Elisa Bray: Caught in the Net
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Your support makes all the difference.A drummer told me this joke last week: "What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians? A drummer." That may be a long-standing joke, but so often drummers are essential to their band's songwriting – take Sam Fogarino in Interpol, Dave Grohl (right) of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, Traffic's Jim Capaldi, Neal Peart of Rush, and Jon Bonham of Led Zeppelin. And drummers are also often the hardest member of a band to find. So if you are a drummer who feels long neglected, a new website has been created for you. Austin-based musician Todd Hansen, formerly of Chicago indie rock band the Winter Blankets, launched Drummer hunter.com on New Year's Day. It is the newest social networking site and aims to put drummers in touch with their future bandmates. Using the kind of profile system seen on networking sites and dating sites, drummers can create profiles detailing their playing styles and influences, while bands can post profiles under "drummer needed", upload videos and sound clippings of their band, and post links to MySpace, YouTube and other websites.
Meanwhile, Cat Power has been blogging her recent trip to India with a charity organisation that provides clean water and sanitation on her MySpace site. Her covers album, Jukebox, is out later this month. You might be lucky enough to catch her on her sole UK concert date at the end of the month, but in the meantime have a look at the short videos of her in the studio on YouTube.
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly is running a competition from their website Getcapewearcapefly.com where you could have Sam Duckworth and co record a track in your own home, which will then become part of the acoustic version of his second forthcoming album Searching for the Hows and Whys. The recordings will take place between 22 January and 1 February. Email competitions@atlanticrecords.com. Also, his track "Waiting for the Monster to Drown" from the album which he co-produced with Nitin Sawhney, is available free from the website.
For a seriously early preview of Cornershop's upcoming album later this year, there's an exclusive and typically exuberant instrumental track called "Who Fingered Rock&Roll?" on their MySpace page. The band's last single on Rough Trade – "Topknot" – is also there to download free.
If you're hoping for a ticket to the Glastonbury festival this year, the tedious ticket-tout busting procedures are returning and registration can be done online throughout February via http://www. glastonburyregistration.co.uk
Good news: Apple will be cutting the price of track downloads from 79p to 74p in line with European prices within the next six months. Whereas in other European countries the price of a download is standardised, here in the UK the prices have so far been dictated by the record labels.
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