The Next Big Thing

Ever having the feeling you were in over your head with this life business? Not that I actually have a fully-functioning one of course but hopefully you get my drift. The ongoing 5am rise pretty much means that I peg out before “The Daily Show” and I’m getting a little tired of this routine. Haw haw. I just realised that I made a wee funny there. Earlier today I got a message from someone who wanted to know if I wanted to receive an album for review consideration. It was described as sounding like Radionapper and Queen. They also mentioned that travesty that has a singer called Brandon. Even reading about that qualifies as suffering for my art.

The least offensive part of that, to me, is Freddie’s crew because I saw them with Mott The Hoople. And because my buddy Art Fein likes them and The Blasters even opened for them once. However there are things that tend to reverse the general wearing down process.

I’m going to use an Americanism here to state that I am “stoked” at the response to The Legendary Tigerman and Rita Redshoes post from folks out Portugal way. Never in all my time doing this have I had such a fervent support for recognising something as obvious as these two artists make great music both individually and together.

It’s led to a few leads on other stuff from that neck of the woods and I’ll be checking that out in due course. Of course, I imagine that other countries get a little sick of being bombarded sub-standard guff from the UK when they have such high calibre talent themselves. I don’t think that acceptance here makes any difference anymore because we're down in the big ledger as the country that buys into all the TV led/Z factor shit. It possibly does in the US because of the potential money reward but even then you have to wade through your chest height in hype for crap. Just thinking out loud here…

So music fans should take a leaf out of the book of our Portuguese friends. They have a passion and appreciation for their artists that would go a long way if adopted in other territories. It’s always good to get a reaction and especially one as overwhelmingly positive like this.