The answer to that question is clearly "not enough".
Feeling like Rip Van Winkle, a few weeks ago my kid came into the office and asks if I ever heard the Against Me version of "Wagon Wheel" and I just looked back at him with a dumb look on my face. I'd never heard of either the band or the song and so he played the Butch Vig-produced track for me. Halfway through I looked up and said "hey dude...this is a Dylan thing" and he corrected me.
I know I probably don't have to tell you, but it sort…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 23, 2010 at 3:39pm —
14 Comments
The other day I heard that Tower Records founder Russ Solomon had finally decided to retire at age eighty-four. After the chain he founded in 1960 was liquidated back in late 2006, he had been running the R5 record shop in Sacramento at one of his former locations. Last May he decided to throw in the to…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 22, 2010 at 11:00am —
19 Comments
Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name or avatar, and then find my featured blogs. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
Kasey Anderson is an artist that was first mentioned in No Depression back in 2002, and there was also a review of his second release…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 19, 2010 at 3:43pm —
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Yeah...the title of this post is messed up. That should read 99 cents...nevertheless...here we go:
An old friend and former colleague of mine who spent a good part of his career working for a large Nashville-based entertainment firm is now earning a living as both an artist manager and a music marketing consultant. He also maintains a great website called
The Music Gardener where he blogs frequently and offers great suggestions to artis…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 14, 2010 at 10:00am —
17 Comments
If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it.
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
If you don't like vanilla ice cream, we offer 27 other flavors.
All of the above sentences or phrases came to mind this morning as I listened to a very early advance copy of an album (I still call them that) from an artist that is known, loved and (most likely) advertised here at this site. It was delivered to me two weeks ago and although I sampled it a little, it wasn't until this morning that I listen…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 9, 2010 at 9:40am —
19 Comments
It used to be that every Wednesday morning was like being back in grade school and getting your report card. That's the day when Soundscan sends out the previous week's sales data for the record industry and you can figure out whether your marketing efforts such as touring, airplay and advertising were making an impact or not. You could also drill down to see things like where your album was selling...Nashville or Albany or Eugene...and at what type of store...retail chain, indie or big box. It…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 7, 2010 at 3:30pm —
11 Comments
Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name or avatar, and then find my featured blogs. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
My ears have always enjoyed a certain type of British folk music and of late I've started to seek out more and more of it. While Fairport Con…
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Added by Easy Ed on July 2, 2010 at 12:30pm —
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We flew in last night after spending a couple of weeks on the road. There were a few days spent in Boston but mostly we were in the NYC area visiting family and doing a little exploration. My wife is still back there attending a seminar at a university, and the boys and I are spending the day doing not much of anything. I should be plunging hard into work but since I do what it is I do from home, the re-entry is slow. Sleep was tough to come by last night after a late arrival and I'm moving like…
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Added by Easy Ed on June 28, 2010 at 6:00pm —
7 Comments
Well I'm not actually leaving for good, just taking some time off for travel and discovery. And I guess this isn't an actual gift because if you really want it, you'll have to pay. But if you are a download type of person it's only gonna cost you $6.99 today on…
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Added by Easy Ed on June 16, 2010 at 11:06am —
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The past few weeks have been insufferable. Too much to hear and not enough time. I've probably added about thirty or forty new releases to my collection and almost every single one of them have been more than just merely good. Quite a few are enchanting, some are great. The rest are all damn good. Which makes it all so confounding to me.
Here's the headline from last week's Billboard Magazine:
Album Sales Plummet To Lowest Total In Decades
Sure...we all know music sales are down and ou…
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Added by Easy Ed on June 10, 2010 at 9:28pm —
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Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name or avatar, and then find my featured blogs. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
It might surprise you that one of the bestselling and versatile bluegrass bands of the past decade resides in relative obscurity beyond their…
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Added by Easy Ed on June 4, 2010 at 3:00pm —
1 Comment
Since this site became active over a year ago, I recognize that I'm somewhat of a lone wolf when it comes to my feelings about listening to music digitally. Oh, there's quite a few of you who embrace the mp3 and can see the cloud technology coming at us on the horizon, but for the most part we have many readers and posters saying that they won't let anyone pry their dead cold fingers off of their CD collection, or will only listen to 180 gram Japanese-pressed vinyl. And there's still one or two…
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Added by Easy Ed on June 3, 2010 at 10:24am —
23 Comments
Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name or avatar, and then find my featured blogs. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
Headwater is a Vancouver based band that's been recording and touring for almost ten years now. They have a couple of records out on C…
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Added by Easy Ed on May 26, 2010 at 4:15pm —
3 Comments
Sometimes when you set out to write something a particular way or about a specific subject you get taken away. Or at least I do, since most of my writing ideas come to me during my morning walks with the dog and the iPod, and it seems that what's clear one moment gets hazy the next, and then changes altogether. And such has been the case with Moby Grape, a band I've loved forever and one that I've often considered to be one of those "early Americana" types of bands I've written about here a time…
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Added by Easy Ed on May 19, 2010 at 10:30am —
9 Comments
Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name or avatar, and then find my featured blogs. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
Graham Lindsey shouldn't be a complete stranger since the Madison Wisconsin singer songwriter has three albums out and had been writte…
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Added by Easy Ed on May 10, 2010 at 4:30pm —
1 Comment
This email arrived the other morning:
Ticket sales for the May14 & 21 concerts are each in the single digits. Ticket sales for the May 9 concert aren't much better -- and are still far below the break-even point.
Unless the numbers improve dramatically VERY SOON, I'll be forced to cancel those shows.
I'm REALLY tired -- physically and mentally – of booking great acts virtually no one in this town will come see.
The music I tend to listen to these days is mostly of t…
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Added by Easy Ed on May 5, 2010 at 1:30pm —
21 Comments
Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
Fur Dixon and Steve Werner are an LA-based duo who slide effortlessly between California cowboy and folksinging troubadour styles. Fur (Jennifer) was a member of the Screamin' S…
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Added by Easy Ed on May 3, 2010 at 8:00pm —
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Going through the library and sharing things I like, and things you might. If you missed the earlier posts, find them on my page by clicking on my name. (To answer the questions as to why I'm not providing links, clips, videos or pictures...it takes too long and I figure if you want to know more, you'll find it.)
If you can imagine somewhere back in the sixties that the Byrds fell into a giant mixing bowl along with Fairport Convention and someone stirred it all up until all the various ingredi…
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Added by Easy Ed on April 30, 2010 at 3:18pm —
1 Comment
Working my way through the library and sharing some stuff you may already know and some you don't.
Diana Jones has such an interesting story that this whole post could be about her. I'll condense and allow you to seek it out on her website on your own. She's a portrait artist, a singer and a songwriter. Two albums released in the nineties, and then ten years later she comes back with two more and at age 41 is nominated as Best Emerging Artist at the Folk Alliance Awards. It leads to tour…
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Added by Easy Ed on April 28, 2010 at 5:04pm —
2 Comments
So this is how stuff can happen these days.
Two months ago a new band forms and after just one gig, they start getting booked almost every weekend. House parties, charity event, clubs.
On April 18th seven ukulele players, an accordionist and someone playing something called a cajon get together at the Live Rock…
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Added by Easy Ed on April 26, 2010 at 4:00pm —
13 Comments
