National Geographic Channel for a travel-writing version? Better yet, MTV: Have your people call our people. World Hum needs a plucky intern. We can put the candidates through the travel editorial paces. They can brood and squabble and battle their addictions and endure flying coach in front of the cameras. It’ll be great TV.
Flight 187 in the Hizzouse!
by Michael Yessis | 03.21.06 | 9:54 AM ET
Jet Blue, you and your seat-back satellite televisions are no longer on the cutting edge of in-flight entertainment. Pilots at Miami International Airport have told FAA officials that their communications are being disrupted by hip-hop music being broadcast from a pirate radio station called Da Streetz.
A ‘Creative Persons Utopia’ in the Dominican Republic?
by Jim Benning | 03.20.06 | 12:08 AM ET
Last December, we pointed out a New York Observer profile of Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, noting that he and several other celebrities, including musician Moby and interviewer Charlie Rose, were involved in a land purchase in the Dominican Republic to build some sort of utopian community for artists and writers. It was all rather vague, and we wondered whether the project was still alive. Now comes confirmation in the March 20 issue of the New Yorker, in a feature story not available online, that just such a project is in the works.
Jam Band Cruises: “You Won’t Have People Selling Grilled Cheeses to Get Money to Get on the Boat.”
by Michael Yessis | 02.03.06 | 12:35 AM ET
But music fans are still laying out gobs of cash to be able to scuba dive with String Cheese Incident and play bingo with the Disco Biscuits. In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Evan Serpick reports that musical cruises are a hot travel ticket.
Moby, Dave Navarro Book Trips to Space
by Michael Yessis | 12.21.05 | 5:42 AM ET
The two musicians have reportedly reserved tickets through Virgin Galactic, a commercial space venture being developed by Richard Branson.
Listening to ‘Layla’ in Tehran? Not on Radio or TV.
by Jim Benning | 12.19.05 | 3:08 PM ET
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decreed that Western and indecent music cannot be played on the country’s radio and television stations. What artists will be affected? MSNBC.com reports: “Songs such as George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper,’ Eric Clapton’s ‘Rush’ and ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles regularly accompany Iranian TV programs, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.” Needless to say, I’m with Ahmadinejad on banning Kenny G. Indecent, indeed. But Eric Clapton did some nice stuff back in his Cream days, and I’m afraid that’s where the ultraconservative leader and I must part ways.
On the Road to Chapel Hill, Off the Road Through Chile
by Michael Yessis | 11.27.05 | 11:12 PM ET
The Sunday travel sections feature a couple of fun road trip stories. In the Washington Post, Ben Brazil chronicles a drive through three music-obsessed college towns in the Southeastern U.S.: Athens, Georgia; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Henry Rollins Hits the Road—With the U.S.O.
by Michael Yessis | 11.16.05 | 5:08 AM ET
How did anti-war punk-rock legend Henry Rollins end up on tour with the U.S.O., supporting United States military troops in hot spots around the world like a latter-day Betty Grable? “[T]here are reasons beyond sheer love of country that influence a performer’s decision to tour with the U.S.O.,” Susan Dominus writes in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. “For Rollins, the travel provides creative fodder, but it also gives him access to places he wouldn’t ordinarily visit, among them Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Honduras.”
Ian Buruma on Protest Songs from Washington to Beijing
by Jim Benning | 11.15.05 | 12:04 AM ET
The author of the fine travel memoir “God’s Dust: A Modern Asian Journey” has written a thoughtful story in the Guardian about the state of protest music. Buruma begins by asking why Bob Dylan tunes are still the go-to music for American protests, but the article soon takes a global turn, touching, for example, on the music that fueled the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square.
‘Mongolia Loves Puff Daddy’
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.05 | 4:30 AM ET
Michael Wolgelenter has a terrific, laugh-out-loud essay about music as a travel touchstone in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.
A Drive Through Kentucky Inspires Cameron Crowe, ‘Elizabethtown’
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.05 | 12:28 AM ET
The promotional onslaught for Cameron Crowe’s new movie, Elizabethtown, is underway. I hadn’t been paying much attention to any of it—I’m a fan of all his movies and I already plan to see “Elizabethtown” no matter what—so I didn’t realize it was a road movie of sorts until I saw this morning’s Los Angeles Times, which features a self-promotional but still terrific piece by Crowe himself about how he selects the music for his films.
Following Bob Dylan, and Maybe Even Bono
by Michael Yessis | 09.12.05 | 4:20 AM ET
In his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan recalls spending an evening with Bono and telling U2’s singer that he should take a trip through Minnesota to the birthplace of America, following a road along “the river up through Winona, Lake City, Frontenac.” What Dylan didn’t reveal is what Steve Dougherty figured out when he opened a road map.
“From the Movies and the Music Videos, I Thought All Girls in America Were Like Britney Spears”
by Jim Benning | 08.05.05 | 10:49 PM ET
So says Kaoutar, a 17-year-old girl from Morocco. But that was before she came to the United States as part of the U.S. State Department-sponsored Youth Exchange and Study Program, launched in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to a story in the International Herald Tribune, while some U.S. efforts to improve the country’s image abroad have been criticized, the youth exchange program is “a notable exception.” The program appears to be changing minds.
The Comforts of “Honky Tonk Woman”
by Michael Yessis | 09.07.04 | 11:42 PM ET
John Flinn never feels homesick when he travels, but he does appreciate being reminded of the better parts of his home culture. In his latest column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Flinn reveals what brings him a smile on the road, including food, toilets and western pop music. “If there is anything more cringe-worthy than hearing French hip-hop, it’s watching French rappers throw down gangsta moves while wearing fashionably baggy ‘street’ clothes in French hip-hop videos,” he writes. “The Germans slick their hair back and try to play ‘50s-style American rock ‘n’ roll, but it still comes out sounding like beer-hall polka on speed.”
What Ever Happened to Songs About the Road?
by Michael Yessis | 06.04.04 | 9:45 PM ET
“The road is disappearing,” writes Dan Neil in Thursday’s Los Angeles Times. “Fading from popular music is the body of imagery, the poetic conventions that evoke the Mythic American Road.” Neil’s terrific essay—he recently won the Pulitzer for criticism—traces the history of the road song and, unfortunately, it’s available only to subscribers on the Times Web site. Also included in the package: Times music critic Robert Hilburn’s picks for the top 25 road songs. Among his choices: (18) Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Sweet Hitch-Hiker,” (7) Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” (3) Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” and (1) Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.”
Airline Music: “Inherited Concepts of How Heaven Sounds,” or Just Crap?
by Michael Yessis | 02.02.04 | 9:30 PM ET
It’s a no brainer, of course. Music on airplanes is almost universally awful. But why? Slate’s August Kleinzahler recently explored the subject, even questioning the two major companies responsible for bringing you endless loops of Cher tunes. (The response when he asks who programs the classical stations: “We farm that out to some woman in Germany.”) Kleinzahler only wants what many of us want from our airline music: a little surprise now and then. Alas, it probably won’t happen on the big airlines anytime soon. “[S]urprise is Public Enemy No. 1 so far as market research analysis goes,” he writes. “Which is why airline audio is the aesthetic equivalent to the prose in TV Guide or supermarket paperbacks.”
What’s the Hottest New Rock Band Named After a Tropical Disease?
by Jim Benning | 01.23.04 | 10:37 PM ET
Dengue Fever. How can you not love a band with a name like that? Although the band is based in Los Angeles, the name makes some sense: The lead singer is Cambodian. The Los Angeles Times proclaimed Thursday: “Sixties surf and pop songs may be the group’s source material, but add the stunningly acrobatic vocals of a modern-day Phnom Penh pop star singing in her native tongue and the result is oddly striking.” The Times’ story is available online only to long-term registered users, but a local alternative weekly features a short report here (fourth item down).
Morning, Not Smart
by Katherine LeRoy | 04.16.03 | 9:53 PM ET
Photo by Katherine LeRoy. She coped with the slamming car doors and the fumes from the gas station next door. But Thai pop gave Katherine LeRoy a hot heart.
Make Springsteen Albums, Not War
by Jim Benning | 02.06.03 | 4:50 PM ET
When Eric Alterman traveled to Europe to investigate the new anti-Americanism, he found that most Europeans had big complaints about U.S. foreign policy but weren’t, in fact, anti-American. Exhibit A: the Bruce Springsteen concert Alterman attended in Paris. “You can tell a lot about a continent by the way it reacts to Bruce Springsteen,” he writes in The Nation. “Tonight, at the Bercy Stadium, the typically multigenerational, sold-out Springsteen audience could be from Anytown, USA. Everybody knows all the lyrics, even to the new songs. Toward the end of the evening, Bruce announces, in French, ‘I wrote this song about the Vietnam War. I want to do it for you tonight for peace,’ and 15,000 Parisians, standing in the historic home of cultural anti-Americanism, scream out at the top of their collective lungs, ‘I was born in the USA,’ fists in the air.”