I was listening to the recommendations on eMusic and came across a band called Beirut (released in the UK through 4AD). It's a strange but charming recording done Balkan-style in Albaquerque by a 20 year-old.
OK, it scores well on the oddity-o-meter. But when I checked the page on Last.fm it had scored over 1 million plays! Much of this is Last.fm subscribers playing their own CDs or MP3s. But that's still quite a score. Who are these people?
Check the page at:
www.last.fm/music/Beirut
Peev: this is listed under punk/alternative in eMusic and "indie folk" at Last.fm. It strikes me that as with black music, we need our sounds to be sanitised before we will listen to it. In other words, we'll always listen to the "white" version and say what a pioneer the guy is for discovering something that has been out there for ages already. The Kocano Orkestar are gob-smacking, for example, and only get 22,500 listens at
www.last.fm/music/Kocani+Orkestar
With this and my previous postings, am I becoming ratty with old age or what?
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