I was looking through the Book of Face pages the other day and ran across a post about The Sidewalk Scene. I remember them, friend Ray Brandes having been a frontman for them how long ago? Two years so? Three years? The post linked to a page which showcased four studio-produced tracks, all jangly and sixties-oriented. Music, in fact, that I remember fondly.
New and impressive albums are piling up on me and I have been on a listening tear. I cannot even imagine how far you are behind. Way behind, if you’re still giving time to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I would have thought you had memorized those by now. Like our fearless leader Bob Segarini is always saying, there’s more great music out there than ever, whether you choose to believe it or not. Set yourself. This column skims what I think are the best and most overlooked over the recent months. Starting with…..
I am a vinyl addict. The gateway drug was radio. When it was riding the crest of the wave before TV came along and kicked it to the curb that wasn’t there. Before TV which a lot of people thought would be the death of radio, a format already writhing in pain. You could only get so big and radio was gargantuan— a seething mass of gelatinous goo— an 800 pound gorilla. By the time I came along, everyone had a radio.
The music business has always been such that the stars become super and the rest pretty much stay in the background. A case in point would be The Funk Brothers and The Wrecking Crew and the many session men (and women) who do the grunt work while the headliners reaps the profits. Not that the stars want it that way. That is just the way it is. And maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be. The people within the music industry sure know the supporting cast by name, if the public doesn’t: the session men and the opening acts and the bands which didn’t get the chance or got the chance and didn’t make it for one odd reason or another.
It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep and part of it has to do with Spotify. Not Spotify specifically, but all of the music subscription services that have come along since digitization: Mog and Pandora and Rhapsody and Sony and others. What set me off was a musician who posted on Facebook that maybe you should log on to Spotify and check out a certain artist. Why would that set me off, you ask? Because I have just recently turned my back to such “services”. Because if they are a better way to find music and artists, they are also cutting off the hands that feed them. The hands of musicians and the hands of songwriters ans indeed the hands of all involved in the musical process, for it is a process.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 