Friday, June 05, 2009

Blase Splee (+ some extra typing)

Oh, hai! Has it really been 6 weeks since I posted last?  More about what I've been doing in a minute, but first I have to tell you what made me show up to the blog today.  I actually got a press release from a band that doesn't suck.  And they're local.  And they're playing a free show at the Lager House June 16.  I know!  What are the odds!


Blase Splee has an accent mark on the e in Blase, but I'm not going to figure out how to make the internets do that.  They're not French, they're from Ferndale.  There's something about the sound of Michigan bands that makes me feel so comfortable and happy, like my mom just made me a grilled cheese.  They have some keyboard parts in there that sound like an organ from the 70s, the ones with the multicolored tabs that you flip up and down.  My grandpa had one, and as a kid I probably thought that Fisher Price had made us matching pianos.  


"She's Wanting Me More" definitely has a throwback feel to it.  It reminds me of this 45 that my sister and I used to play when we were kids. Every time we put it on we'd run around the house in circles.  The song is off of Et Cetera, their new record that they're officially releasing this Saturday at Small's.  You can download the new record and their debut EP for free from their website.

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Where have I been? 
I stopped listening to music a lot when I became kind of obsessed with This American Life.  That show made me think seriously about what unique story I had to tell about music.  How is this blog any different than the rest?  Being part of the churn of disposable blog posts is not my purpose.  I will never post enough mediocre crap fast enough to get free promos, tickets or any of that press stuff.  

I thought about what I really found valuable from other music blogs.  The answer is things that are permanent and have a story tied to them.  I still listen to the mix that You Ain't No Picasso posted when he turned 21.  I love the mixtapes that Tsuru's readers make together.  The Post-Rockist recently wrote about a long forgotten mix that they found in their car and it was just great writing.

I thought about totally changing Let's Trade Mix Tapes, making it more of a creative writing or podcast based project.  I may add some of those ideas still.  But in the end, I realized my sole motivation for blogging about music is simple: when I find a band I love, I have to tell people about it.  Elbo.ws doesn't want me because I don't vomit often enough into their feed, and I think that's a good thing.  I don't want to be part of an aggregate.  The blog will be here when something really good comes along to talk about.

 
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