Creating a couple of radio shows and having a voracious appetite for new music keep me coming back to Bandcamp. It is a wonderful thing. I never play tracks on my shows that I have not purchased in some way, and my preferred method is Bandcamp. It is an incredible repository of wonderful music. Sure, there are some not-so-great tracks held within its digital embrace, but the sheer breadth and depth of the creativity available to listen to and ultimately buy is fantastic.
At the latest count, people buying through the app have paid over $1.57 billion dollars to artists, and on the day that I write this article, over 72,544 records were sold! This is both extraordinary and somewhat humbling when you think about it. With all the horrors that the world is undergoing, which cannot be ignored or underplayed, it is very comforting to think that there is this huge community of artists sharing their art with us on a very easily negotiated platform. You stream before you buy, you can stream and not buy (less preferable than the first option, but still commendable). The very best thing (apart from the artists being paid properly) is that you can search by genre or location, or both. In one of my shows, I have a slot for Scandinavian Americana that has morphed into ‘Diamonds from Down Under‘, which features Australian or Kiwi Americana. The ability to search by location has been brilliant and frankly a lifesaver, as once you create these things, they become a monster that has to be fed each week!!
So, in honour of Bandcamp, here is my brilliant Australian find of this week, and I suspect we may be hearing a lot about this band in the future, Good News Now We Can Eat All The Vampires (I kid you not), and the very first thing I bought on the platform from Wilco. The radio show has some crackers in it too from DBT, Kathleen Edwards, Josh Rouse, Mike Farris, Lee Moses and more. As ever…
