VB does what all good Rock n’ Roll does- it makes you want to drink beer, jump around and have fun. It’s a turbulent time in Music Land these days. With plunging CD sales, the landscape is evolving faster than the gassy, bloated, overindulged music industry can keep up with. All the blood sucking lawyers and sycophantic parasites who have over the years convinced themselves, and the artists they exploit, that they are not only necessary, but vitally indispensable, are now finding themselves more and more filling out applications at Starbucks and Kinkos. If I had a dime for every “Barista” with a Bachelor’s in Communications, I could buy my own coffee shop. The pendulum is steadily swinging back in the right direction, thanks in no small part to the web. Hang on to your hats and glasses kids, the My Space revolution is in full swing! The up side: finally the artists and the fans are in charge of their own destiny. The days of the company constructed mega star being jammed down our throats via lame radio monopolies and MTV are numbered. The down side: Ironically, thanks to a handful of super successful trailblazers, the competition is as fierce as ever. Every Tom, Dick or Harry with a laptop wants to be the next Arctic Monkeys. This is where Victor Bravo has a leg up.
It’s not enough to be a great band anymore. Having a good website is an imperative in today’s topsy turvey world of broadband rock n’ roll. Check out www.victorbravo.com. Like the music, VB’s site is competent and easy to get into. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most net savvy dude, and that being said, after about 30 seconds, I was reading about the origins of the band while rockin’ out to the latest EP, Shut Out The Sky.
The songs from the EP on the site are great. The first song, "Dallas", starts soft and then kicks into a rollicking crusher with a bit of a funky beat. Simple, yet totally effective. The second song, "Binge" (my personal favorite), starts off reminding me a bit of the Replacements, then hooks a left turn into Husker Du territory before I know what to do with myself. The third song, "Sarbanes-Oxley" (named after the corporate accounting reform bill), is kind of a mid-tempo romp through the land of Enron, politics and fraud. Although a bit fluffy, it’s not just the subject matter that’s important. Like all good rock, it’s the feeling man!
Even better than the cuts off the EP, there is a link to Victor Bravo’s Myspace page(which, by the way, has even more band info and songs you can’t get off the home site), which in turn sent me to an awesome clip on youtube of the band rockin out live in some tiny dive, completely living the dream. Thanks to all the web-based technology Victor Bravo uses, I was drawn into the world of a band that, although great, may not have grabbed my attention had I stumbled upon them the traditional way back in the dark ages (read: a label-less cassette tape laying on the rusted out floor of my friend Steve’s ’74 Duster amongst the piles of empty cigarette boxes and HoHo wrappers). Progress is important, and this is a fast world we’re living in all of a sudden. I think the beauty of the new system that’s emerging is the Darwinian quality it contains. Those who try harder, innovate, and stay on top of the web stuff will ultimately thrive. There are a million good bands out there, but Victor Bravo is great.
Write it down somewhere--on a cigarette box or HoHo wrapper if ya have to-- these guys are going to be huge.
Write it down somewhere--on a cigarette box or HoHo wrapper if ya have to-- these guys are going to be huge.
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