Kids and Aliens (MP3s)

Do you remember the good old days of MP3.com, before Vivendi Universal bought it and ran it into the ground? Just like on MySpace these days, unsigned bands and musicians could upload their music and present it to the whole Internet, for better or worse. And while most of it was crap with no redeeming features whatsoever, there were a few gems waiting to be found by music fans with strange tastes and too much time on their hands. Here is one example, the band Background, who said about themselves "Background has been playing together for many years...not playing music but actual playing because we are all cousins and like playing with each other."

Here are the lyrics for their song Alien Abduction, giving practical advice of how to deal with hostile aliens, if you forgot to wear your Thought Screen Helmet.

aliens aliens
lil green aliens
coming down to carry me away
i grabbed his green body
and threw it in the trunk
what could the alien say?

1 night i was alone
watching television
when i saw a bright light
i went outside in my underwear
and wasn't sure my eyes were right
the alien saw me
and tried to take me in his ship far away
i hit him in the head and threw him in the trunk
what could the alien say?

And now with music: Alien Abduction (mp3). Can't get enough? I got one more for you: Background (mp3).

Comments

[Stark Effect]

Background, yes! For a while there, mp3.com was a fertile ground for finding outsider music-- listen to the archives of "Incorrect Music" around the spring of 2000 and you'll hear some tracks that I submitted to Irwin and Michelle. Another great mp3.com find was Wayne and Liz, but there was also Cyrus Sullivan, Girls With Attitude, Solak, Fred Langer's "You're the Sweetest Little Fetus"... oh so many treasures...

[mr projectile fan]

mp3.com was the shiite circa '00!

especially for undiscovered electronic music producers, one guy i found out about was matt arnold of minneapolis who went by the moniker mr projectile, his tracks were downloaded something like 45k+ times ... several of which went on to be found on his proper label releases/ good stuff! clicky idm with a strong sense of melody, woot! users at soulseek still have those tracks shared six, seven years on if you care to dig them up for yourself/ mp3.con = solid!

[rich]

Also, you could make some loot from it during the pre-burst dot.com bubble halcyon days.
A person I know made otherwise normal trance/house music that would occasionally yield small, sub-dollar checks (this was pre-paypal) for downloads that month. It was assumed that down loaders went past lots of advertisements so some of the revenues for ads went back to artists whose music was downloaded. One day he was shocked to have recieved a check for five thousand dollars. It turned out that month they'd been promoting his sub-genre of music and had thousands of downloads. But soon, the rate that MP3.com payed out diminished and eventually vanished. He did get his music on some watch manufacturer's CD compilation though.