DAILYSESSION

By David Hinckley –  New York DailyNews

The two will become one station and broadcast with WBLS call letters at 107.5

After 30 years as spirited and often ferocious rivals, WBLS (107.5 FM) and WRKS (98.7 FM, Kiss-FM) will become one.
In a turn as sudden and stunning as the Yankees merging with the Mets, the city’s two adult urban radio stations announced in a joint press release Thursday that they will become “One Family, One Station.”
Kiss and WBLS began simulcasting at 10 a.m. Thursday, starting with a tribute to the 30-year legacy of Kiss.
As of 12 a.m. Monday they will become a single station at 107.5 FM, under the WBLS call letters.

It is likely this news will not please all listeners, many of whom feel there are already too few black media voices in the city.
The merger is part of a major reshuffling triggered when Disney agreed to acquire 98.7 FM from Emmis.
The complicated $96 million deal essentially lets Disney lease 98.7 FM as of Monday morning, when it will start simulcasting ESPN radio there. ESPN radio is now heard on the weaker 1050 AM signal.
Disney had been thirsting for an FM signal so it can better challenge CBS Radio’s all-sports WFAN (660 AM).
A key factor in this new deal is that WRKS and WBLS have both had financial problems, at the stations themselves and with their parent companies.

Emmis last year also sold its 101.9 FM frequency in New York.

[Read More]

Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival 2012 Weekend Event Profile: Funky Slice Vinyl Shop, The Daily Session and Cedar Room

Eager to open its doors for the first time to the public and participate in The Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival, on June 1, 2 and 3rd; Cedar Room, home of Funky Slice Vinyl Shop and The Daily Session will be serving up wax for your consumption, providing and broadcasting live mixes and finishing the weekend with the most exclusive Dance Party in Bushwick.

A community center for vinyl enthusiasts, connoisseurs and junkies, Funky Slice Vinyl Shop invites you to dig our extensive selection, take advantage of our listening booth and have a listen to our hard-to-find and rare grooves and take home with you a slice of New York’s underground. Making available stock from Vinylmania, offering House, Disco and Soul Funk and other unclassifiable and undiscovered gems, from Friday until Sunday, here is your chance to gain entrance to this membership record listening joint.

All while local DJs deliver The Daily Session—Transmissions from New York’s Underground that keep vinyl alive—enjoy and take part in the green environment that is Cedar Room. Throughout the weekend before your eyes, local, talented artists will be having live art sessions, producing calligraphy, graffiti and cover art.

On Saturday night Cedar Room will be hosting some of the best known and yet-to-be discovered DJs who will grace us with their favorite tunes in an unparalleled sound system. Sure to be a magnet of positive energy this party is open to all participants of Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival. Not to be missed!

By Jez

details coming soon!

Funky Slice Vinyl Shop is the ultimate underground boutique for professional DJs, Record collectors and music lovers.

Funky Slice is a membership record listening joint. From a Hidden Fortress on a Daily Basis local DJs in the know deliver The Daily Session, a live streaming Radio Show providing eclectic mixes directly from the heart of New York’s underground. We keep our store’s location undisclosed to allow us to listen and share music, and In Order to Dance, in a completely free and shared environment, and of course through a proper sound system equipped with a sweet spot so you don’t lose the warmth and juiciest parts that only vinyl music can offer.

In a digitally and Mp3 dominated music world respect and appreciation of music is difficult to accomplish. At Funky Slice what we are offering is not just vinyl, but a whole experience of record digging, crates included. Featuring an infinite array of diverse and unrivaled hand-picked selections from unique and singular categories, this vinyl shop serves up the wax you must have. Dropping needles in our listening booth while admiring sleeve art and choosing and discovering all those hard to find gems, in a conducive green environment, you can relax and enjoy the entire record listening experience.

Funky Slice Vinyl Shop is not only a shopping place but a community center for vinyl enthusiasts, connoisseurs and junkies. Not only do we exchange information about records and parties but art, ventures and ideas. It is a cultural exchange between different ages, sexes, races under music.

Home of Funky Slice Vinyl Shop and one of the many locations from where The Daily Session is broadcasted, The Cedar Room completes the circle of this exclusive collective. Several times a month through invitation only, The Cedar Room opens its doors to its members for the ultra exclusive Nininja Party. It’s an enlightening gathering.

By Jez

By Roy Furchgott – NY Times

Buying records is easy. You can find them by the milk crate at yard sales, for a few dollars apiece in used record stores, and there are new, special pressings by contemporary musicians like Shelby Lynne, whose “Just a Little Lovin’” album, at $30, is a top seller. But buying the instrument needed to listen to them, a turntable, is a different matter.

“Young people didn’t grow up with turntables,” said Kenny Bowers, manager at Needle Doctor, a Minnesota store specializing in turntables. “It seems mysterious and complicated because you don’t just push a button and have it play for you.”

There are advantages to old-fashioned analog music, according to some audiophiles. “There is a fuller sound to it, and more depth to the sound,” said Ryan Holiday, the New Orleans-based marketing director for American Apparel. He’s a new devotee of jazz and David Bowie, thanks to LPs. (For the youngsters, that stands for long playing, as in long-playing record; there were also small records called 45s). “I could hear hands going up and down the frets, and stuff that they probably didn’t want you to hear. Which is a nice little surprise,” he said. [Read More]

By JON PARELES – NY Times

Last week Ralf Hütter, the singer and founder of the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk, recalled the first time the band came to New York City: in 1975, for an American tour to promote “Autobahn,” an unlikely hit sung in German and backed by electronics. The group members were carrying, he said, a few suitcases, some synthesizers in padded boxes they had built themselves and, for visuals, a slide projector.

Things have changed. For Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 at the Museum of Modern Art — eight sold-out concerts that conclude Tuesday, with Kraftwerk playing through each of its eight studio albums from 1974 to 2003 — Kraftwerk deploys 3-D video projectors that send images leaping forward from the stage, along with a custom surround-sound installation including overhead speakers and a sleekly concealed wall of woofers at the front of the stage. (A multimedia exhibition at MoMA PS1 continues through May 14.) [Read More]

Please click HERE for more info.

By BEN SISARIO – NY Times

One Friday afternoon last month, 60,000 tickets at $100 and up went on sale for a major music festival at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., before the headliners had even been announced.

It sold out in three hours.

The festival with the fervent following was the Electric Daisy Carnival, a two-day event next month dedicated to the concert industry’s new favorite genre: electronic dance music. Long considered a marginal part of the music business that subsisted in clubs and semi-legal warehouse raves, dance has now moved squarely into the mainstream, with a growing circuit of festivals and profit margins that are attracting Wall Street.

For an industry increasingly reliant on aging headliners — like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and the Rolling Stones — the appeal of a genre with fresh stars and a huge young audience is undeniable.

“If you’re 15 to 25 years old now, this is your rock ‘n’ roll,” said Michael Rapino, the chief executive of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s largest concert promoter. [Read More]