Music Biz Headlines, May 3, 2019

By Kerry Doole

Get your Kleenex ready as you watch Dan Mangan help a Hamilton kid give his mom the best birthday present ever

The problem with being a kid when it's a parent's birthday is that coming up with a meaningful gift can be hard. Still, sometimes if you're willing to think outside of the box, you might get it right and deliver the best birthday present ever. Enter Dan Mangan. – Mike Usinger, Georgia Straight

Why Deliluh are sticking to unconventional venues

A new short documentary called Somewhere Else centres around the Toronto band and the spaces that fuel their DIY ethic – even when those spaces also test it. – Michael Rancic, NOW

Music Notes: Let the Suns shine in

Touring rock? Instrumental jazz fusion? Local classical guitar? Matt Olson has you covered with this week's recommended shows. – Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

Reclaiming Yoko Ono: Montreal exhibition Liberté Conquérante/Growing Freedom celebrates the often-maligned artist’s work

Yoko Ono instructed me to climb into a big cloth bag, so I did, pulling it up to my chin. I and another man laughed as we took a few steps in our form-effacing sacks at Montreal’s Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain. – Robert Everett-Green, Globe and Mail

How a couple from Canada brought 'Come From Away' to the world

From Broadway to London’s West End, racking up awards along the way, Come From Away is the Canadian theatre feel-good story of the century. But, the story behind the celebrated musical begins in Canada, and with a show that was the hit of Toronto Fringe a decade ago. – Anya Wassenberg, Ludwig Van

18 Toronto concerts we're looking forward to in May 2019

Lizzo, the Strokes, Canadian Music Week, CBC Music Festival and more – here are the shows to catch this month.  – Staff, NOW

International

ASCAP distributes a record $1.1 Billion (US) in royalties

The performing rights society announced that its total revenues for 2018 were a record $1.227 billion, an increase of 7% over 2017. Distributions crossed the $1 billion mark for the second year in a row, with $1.109 billion in royalties paid out to its songwriter, composer and publisher members — also a record. – Variety

Carly Rae Jepsen: Queen of Hearts

Her new album is full of big, sparkling dance-pop. All it took was four years, a breakup and 200 songs. – Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone

What became of the great Beatnik hangouts in San Francisco?

We hear a lot about the old Beat hangouts in San Francisco — the cluster of low-lit bars and bitter-coffee-serving cafes grouped around North Beach. With most of the Beat generation having died years ago — Lawrence Ferlinghetti being the exception at age 100 — what happened to their boho hangouts of yesteryear? –  Michelle Robertson,SFGate

Hear Bob Dylan rehearse ‘One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)’ in 1975

The previously-unheard performance was recorded at a motel one day before the Rolling Thunder Revue began touring in October 1975. – Andy Greene, Rolling Stone

The Bengali homemaker whose ‘Disco Jazz’ album has become a ‘holy grail’ after 40 years of anonymity

Why, almost 40 years after its release, is the nerdy world of music collectors paying so much attention to a homemade record made on the spur of the moment in the Canadian prairie town of Calgary? –  Nate Rabe, scroll.in

RAC and Goldroom launch Minerva Music, a label that distributes music on the blockchain    

Grammy-winning remixer André Allen Anjos (R.A.C.) and Los Angeles-based producer and DJ Josh Legg (Goldroom) have launched a new record label, Minerva Music, the first to distribute all of its music on the Ethereum blockchain. – Harley Brown, Billboard

Play It Loud at The Met

That’s rock and roll. This exhibit is so much better than the reviews. By the time I was finished I was in shock as if I’d just endured a Zeppelin show, or another aural assault by our favorite bands of yore. A bunch of instruments from famous musicians…doesn’t sound like much. Unless you were there, unless you lived through it. – Bob Lefsetz, Celebrity Access

The Libertines’ Peter Doherty hospitalized after being injured by a hedgehog

The hedgehog-related injury occurred when the notorious Brit rocker was walking his dogs. Yesterday, Doherty tweeted that he was “in a hospital bed with an infected hedgehog spike wound.”  – Pitchfork

Northern Nights Music Fest to have recreational cannabis sales and consumption

The festival in the heart of Calfornia pot hub Emerald Triangle will be one of the first overnight, three-day festivals in the U.S. to legally allow recreational cannabis sales and consumption. – Taylor Mims, Billboard

Vampire Weekend: Father of the Bride review – a scrapbook of brilliant ideas

Their first album in six years sees VW integrating styles from country to flamenco into their preppy pop, often brilliantly. – Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

Canadian prog rocker Devin Townsend on Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger 

“He is almost more like a scientist than he is a rock musician. He is a functioning genius, in my estimation." –  Greg Prato, CoS

Tunecore is now collecting nearly $1M a day for its independent artists - who just earned over $500M within 18 months

The commercial clout of the self-releasing artist sector is becoming increasingly big news. – Tim Ingham, MBW