Song of The Day
One of my more frequent commenters is Altay. He's an entrepreneur who was funded by Ycombinator and has been working on a startup for a while. He's left a number of great comments and I've exchanged a bunch of emails with him.
When I was up at the Ycombinator event earlier this month, Altay greeted me with a CD. It turns out in addition to being an entrepreneur, he's in a band called The Great Unknowns.
Well my goal is to make sure they aren't The Great Unknowns for much longer, because that CD has gotten quite a bit of airtime in our house in the past week. If you like Lucinda Williams, I guarantee that you'll like this group.
But there's a story here. They recorded this album in the basement of a dorm at Harvard just before Becky (the singer) moved to Georgia. Sort of a last-hurrah thing as a band. Then, a week after they finished the album, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls heard it, and called to sign them to her label, Daemon Records. Thanks to Amy and Daemon, they got all these great old-media reviews and radio play and they got to tour with the Indigo Girls. But their record came out before music blogs were the place to be. So we are going to change that, hopefully.
Here is my favorite song on the record, called Don't Come Home. It's terrific.
Don't Come Home - The Great Unknowns
If you like this as much as I do, please sign up for their mailing list as they are going to be touring in the fall.
This is a good tune. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Mike Lewis | August 31, 2006 at 07:27 PM
homeboys need some more friends on MySpace. can't forget to hook that up.
Posted by: dwn2bbrwn | August 31, 2006 at 07:45 PM
Thanks! Just purchase their CD...The old fashioned way....
Posted by: Hilary Harris | August 31, 2006 at 08:01 PM
I look forward to the Song of the Day now! Thanks. My son is a 'budding' musician, 17 years old. His site is BillKarr.com
Hope you like his work! He does all the mixing, music, lyrics (with some friends), etc. with Sony Acid Studio.
There are a couple of terrible recordings up there... but I can't knock him for his sense of humor or experimenting!
Regards,
Doug
Posted by: Doug Karr | August 31, 2006 at 08:15 PM
Some of my favorite records are on Daemon. Look forward to listening the his band's record.
Posted by: Raj Bala | August 31, 2006 at 11:47 PM
Thanks for hyping our music, Fred! I'm psyched that you liked the record. And thanks to everyone who commented, too.
Becky was listening to a lot of Sam Cooke, decided to write an "oldie" for the album, and came up with Don't Come Home. =)
Posted by: Altay | September 01, 2006 at 10:50 AM
Fred,
Nice discovery - I'd not heard of this band before.
Now... signing up for a band's mailing list is one thing, but a TRUE fan of the Great Unknowns would start a Demand for the band to come perform in their city :-)
I just started one in San Diego.
Here's the link to start a demand for The Great Unknowns in your own city:
http://eventful.com/performers/P0-001-000004922-0/demand
Posted by: Brian Dear | September 01, 2006 at 11:30 AM