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Music News: How much would you pay for original Fyre Festival merch?

Fyre Festival ticket buyers had dreams of swimming with the pigs on Great Exuma, as actor Steven Bauer did at the much more successful Sandals Emerald Bay Celebrity Getaway and Golf Weekend in 2013.
Fyre Festival ticket buyers had dreams of swimming with the pigs on Great Exuma, as actor Steven Bauer did at the much more successful Sandals Emerald Bay Celebrity Getaway and Golf Weekend in 2013.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Sandals
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by Jade

March 19, 2019

Above, listen to an episode of The Current's daily Music News podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up for a daily Music News e-mail and join our Facebook group.


Did you watch one of the Fyre Festival documentaries? If you did, you probably came away with very little pity for festival (and fraud) mastermind Billy McFarland, but you might have had some empathy for the victims that were scammed by the event.

Well, now there's a way to help them get paid back, and get yourself an artifact from the notoriously disastrous festival. Manhattan's U.S. Attorney's office will be auctioning off the festival's official merchandise to help pay off the $26 million debt.

Information about the actual items for sale or when the auction will take place hasn't been announced, but a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said that they "have an assortment of the 'real thing' Fyre-Festival-branded T-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, hats, wristbands and medallions." (Billboard)

Metallica collaborating with the San Francisco Symphony

Sometimes 2019 feels like a musical Mad Libs game. Today's offering is Metallica joining up with the San Francisco Symphony to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their 1999 live album S&M.

The S&M2 concert will be held Friday, Sept. 6 and will be the first show held in the new Chase Center in San Francisco. (Pitchfork)

Fiona Apple teasing new music

Fiona Apple is back in the studio, thank goodness! Her last album was 2012's The Idler Wheel, but she's been popping up in the past few years on one-off songs (like the theme song for The Affair, or her cover of "Pure Imagination") and duets (like Andrew Bird's "Left Handed Kisses" and King Princess' remake of "I Know").

On Instagram, she shared two clips of herself working in her home studio. In one clip, she was cuddling her dog and swung the camera around to show her small studio setup while she says, "Are we recording? Are we doing vocals? I think we are." She continues, "Okay, we need to get back to work now. You don't need to go to a studio. You could just do stuff in your house, and then nobody can tell you what to do." In the second clip, she's got headphones on and is drumming to a beat in her own head.

There was no other tease about possible dates, but in a Q&A with fans last year, Apple did say that she's been making new music. Let's hope she releases it someday soon. (Pitchfork)

The Godfather of Rap, Andre Williams, is dead at 82

Andre Williams, "the Godfather of Rap" and Motown artist who worked with Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, died from colon cancer this weekend at age 82.

The smooth-talking singer and songwriter got an early start in the Detroit R&B scene as a teenager in the 5 Dollars. Nicknamed "Mr. Rhythm" while signed to Fortune Records, he scored hits like "Jail Bait" and "Bacon Fat."

He moved to Motown in the '60s, writing songs for Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, and Ray Charles. He continued working as a solo artist and collaborating with artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Parliament, and Tina Turner, up until he released his final solo album in Don't Ever Give Up, in 2016. (Rolling Stone)

Hip-hop makes cheese funky

Your musical taste might actually have a taste — at least when it comes to cheese. Last fall, a group of researchers from Bern University of Arts in Switzerland teamed up with Swiss cheesemaker Beat Wampfler to test out a theory that music could affect the taste and structure of cheese.

They put nine 22-pound wheels of cheese in their own wooden crates and then for six months they were played non-stop loops of one song each — with the music soundwaves directed towards the cheese. What were they listening to? Mozart's The Magic Flute for the classical cheese. One rocked out to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," an ambient block got Yello's "Monolith," there was a techno cheese that listened to Vril's "UV," the hip-hop cheese heard A Tribe Called Quest's "Jazz (We've Got)," and there were some aged in silence or hit with high, medium, and low frequency tones.

All this music seems to have done something, because when they brought in some food technologists (yes, that's a job), they concluded that the cheese that was played music had a milder flavor and that the hip-hop cheese had a stronger aroma and stronger flavor. One of the experts said that the Tribe Called Quest cheese was, "remarkably fruity, both in smell and taste, and significantly different from the other samples." Hip-hop truly is funkier. (Smithsonian)

Viral clip: Karen O and Danger Mouse film new video live on TV

Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse, legendary director Spike Jonze (who's directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and has made music videos for Fatboy Slim, Beastie Boys, Kanye West, Björk, and Weezer), plus The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. What do they all have in common? Well, they came together to create a live music video for the song "Woman" by Karen O and Danger Mouse, off their new album Lux Prima.

The video is shot in black-and-white and features dancers, live singing from Karen O, and guitar playing by Danger Mouse; plus some great lighting and trademark Jonze quirkiness. (Consequence of Sound)


Audio sampled in podcast
Jahzzar: "Comedie" (CC BY 4.0)
BoxCat Games: "Against The Wall" (CC BY 3.0)
Fiona Apple Instagram clips
King Princess: "I Know (feat. Fiona Apple)"
Andre Williams: "Bacon Fat"
A Tribe Called Quest: "Jazz (We've Got)"
Karen O and Danger Mouse: "Woman" (Live on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)