Are you guys reading Scott Perry's New Music Tipsheet and receiving his weekly emails? If not, you should be. He's a pretty keen observer of the music machinery and just so happens to have written a piece on Monday on the band behind today's Fall Vinyl Giveaway, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.
"You may notice that my weekly emails focus more on the business side of the music business, rather than the music side of the music business.
You all have two ears and you all know what you might like; we here at the Tipsheet just do our best to bring together all the week's new releases so you can find for yourself the bands that appeal directly to you, either for personal or business purposes.
But every now and then there comes along a band that meets both worlds -- a band that I like AND has an interesting business story to tell.
This week, that band happens to be EDWARD SHARPE & THE MAGNETIC ZEROS, a band who are making waves in underground circles, but whose story has gone largely unheralded by the mainstream.
Yeah, they've gotten press by all the right blogs and papers. And they're starting to get some airplay as they tour the States, including indie stalwarts KCRW, WXPN, and World Cafe. However, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros is not one of those bands that are dominating blogs & press to the point where radio HAS to play them or risk looking like a fool for not playing them. Yet.
But what's unraveling in real time, in real life, is the band is selling out concerts with little fanfare, propelled largely by word of mouth. In all honesty, I haven't seen anything like this since the White Stripes were selling out multiple nights in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit while they were still signed to Sympathy for the Record Industry -- in other words, those who know, KNOW.
For the uninitiated, Edward Sharpe is a rag-tag band of about a dozen modern hippies, lead by the former singer of Ima Robot. In the month prior to the July 14 release of Up from Below, they were playing packed shows weekly at a beat-down old theater in downtown LA with minimal airplay from KCRW. But that's just the beginning of the story.
Read the rest right here and leave your entries to win the Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros debut LP in the comments to this post. State your case and make it good. Because you're in the KNOW ...right?
