The News Review:
- Rock for Children – Music – Report – New York Times
- Music – AARP – Report – New York Times
- The Revenge of the Dork
Rock for Children – Music – Report – New York Times
New York Times – Nov 26, 2006
Ralph Covert of the grown-up band Bad Examples and the family-friendly Ralph’s World has built a cottage industry to rival that of Mr. ther artists who have dipped into kiddie rock include the country-punk singer Jason Ringenberg the all-girl band Luscious Jackson and members of the Mekons who tried on alter egos in the band Wee Hairy Beasties whose album “Animal Crackers” (Bloodshot Records) came out in ctober. Skip to next paragraph Multimedia… “They think it’s funny and that it sets them apart. Plus if you listen to that music now like I do way too often you realize it’s kids’ music: three chords dressed up with all this distortion. ” Such parents can take credit for the success of this summer’s Kidzapalooza the two-year-old arm of the Chicago-based rock festival Lollapalooza which lured a crowd of 160000 up from 2000 in 2005. The attractions included a “rock ‘n’ roll petting zoo” where children could get behind a professional drum kit while parents rocked out on guitar or bass and a hip-hop workshop where children still in strollers burned rap CDs with professional disc jockeys. Among the performers were Patti Smith and Perry Farrell the former frontman of Jane’s Addiction and the founder of Lollapalooza. “People in their 30s and 40s aren’t really grown up and they don’t want to grow up” said David Agnew a vice president of the Buena Vista Music Group and the force behind this year’s “Devo 2.
Music – AARP – Report – New York Times
New York Times – Nov 26, 2006
com said she plans to join AARP at some point to take advantage of financial benefits like discounts on insurance rental cars and hotels. But as for recommending albums “If I want to know about cool music I’ll ask my 22-year-old. ” Whether AARP succeeds in its new venture it’s on to something significant. Like Madison Avenue it is responding to the marketing challenge posed by the huge but fickle post-war generation which for the last 60 years has driven cultural trends from hula hoops to the S… verall marketers say older consumers need to be made comfortable. So House of Blues the concert promoter found that it could boost ticket sales for older artists by offering pre-show dinners or wine tastings. Sometimes they added seating in clubs that had required fans to stand. AARP is heeding such lessons by developing the machinery of modern tastemaking.
The Revenge of the Dork
TIME – Nov 26, 2006
artTools –>Frank Portman had to grow up. The punk pop band he founded in the ’80s–the Mr. T Experience–had the kind of long-term niche success that leads to self-doubt and massive credit-card debt. Plus the band had fallen apart. Portman 42 was on the verge of becoming that old guy working at a record store. And record stores don’t much exist anymore… Another ditty neatly summed up male teenage sexual frustration with the song title Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend. Portman argues that simply writing rock songs made him uniquely qualified to write a book for both teens and adults a literary Gilmore Girls. “Rock ‘n’ roll is teenage music. But you don’t stop listening to the Who when you’re 20″ he says. “ur entire popular culture’s about high school. It’s this thing that most people suffered through terribly or like to think they did. ” His impossibly brilliant 14-year-old character when taking a break from getting beaten up and riddling through confused if well-meaning lectures from his righteous Bay Area stepfather works on his rock band which exists only in his mind: “The Nancy Wheelers [with] me on guitar Sam Hellerman on bass and uija board first album: Margaret? It’s God.