OaO's Monday Marginalia™

My funny story about this week's Music Capsule artist, The Main Drag, follows hence: when reviewing for GarageBand.com (see previous entry), one is given a pair of songs in the same genre. You write two reviews and then choose which song you liked better without seeing either the name of the band or the song title--once the review is submitted you'll see a summary page with all that information. The band submitting the song can also ask the reviewer to address specific questions like, "how are the vocals?" or "how's the production?" So I'm given this particular song to review, and the question the artist is asking its reviewers is, "Who do we sound like?" I listen to their song, and they sound like The Main Drag. So I reviewed the song thus, "Well, you sound like The Main Drag. Either you are The Main Drag, in which case you have a wholly original sound, great beats, and awesome instrumentation, or you are ripping off The Main Drag, in which case you are derivative hacks." Indeed, that's who they were--one of the band members emailed me back later to opine that that was a pretty freakin' hilarious review.

I started the music capsule hoping that I would mostly be able to feature music from folks I knew, thus circumventing the gray areas of content on the internet. As it turns out, the people that I know or have met online are kind of flaky about responding to emails asking if they will send me an mp3 or if I can feature one of their songs already online, so those areas have stayed gray. The first trio of songs came from MacIdol, where I'm a member of the community and the stated manifesto is the freedom of music. However, this week I'm linking to content that's not hosted here and to which I've received no permission, explicit or implied, to link. Even though it's far from clear that explicit permission is necessary to create a hyperlink, I want to keep the lines between linker and hoster of musical content as clear as possible. Thus you will notice I've become a bit more explicit about where my links are coming from and what it means that I'm providing these links. When I've become the new Pitchfork Media, I'll start throwing my weight around and change the future of the music industry as we know it. For now, it's pseudo-legalese for everyone.

All of that said, check out The Main Drag. They are worth your time.