Youth is Like Spring, an Overpraised Season: a Top Five

Young people with talent; don’t you just hate them? This week’s Wednesday Top Five is in honour of those snot-nosed brats who managed to make meaningful contributions to the word before leaving their teens.  Damn their eyes.  According to neuroscientist Daniel Levitin it takes ten thousand hours work to make someone a “master” of any particular skill, so this is essentially a list of kids who should really have got out more…

5. Jenny Lewis, from Rilo Kiley.  Not a true musical prodigy, but she was kicking up a fuss as a child actress by the time she was ten.

Rilo Kiley – Paint’s Peeling

4. Buddy Holly. The ultimate live-fast-die-young idol.  He wrote awesome songs, got shafted by his manager, played with Elvis, and died in an plane crash; all at the tender age of twenty two.

Buddy Holly – Oh Boy

3. Laura Marling.  Last year’s darling of the London indie set, Marling wrote all the songs on her debut Alas, I Cannot Swim before she was eighteen.

Laura Marling – Night Terror

2. Conor Oberst, from Bright Eyes. This precocious scamp has been writing and recording music since he was ten.  His first EP, Water was the inaugural release for Saddle Creek Records (then called Lumberjack Records), and was recorded when he was just thirteen.  Admittedly most of his early stuff was absolute rubbish, but there were the odd sparks of genius.

Bright Eyes – Falling Out of Love at This Volume

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  This cheeky bugger was composing by the age of five, allegedly wrote his first fugue aged six, and was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg aged only seventeen, where he performed before the Austrian royal family.  For the record, his full name is Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart (Amadeus is Latin for Theiophilus, and not actually his name at all, even though his signed all his manuscripts Wolfgang Amadeus)

W. A. Mozart – Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

 

Team Love Records: a profile

In my Tilly and the Wall review earlier in the week I briefly mentioned Team Love Records, and how they’re a Web2.0-savvy label who’re all in favour of free music downloads (which I’m assuming you’re a fan of too, being as you’re here, reading an mp3 blog…).  So just to hammer the point home, here’s a full-blown profile of the label.

Founded in 2003 by Conor Oberst and Nate Krenkel (formerly of EMI and Sony, in some sort of A+R capacity), the label grew out of Conor’s frustration at not being able to sign all the bands he wanted with Saddle Creek.  Conor had a hand in the founding and running of Saddle Creek, but due to the growing size of the label, and the disparate tastes of all the people involved, the smaller, less obviously accessible bands that he liked weren’t getting deals.  That said, Team Love is still hand-in-hand with the Creekers; they handle all Team Love’s U.S. distribution, and the Team Love online shop is on the Saddle Creek website.

The thing that initially set this label apart from others was that they gave all the music away for free on their website.  This (obviously) caused trouble when negotiating with other labels for international distribution, so as far as I can tell they now only willingly give away a few tracks from each release.  This approach seems to be the norm with small, web-savvy labels at the moment – everyone, bar the majors, is in agreement that promo mp3s generate more interest and ultimately more fans/money down the line for an artist than aggressively hoarding all the act’s music does…

In terms of label roster Team Love’re definitely supportive of smaller projects than Saddle Creek, but they do have a few notable exceptions.  Tilly and the Wall are their flagship band, and they seem to be doing pretty well (despite the rubbish new album) but as far as I can tell the labels biggest success so far has been Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins (Jenny being the frontwoman of Rilo Kiley) –  who made it onto Later… and thus into the hearts and minds of a certain type of English music fan.  Willy Mason’s first LP Where the Humans Eat was also a Team Love release, but it seems he’s an exclusively Virgin act now.

So there you have it; Team Love Records.  I’d strongly recommend checking out their website and availing yourself of all the free mp3s you can find there.  Chances are you’ll find something you like.  In the meantime, though, keep yourself occupied with these little trinkets.

A Weather – Oh My Stars

McCarthy Trenching – Cassette Tape Massacre