NEWS

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Next Gig: June 1 w/ New Granada, Dirty Little Heaters

We're set to play a Thursday night gig at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill on June 1. New Granada has got our Big Dave on drums. It's the last gig with their bassist, before he moves to New Orleans. But, out drinking recently, he broke his hand. So maybe it will be their first gig with their next bassist, if they can find one. But he's hoping to be healed. New Granada's entire set is a rock opera, by the way.

You can reduce the sound of the Dirty Little Heaters to just two elements: Reese's blues-belting quaver and Melissa's tom-heavy drumming. But since they're a duo, that's just about all there is to their sound, and Reese's raw guitar chords are great too. They've been catching some much-deserved attention of late, and we're glad to finally get a gig going with them.

posted by bendy @ 5/19/2006 07:13:00 AM [permanent link]

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Snuggle Factor 10

Eliza from Blackstrap has a side-project, Snuggle Factor 10. They posted their first song to MySpace. It's a doozy. The sample comes from Fetchin' Bones, a band that was a big influence on her musical upbringing. SF10 is a lot different than BS, but we're planning to trade some songs back and forth.

posted by bendy @ 5/15/2006 12:43:00 PM [permanent link]

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Sales Figures When You're Giving It Away

Blackstrap got picked up by the podcast Morning Buzz the other day: thanks for the play, guys. You know your shit. (Listen, you'll see what I mean...)

It's been almost a year since I started blogging as a way to promote Blackstrap. By the middle of the summer, we were getting enough traffic to have to move the site off of a free webhost, and with that came detailed stats of what's being read and listened to on blackstrap.org.

I did a tally of our music traffic, and was pleasantly surprised to learn we've had our songs downloaded over 12,600 times since July. "Walking into Walls" is the big winner, accounting for 5269 plays. There are days where that mp3 seems to get linked to baidu.com, the giant Chinese search engine, and we get 40 or 50 plays. That track and "Everybody's Doin' It" (3844 plays) get the baidu treatment the most. I'm not sure why baidu chooses those songs. There was a hit album in Ireland last summer with a track called "Walking into Walls" which might explain some of it, since baidu has a mp3 search function. So some of the traffic might be fans of this Irish boyband guy's solo album. On those 50 download days, it seems that a link to the song is getting featured somewhere, breifly, on their site. 'Cause when I try to follow the referals, it's gone.

We've posted six tracks to this site, and that averages out to 2100 downloads per song. I'd be overjoyed if a song of ours got that many plays on the radio. This is probably just as good: it takes a bit of effort to download a song, so those 2100 clicks aren't to totally passive listeners.

That got me thinking about punk and indie music, and wondering how many influential albums have also sold decently.

I found the RIAA database of Gold and Platinum records.

Never Mind the Bollocks went gold in 1987, platinum in 1992.

Combat Rock went platinum in '83, but it took till '91 for the debut and London Calling to go gold. Eventually London Calling went platinum too, tho' Sandanista is stuck at gold. Which is impressive for a triple album with a lot of experimental tracks.

Third generation punk has done much better. Rancid's "Wovles" went gold in '96, platinum in '04. So it's been a steady seller, not just a flash. And that helped Op Ivy go gold in '03. But the second wave remains obscure. Black Flag, Minutemen, Huskers, no dice. Nothing from SST. Cobain's attention helped the Meat Puppets To High To Die go gold.

The Kinks have only had four gold records. A comp, a live album, and Give the People What they Want and Low Budget. Rock critics don't pay for records.

The Smiths have three gold. Almost everything by the Cure is gold or better. I'd have thought their sales were comparable.

Devo have two gold and a platinum, Freedom of Choice. Two for Lou Reed. None for Velvet Underground still, which amazes me, since the Pixies eventually picked up two gold albums. Plenty for Velvet Revolver, multiplatinum even. I didn't even realize they had multiple albums. And that's a reminder that even the dullest mainstream rock sells in a realm far beyond the records that occupy the minds of musicians, critics and nerds.

posted by bendy @ 5/04/2006 01:11:00 AM [permanent link]

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