Experience great music and video on demand with our broadband media player. Listen to music, watch videos, and experience podcasts, interviews, and multimedia features.
I used to tell people that we were living
in the age of the MP3 single — meaning
that the days had finally arrived that
bands saw giving out one free MP3 from
an album was a great wat to promote the
album.
But Kristin Hersh and her new
project 50 Ft. Wave has blown that
whole theory away and just given out a
whole EP of 5 songs for free. So in Spacelab
tradition on such releases - class will
be cut short for this review - you have
some downloading to do.
This is true to form for Kristen Hersh.
She's elder stateswoman of power punk
pop. She used to front Throwing Muses,
but eventually they ended and Kristen
Hersh did solo music before her current
50 Ft. Wave project.
The band grew so tired of how money has
polluted the music industry in the form
of payola, they decided to take a different
approach. Rather than pay for expensive
marketing that reaches closed doors and
closed minds, why not be self-empowered
and tap a concept like social networking?
They decided to give an EP away for free
online , encouraging people to do the
same to pass it on. The tracks come with
a Creative
Commons license - so share but follow
the guidelines.
Kristen Hersh also adds this as
a footnote "So we're sending free
recordings off into the world to do their
work. If people enjoy these songs and
are excited by them, we ask that they
share them with others. The music business
is about fame and huge profits -- egos
and greed -- music itself, is not."
RATING: ***** 5
out of 5 stars (on theory
alone, but good music)
