I Promised You New Bands....

Yeah, I know that I promised you all new bands for the "official" list, so here we go. One of the benefits of the book taking longer than planned is that members of several '80s and '90s-era Nashville bands have gotten in touch and provided much-needed and greatly appreciated information on what they were up to during with their bands. While I'm still working on The Other Side Of Nashville, I'm still interested in receiving band histories, discographies, photos and such, so please use the handy email link in the column to the right and get in touch with your info!

As for adding bands to the list, I've got a bunch of new ones. Some were received via email and some are my new MySpace "friends," but I've added the following to the "official list" and will include them in The Other Side Of Nashville book. As we get closer to having the project done – I'm still hoping for the end of the year – I'm getting excited about seeing the finished product. That's one of the benefits of doing it yourself, you get to witness and shape the slow-moving progress of the book and hope that everybody else enjoys the results as much as you've enjoyed creating it!

AMERICAN BANG (formerly BANG BANG BANG),
BUNNY YUM, ELEVENS UP,
THE EXCUSES, FLASHCUT PIN-UPS,
IDAHO BEACH HOUSE, THE MAGIC WANDS,
THE PRESERVATIVES, RED CARPET RATS,
JUDSON SPENCE, SPRING CHICKENS,
STREPANOVA, WILD DOG DAZE,
WORD UPRISING

Next post to come...more local mp3 files for your listening pleasure...I promise!

Don Mooney Remembered

Chip Chilton (Chip & the Chiltons) passed along the news that Don Mooney, guitarist for the Bob Camp Project and the popular reggae/ska band Freedom Of Expression passed away on Monday, October 1st. Don was only 52 years old at the time of his death, and was evidently living in LaVergne. Don's obit in The Tennessean doesn't address the cause of death and I wasn't able to find any other info.

I met Don a couple of times through the years, but didn't really know the guy and don't have a lot more to add. If any of his former bandmates have more information on what Mooney has been up to through the years, please leave a comment or email me (link to right). If you knew Don and would like to share some memories, feel free to leave a comment and share it with our readers.

(I originally misidentified Chip Chilton as Chip Staley, who played with Don in Freedom Of Expression. Sorry about that...guess that either I'm getting old or have too many names on my brain....)

Glossary's Better Nature

Murfreesboro roots-rockers Glossary celebrated the band's tenth anniversary this year. In this day and age, that's quite an accomplishment. When you consider that the indie landscape is littered with the corpses of broken bands and bankrupt labels – and don't even get me started talking about the artistic body count and unmarked graves that you'll find on the major label level – the fact that Glossary has persevered, relatively intact, over the past decade and managed to release four albums entirely on their own (OK, maybe with a little help from their friends), well...color me impressed!

Now the band is jumping headfirst into the digital age with a brave and bold business strategy: they're giving their new album away. Yup, you read that correctly...you can download the new Glossary album, The Better Angels Of Our Nature, FREE from the band's web site [link]. Even better, they've provided high and low-resolution files in both AAC (iPod) and MP3 (everybody else) formats. The album is being published under a Creative Commons license that allows you to download it, play it anywhere that you want, burn a copy for your friends, anything but commercial use.

Of course, the band hopes that you'll like their new CD and maybe come out to see them when they play in your town. The Better Angels Of Our Nature will also be available as a limited edition CD on October 23rd, so if you want to have a physical copy of the disc (with packaging by either Grand Palace Silkscreen or The New Year), check back with the band's web site later in the month or, if you're in the Nashville area, check in with either Grand Palace in Murfreesboro or Grimey's Music in the Music City. Glossary will also be performing a FREE live show at Grimey's on the date of the album's release.

The Reverend has downloaded the new album and tho' I haven't listened to it yet, I haven't been disappointed by Glossary in the past, and I don't expect to be disappointed now. I plan on grabbing a copy of the CD when it comes out in a couple of weeks, and I'm real impressed with this forward-thinking and ballsy move by the band. Anything positive and intelligent like this that a band can do to promote their music is going to pay off in spades down the line, and I think that the new fans that this move will bring to the band will more than offset any ephemeral "losses" they might incur from people downloading rather than buying the CD. Bravo, Glossary!