Good Music Needs a Stage

Apple just opened the Apple Music Hall in the heart of London, and as New Yorkers, we are a little miffed. It did so in total secrecy, maybe because such a move seems so out of character for a big tech company. After all, Apple even stopped live-producing its wildly popular product announcement shows, and after the pandemic, its annual developer event has become virtual-only.

The 600-cap venue is designed to connect high-quality live music events to the internet. They plan to host superstars there for special shows – the backstage area is designed to accommodate their needs – as well as up-and-coming acts. We certainly hope to see an artist we featured on glamglare perform on this stage one day.

We keep coming back to one idea: live music is the natural antidote to machine-generated entertainment. One might suspect that the big streaming companies are at least tempted by the latter. The cheaper they can buy the music, the more profit is left for them.

Against that backdrop, Apple’s investment in the human creation of music feels like an encouraging sign, at least for now. It also revives a live music thread that reaches back to the iTunes Festival, which came to SXSW in 2014, even if it was never fully woven into the rest of the event.

Back then, Spotify also ran its much-liked Spotify House at the festival, before giving it up a few years later. Maybe it is time for the streaming service to find its way back into live music, too, rather than putting its name on a soccer team. At a moment when many artists feel the company has lost its focus on music, that might not be a bad place to start.

Discovery of the Week - Gus and the TV

Earlier this month, New York’s indie music festival The New Colossus announced its first wave of acts for the festival’s eighth edition, taking place March 9 to 14, 2027, on the Lower East Side. For us, the anticipation and the music discoveries are almost as much fun as experiencing the real thing live. So we started listening to the playlist, and whenever a song stopped us in our tracks, we took note.

I am not yet through all 79 acts announced so far, but the one my interest instantly landed on was “Get In” by Gus and the TV. One song is often enough to put an artist on our live list during a festival, but I wanted to know more. And knowing the three New Colossus founders, all music industry veterans, I was pretty sure they would not stop at just one song either.

The project, led by Gus Diecker from Columbus, Ohio, released the album Santa Maria in February of this year, featuring eight delightfully different songs. Roughly half of them reminded me, in vibe, of Julian Casablancas’ only solo album, Phrazes for the Young, one of my all-time favorites. The other half leans more experimental, electronic, and synth-pop, with “Get In” sitting somewhere beautifully in the middle.

In short, I am very much looking forward to seeing Gus and the TV live. And if Gus Diecker happens to release another single before March? We will be listening closely. Song Pick of the Day material, perhaps.

Cover Song of the Week: Johnny Cash - One

As New Yorkers, we may have wished otherwise, but London is, of course, a perfect location for an Apple Music HQ. Two songs come to mind from our first visit to London in 1992: “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred and “One” by U2, which we heard pretty much everywhere. We spare you a cover of the former, but Johnny Cash did a beautiful version of “One,” which saved U2 from a breakup during the recording of Achtung Baby, their seventh studio album.

This Week in glamglare history

1 Year Ago: Automatic - Black Box

Automatic is a fascinating trio from LA known for retro-futuristic post-punk and critical social commentary. “Black Box” is from their 2025 album Is This Now?.

5 Years Ago: Girl As Wave - Other Side

Girl As Wave is the project of singer-songwriter Marci Elizabeth and producer Jimmy Deer, who have been releasing intimate synth-pop since 2017, including eight Song Pick of the Day features.

10 Years Ago: Votaries - Succumb

Votaries was a project by North Carolina musician Jackson Scott, who released three albums of noisy fuzz rock under his own name. We saw him live twice in one day in 2015, when Williamsburg was still all about music and hosted its own festival.

Song Pick of the Day

Listen to all seven songs on YouTube, or follow our daily updated Song Pick playlists on YouTube, Apple Music, or Spotify.

• Celestina - summer tides
• Tove Styrke - Me/You (always and forever)
• Tan Brown - Freedom Pt. 2
• Band of Revelations - Wishing Well
• Dutch Mustard - Hear Me Out
• Craig Benedict Valentine Badynee - I’ve Been In Trouble Before
• MINOE - Small Town Girls

We publish one Song Pick of the Day every day. You can subscribe to receive them by email.

Oysters, Orange Vests, and Autumn Abundance

FreshDirect has delivered our groceries for 23 years, and last week, they invited us to their Bronx facility for a “First Taste of Fall.”

Spectacular barely covers it. We happily gravitated toward the oysters, tuna, steak, and wine, surrounded by a magnificent harvest display that seemed to contain every color, shape, and texture fall has to offer. I especially loved talking with the product experts and learning more about the food that regularly arrives at our door.

Orange vests on, we ventured behind the scenes and into the enormous, humming heart of FreshDirect. While we did not explore all 38 carefully controlled temperature zones, the glimpse we got into a few areas of this vast operation gave us an entirely new appreciation for what happens before our groceries arrive at the door.

As if all that were not enough, we left with fresh produce, flowers, and even a brand-new cookbook. An extraordinary evening followed us all the way home.