The Weekly Music Pulse – SITASS Edition

Weekly Music Pulse – SITASS Edition

R&B Legend Wilson Pickett Dead at 64

Soul legend Wilson Pickett died of a heart attack in a Virginia hospital today, according to his management company. He was 64 years old. Pickett was among the grittiest, rawest soul singers of the 60s, and during his tenure on Atlantic records from 1965 to 1973, he recorded such landmark stompers as “In the Midnight Hour” and “Land of 1,000 Dances.”

Pickett left his hometown of Prattville, Alabama while still in his teens, heading to Detroit and starting his first group, the Violinaires, in the late 50s. He later joined the Falcons, led by fellow soul giant Eddie Floyd, hitting the R&B Top 10 in 1962 with “I Found a Love,” a classic soul burner topped by Pickett’s screaming and sweating lead vocal. Three years later, after a few minor solo hits with RCA, Atlantic sent him to Memphis to record with the Stax crew, where the pumping “In the Midnight Hour” established him as a force to reckon with and helped define the gritty Southern soul style.

Over the next few years, he cut side after side of fiery, vital soul, including “Mustang Sally,” “Funky Broadway”, “I Found a True Love” and the smoking Bobby Womack collaboration “I’m a Midnight Mover,” splitting his recording time between Stax and Muscle Shoals. An unlikely pairing with Gamble & Huff for 1970’s Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia worked out surprisingly well, and produced the hits “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You” and “Get Me Back on Time, Engine No. 9,” the latter a sweet slice of churning funk with psychedelic overtones. Pickett continued to have hits right into the early 70s, capping his long string of smashes in 1971 with the thrashing funk cut “Don’t Knock My Love.”

Pickett left Atlantic for RCA shortly afterward, and never again had the same level of success, commercially or artistically. He was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In 1999, he cut It’s Harder Now, a surprisingly strong comeback album that found his paint-scraping falsetto still intact.

(credit: PitchforkMedia.com)

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Plugging the Bitchin’ Music $h!T

Mike Eagle – Letters From Freakloud

Everybody’s favorite IP MC (don’t tell me you don’t know what THAT means!) is spreading the gospel of Open Mike. He talks about the concept of dreams and what he’s doing to keep his alive.

Head over to Open Mike’s MySpace account to check out his newest beats and rhymes…IMMEDIATELY!

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DP Wieland – A Bird in the Hand

DP follows the example set by Kyle David Paul and drops some fiction. Worth an early morning read and a picture of this guy:

When Richard Simmons finds your writing dreamy you must be InsidePulse Worthy!

Honestly, a nice piece about…well, just go read it!

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Brian J. Blottie – Anger is a Gift

Blottie RETURNS to save the day (here at InsidePulse.com.) He tells you all to piss off, but in that nice way that only someone who truly cares could. Like Grandma, but with more swearing and less Gin.

Actually, make that MUCH more swearing. Oh, and he also mentions…

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Gloomchen – Totally True Tune Tales

East Dubuque, Iowa. Not the town you think of when you think of rock? Tough. Gloomchen proves in her latest tale that It can be a pretty rad place…sometimes, even when young women lose their falsies. No kidding.

No surprise that Gloomy knows someone with falsies. Now, are you thinking about the same thing that I am?

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Prince Makes First SNL Appearance in 25 Years

After two decades of depriving Saturday Night Live audiences of his assless chaps, Prince will take the SNL stage on Feb. 4. Steve Martin will be hosting for his record-making 14th time. The last time Prince played SNL was back in 1981, right after Dirty Mind and Controversy had been released. Prince’s appearance will be in support of his new album, 3121, which comes out March 21. The first single from 3121, “Te Amo Corazon,” was released back in December. The single is available through Prince’s own digital music distribution outlet, the NPG music club.

(credit: Spin.com)

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That Bootleg Guy, Aaron Cameron, has TWO Reviews for you:

1) Snoop Dogg – Welcome to Tha Chuuch: Da Album which, based on Cam’s review, is crap.

AND…

2) D.P.G. – Dillinger II Young Gotti: Tha Saga Continuez… featuring the reunion of the Dogg Pound. This one must have blown chunks as well.

If you need your fix of beats from 1998, these are the albums for you. Otherwise, for those of you who have senses of humor:

The Internet is for Porn.

There, that’s better.

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Oh yeah, there’s some stuff from myself as well…not that I am partial to my own stuff or anything…

Stuff I Think and Shouldn’t Say

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50 Cent Sued For Copyright Infringement

Rapper 50 Cent stole some of the lyrics for his 2003 hit “In Da Club” from a song by former 2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell, an attorney claims in a lawsuit. Richard C. Wolfe filed the copyright infringement lawsuit against Curtis James Jackson, aka 50 Cent, in Miami federal court last week on behalf of Lil’ Joe Wein Music.

Parts of “In Da Club,” from the Shady/Aftermath/Interscope album Get Rich or Die Tryin,’ copy “It’s Your Birthday,” released in 1994 on Campbell’s solo album “Still a Freak for Life,” the lawsuit alleged. A message left January 20th for Wolfe was not immediately returned.Lil’ Joe Wein Music holds the copyright to “It’s Your Birthday” and other songs Campbell produced with his rap group 2 Live Crew and as a solo artist. The company is owned by Joseph Weinberger, an attorney who formerly represented Campbell.

Campbell’s song “I Like It, I Love It” can also be heard on the 2003 DVD 50 Cent: The New Breed, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages in addition to attorneys’ fees and other legal costs. Wolfe won a $2.3 million judgment against Campbell in 1994 for another rapper who claimed Campbell withheld royalties.

(credit: Billboard.com)

Ha. Ha, ha. That asswad STOLE from LUTHER CAMPBELL?!?!?!? That’s like beating a retard in a fist fight, and then BRAGGING.

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The city may be there for them to use, but the men behind Pitchfork’s fifth favorite single of 2005, the Futureheads, spent five weeks in the North Yorkshire countryside late last year laying down tracks for their upcoming second album.

According to a recent post on their website, the band recorded fourteen songs with Blur/Doves/Depeche Mode producer Ben Hillier “on a farm near Scarborough”, “taking advantage of the different spaces to achieve different sounds with their instruments…guitars in the greenhouse, and drums in the barn!”

The tracks are being mixed this month, with tentative titles including “Worry”, “Thursday”, “Yes/No”, “Cope”, “Fallout”, and “Return of the Berserker”.

(credit: PitchforkMedia.com)

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In the corniest move this side of Kidz Bop, legendary new wave subversives Devo have re-recorded several of their classic tunes with a most unlikely band of vocalists: five youngsters. This is according to Billboard.com, but we assume they aren’t joking.

Collected on a disc branded Devo 2.0, this fresh batch of kid-friendly fare will see release March 17 via Disney Sound, the jolly folks who brought us They Might Be Giants’ Here Come the ABCs. And as with anything involving children and pop music, Devo 2.0 will either be beautiful, heinous, or effing kitsch-tastic.

Devo-tees take note: Devo 2.0 also features two brand new tracks from the Energy Dome-donning act, “Cyclops” and “The Winner”. In addition, this foray into the 21st century boasts a companion DVD, full of animated and live-action videos for each track directed by Devo bassist Jerry Casale.

(credit: PitchforkMedia.com)

MOST. INSANE. IDEA. EVER.

Let’s hope that I don’t have to review this…and if I do, I will pass it off on Salty.

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Monkey Business

Alex Turner, frontman for British foursome Arctic Monkeys, is a scrawny nineteen-year-old with spotty skin who mumbles like the shyest kid in your freshman dorm. He’s also England’s fastest-rising rock star. Arctic Monkeys’ first single, the rambunctious guitar blast “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” debuted at Number One there in October, thanks to a fan base that grew around free MP3s of the band’s demos.

“One minute we were at college and stuff,” says Turner, who still lives in his parents’ house in a suburb of Sheffield, England. “And the next minute all this happens.” Even though their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, won’t be released in the States until February 21st, Arctic Monkeys sold out a U.S. tour last fall; at the New York opener, Turner begged overexcited hipsters to stop snapping pictures for their blogs.

The band has since won praise from the likes of Mick Jagger and the Strokes. But three years ago, Arctic Monkeys were just another group of teenage friends messing around in a garage with instruments they couldn’t play. “We just wanted to be a band — playing anything was quite an achievement,” says nineteen-year-old drummer Matt Helders. After months of thrashing through Vines and White Stripes covers, Turner began bringing in his own songs. The breakthrough was “Fake Tales of San Francisco,” a hooky, sharply observed nightlife portrait, with ska rhythms and one Elvis Costello-worthy pun: “All the weekend rock stars are in the toilet/Practicing their lines.”

At local gigs, the group gave away home-burned demo CDs of its punky, Brit-poppy tunes, which evoke Blur and the Libertines. Soon, fans posted the songs online, and ever-larger crowds of kids were singing along with Turner’s uncannily smart lyrics. Last spring, Arctic Monkeys ended a bidding war by signing with U.K. indie label Domino Records, home to Franz Ferdinand.

The band hopes the hype from its fairy-tale ascent won’t distract from its music. “We wanted to find a sound separate from changing styles and times,” says Turner. “More than anything, we just want our album to be remembered.”

(credit: RollingStone.com)

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Lastly, don’t forget to head over to the Inside Pulse Reader Forums and cast your vote for the Greatest Album Cover Art of All Time!

That’s the week that was in Music here at IP.

Until next time, keep it real!

Ssquared