Dusted Magazine published my year-end round up this morning. To sum it up real quick, here is a chronological list of the records of 2006 that I keep returning to, and some links to longer reviews of the discs (including reviews by excellent Dusted writers like Emerson Dameron and Jennifer Kelly):
Tarantella - Esquelitos
Eagles of Death Metal - Death by Sexy
Epsilons - S/T
The Gossip - GSSP RMX
Various - The World Is Gone
Battleship - Hearts Addendum
Dark Meat - Universal Indians
Nina Nastasia - On Leaving
Dirty Faces - Get Right With God
Entrance - Prayer of Death
And if you'd like to play along at home, here is an hour-long MP3 mix of some of songs I talk about in the article:
Bendy - 2006 Mix
posted by bendy @ 12/14/2006 07:28:00 AM [permanent link]
Blackstrap is a rockpunk band that was formed in 2002 by several
disgruntled music fans. Some had played in bands for years, some had
never been involved in music. All of us were upset with the
direction the USA was moving. As you can tell, our impact on all that
has been overwhelming.
We broke up in 2004, just before releasing a debut EP. We still feel
bad about messing up 307 Knox Records
like that. We got back together in
2005. We might drive each other crazy again, so no promises.
We're a band that doesn't have many options as far as
money and time and touring and all those other thing that could make a
band be your life. The web is the main way we promote
ourselves. We figured out we should share what meager knowledge we have
obtained.
Websites are a lot of work to figure out, and don't work any magic
on their own. Most people who view your website are already going to know you exist.
Just having a website doesn't mean anyone is going to visit. So don't
worry about securing an Internet domain right away. Stick some
music on MySpace,
and then participate in sites that might actually drive interested
listeners to your music. Blackstrap gets more hits from our link
on ncpunkonline.com than from
higher-profile sites where we get lost in the shuffle.
There are advantages to having your own custom built website and
domain name, but it's only as useful to the extent that it gets linked to.
Here are some sites that are important and help to get noticed. They aren't all music sites, specifically. Alot of them require participation. But hey, you wanted to be on stage, right?