GrandGood will not be at this panel discussion because we were too slow in getting tickets. Hopefully it will be broadcast in some fashion. If you’re going, please sneak in a recorder. Link (Related: The audio to a panel discussion with Rza that we posted about a few weeks ago is available. Link (via hiphopblogs))
Sasha Frere-Jones, moderator. With Steve Albini, Ani DiFranco, Ric Ocasek, and the RZA.
Sasha Frere-Jones is the pop-music critic for The New Yorker. From 1991 to 2003, he was a member of the band Ui, whose albums include “Answers,” “Lifelike,” and “Sidelong.” In 1998, he released “Standing Upright on a Curve,” a solo guitar album. He is currently finishing an album of loud rock songs.
Steve Albini is a guitarist, recording engineer, and occasional music writer. Formerly a member of the bands Big Black and Rapeman, he currently plays with the group Shellac. He has overseen the making of the albums “In Utero,” by Nirvana, and “Surfer Rosa,” by the Pixies, among many others.
Ani DiFranco is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She produced her first sixteen solo albums and co-produced her seventeenth, “Knuckle Down,” which was released this year. She has also produced recordings by the artists Dan Bern, Janis Ian, and the group Bitch and Animal, and co-produced Drums & Tuba and Hammell on Trial for her Righteous Babe Records label.
Ric Ocasek was the front man for the rock band the Cars, which sold more than twenty-five million albums in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. He has produced recordings by Bad Brains, Guided by Voices, Hole, Weezer, and No Doubt, and served as vice-president of artists and repertoire at Elektra. His solo albums include “Troublizing” and “Nexterday.”
The RZA, whose real name is Robert Diggs, is a founding member of the hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. He has produced all their albums and also the solo efforts of Method Man and the late ODB. As a film composer, his credits include “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” which was nominated for a BAFTA, and “Kill Bill: Vol. 2.” He is the author of “The Wu-Tang Manual,” published this year, and will star in “Derailed,” with Clive Owen.
