A Good Way To Get People To Talk About Your CD
Within a month of starting this website, I got an email from a random Northern band. They wanted to know if I would like a copy of their album, ostensibly to check out and hopefully hype on the website. Well of course I wanted it. The novelty of a band wanting to send me their CD was pretty neat, and even if they didn't come from San Diego, maybe I could learn about something new and bask in the shallow, thankless, reflective glory that is being the "first person" to tell you about a band.
Well, it turns out that I didn't particularly like the CD. It wasn't god awful, but it wasn't something I was going to stick my neck out and talk about just because they sent me a CD. It actually arrived while I was visiting New York, so it had been sitting in the mailbox when I got home, along with an email from the band asking if I'd got it yet. I replied that I had, but had been out of town and was going to listen the first chance I got. Not having a job, this was not a problem. I listened a few times. Nothing struck me. But I got a few more emails, asking what I thought. Then one of the guys IM'd me. He told me that he'd read my review of "A Confederacy of Dunces" at amazon.com. I read a Confederacy of Dunces in 1999, my senior year in high school, and did not remember writing a brief review of it at Amazon.com
Needless to say, I did not respond. In fact, I think I made sure my windows were locked. Anyways, this is a textbook way to not get someone to write about your CD.
A good way to GET someone to write about your CD is to send them a really good CD. And someone did that to me just yesterday: Nathan Asher & The Infantry - Sex Without Love. The hype aroudn the album stresses that one of the songs had won two potentially made up songwriting competitions that I had never heard of. Having Won numerous blog competitions myself, most notably the Conor Lastowka Blog Writing Award, and the My Cat's Butt Invitational, this did not impress me. But the quality of the song "Thursday Night/Friday Morning" (not the award winner) did. It's the album closer, and builds from a quiet song mainly featuring the singers Oberst-like wavery vocals (a good thing), into a great drum and key heavy fake-ending-climax-then-reprise, which, as we all know, is the only proper way to end an album.
It would be foolish to base an album recommendation just that one song, (see Spacehog - In The Meantime), so don't just take my word for it. Kwaya Na Kisser recommends the album as well, and has a few more MP3s for you to check out. I think that any band that has it together enough to pull off the album closer they do is worth giving a chance to the rest of their material. So if you want, check out the CD at CDBaby.
And seriously, check out A Confederacy Of Dunces
Comments
I don't know, man. Sounds like Coldplay.
"You know I know your gay?..."
Then again, I have the worst taste in music ever.
Posted by: Grey | May 17, 2006 07:43 AM
I agree T-Nite/F-Morning is a very good listen ... but the reprise doesn't add much for me, I'd take a couple more verese of the song and do w/out the comeback ...
Posted by: Big Jim from Vienna | May 19, 2006 07:02 PM