When the music industry finally collapses there will only be Youtube. Entire albums will be released through Twitter, comprised of just one-hundred-forty characters. Justin Bieber wasn’t the first, only the most recent performer to craft his own stardom in the strange internet meta-world and be birthed with such incorrigible appeal that music fans started buying vinyl again to soothe their discomfort with things immaterial.
And yet in this topsy-turvy world, still stranger things are possible. Amid this year’s Canadian Music Week, the week when industry professionals from all corners get together and talk about how freaky and post-modern the world is, a band aptly named Dinosaur Bones is stepping into the spotlight by doing things the old-fashioned way. In the three years since their formation, Dinosaur Bones have cultivated a reputation as one of Toronto’s most impressive and hardest working live bands, and they have done it without the requisite dependence on that thing called the Internet. Dinosaur Bones have just released their first full-length album, My Divider, on Dine Alone Records.
"As a band, our philosophy has always been that there is no substitute for hard work. It is the single best way to get better," says lead singer and guitarist Ben Fox. “Improvement is our primary concern." As for hard work, they accept no substitute: My Divider, a lush and enveloping record, was financed out of the band’s collective pocket and recorded at length before being shopped around to labels. In the mean time, the band has been performing extensively, in Toronto, the East Coast and the northern United States. It is an approach at odds with the more commonly observed “hype machine” model, in which bands use their online presences to tantalize fans and titillate record labels. The new way gets the word out, but it also presupposes the actual music, where no such thing may have formed. It’s why the contemporary music fan has developed the habit of hearing about more bands than she has actually heard.
In a coffee shop down the street from Sonic Boom, the venue for one of Dinosaur Bones’ CMW performances, I try to recount to Fox my first experience googling the band: the search “Dinosaur Bones” turned up the Myspace, the Radio3 coverage and a catalog of links and articles about the bones of dinosaurs, which effectively meant the bones of dinosaurs were getting more hits than the band.
I query whether a greater online presence would make for a quicker break-through, but Fox isn’t worried. “The blogosphere,” he says, “works faster than musicians’ development.” Online hype can make a musician’s career seemingly over night, but also threatens to turn fledgling artists into celebrities before they know how to sustain their success. The Dinosaur Bones methodology is more straight-laced: play great live shows, craft good records, take your time, reap rewards. “A slow build is good. Then the band is ready if something big comes along.”
The methodology is a ringer. Now signed to Dine Alone Records, the D-Bones are now label mates with Hey Rosetta!, Tokyo Police Club and City and Colour, and one can speculate that they will now inevitably find themselves on the rather metaphysical side of the music industry they have so far circumvented. Contemporary music fandom can be fickle: music lovers lately prefer to listen to as many bands as possible, sure, but only very briefly. “The ironic thing,” notes Fox, “is that with mainstream bands or bands with more mainstream appeal, you see that their audiences care more."
Dinosaur Bones aren’t old-fashioned, they are defenders of the old way: they just want to make music, they want the music to be as good as it possibly can be, and they want the music to speak for itself. Longevity is elusive in the music business, but Dinosaur Bones believe that if something is done right, it will stand the test of time.
Source http://thevarsity.ca/blogs/93/entries/42768
And yet in this topsy-turvy world, still stranger things are possible. Amid this year’s Canadian Music Week, the week when industry professionals from all corners get together and talk about how freaky and post-modern the world is, a band aptly named Dinosaur Bones is stepping into the spotlight by doing things the old-fashioned way. In the three years since their formation, Dinosaur Bones have cultivated a reputation as one of Toronto’s most impressive and hardest working live bands, and they have done it without the requisite dependence on that thing called the Internet. Dinosaur Bones have just released their first full-length album, My Divider, on Dine Alone Records.
"As a band, our philosophy has always been that there is no substitute for hard work. It is the single best way to get better," says lead singer and guitarist Ben Fox. “Improvement is our primary concern." As for hard work, they accept no substitute: My Divider, a lush and enveloping record, was financed out of the band’s collective pocket and recorded at length before being shopped around to labels. In the mean time, the band has been performing extensively, in Toronto, the East Coast and the northern United States. It is an approach at odds with the more commonly observed “hype machine” model, in which bands use their online presences to tantalize fans and titillate record labels. The new way gets the word out, but it also presupposes the actual music, where no such thing may have formed. It’s why the contemporary music fan has developed the habit of hearing about more bands than she has actually heard.
In a coffee shop down the street from Sonic Boom, the venue for one of Dinosaur Bones’ CMW performances, I try to recount to Fox my first experience googling the band: the search “Dinosaur Bones” turned up the Myspace, the Radio3 coverage and a catalog of links and articles about the bones of dinosaurs, which effectively meant the bones of dinosaurs were getting more hits than the band.
I query whether a greater online presence would make for a quicker break-through, but Fox isn’t worried. “The blogosphere,” he says, “works faster than musicians’ development.” Online hype can make a musician’s career seemingly over night, but also threatens to turn fledgling artists into celebrities before they know how to sustain their success. The Dinosaur Bones methodology is more straight-laced: play great live shows, craft good records, take your time, reap rewards. “A slow build is good. Then the band is ready if something big comes along.”
The methodology is a ringer. Now signed to Dine Alone Records, the D-Bones are now label mates with Hey Rosetta!, Tokyo Police Club and City and Colour, and one can speculate that they will now inevitably find themselves on the rather metaphysical side of the music industry they have so far circumvented. Contemporary music fandom can be fickle: music lovers lately prefer to listen to as many bands as possible, sure, but only very briefly. “The ironic thing,” notes Fox, “is that with mainstream bands or bands with more mainstream appeal, you see that their audiences care more."
Dinosaur Bones aren’t old-fashioned, they are defenders of the old way: they just want to make music, they want the music to be as good as it possibly can be, and they want the music to speak for itself. Longevity is elusive in the music business, but Dinosaur Bones believe that if something is done right, it will stand the test of time.
Source http://thevarsity.ca/blogs/93/entries/42768
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