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  • From: WWWhatsup <joly AT dti.net>
  • To: typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [TypicalGirls] Rick Rubin <3 Gossip
  • Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 07:47:58 -0400

[Sony has hired Rick Rubin as co-pres. of Columbia Records.
His job is to save the future of the music industry. He in turn
has turned to Beth & co.]


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html

The Music Man

By LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Published: September 2, 2007

Rick Rubin is listening. A song by a new band called the
Gossip is playing, and he is concentrating. He appears to be
in a trance. His eyes are tightly closed and he is swaying
back and forth to the beat, trying at once to hear what is
right and wrong about the music.

<snip>

Though Rubin maintains that his intention is simply to hear
music with the fresh ears of a true fan, he has built his
reputation on the simultaneously mystical and entirely
decisive way he listens to a song. As the Gossip, which is
fronted by a large, raucous woman named Beth Ditto, shouts to
a stop, Rubin opens his eyes and nods yes. This is the first
new band signed to Columbia that he has been enthralled by,
but he is not yet sure how to organize the Gossip's future.

<snip>

Rubin headed back to his Range Rover. In the car, he said he
had some live footage of the Gossip that he wanted to show me.
"I saw the group at the Troubadour, and they blew my mind," he
said. "It was the best show I've seen in five years.
Afterward, I met with the band. They felt stressed, and they
were having trouble writing songs. The energy in the room when
they were performing was so intense, and I'm not even sure how
we'd get it to feel like that in the studio. So we decided to
record a live show during their European tour, and we're going
to release a DVD of the live album as their first release."

Rubin looked pleased. Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the
Gossip, is exactly what he has been looking for since he took
this job at Columbia: she is an outsize personality in an
outsize body with a Joplin-esque, bluesy voice. Ditto is the
kind of artist Rubin loves unique, ambitious and open to
guidance. "For a band like the Gossip," Rubin continued, "the
support of a record company like Columbia is still really
important. I grew up in the independent music business, and
you still really need the muscle of the majors. A record
company call can still get you heard like nobody else."

Rubin paused. "That's the magic of the business," he said.
"It's all doom and gloom, but then you go to a Gossip show or
hear Neil (Diamond) in the studio and you remember that too many people
make and love music for it to ever die. It will never be over.
The music will outlast us all."


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http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
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