
Love Ghost – Fade Away (shave my head)
Your old Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin records might just be the biggest enemy to the survival of rock music. It’s not that I don’t like those groups. I love them. But, the fact the matter is that while economic interests dictate that every other song you’re ever going to hear on rock radio is going to be AC/DC, no new AC/DCs are going to receive the incentive to thrive.
Now, because the rock canon is powerfully marketed nowadays, there’s little money left over to go towards up-and-coming writers. Imagine if someone had told Dylan, Lennon, or Cobain that the best songs have already been written and they shouldn’t bother? This is essentially what is going on here.
Most new rock bands will try to ape the rock classics in a bid to sneak into the festivals that cater to older tastes. Fun, but not fresh. I like my new rock bands reckless, inventive, and able to chase new sounds even if they sometimes fail.
That’s one of the reasons why we’ve spoken about Love Ghost before. Are they even a rock band? Not sure. They got guitars and songs like Fade Away (shave my head) future grunge tone a pretty punk attitude. But, they are kids that are chasing something new, they’re ambitious, and they could use your support more than a bunch of bored rockstar millionaires.
Nathaniel Paul – Silence
Dedicating your life to art is not comparable to the majority of other professions. On the one hand, throughout history, artists have had to bear the burden of economic uncertainty. Their work has usually not been valued as it should have been while the artists were in their prime. And, even though their mission is, usually, to build a bridge of communication with their would-be audience, the artists often remain ignored.
It is ironic that such a profession, one that can’t be fully taught or programmed, would be forced to suffer such indignities. After all, all periods of history are largely defined by the music, books, and cultural ideas prevalent at that time.
Nathaniel Paul is a lifer and has had the opportunity of seeing these things firsthand. Silence is a subtle piece of indie-pop that looks at not just the economic pressures put on artists but at the weight that their fragile psyches need to juggle in order to create their works. An ode to sensitivity and creativity, Silence is a song that does well to define our age.
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