This Post Makes My Blog, Like, An Official Blog
An oft-cited aspect of the blogosphere is its ability to create instant hype. I most commonly come across this sort of thing in regards to music -- up-and-coming (actually, "up-and-coming" though I have a feeling a lot of what I'm about to say might rest a little easier in ironic quotation marks; but I don't think I'll always feel like supplying them; anyways, fill them in as you see fit) indie rock bands that get a few MP3s floating around, maybe an album leak, and then get panned by Pitchfork and then that's that.
As common (or "common," see what I mean?) as these bands may be, the biggest example of the phenomena probably came from film: Snakes On A Plane. Its presence as a meme/joke/whatever was huge. Even before Samuel Jackson started making personal phonecalls to people there were internet contests and script rewrites and general gossip mongering all over the internet about the movie. Mongering to such a ridiculous extent, in fact, that plenty of people thought the whole thing was a put on, which might partially explain why it released to entirely unextraordinary numbers. It didn't flop, but it wasn't the huge hit the studio was expecting it to be, either. No wonder Big Media hates the internet.
ANYWAYS, one of the most talked about & hyped blogo-bands from the past couple of years is an outfit named Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. So I'm a fan of this band, which I bring up rather bluntly because a lot of the blogs I visit, both MP3 and otherwise, not only think that this band is bad but that the band is bad for music, and the scene, or whatever. It's not backlash either -- at least not in the typical sense -- because these are the same blogs that enthusiastically endorse all kinds of stuff before it really hits. I remember hearing about CYHSY through our (sadly, now defunct) local record store's email newsletter, which made sure to point out the fact that these guys had self-released and -distributed their debut album and that Oxford, MS, was pretty damned lucky to be getting any. I think I rounded up a few MP3s from somewhere and as soon as I heard "Over And Over Again"'s David Byrne jitter, I was pretty much sold. They get compared to The Talking Heads more than they should, but it would be even more ridiculous to avoid the obvious, especially on this song. His voice may drift from Byrne to Gordon Gano to elsewhere in the surprising-melodic-yelp-verse, but the music only rarely sounds this Heads-ish.
ANYWAYS AGAIN, the only negative thing I've heard about them that stuck to me is from this past summer's Bonnaroo, where they were apparently the only holdouts in what was otherwise some kind of Hippie/Hipster peace accord. On the other hand, we probably need a couple of hardliners around, so maybe that's a good thing. They're like the Sharons of Brooklyn. This might be why they aren't liked [note to reader: most of the blogs I read are NYC based] as a band -- for purely personal reasons rather than their music. I don't have to worry about that in regards to them, but Lord knows there're plenty of local acts I would not give a fair shot based entirely on the personnel involved.
ANYWAYS AGAIN AGAIN, they have a new album coming out in January, supposedly, which will also be available for download in user-friendly MP3 format from Insound.com, after which purchase the band will eventually send you the actual CD in the mail. I've listened to a couple of tracks and currently have "Satan Said Dance" as my MySpace profile's song. It's pretty tight.
p.s. This blog would be more official if there were hyperlinks but ya ain't gettin em.
As common (or "common," see what I mean?) as these bands may be, the biggest example of the phenomena probably came from film: Snakes On A Plane. Its presence as a meme/joke/whatever was huge. Even before Samuel Jackson started making personal phonecalls to people there were internet contests and script rewrites and general gossip mongering all over the internet about the movie. Mongering to such a ridiculous extent, in fact, that plenty of people thought the whole thing was a put on, which might partially explain why it released to entirely unextraordinary numbers. It didn't flop, but it wasn't the huge hit the studio was expecting it to be, either. No wonder Big Media hates the internet.
ANYWAYS, one of the most talked about & hyped blogo-bands from the past couple of years is an outfit named Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. So I'm a fan of this band, which I bring up rather bluntly because a lot of the blogs I visit, both MP3 and otherwise, not only think that this band is bad but that the band is bad for music, and the scene, or whatever. It's not backlash either -- at least not in the typical sense -- because these are the same blogs that enthusiastically endorse all kinds of stuff before it really hits. I remember hearing about CYHSY through our (sadly, now defunct) local record store's email newsletter, which made sure to point out the fact that these guys had self-released and -distributed their debut album and that Oxford, MS, was pretty damned lucky to be getting any. I think I rounded up a few MP3s from somewhere and as soon as I heard "Over And Over Again"'s David Byrne jitter, I was pretty much sold. They get compared to The Talking Heads more than they should, but it would be even more ridiculous to avoid the obvious, especially on this song. His voice may drift from Byrne to Gordon Gano to elsewhere in the surprising-melodic-yelp-verse, but the music only rarely sounds this Heads-ish.
ANYWAYS AGAIN, the only negative thing I've heard about them that stuck to me is from this past summer's Bonnaroo, where they were apparently the only holdouts in what was otherwise some kind of Hippie/Hipster peace accord. On the other hand, we probably need a couple of hardliners around, so maybe that's a good thing. They're like the Sharons of Brooklyn. This might be why they aren't liked [note to reader: most of the blogs I read are NYC based] as a band -- for purely personal reasons rather than their music. I don't have to worry about that in regards to them, but Lord knows there're plenty of local acts I would not give a fair shot based entirely on the personnel involved.
ANYWAYS AGAIN AGAIN, they have a new album coming out in January, supposedly, which will also be available for download in user-friendly MP3 format from Insound.com, after which purchase the band will eventually send you the actual CD in the mail. I've listened to a couple of tracks and currently have "Satan Said Dance" as my MySpace profile's song. It's pretty tight.
p.s. This blog would be more official if there were hyperlinks but ya ain't gettin em.
posted by PearJack at 1:56 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home