Music, Music, Blah, Blah, Blah

I've been listening to iTunes for the past 4 hours or so. In that time, 6 different artists' demos have popped up. Some of it is excellent. The great thing about the interweb is the democratization of music distribution. All of these guys have myspace pages. They all perform around town or around the country. People can find them.

The trick, of course, is marketing. How do you choose an album or 20 to buy if there are tens of thousands released every year? Some study I read years ago for LBJ said that Gen X is all about partnerships and information sorting. Gen Y takes that to a whole new level, and the kids behind them should be stupid-clever with the sorting. At this point, they're too young to really measure, but it seems brands will be more important to these kids. Not necessarily the big brands or the big labels, but "tastemakers" -- the blogmen who can extol and crush a single before a frame of video footage is shot or a real tour is announced. They scare me a bit.

I am protecting the band from all of that for as long as possible. They've had some minor local press, but it's been more about word of mouth. (The November show should be insane!) I run their name through search engines and p2p just to see if their stuff pops up yet and so far so good.

Last week at The Belmont, we discussed potential cover songs. Since I am not on Creative, I am not going to be interfering in those discussions, but I may make some suggestions to S about it. I am thinknig classic funk, current brit-pop, or an interesting hip-hop song. They can pull off anything they want. Everything is extremely up-tempo, and I would love to hear them take something mid-tempo and make it their own. So to speak.

(While writing, Lost Prophets' live cover of Cry me a River and Sublime performing Loser as a punk song. Weird. Now I have Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon." It's still so current after 35 years(?!). It's too late to hear Craig Mack. Charlie Hunter is much more my speed this time of night. It jumped to the Killers - the original version of Mr. Brightside, unplayed since I saw a cover on RS:S this summer. I should have just put it on jazz in the first place.)