Eat This Lars Ulrich

The best band you’ve never heard of, The Damnwells, are doing something really interesting.  They’re offering their incredible new album, One Last Century, for free.  But, like, really.  Ticketmaster doesn’t try to step in with a $42 handling charge or anything.  Here’s an explanation from lead singer Alex Dezen:

“I suppose the hardest thing to explain to people is why I’m giving this record away. “You’re just going to give it away?” seems antithetical to the human brain. “Is this just a bunch of b-sides or something? Some ‘give away’ material you don’t mind releasing into the ether?” No. Quite the contrary. I have never worked so hard or put so much of myself into a collection of recorded songs. It is for just this reason that I want to give it away. To me it makes perfect sense. I just want people to hear this music, and I don’t want them to have to enter into some kind of contractual agreement with a third party to do so. Download the record, copy it and give it to your friends, lovers, and enemies. Whatever. It’s so hard these days just to get the actual music into people’s houses and cars, let alone their ears. Besides, I know everyone’s broke, maybe I can supply the soundtrack. So, I just want to give this music away because I want people to hear it. I should have done this years ago. I’m starting over.”

I love this.  I already loved this band.  Now I wanna show up at their door with milk and cookies or something.  With so much crap in the world of music, this is refreshing.  Just a great band wanting to share their music with as many people as possible.  

This reminds me of Radiohead letting you name your price for “In Rainbows.”  But this is significantly different.  Radiohead can afford to not make money on an album.

Download the album, buy their previous release (it’s worth it just for “Golden Days”), visit their website, their myspace, see them on tour, check out their documentary, give them some love.

(For the record, I’l probably use the “the best band you’ve never heard of” tag frequently in this blog.  But it works, because now you’ve heard of The Damnwells, and some other band has stepped in to that role.  I’ll let you know who they are soon enough.)