Kids, if you dig DJs, MySpace is a great place to explore. The coolest thing I did when signing up for MySpace was enlist Fatboy Slim, the Bassbin Twins, and Adam Freeland to be my friends. Awwww, cute, you’re thinking.
I won’t cover up the lie, anymore: I’m a big Big Beat devotee. On MySpace, as in life, if ye network with the folks you like, you’ll generally like what comes back to you. This week’s MySpace find is DJ Silence, someone who noted I chose those monolithic mixmasters as friends and got in touch.
The Albuquerque, NM-based Silence makes some awesome mixes, as evidenced by his freely downloadable stuff. Go ahead and sample that buffet. If you’re into the breakbeat-electro scene, he’ll fill some of your hours with some mighty fine grooves. Myself, I’m totally diggin’ the Grunge Breaks mix.
We get a lot of new music CDs from up-and-coming bands here at Bullz-Eye, and while we don’t always have the bandwidth to review them all, they don’t deserve to fall through the cracks.
Thus we introduce the Houstonian quintet Motion Turns It On here at ESDMusic, because they have a nice little MySpace page that presents the ethereal guitar-pop band in all its indie glory.
Instrumental, experimental, psychedelic and downright soothing at the end of a long day, Motion Turns It On evokes ambient, almost jazz-oriented chordings in a smooth way certain to please the ears of old Brian Eno fans all the way to more hip jam-band fans. Even Phish-heads who liked the downtempo side of the Vermont earthy-crunchies will dig Motion’s vibe.
Try it, you’ll like it. We do. For those who want more than a taste, the band’s six-song EP rima is pulling down critical kudos all over the web, including this one at Amplifier.
As an old-time Apple apologist and–in one of my other lives–a computer journalist who’s closely followed the industry for a couple decades, I’ve become more and more fed up with the company over the years, as well The Man Steve Jobs. Used to be I thought Jobs was here on earth to save us from the massive geekdom his alter-ego Bill Gates would inflict upon us…and make our computers actually, you know, usable.
Old-time Mac mavens like me now see Jobs as less of a messiah and more of a Rasputin, more interested in hobknobbing with rock stars and music-biz money than making really good computers.
C’est la vie. Follow the money, right? Sure looks like Jobs is, and it turns out he didn’t have a passion for computers after all, but instead phones and MP3 players and in fact any gizmo that inflated the size of his already fat wallet.
But the zeitgeist he preaches, the Kool-Aid he serves, still touches some people and does occasionally foster innovations and open-minded thinking. That’s how we arrive at the new iPod commercial.
The story: This guy, Nick Haley, student and Apple freak, mocks up his own iPod Touch commercial and posts it to YouTube. Somehow, he discovers an obscure, grungy Brazilian power-pop band called CSS, fronted by a diminutive cutie nicknamed Lovefoxxx, singing this song called “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex.” Apologies to the Spice MILFs, but this song oozes hot as opposed to the processed corn syrup that comes from their latest lingerie ad (see below). Check out his original production:
That was great idea #1. Great idea #2 was an open-minded someone at Apple in the marketing department realizing its beauty, ringing up Haley, and adopting it for the actual TV commercial. Genius because it creates another YouTube hero, which feeds the fantasies of every Mac + iLife hacker out there and keeps them interested (and buying new hardware).
For the music fan, it beats the living crap out of trotting old warhorses like U2 out of mothballs for a round of TV spots, that’s for sure. That’s where the iPod commercials succeed: When they take little-known bands and pump them up, instead of padding the stats of the already-popular or on-the-decline dinosaurs. If I ever see a Sting iPod commercial, it might be enough to give my 160-gig Classic iPod the old-skool Jimi Hendrix treatment with matches & gasoline. (People who don’t know me think I’m kidding.)
Now, CSS is world reknowned, and its MySpace is going insane, from sleepytown to millions of plays on its other music. The iPod’s got its Touch, and Apple’s still got its King Midas touch for even the most obscure bands, literally, in the world. Music is my daddy, indeed.
The Billy Gibson Band is perfect for MySpace: They play blues, which has a national fan base that’s sparse but passionate–in fact, one might argue that the Internet kept blues alive, hooking up fans with the music at a time when the commercial music world left it for dead.
Gibson’s a harmonica player from Memphis, and it’s not just blues he can appreciate, but the Memphis Stax soul tradition as well, evidenced in his adventurous but interesting cover of Booker T. & the MG’s hit “Hip Hug-Her,” substituting his harp for the classic Booker B-3 organ line.
If you’re a blues fan who likes the Chicago stuff or the more B.B. King electrified side and not the Delta hollerin’ acoustic blues or country-drenched Texas style, Billy Gibson’s for you. Stop by his MySpace and stay awhile, and if you like the sample bites, dive into the 99-cent download buffet.
Most of the time, the Man About MySpace is at your service to find great new bands for the sampling. Today’s blog, however, offers a tip of the cap to a phenomenal fan site, Neville Tracks.
See, few families in America have put out solid music output for as many decades as the Nevilles, starting with keyboardist Art in the 1950s when New Orleans R&B was a national phenomenon. One could argue for Clan Cole (Nat & Natalie) or the Jacksons or (most legimiately) the Nevilles’ New Orleanian colleagues the Marsalises (patron Ellis teaches at Tulane and still records, and sons Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason have all released good and sometimes great recordings for the better part of 30 years), but the Nevilles pop up everywhere, from the pop to the soul to the rock to the world music charts.
And there’s not just the brothers Art, Aaron, Cyril and Charles. There’s Aaron’s son Ivan, a veteran who played with Keith Richards and the Stones, a member of the current Neville Brothers band, and leader of the edgy funk band Dumpstaphunk. There’s Charmaine, Charles’ daughter, whose jazzy world-beat club act is a party wherever it alights.
If you enjoy the Bros., try dipping into the next generation.
But wait, there’s more: Art’s group The Meters added a great Big Easy vibe to straight up funk and whose early-’70s records set the blueprint for the Neville Brothers sound as well as a thousand jam-band acolytes. The Meters’ grooves, today, still sound fresh and creative. Can’t say that about a lot of the dinosaurs from funk’s heyday, enjoyable as they are to spin.
Neville Tracks does its best to track the family’s in-print recordings as well as tour dates. Not an easy job after Katrina forced scattered the family throughout several states. But they persist, and so do the superfans who power this MySpace.
