Why Do I Do This?
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There is no enough honesty in today's music world. A month or so ago I've seen NRBQ live. That was an experience. But, a strange feeling was left in my belly... In what world do we live in when it's so hard to prove yourself, even if you are a group of wonderful musicians like NRBQ. They are playing for thirty years now and still not too many people heard about them, although they deserve most careful attention. Not only because they play for 30 years, but also for the quality of joy they bring to us every time they pick up their instruments. A week after that, I met my friend and a great musician Mike Watt at a tiny club in New Orleans. Mike Watt is a legendary bass player, and every bass player who holds about his instrument knows about that. Just ask. Also, Watt is a great songwriter and storyteller. Just listen to his last piece Contemplating The Engine Room, probably the most intelligent musical product in the nineties. Yet, Watt was playing in a tiny club in New Orleans and only about 100 people of billions Crescent citizens saw him. I really don't know the reasons why really creative musicians have tuff breakthroughs in the music world. One of the basic needs of an artist is to present his/hers work to the audience, to concretize the piece they figured out. Also, the scientist needs his science to be applied, again to concretize, to make sense out of it. This part seems to be the hardest thing in modern music business. And things seem to get worse and worse. Somewhere in the eighties and beginning of the nineties, things seemed to get better. Husker Du signed for a major company, then the Replacements, REM, Sonic Youth, and so on. Most of them did not loose their artistic independence, but we have seen sad split ups of some of those bands. Britany Spears philosophy of music companies, magazines like Rolling Stone or Spin and radio stations makes today's music scene a deplorable and awful thing to comprehend. Thank god we have the Internet - world biggest trash can - to explore things that are not wrecked by businessmen's greed. Recently, completely accidentally, I came across several very good bands on the Internet. I was really thrilled by their sound and maturity. And I was thinking, what I can do to make their life easier, to help them as they helped me by experiencing their stuff. Well, the only thing I can do is to spread the word. The idea developed slowly and I decided to put out this site, some kind of my own fanzine, my little music box that would be updated as often as possible and that would contain information about bands I happen to like. Bands that I would put here are usually completely unknown to a wider audience, and I will try to help them in attempt to find audience and recognition. I will try to select bands such that each issue of my music box has some kind of a topic. First issue has a topic new British folk-rock, and it will be followed by beloved Australian scene, maybe some East-European stuff (I came across an excellent Russian band), Italian stuff (with a little help of my friends I hope), and so on... Of course a lot of what I will do here depends on you too. Please, be sure to contact me and help me doing this, contact bands, send and exchange materials, explore... I dunno. This may work well. Keep in touch! Stanislav Zabic - Zaba |