Music and the flips sides to the internet...

I have little energy tonight so this will be slightly all over the place, sorry!

The internet is bad for music, there I've said it...no course it's not but it does have a few down sides. File sharing poses potentially the greatest threat to emerging musicians today depriving them of the money they deserve and need to live and produce music. Well the greatest threat apart from "made for TV" talent shows which elevate mediocrity way above its designated place in the musical food chain and snuff out real talent.

The other big downside and maybe this is just a personal thing. I love CDs. I love album work, I love the physical nature of a CD and the excitement of opening a CD, taking out the artwork and flicking through it, reading the lyrics whilst you listen to the music for the first time. It's such a nice thing to do...you just don't get that from iTunes, maybe that's just me and I'm getting old, am I alone in the world?

On the plus side, the internet has allowed unheard of and insanely talented musicians to find a voice outside of their own town/state/country and reach a much wider musical audience. One such musician is a guy called Kevin Montgomery who I discovered last night with a friend. This guy has produced some of and I don't use this term flippantly..."the most mindblowingly beautiful music I have heard in years!"

Some of his stuff is very Country and maybe a bit too Country for me but some of his other songs...wow, I actually can't describe the level of beauty in the music. Check out his myspace and in particular check out and listen to the songs Nothing, True, Angel Tonight and She Don't Wake Me Up.

And how did I find him...in short....fan of Counting Crows (who owns CDs - yes folks CDs of all their albums) years ago found a guy called Kid Lightning (Dave Gibbs - friend of Adam Duritz) promoting and talking about his solo album on countingcrows.com messageboard. Purchased said album, met and saw Dave Gibbs perform live. Dave Gibbs teamed up with Chris Seefried (who's solo album Denim Blue I also own and who produced Jay Nash's album The Things You Think You Need - which I also own along with other Jay Nash music), Jude Christobal and Jeff Russo to form Low Stars whose album I also bought. Kevin Montgomery is listed as a top friend on Jeff Russo's myspace page and that is the history behind it.

Confused? You shouldn't be. My love for one band years ago has spawned so much more music I adore and I keep finding more connected to it like a tangled and intertwined musical spiders web...and that people is why the internet, whilst being in some ways bad for music and potentially damaging is awesome in so many others and maybe just maybe we all need to stop taking it for granted and commit to stop filesharing music and give something back to these amazing artists before we lose them.

Happy listening world xx

Worshipping the Sun...

Well what do you know? Today has been the most beautiful day here in London. I actually can't put in to words just how amazing it's been. Not the hottest day of the year but honestly the most beautiful by some considerable distance. It's been really warm but with a nice breeze and not a cloud in the sky and there was a really great urban sunset too, you know sun disappearing behind buildings and that odd way that light bends itself round things and can make even the dullest objects just look totally amazing...just stunning, a day I will remember for a while.

So I was in the car driving home and wanted to put on musically something sun related, just cos I was in awe of what the big ole star can do for us. I had a quick scan through my iPod and had this idea that wouldn't it be cool if you could do a search based on lyrics in songs or song titles and build a playlist based on that??... someone somewhere will now steal my idea and become insanely rich, so it's my idea and you owe me big time!!! anyways I found more songs than I realised with the Sun in the title.

So here's a few Sun titled songs you may not have heard of which you can have a look at/listen to and well they're not necessarily happy songs, in fact they're probably all right downers but hey the sun is why we're all here scientifically speaking, it's a huge source of inspiration...so let's give those constant raging gases, heat and light a bit of worship for making life possible and well, delivering us sweet, sweet crazy summers days that just take that little bit of breathe away from us all...

Brendan James - The Sun Will Rise
Cary Brothers - Bottled The Sun
Kid Lightning (Dave Gibbs) - Sunshine and Cinammon
Gin Blossoms - California Sun
Hafdis Huld - Who Loves The Sun
Howie Day - Standing In The Sun
REM - Around The Sun
Tonic - Sunflower
Toploader - Following The Sun
Vertical Horizon - Sunshine

I wonder how many songs on iTunes have the word Sun in it...hmmm too many I reckon and something I shouldn't worry my mind with at the time...

Nite all xxx