Great band. These guys were an anomaly. At a time when people were getting pigeon holed into "styles" out comes Fishbone. They weren't black enough for the blacks. They weren't quite punk or ska and they weren't metal. But somehow they incorporated all of those things and more.
What struck me though was their "discovery". I don't even remember who it was that caught the show and signed them. Yeah I suppose I could rewind but at this point, I just want to maintain my focus on this. They started talking about how everyone in the music industry was scoping the scene looking to sign the bands that the kids were into.
To get to the point, where has that ideal gone? The one and possibly only good thing about big record companies is that they were a filter. They sifted out the tripe and found the music that really hit home. The music that mattered to people. They developed that. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But at the least, they took the time to try and filter out the dregs.
That's gone now. Now it's up to us to sift out the crap to find something decent and new. There's the odd thing you'll find on youtube but it's few and far in between. I have bought a cd from a guy on the tube. It's rare but it happens. But the work is tiresome. I find myself relying on word of mouth but often it's touch and go.
I welcome the home studio revolution but I long for the days when a band would build it's fan base on merit instead of "likes" on a youtube page. There's too much crap out there. Fine. Can we put the control in the hands of smaller indie labels? Can we forget the big boys but still keep some sort of filter?
There's Candyrat . Is there an indie label for Rock? Metal? Jazz? World? We need that.
