It’s awful quiet around here.
3:16PM ON
01/16/2008
BY
Matthew Lawrence
What Rhode Island band, past or present, do you think is the most popular today? Sage Francis? Throwing Muses? Talking Heads? Lightning Bolt? Fedd Hill? Wadsworth Mansion?* The marching band? That band that used to be Rebecca Nurse that I always forget the name of now? That guy Temperamento that posts 712 Myspace bulletins a day about how you can have your own chance to record with him? The band that used to be Monty’s Fan Club that I refuse to acknowledge the new name of no matter how many times the DJs say it on BRU?
Mmmm, nope. Not any of those.
Not according to Myspace, anyway. Searching for the most popular musicians in Rhode Island, you get Ioneye, a “dub/ambient/breakbeat” guy from Newport whose chemical beats tend towards the slow and (very) repetitive. He’s the second result that comes up if you search for local artists by popularity, after The Muzzle Recording Company, a studio in Olneyville that has about 1500 friends.
Oh, and how many musicians in the 401 area code does the world’s most popular website count? Thirty-two. That means that our state has less than one musician per town (and my band is nowhere to be found!) It also means, according to the site’s always flawed search functions, that our biggest artist is only .055% as popular as “unsigned” “bisexual” “musician” Tila Tequila, whose friend count is currently approaching 2.8 million.
[*A boy can dream. "Sweet Mary" is one of the best songs ever.]
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2 Comments on “ It’s awful quiet around here. ”
January 16th, 2008 at 7:16PM
Eric Smith Says:
You know how many times a day that guy must hear, “Dude, aren’t you the guy from Wadsworth Mansion?” I bet none.
[Reply]
January 24th, 2008 at 6:07PM
My Woody’s Outside, Covered With Snow. | Providence Daily Dose Says:
[...] Island,’ and I noticed learned something totally crazy. Not that there’s no page for Wadsworth Mansion and not that “WBRU is unquestionably the hub of local music”–I just edited that [...]