OUT ON MP3.com Calendare by Mark Mardon.

30 March 2000 The Bay Area Reporter

Brown-Star see the web as the music market of their dreams.


While Moon Trent and his Brown-Star bandmates Brett Klinker, Andy Lund, and Scot Callis claim as influences the Buzzcocks, Velvet Underground and Elliott Smith, there’s something very Smashing Pumpkins in the sound of their newly re-released album, Due Damage, originally out on the micro-label timmi-kat ReCoRDs. In part it’s vocalist Trent’s nasally, high-pitched, tight-throated whine. It’s a toss-up who has the better voice, Moon Trent or Billy Corgan, but they’re two peas in a pod (although Trent is the cuter, gayer pea). Then, too, some of the song styling has a lo-fi Pumpkinesque feel to it. The instrumentation is pretty good, with Klinker on guitars, Lund on bass and cello, and Callis on drums, creating a kind of buzzing harmonics where everything is in sync most of the time, but little odd bits keep popping out, keeping the songs from being too controlled and predictable. The production values are just adequate, but many of the songs are quite catchy, power-pop tunes with intriguing lyrics. Trent’s voice is the glue, so you have to like his sound to like Brown-Star.

But why, you ask, do I mention the band at all, since they haven’t been playing out locally much lately? The last big gig Brown-Star landed was a spot in October ‘99 Howard Stern’s nationally syndicated radio and TV show. That got Brown-Star noticed, but no major labels came running to sign them. Something else did come of that outing, however, and queer musicians everywhere would be wise to take notice.

In the course of the Stern Show broadcast, Trent mentioned that to get further Brown-Star music and information, listeners could go to their Web browsers and hit on www.mp3.com/brownstar, a section of MP3.com, one of many commercial websites that make digitized music available to listeners. The day of the broadcast, the Brown-Star page received more than 300 hits.

At the time, only one Brown-Star song was available on the site as an “mp3” music file suitable for downloading and playing with the appropriate mp3 player. Once Brown-Star saw they could lure people to their site, they rushed to upload their entire Due Damage album. Now when music surfers visit the Brown-Star section of MP3.com, they can click on a button to order the band’s entire 12-song CD ($5.99), which MP3.com packages and ships to the buyer ($2.49 shipping). The CD-ROM shipped by MP3.com not only plays the music, but includes a virtual mp3 player that pops up on screen, much like any audio player. But the MP3.com player allows you not only to program the album’s song line-up, but lets you read the song lyrics, learn the band’s history, and view the band members gorgeous mugs.

back to the Brown-Star page*Brown-Cam*Bio*Discography*News*Shows*Sounds* Lyrics* more enthralling press clippings*Images*
e-mail us: timmikat@hotmail.com* timmi-kat ReCoRDS homepage*
t.k. annex* timmi-kat Bands* Milkshake**katalog*