Do It Yourself / Save You From Yourself
It’s difficult to find the right words to describe my attitude towards do-it-yourself musicians who embraced the internet and get some exposure they couldn’t possibly have gotten way back when. Sure, the mainstream is still there with over-priced albums and mass media advertising. Just go to your local mall and look at it yourself. No need to write about it. But what’s with the sullen one-man-bands out here? Not all of them are good. Few achieve professional recording quality. None produces an epic masterpiece like Mike Oldfield’s “Music of the Spheres”.
Still, there’s plenty of great artists out there who have realized that locking up the music won’t help their mission. My latest discovery is Scott Andrew. He’s making acoustic pop that, at times, reminds me of R.E.M., yet sounds merrier. Stumbling across his homepage, I found an inviting virtual place. I immediately felt encouraged to check out his music and liked what I heard. The songs didn’t leave me speechless, but the light atmosphere and the charismatic voice sounded good.
I could have left it at that. If a musician offers his songs for free on his homepage he must be stupid and doesn’t deserve any (financial) support, right? Wrong. Scott sells his latest cd “Save You From Yourself” for 8 US$ (if you signed up on his mailing list/demo club). So I just bought it. It felt right. The album arrived today. It looks good, sounds great, and beats 98% of the current German charts.