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Future of Music Coalition, the 8 year old non-profit that represents musicians in the on-going debate over public policy as it effects their livelihood, is holding another Policy Summit starting October 4th. This year, the attendees on hand will probably reflect more of the top-shelf personalities behind the scenes at the intersection of music, technology, policy and law than years previous. No doubt, the possibility of policy makers, music makers and industry stalwarts being in attendance hasn’t been greater, nor has the importance of the outcome.

Washington Post

This year’s summit hosts a boatload of speakers and panelists, including Daniel Ek (founder and CEO of Spotify), Senator Al Franken (being interviewed by R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills), Bob Boilen (host of NPR‘s “All Songs Considered”), Wayne Kramer (guitarist for garage rock icons MC5), Mac McCaughan (frontman for indie rock stalwarts Superchunk/founder of Merge Records), Seth Hurwitz (9:30 club owner/chairman of I.M.P.), Brian Message (Radiohead’s manager), Greg Kot (music critic for The Chicago Tribune) and many others.

This Tuesday, our own Todd C. Roberts will also be on a panel discussing the future of music journalism. If anyone is planning to attend, please stop by the discussion and say ‘hello’.

“Critical Condition: The Future of Music Journalism”

PANELISTS:
Maura Johnston Editor, Idolator
Greg Kot Music Critic, Chicago Tribune
David Malitz Staff Writer, Washington Post
Howard Mandel President, Jazz Journalists Association
Tom Moon Music Critic, NPR; Journalist
Fiona Morgan Journalist, the Independent
Scott Plagenhoef Editor-in-Chief, Pitchfork
Casey Rae-Hunter Communications Director, Future of Music Coalition
Todd C. Roberts Co-founder, The Daily Swarm; Artist Manager/Consultant, Truant Media
Molly Sheridan Managing Editor, NewMusicBox.org; Director, CounterstreamRadio.org
Eliot van Buskirk Columnist, WIRED

More information: The Future of Music Coalition

Wikipedia:

Mr. Magic, an important figure in the world of hip-hop radio, debuted in 1983 on WBLS-FM in New York City with the first exclusive rap radio show to be aired on a major station. Billing itself as Rap Attack, Magic’s show featured Marley Marl as the DJ and Tyrone “Fly Ty” Williams as the show’s co-producer. Magic’s reign on the New york City airwaves lasted six years and was instrumental in broadening the scope and validity of hip-hop music.¹

During the mid-80s there was a rivalry between Mr. Magic and Kool DJ Red Alert, who hosted a weekly show on WRKS-FM. The feud also played out between proxy rap groups, the Juice Crew and Boogie Down Productions (see The Bridge Wars). The Juice Crew – headed by Mr. Magic’s on-air assistant, DJ Marley Marl – was named after one of Magic’s aliases, “Sir Juice.”²

As confirmed by DJ Premier, Mr. Magic died on the morning of October 2, 2009, due to a fatal heart attack

DJ Premier’s Obit:

I WANT TO SEND OUT THE UTMOST RESPECT AND CONDOLENCES TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN RIVAS——aka MR. MAGIC

HE PASSED AWAY THIS MORNING OF A HEART ATTACK…..

TRUE HIP HOP HEADS KNOW THAT HIS HISTORY IS SO LONG  DUE TO HIM BEING THE FIRST RAP MIXSHOW TO EVER BE ON COMMERCIAL RADIO ON NEW YORK‘S WBLS—(107.5) WITH MARLEY MARL AND FLY TY IN 1982–1984…....THEN WENT ON TO WHBI IN OCTOBER OF 1984 AND THEN BACK TO WBLS in 1985 and WDAS in Philly SIMULTANEOUSLY

HE PAVED THE WAY FOR ALL RADIO STATIONS THAT EVER DID MIXSHOWS AND ALSO SPARKED THE CAREER OF BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS DUE TO THE DISS HE SHOWED WHEN THEY CAME TO SHOP THEIR DEMO TO HIM AND WAS TURNED AWAY WHICH THEN SPARKED “SOUTH BRONX” AND “THE BRIDGE IS OVER”.......

HE WAS KNOWN FOR HIS DIRECT AND SARCASTIC ATTITUDE ON THE AIR AND EVERY ARTIST WANTED HIS APPROVAL WHEN IT CAME TO BREAKING NEW RECORDS….....HE EVEN HAD SONGS DEDICATED TO HIM BY THE LEGENDARY WHODINI—(“MR. MAGIC‘S WAND”) WHICH WAS SURPRISINGLY PRODUCED BY ONE OF MY FAVORITE ARTISTS THOMAS DOLBY…....

SHOUTS OUT TO MARLEY MARL AND FLY TY FOR THE CORRECT INFORMATION ON THIS…...

REST IN PEACE MR. MAGIC…..........DJ PREMIER

The Daily Swarm: What does “Haih…or Amortecedor” mean?
Sérgio Dias: We were going to call the album “Barauna,” which is a difficult word, It means don’t give up ever, but I thought it would be too personal so we went for “Haih…or Amortecedor.” It’s one of the songs Tom Ze and I did and released on iTunes. It means “shock absorber,” but you can keep breaking down the word into different meanings — interjection, amore – love, amortecedor, love weaves, love weaver, love we spun – it goes on with many possibilities. Haih means raven in the Shoshone language. So it’s Raven Shock Absorber – it’s a mutating name.

What was Tom Ze’s role on this album?
He’s a genius. We wrote together. We had 18 songs we had to cut down – the others will be [available] on the Internet.

We met after the first Os Mutantes reunion gig in Sao Paolo – it was a year after the Barbicon show. It was incredible we had like 80,000 people at the Ipiranga museum. Tom Ze was there and I invited him to play with us. The first time we met I was 16 or 17 and he was 22 or 23, which was a huge age gap then. We knew each other, but never got in touch. We had this strong, powerful encounter. We had separate lives, but we came to find out that we are the same. It’s an amazing, magical thing. I was like “please let’s work together,” and he became a writing partner. We wrote together in my Sao Paolo studio.

You also collaborated with Jorge Ben, who wrote “A Minha Menina,” Os Mutantes first hit.
He graced us with an original “O Careca.” Jorge is a beautiful person and we love him. He got a prize from MTV and afterwards there was a party and we met and had a great time – that started everything. He knew we were making album and he was kind enough to give us the song.

What’s the mass rally sample that opens the record on “Hyms of the World,” it sounds like a Nazi rally or maybe a soccer game?
It’s a Putin talking to the Soviet Union Army. Then at the “End Part Two” you hear the entire Soviet Army singing the national anthem, and then the Brazilian and the American anthems. It’s very hard to understand America without Russia or the Soviet Union. It’s much more interesting to think about U.S. with the Soviet Union — there’s poetry there.

A lot of your songs have political references. Is “Sambo Do Fidel” a reference to Fidel Castro? You also mention Obama in that song.
Yeah the lyrics go, “Obama my brother, Bush my brother, give a green card for me, for you, for someone…” We were in Miami when Fidel fell ill and all there were all these parties and I didn’t’ understand why. Everyone was saying Fidel had died. So it starts in Spanish wondering what happened to Fidel, I wish his brother would tell me.

And “Baghdad Blues”?
That song is influenced by all of what’s happening in the world. I heard this smooth melody Tom Ze was singing and immediately felt like I was in the decadent Paris of the 20s or Tangiers with opium dens and ladies in nightgowns. Baghdad was the Paris of the orient, a place where all the Europeans went. We learned about it in elementary school—the stories “Shahrazad,” “1001 Nights,” “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves,” and the Babylon Gardens, which I mixed with Saddam Hussein and bombs.

How was playing all the summer festivals like Outsidelands and Bumbershoot?
It’s was amazing. All the kids signing in Portuguese like we used to with the Beatles in English – it’s very humbling. I feel it deep in my heart.

Who is Bia Mendes?
She’s an old friend I’ve known for 20 years. When Zelia left we were looking all over for a singer and thought we just might not have a female vocalist. Then we made “Mutates De Pois” and she sang on it and was amazed by her vocals. She has a very original voice and is always smiling.

So your brother Arnaldo’s not playing with you?
No, he hasn’t played with us for the last four gigs, but he’s happy. He put out a film about his life. I’m glad he’s happy. I would love to have him back, he was really starting to shine on the second tour.

So it’s a completely different band now.
Not really, the same spirit is there. Even though we are apart, Arnaldo and Rita live inside me – we’re close spiritually and we’re brothers. Those two years together, all that time making pranks and music. Os Mutantes were a good school for me to learn about leadership. To be a chief, you have to be an Indian. Arnaldo was an excellent leader, but Rita and I did a lot of things too. Arnaldo was on the business side, I was on the music side, and Rita was in the middle. It was a flesh and blood like an entity.

Os Mutantes was something of a family affair. Didn’t Arnaldo actually start the band in 1964 after his and Rita’s bands played a high school music contest.
Arnaldo was two years older and he was in a band with my brothers called the Wooden Faces, I was just a spoiled brat bugging the hell out of them. Rita’s band was called “Teenage Singers,” and he tried to put the bands together — maybe just to get the girls. Rafael, my brother Claudio’s friend, was a big influence and taught me guitar. They called me to try out on guitar, Rafael went to bass, and Surilee was lead singer and Rita was there too. We made a 45. I was only 14 at the time. We became the Six Sided Rockers.

Wasn’t your brother Claudio something of an electronics genius who made homespun instruments?
He solved all my music problems. After the Six Sided Rockers broke-up and it was just Arnaldo, Rita and I, all responsibility for music textures fell on me. This was before pedals. My brother would do things like put a record player cartridge under my guitar bridge to give me an amplified acoustic sound twenty years before Ovation guitars.

And your father was a poet and your mother was the first female pianist to write and orchestrate a piano concerto with an orchestra.
My father was an amazing poet and a great singer. He wrote lyrics for “Tempo No Tempo” and a few others. My mother played piano on the first song I wrote “Senhor F.” We used to see my her play places that were like Lincoln Center’s opera house. She’d get 10 or 12 ovations.

Did your parents freak out when you dropped-out at 13?
My mom said, “okay, you earn your own money now.” So I gave music classes. I would learn songs by playing records at half-speed, I learned how to play the Ventures’ songs – which were very hard. Light years ahead of what I was playing. Don Wilson and Nokie Edwards were outrageous; it was tough to get their solos down.

How did you get turned onto the British Invasion?
We used to listen to the BBC on shortwave radio. We recorded “Help,” off the radio the day it was released in the U.K. and by the time it came out in Brazil we could already play it. But we tuned in everywhere, we’d listen to Mariachi from Mexico and American radio stations playing the Beach Boys —it was a great music education.

Shortwave was kinda like the Internet of its time.
We could gather information from all over. You could hear stuff from China. It was all mysterious and came in bits and pieces. We were also very influenced by the movies like “Un Chien Andalou,” and “Ben Hur.” The beginning of “Don Quixote” is a mix of Verdi’s “Aida” in a minor key with the theme from “Ben Hur.”

Didn’t you also play a bunch of TV shows early in your career?
The Six Sided Rockers played on a show that was like Shindig! or the Jools Holland show with great bands like the Everly Brothers. We were also on this Hit Parade-like show, “Round & Square,” like who’s boring and who’s hip. We would sing Beatles and the Fifth Dimension or whoever had a hit. When “A Day in the Life” came out we had to learn it —Fuck, what an amazing song, it blew my mind. The shows forced us to learn how to play in different styles.

What about “The Ronnie Von Show,” wasn’t that where Os Mutantes got their start? Wasn’t Ronnie Von the band’s “godfather?”
No, that’s Bullshit. He had a program we always played on, but we played all over. People say he gave us our name, but we got it from a science fiction story called the Planet of the Mutants. We were very into science fiction and Arnaldo had a great collection. There was this TV show with David McCullum [The Outer Limits], where he had a sixth finger, which grew into a second head and we used that for the back of the album.

How were you first introduced to the Tropicalia scene.
Hit Parade invited Nana Caymmi, Dorival Caymmi’s daughter and Gilberto Gil’s girlfriend, on the show. Gil had just come from the north. We went to record “Bon Dia” and Caetano was there, he was so skinny. He was sitting in a corner with his legs crossed. Gil was there working, but they were both checking us out. Afterwards Gil came to my place and played “Domingo No Parque“ for us. He wasn’t so keen on Brazilian music and wanted something new. It was so different and it freaked us out. We immediately started working on it. Then we met Rogerio Deprat, which was meant to be. We were a perfect fit. We had technology, know-how and music culture and he had all these ideas – it was a great marriage.

What were your impressions of these guys?
The first day I was scared of them. I thought, ‘what the hell is this Brazilian music?’ But when Gil arrived and played “Domingo No Parque,” it blew my mind and everything started to flow. We met Rogerio Duprat who did the arranging and then it was just work, work, work. We worked hard as hell. On Ronnie’s show we played a cappella, Bach fugues in three part harmony, Staple Singers songs an straight rock and roll – it blew everyone’s minds. They had to accept us because we were so good on a musical level.

Rogerio Duprat was sorta Tropicalia’s George Martin, what was his role in your work?
He was a great genius. I really miss him. He was a massive influence. His take on our ideas, like putting “Aida” and “Ben Hur”” together, was amazing.

Like the trumpet rondo part he put together on “Ou Panis Et Circenses” —four guys on the same mic playing stops and coming together — it‘s incredibly hard to play. You have to play without breathing and four guys doing it together. When Rogerio passed away I bought a cello, it’s on this album—I play it on “Fidel.” I used to play his cello. so to honor him I started playing cello.

When you played “Domingo No Parque” on TV in October 1967 at “The Festival of Brazilian Popular Music” you got booed for using an electric guitar, which freaked out the traditional Brazilian music establishment, it was kind of like Dylan at Newport.
It was different with Dylan. Our problem was that the electric guitars were symbols of America and we had a repressive military government.

I didn’t pay attention to political divides. I had a dune buggy and had just seen Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider,” so I painted my buggy like his motorcycle. I didn’t care if it was a US flag or not, I just thought it was beautiful. I got shit for it. It wasn’t easy getting those metallic colors in Brazil—we had to improvise.

Improvisation and experimentation are a big part of Os Mutantes’ ethos. Didn’t you replicate the Beatles’ backwards tape loops on “Tomorrow Never Knows” with a can of bug spray?
The Beatles were very inspiring. When we heard the backwards hi-hat, which sounds like ffft ffft, it sounded like a can of bug spray. We actually used the bug spray on the new album.

One of Tropicalia’s touchstone moments was the1968’s International Song Festival in Sao Paulo where Gil played “A Question of Order” and was disqualified for being anti-military. And you guys came out with Caetano wearing plastic suits and did “E Proibido Proibir” (To Forbid is Forbidden) and were shouted down. You had to turn your backs to the audience and Caetano screamed back, “You’re out of it! You don’t get anything! If you’re the same in politics as you are in music, we’re done for!
We had just come back from France where there were street protests and where the expression “Forbidden to Forbid” came from. In the middle of it people started throwing chairs, eggs, all this stuff at us, so we turned out backs, not to make a political statement, but to cover our asses. Caetano made an amazing speech. We were defiant and rocked even harder and were screaming against them. It was a riot. We were raised with music in the womb and knew we were doing good stuff. We knew they were wrong.

What was the significance of that moment?
It was important because of what happened politically, it was a big turn around. You could see the divide between straight people and people for freedom of expression. It was on live television and in all the newspapers.

What about in terms of the music divide between what people call MPB (Musica Popular Brasileria] and the contemporary music you were playing?
MPB was more of an old fashioned thing, the guys playing festivals with us like Eud Lobo, samba, bossa nova – it was very pigeon-holing.

So you were caught between the left and the right, the military regime and the communists.
Coming out of the ‘60s, there was no right or left, we were anarchists. Like the kids in America or the Beatles, they weren’t political, but what they did was political. It was a clash of a new experiment, a new creativity that engulfed everything that was. The idea of politics, of the left or right wing, Putin or Regan—our biggest dream was The Federation in Star Trek, that we are all one, we are the world – we already knew that and the kids felt the same. There was a vortex of energy you could feel all over the world.

What were you doing in France in 1968?
We played MIDEM in Cannes and then went to Paris where all the riots were happening. I saw guys putting red flag on top of Notre Dame, which was dirty and black and beautiful then, not like the white one today – it was incredible. We got tear gassed too, we were in the middle.

Did Os Mutantes tour?
We played France and Portugal and that was it. We played all over Brazil with the Shell Oil Company – the only time we earned money, they used one of our songs. They wanted a young approach. Our pictures were in every gas station—- full size. We made a jingle for them – Algo Mais – which means “Something Else,” that only Shell could give you. We did this song and put it on the album – it was the motto for the Shell campaign. Could you imagine us doing that? It was great, we made a bunch of videos based upon our song – the first music videos.

Caetano hosted a kind of Dadaist TV show called Divino Marvilhoso (Divine Marvelous) with you guys with cages, bananas and mock funerals which Tom Ze, Gal Costa, and Jorge Ben were on, what was that like?
It was a show without a plan. Everything was improvised and it was all done live. We never knew what was next. Let’s get Jorge Ben! And then Arnaldo and I would improvise. We had cages, but the TV was behind the cage so that the public was caged in not us. Caetano thought of that.

In Caetano’s book Troipical Truth he writes about a “Divine, Marvelous” last supper with Christ and the apostles and a table full of bananas and everyone singing while eating bananas and funeral with a grave marker saying “Here lies Tropicalism.”
I don’t clearly remember all that, but we used to have bananas on the tables and we used to throw them to people. We had high ratings. I remember the time we had a coffin, but the program was on only for like 2 or 3 months. We were just young kids, we thought we were immortal and indestructible.

The military government issued the Fifth Institutional Act (A5) at the end of ’68 limiting free speech and which led to Gil and Veloso arrest at the Sucata club supposedly because of a poster that pictured a criminal who had been murdered by the police, with the words “Be A Criminal, Be A Hero.”
It wasn’t just the art, it was all the craziness together. When evil gets power, it goes to extremes and we were dong so many crazy things they just couldn’t let happen. They had to find a way. They were looking for excuses to arrest them. Several times we had to stop a show and leave because we heard they were going to raid us. The military gave us a citation because we played the national anthem and used it as a hook to arrest Caetano and Gil — I’m the one who started playing it.

The Sucata was a small nightclub by Lagoa. I lost my cherry there, I stopped being virgin. At the time I was way into guitars and didn’t care about girls. Then this girl gave me a massage, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. She seduced the hell out of me. I became a follower, an apostle of that…

Your third record, 1969’s “A Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado” had your biggest hit, “Ando Meio Desiglado,” a drug song, but the Tropicalia movement was effectively done.
The title means “I’m a Little Spaced Out,” but it wasn’t about marijuana, it’s a love song. The translation is, “I feel a little spaced out, I can hardly feel my feet on the ground, I hear voices outside, if you care about me, I wish I could talk to you…”

Os Mutantes was bigger than ever when Rita decided to record her solo album which Arnaldo producd and which effectively marked the end of the first incarnation of Os Mutantes.
I didn’t understand why she was doing it when she already had a band. We still did a bunch of stuff together, but I refused to play on her album. I didn’t understand it, we were one entity before the 1970s.

What’s the story behind “Techinicolor,” the “lost album” recorded in Paris and lost for nearly three decades?
We were in Paris for 3 months playing at the Olympia with Gilbert Becaud who’s famous there. It was a variety show with all this crazy stuff that was supposed to last a month but lasted for three. Polydor UK asked Polydor Brazil for us to do an album, but we weren’t ready. We had just finished an album. So we did a few versions of those songs and four new ones. We recorded them without our stuff. “Technicolor” wasn’t a typical Mutantes album, it was kinda cold. Polydor asked us to stay in UK, but Arnaldo never told me about it. Him and Rita decided to go back for family, but it would have been easy to stay.

What happened when you got back to Brazil?
We got back to Brazil and nothing was happening. We were on this TV show, “Son Libre Exportacion,” but it was a caricature of what we had done.

Didn’t you guys set up a commune outside of town where things really started getting freaky?
We had a place in Cantareira, which is a mountain where the three brothers bought land and made a home All the crazy people and intellectuals from Sao Paulo came It was fantastic scenery – nothing that crazy – actually it was a bit crazy, No worse than the Grateful Dead. We started to put on shows for free. That’s when I had my first LSD trip and had an idea of getting a bus, and playing for everyone for free on the road. I think in reality it only happened for three days. A friend who raced cars had a bus with a platform. We tried to develop this thing with intellectuals and everyone taking acid. I was a virgin with acid. Arnaldo just said close your eyes and open your mouth – it was an amazing trip. Our PA was playing music from the top of the bus and I remember I was made of the music.

Arnaldo had a hard time of things after the band broke-up going in and out of institutions and injuring himself jumping out of one of these places.
It’s true., what can I say? It’s like you go to space and have a slight tear in your suit. It makes no difference while you are in the rocket, but when you go outside and have leakage it can be a problem and hard to pinpoint exactly what it is – it could be a heartbreak or anything.

What was it like when Caetano and Gilberto came out of exile?
They were distant from us. I didn’t understand it and still don’t. They went through a lot and didn’t treat us the same as before. I don’t know if they felt hurt because we didn’t go into exile with them, but it felt different. We started to grow apart. We started doing more psychedelic things and they took different paths playing more traditional music but always with a genius behind it.

There’s a quote from Gil when he was Brazil’s former Minister of Culture: “Os Mutantes were an extremely important phenomenon not just musically but also politically, because they inseminated a new spirit, that of the politics of ecstasy, into the Brazilian body politic. They were part of a revolutionary moment in Brazilian music and mores, so their reuniting has an element of restoration, of putting back together something that was broken asunder in the violent processes going on at that time.’’
That’s a beautiful quote. Gil is such a poet and such a beautiful spirit. He’s not on the new record only because he only stopped being minister while we were recording. We spoke and he was ready to help, but we were at the end of the record. I assume sooner or later we’ll do something together.

How about Caetano?
I met-up Caetano on tour and he was great. He came on stage and sang “Baby” with us. It was lovely, such a beautiful moment. I’m not sure what the future will bring, would love to have these guys on stage together. I’ve admired and adored them forever.

The New York Times:

Sunn O)))’s kind of mystery, practiced since the late 1990s, can be suffocating. It started its show, as usual, with a 20-minute censing of dry ice and the recorded chants of Gyuto monks. Then the band started its march of long, long notes, played by guitar and bass and a little bit of keyboard. The members played through the pieces in unison, without a drummer, so slowly and loudly that small discrepancies of timing produced dissonances that worked like sonar drills on your guts.

The L Magazine:

For a moment, I was convinced that I was having a seizure and that I needed medical attention.

The New Yorker:

Sunn O)))’s performance last week at Brooklyn’s Masonic Temple may be the loudest show I’ve ever seen…. Standing in front of the stage on Tuesday night felt like a teen-age dare. How long could I stand to have my organs palpated? How could I tear myself away? Would the volume loosen up kinked muscles? Sterilize me? The intense physicality of Sunn O)))’s music makes it seem like any number of things might be happening to you and only a forensic reconstruction will reveal exactly what did happen.

Over the course of twelve years, Sunn O))) have devised something that operates to the side of, or behind, music: their sound eats up space and time. After the show was over, my head felt like a bag of blueberry muffins that had been left under a bench for three days. I walked down Vanderbilt Avenue towards my house, sweaty and bereft of the ability to echolocate.

Free The Basement:

“If a car hit me,” I remarked as we crossed the street, “I don’t even think I would feel it.”

Self-Titled:

”...you’ve gotta be willing to wade through waves of slowwww, shape-shifting distortion for a good 90 minutes if you want the true Sunn O))) experience.”

Bravewords: