Once again featuring something that is a bit older news. This is probably my very favourite album (though not my favourite song or band).You may remember Harvey Danger from the late 1990’s. They had a fairly big song on the soundtrack of both Disturbing Behaviour and American Pie. You’ve probably heard it. It’s called Flagpole Sitta
They sort of faded into more-or-less obscurity for a while after releasing Where Have All the Merry Makers Gone? They had an album in 1999 called King James Version. The lead track is called Carlotta Valdez and is based on the movie Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. It’s a very catchy album with some really good songs that totally failed to go anywhere. It was partly due to not having a single as big as Flagpole Sitta and due to a failure by the record label to promote it in virtually any way, shape or form.
In 2005, a friend of mine on the Penny Arcade forum sent me a link to www.harveydanger.com. They had released their new album, Little By Little… for free. Just click here and download. They basically decided to go around the entire record industry and give the music direct to their fans. It is an amazingly solid album from beginning to end. There is really tight songwriting and musicianship throughout.
I liked it so much that I ordered it from their site (along with some stickers, buttons and a t-shirt). Then I went and bought the rest of their back catalogue. I am very much in favour of this model. Give people something for free and let them decide if it is something worth buying. Radiohead did the same thing with their In Rainbows album (which I also bought the special edition of). Nine Inch Nails released part of the Ghosts album for free and the entirety of The Slip for free. I am 100% behind this model and I would like to see more musicians move toward it. There are a great many articles on TechDirt on this very topic, if you would like to read further.