RIFF MARKET

RIFFMARKET "STATE OF THE ALBUM" EDITION

Rather than dismiss A Place to Bury Strangers's S/T as a songless one-trick turd or call out its lone booster for becoming his site's most shameless autoeroticist, I'd like to point out that this record probably isn't that bad of a marketing tool for the effects processors the band's frontman apparently builds. There's not a song on here worth talking about, which is to say there's no song that will get in the way of the man demonstrating to us all the different settings and kinds and configurations of distortion pedals he can put together. It's sort of like the preset song on one of those Casio keyboards with a lot of buttons. Not the best song, but you're not buying the song, etc. Taking this a step further, it might be nice to see more equipment makers sponsor indie bands, with the obvious strings attached. A fair record deal in my mind would be the Equipment Maker gives its best equipment to the band, with a 50/50 on record sales after EM recoups production costs; album art that heavily features the sponsoring equipment; a complete equipment list in the liners or at the very least in the PR email whatever press monkey sends around on their behalf; the prices of the various equipment in the liners, and maybe some kind of discount for people who bought the album; a few songs with alternate equipment-referencing titles (e.g. Metallica's "Enter Ziljian," Jay's "(Can I Get A) Mexican Stratocaster"); none of the band's songs are allowed to be too good.

28 RIFFS

Labels: indie, industry, riffs