Great new music from independent labels and artists all around the world

Music mostly from the USA this week but with Iceland and Taiwan represented as well.
Summer has settled into its familiar UK pattern of rain from mid-July (when schools finish for the "summer"). So nothing special by way of a pic this week. Just pointed the camera out of the barn window and pressed the button!Love is never wrong – Brian O’Shea (Las Vegas, Nevada ) From the album Still alive and kickin’ butt Brian O’Shea is aka Brian KeithBorn in Port-Glasgow, Scotland. Brian began his musical career as a trombonist while in high school performing in local Jazz bands, he then immigrated to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Guards as a bandsman and ended his stint as a sergeant.After returning to London he toured as an opening act for Junior Walker & The All Stars, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Wilson Picket, Rufus & Irma Thomas, and Stevie Wonder, just to name a few.Brian began singing, writing and producing and got his first hit, "Everything I Am”, as lead singer Brian "Keith", with the group, Plastic Penny in 1968.As Brian Keith he appeared on a rock cd by "Screaming Lord Sutch & Heavy Friends" with Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Noel Redding, Nicky Hopkins, Keith Moon, Ritchie Blackmore,, the British Royalty of rock. Not to shabby eh?The 1980s took Brian to Las Vegas where he has since made his home.Brian recently produced a cd of R&B, Rock & Roll and Blues songs, and a Disco//trance based cd "Bonetrance" as "Big Bad Bone Daddy" to express his love of the trombone, all songs written, performed & produced by Brian. He is currently starring in a show at Mandalay Bay’s World Famous "House of Blues" since 1999. Brian continues to be one of the finest R&B singers to be heard on the Las Vegas circuit today.www.oshea-keith.com/   Joel Tenenbaum is just like you.Joel is a 25-year old graduate student at Boston University pursuing a physics PhD.  And he loves music.In 2003, Joel received a notice accusing him of downloading music through the P2P service, and told him that he could settle the case for $3,500.  He called the payment hotline, offered $500, and sent a money order in that amount.  That offer was denied.In 2007, a complaint showed up on his doorstep after years of silence requiring that Joel appear in court. Rather than backing down, like the other 30,000 people, Joel chose to stand his ground and elected to proceed pro se with the help of his mother.Joel filed an answer with a counterclaim asserting abuse of federal power and that the excessive damages were unconstitutional. Joel appeared in court where the Judge ordered the parties into settlement.   In the settlement, Joel offered to settle for $5,000.  The opposing counsel denied and counter-offered a settlement of $10,500 to be paid over 1 year.  Joel declined."For the past four years, they’ve been threatening me, making demands for trial, deposing my parents, sisters, friends, and myself twice – the first time for nine hours, the second for seven. I face up to $4.5m in fines and the last case like mine that went to trial had a jury verdict of $1.92m. When I contemplate this, I have to remind myself what I’m being charged with. Investment fraud? Robbing a casino? A cyber-attack against the federal government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave."A small team of students under the guidance of Professor Charles Nesson, have committed to helping Joel fight back against the RIAA by legally and publicly representing him.As they say, "It’s not a vendetta. It’s just that Joel chose to stand his ground. It’s about defending the average Davids against the corporate Goliath." Because Joel Tenenbaum is just like us too.Now as you know, I support copyright laws and despise piracy, but this is surely counterproductive, to go for a little guy and threaten punitive fines and costs is all about the law, and nothing to do with justice.More at http://joelfightsback.comfollow the case on Twitter. Follow @joelfightsback and use the hashtag #jfbThe Rain on 8th Avenue – Dudley Saunders (LA, CA, USA)From the album The Emergency Lane.Over the course of three albums, "avant-folk" singer-songwriter Dudley Saunders has populated a veritable township with his strange, Flannery O’Connor-ish characters. And now he is literally putting that "town" online, in a unique new website.At DudleySaunders.com, web-surfers find a panoramic, 1920¹s-era photo of the entire population of a small town. But as they scroll through the sepia-toned crowd, they discover that the twisted people in Dudley’s songs 
are hidden there. Signs appear over them: Whore. Killer. Masochist. A click brings you video of Dudley taking you inside the fascinating background on the songs and the characters’ lives.www.DudleySaunders.comwww.MySpace.com/DudleySaundersThe Master Thief – Pc Muñoz (San Francisco, CA, USA)From the album What Happened? As I threatened, I have to play another track this week.Free new album out now: What Happened? pc muñoz’s "mash-note to hip-hop" jam-packed with remixes, Grab Bag bonus tracks, special guests, scrumptious beats, and other treats is out and available for free. It really is an interesting album. You can get it from: www.threcords.com/?product=3www.myspace.com/pcmunozhttp://pcmunoz.com/Oh La La – Adriana Kaegi (Zurich, NY)From her the album TAG. This is the original version and Adriana told me this afternoon that there is a remix on the album by Charlie Lagond who was the original sax player in Kid Creole and the Coconuts. There will be a music video of that soon and those that sign up to Adriana’s mailing list will get to see it first as an exclusive.TAG has been announced album of the month at Amazon"TAG is upscale downtempo music for the recently unemployed," laughs glamorous blond renaissance woman and chanteuse, Adriana. Sultry and satirical, Tag is the cool comeback of the co-founder of the tropical funk mega-band, Kid Creole and the Coconuts. It’s a voice we’ve been waiting to hear – a grown woman making intelligent witty chill-out songs with personality."Available on both Amazon and emusichttp://adrianakaegi.comhttp://myspace.com/dearaddyTwo charts from Richard Florida’s Music & The Entertainment Economy Project at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School Of Management illustrate an interesting point. The first looks at the size of various music scenes as measured by the number of artists on MySpace.BandsLA 47840Brooklyn 37565New York 34392etc.When looking at the number of fans that bands based in certain cities have, the rankings shift.FANS1. LA 377935652. NY 201509036. Brooklyn 10397596Those fan figures look unbelievable but I suppose if they are based on the number of friendships rather than unique fans it may be feasible. I’ll have to check the sources.from: www.hypebot.com http://tinyurl.com/na4x6q via ArielIt ain’t easy – Josh Charles (Brooklyn, NY, USA)I’ve played Josh Charles before – way back in December."I grew up in Kansas City and started playing in blues clubs when I was a teenager. New York City (Brooklyn) is my home right now even though I’m more of a "wandering nomad" type and I feel a close kinship to New Orleans. It’s hard to put into words what that city means to me, but having been there right up until Hurricane Katrina and spent a lot of time there since, I can say that it’s one of the most important and influential places in my life as an artist."Now he’s doing something amazing to help the recovery of NOLA. Proceeds from the sale of his song Healing Time go to The Preservation Resource Center (PRC) of New Orleans to help rebuild, restore, and preserve the architectural history and historic neighborhoods that support the local culture and character of New Orleans. Please download Healing Time today http://tinyurl.com/healingtime and help rebuild New Orleans. Even at just $.99 at a time, it will make a big difference to real people’s lives. See this CNN film.

Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a>
www.joshcharlesmusic.com/www.myspace.com/joshcharlesonlineThrough August and September Josh is opening for Buckwheat Zydeco.Aug 19th Pittsburgh, PAAug 20 Cleveland Heights, OHAug 23 Indianapolis, INAug 25 Ferndale MIAug 27 Nashville TNAug 30 Evanston ILSep 1 Minneapolis MNSep 2 Kansas City, MONineth Place – Buckwheat Zydeco (Louisiana)From Lay your burden down, recorded in Maurice, Louisiana.The most adventurous release ever by an American music icon. Buckwheat is famous for fusing zydeco’s rhythmic energy to rock, R&B and funk. With guest appearances by Sonny Landreth, Warren Haynes, JJ Grey and Trombone Shorty.Stanley "Buckwheat" Dural started his career as an R&B organist, and then spent two years with accordionist Clifton Chenier before forming Buckwheat Zydeco in 1979. Besides learning zydeco from Chenier, its universally acknowledged king, Dural also absorbed his mentor’s maxim that music with real substance must be based on real-life experience: "I like to hear something with ideas," Chenier once told this writer. "See, a lot of young people don’t understand that, they cut a record but they don’t tell a story — and you know why? They ain’t got no story to tell, ’cause they ain’t been through nothin’."SCRIPT 2

Buckwheat Zydeco "Ninth Place" (mp3) from "Lay Your Burden Down" (Alligator Records) Buy at Amazon More On This Album

Getting colder by the year – JJ Soul Band (Reykajavik, Iceland)(INGVI THOR KORMÁKSSON and JJ SOUL)The songwriters, Kormáksson and Soul, met in Iceland 1993 and soon began writing music together. In 1994 they made their first CD, HUNGRY FOR NEWS, with JJ Soul Band and CITY LIFE in 1997. On both CDs the music is many-sided; blues, R&B, fusion, rock, pop and latin, sometimes all in one (blues-confusion?). Singer/songwriter JJ Soul is from Oxford, England but Ingvi is from Iceland as the rest of the band. Mr. Soul has been living and breathing music since he was eight years old. He used to play drums with small jazz units and worked both as a drummer and a singer with various rock and cabaret acts in England for many years. Since he moved to Iceland, he has focused on his writing skills and writes both songs and (mainly) lyrics. J.J. Soul currently resides in Oxford, U.K. He works as a painter, musician and art teacher.www.jjsoulband.com/www.myspace.com/jjsoulbandhttp://twitter.com/JJSoulBandIt seems we had our summer for a few days in June. The Met Office here in the UK – who supply weather forecasts for the BBC and others have admitted that their forecast of a "barbecue summer" seems unlikely to happen. Apparently they had only forecast a 65% of lower than average rainfall and above average temperatures. This has now been revised down to 50% (doh!) and a more confident prediction that August will continue like July. Wet.As Jeremy G-Spot Gugenheim suggested this morning, the press team at the Met Office stands accused of "sexing up" the weather forecast.I’ve been catching up on podcast listening over the past few days and it seems that the hot weather has a detrimental effect on some of my AMP colleagues.
Rowley’s beer tweets driving Codger and I crazy
P Cogle’s oldest fan broke; yep, I’ve run out of money. Now he’s got a new 12" fan.
Grant Mason – Three from Leith 177 – pulled his zip down to get more air in the front … while riding home on his bike!

35 mm – Oliver Benjamin Thayer (Taichung, Taiwan)Oliver Benjamin Thayer was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and instantly whisked away by a storm cloud of dust. He spent his youth traveling the globe with his parents as they collected odd jobs, long playing records and volumes of strange verse. The family bounced from Turkey to Italy to Israel to Prague as if no boundaries existed and time and space were a vague superstition. Briefly attending vocational school in Vermont, Oliver began writing songs in earnest out of frustration with his inability to repair corroborators and pay bills simultaneously. Drawing upon his love of hip-hop, P-Funk, Bob Dylan, Country/Western, and the weird and mercurial archival collections of Harry Smith and Alan Lomax, Oliver set out on his musical odyssey. He again took to the road, blowing through New York City where he squatted in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn – chasing demons through the projects and catching images for songs. He made it back to Oklahoma to meet Arlo Guthrie, rambled through Colorado to Minnesota, where he became a band leader, producer and studio sorcerer. He and his bride whom he chased to Taiwan reside together in peace and harmony awaiting the peak and inevitable meltdown of the modern world.www.theoliverse.comwww.myspace.com/oliverbenjaminthayer