Does anyone else have songs from artists who perhaps never made it beyond a handful of fans? I have some songs I treasure, got the CDs from the musicians or friends over 10yrs ago, but they've dropped out of the radar and I can't find them anywhere. Just their voice haunting my speakers like a sweet ghost. There's also an mp3 I got off a yahoo group, around 2005. I like the song, but it has no artist name, no title, just a voice and a guitar, perhaps home recorded.
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@dilmandila yes, from back in the days of lime wire. I have a bunch of pop punk music that never made it past that era. I wish I could find a band that I really kind of fell in love with literally called “My Favorite Band.” They uploaded their EP in its entirety. I think it’s something like eight songs. But I don’t have any of the song titles saved anywhere. It’s just a burn CD, with a logo of which I thought fit the band at the time. The logo was hand drawn by me. 
@dilmandila I still listen to music from Boca Chica, a band from Pittsburgh that I lost track of when I left town. Some members were friend-of-a-friend. It looks like they have not put out an album in over 10 years, but my kids now have their music on a MP3 player.
They got some national attention at one point..
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2009/10/second_stage_boca_chica.html
@dilmandila yup - first ones that come to mind are a local synthpop/post-punk band whose singer died way too young; the band of a guy my dad worked with whose CD I was lent to review and copy to tape when I was 12 (they were also stopped by an untimely death); and the odd MySpace artist whose song I downloaded and still have on a hard drive somewhere.
@alicemcalicepants @dilmandila The Velcro Teddybears should have been big stars - met them as fresh faced youngsters playing in a pub in Barnsley, then went to most of their gigs over the next ten years including a Yorkshire Unplugged competition that they won, but they never cracked the big time. Still love their stuff!
http://dogwoodtales.blogspot.com/2012/04/yorkshire-unplugged.html
@dilmandila i have a recording from my music teacher from years ago, meant to study at home to prepare for a theatre piece. Just some chords on a keyboard, nothing fancy, an idea that still needed a lot of work. That silly little recording still inspires me today.
@dilmandila Oh, yeah, I do. I was part of an IDM makers forum back in the day, we traded a bunch of mp3s and cds. I just recently ripped all the old cd-rs from that group that I still had, but I've long since lost the tracklistings, so I've got a bunch of stuff I only know the artist name for, but not the name of the track or the album name
@dilmandila
I still have some tracks made and uploaded by users on a forum I was in as a teenager in 2005. One of them in particular is pretty good and is made by someone who has a small following now...
@dilmandila @HauntedOwlbear I have an mp3 of a song (Blast Off) by person who ultimately did become very popular (Sammy Rae), but as far as I know they haven’t released it in any form since we were all essentially kids, which is a shame, I think, because I really like the song!
@dilmandila I've been beating the drum for my friend Daniel Østvold for almost 30 years now, especially his one solo studio album, which he doesn't even think is all that great.
I think about 500 copies of that CD were even printed and I think most of them stayed close to his personal circle or are even still in his house. I think his songwriting is amazing.
@dilmandila Room 1202. I hung out with the singer/songwriter of the band (the only guy listed on Discogs, Omar Quiñones), went to a couple of their shows, had a CD-R of their music that got disc rot, and can't really listen to them anymore since their music is mostly not online. The only stuff on Youtube is poor quality live performance. Real shame.
@dilmandila sorta related: there is an internet radio station i love that is small and plays reruns of their friday show all the way back to like 2006. The other day i was listening and found 3 songs I liked. Shazam could recognize them but they weren't avaliable anywhere. I think only 1 artist was on tidal with a different album and one artist was on bandcamp with a different album. The 3rd functionally didnt exist. If I hadn't heard the 2006 rerun Id never have heard the songs!
@Trenton_Hoshiko What's the link to the radio? I might want to listen 😊
@dilmandila I was hugelt involved in the metro Atlanta music scene 10-15 years ago, and I have a few dozen albums that, probably, I'm the only person to still (or ever) have a copy.
There's a line from one of them that I quote often enough that I had to upload the song, so people would know what I was talking about.
@ajroach42 That's a sweet song! I will download and add to my collection. Thanks for sharing it! :-))
@dilmandila I really love the stuff Nelson put out.
He's on Bandcamp: https://johnthefruitman.bandcamp.com/
He's also in Holders: https://holders.bandcamp.com/album/sorry-taylor-konerman
And there are a bunch of his other videos on NETV. https://communitymedia.video/search?search=john%20thefruitman
@dilmandila He's also the producer and sometimes host of @workingclassmusic and the main videographer for our main concert series https://vod.newellijay.tv/c/music@vod.newellijay.tv/videos?s=1
@ajroach42 @dilmandila I do this with music and writing on the Internet Archive. Although any web site or platform can disappear, putting your work up in both sales and streaming sites and the Archive will keep it available for years to come.
@dilmandila tons. Obscure demo tapes, self released CD-Rs, sometimes even DIY 7" vinyl. Love that stuff.
@dilmandila absolutely. Living in Maryland growing up, punk band Active Sac. Then in Florida later, bands like Pygmy and Monster Zero. When I lived in New Hampshire, too. Sometimes bands that may even have been kinda loved locally a little but NO ONE would know their names if you mentioned them to someone (The Gravel Pit from MA).
@dilmandila I got a cassette in the late nineties from a black metal band called Perished. I played it a lot and it is my lost white whale. The cassette is lost and the band probably quit 30 years ago. But my memories still lives 🙂
@dilmandila Yeah, I have loved and appreciated many small artists, some now well forgotten, or who've withdrawn early works from distribution.
I'm archiving their work from time to time, although I'm lagging behind about it.
Here's a favourite:
The October Country - Clean Kills and Other Trophies
https://archive.org/details/the-october-country-clean-kills-and-other-trophies
@HauntedOwlbear This is cool! Though I wonder about copyrights, if they would mind....?
@dilmandila Honestly, I hope they get in touch to complain, then I can ask them about preserving their other CDs!
The band and micro-label have both vanished off the face of the earth, so I'm considering this to be both music preservation and bait.
@HauntedOwlbear Well, makes sense then. The songs are great! I will download to add to my collection :-))
@dilmandila Totally. There’s a guy named Steven Emerson I used to see perform with his band pretty often in the SF Bay Area 25 years ago or so, and while he put out a couple of albums, I’ve never met anyone outside of one of his shows who knows who he is. Great crooner.
Cool thing is it’s so easy now to get on streaming, and he’s there, so anyone can find him.
Also, I had a band back in college, and our demo tapes are on streaming. I hope that we are that band for some folks…
@dilmandila I still have songs from my brothers' old bands stuck in my head.
@dilmandila I got a rip of a folk rock CD from the early aughts, courtesy of some family member (forgot who). The band used to have a website, which has long gone offline, they have a singular Discogs entry, and aren't on any streaming platforms.
Pity, because the songs are bangers, too.
@dilmandila and until recently, one of my favourite nu metal bands, LeVeL, was basically a "everyone in this niche heard of them, nobody outside ever has, they put out one CD in 2005 and vanished" type deal. Couple years back they reformed though and went on Spotify and such.
@dilmandila (a band called "Level" with an album called "Level", you can imagine how ungoogleable they were)
@amberage 😂
I wonder if some of the names we pick for ourselves now will not make much sense to people in future.
@dilmandila @oldredsubby Brenda Weiler of Fargo, ND.
Have the mp3s from a ripped demo cd of this acoustic guitarist Katie Yearick who used to play coffee shops and small venues in upstate New York in the late 90’s. Have transferred those files from multiple laptops, pcs and mp3 players over the years.
@dilmandila I have some songs from the old Limewire days from a band out of Kansas (I think?) called Samsell. I know nothing about them, and google has never helped me much, but damn I love their music. Every time I hear one of their songs I wish I had more.
@dilmandila I got some CD like those too!
@dilmandila YES! Well, had. I remember hearing a song on a guitar mag cover CD a very long time ago (20-30 years). Might have been Total Guitar. I've never been able to track down the band or anything else they ever did.
Song was called Chicken, and I think the band was called Sault St(e?) Marie, which is practically un-Googleable because it's the name of at least 2 towns where other bands have come from.
@woe2you @dilmandila It's Sault St Marie, and there's another band called Sault Ste Marie that is more recent. The CD itself is listed on Discogs, but yeah, can't find the song or band anywhere and this is the only recording of them apparently.
@woe2you @dilmandila at the days before you had to consult an SEO expert when naming your band.
@dilmandila Also: Human Radio - one album on Epic or Columbia in 1990. Fairly perfect pop. Found the CD on Discogs a couple of years ago to my joy. The whole album is on YT - my fave track is My First Million.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP-LgxRc_GDzU9uOin-LAD8MGH2WS4SxK
@dilmandila My favourite such is a San Francisco duo called M-1 Alternative. Three perfect albums between ‘88 and ‘92 and then kaput. (One member has been releasing their demos on BC, but it’s slow going.)
@dilmandila
There was this Latvian (I think) folk-rock-electro artist from the late 90s, I can't remember her name or the album name. Just that it had a portrait of her in front of a wall covered in climbing vines. She was really ahead of her time.
@dilmandila One of my favourite Christmas songs was one I found while compiling a Christmas Music for the Apocalypse blog series: 'A Post-apocalypse Christmas' by Art Elliot.
I think it's genuinely beautiful, but it still only has 2.5k views on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JlJ8OTxALv4?si=4InrDNmV9Txj4Mm4
@rubyjones Its a sweet song 😊♥️
I have found random gems of music through these obscure artists that never gained any traction for whatever reason. Most music is born from spontaneity in the moment and only it's memory remains.
@dilmandila Definitely. I know a very talented singer-songwriter in the Washington DC area who has released 3 CDs and has a devoted but very small following. Her last CD was probably 9 years ago and it's still one of my favorites.
@dilmandila I have several CDs from such artists, but the most interesting is an old LP from a Baltimore radio station with tracks from several local bands, none of whom I was able to find anything about.
@dilmandila yes, I was very involved in a local community of musicians about 20 years ago, and have a lot of demo CDs and files. Some of these demos had a circulation of hundreds, some only single figures. Some are really good. I've lost touch with nearly all of the people involved, but still hear the music occasionally.
@dilmandila So many little local bands that only released a handful of songs and then broke up/moved on/otherwise vanished. It's kind of tragic because I want everyone to know some of these songs by heart, they mean so much to me.
@dilmandila I love these types of artist, such a fleeting bit of history of an other person's soul you crossed paths with at some time in the past. It's a real treat to have experienced it and to remember back to it.
I've got CDs and mp3s of long-gone local artists who's lives moved on away from their music too, it's good to keep their artistic spirit alive from time to time. Even some songs stuck in my head I'd loved live that never got recorded. It's profoundly beautiful stuff