Every time there’s a thread on the SDMB or any other message board about one hit wonder bands that are actually very good and deserving of more credit than just being remembered for “that one song that used to be popular,” Harvey Danger gets mentioned.
Well, I never checked the out before, but decided to give them a listen because they are releasing their third album right now, for free via bittorrent and apparently directly from their website starting tomorrow. Here’s the download page and there’s also a link to their explanation of why they’re doing this, which I found really interesting.
Well I’m listening and it’s actually a pretty good little record. The physical record store copy has a 30 minute bonus disc, so if I end up liking the record a lot I might just get myself a copy. I’m curious to see how their experiment turns out sales-wise.
Do you (or anyone else) know what this means for The Long Winters, the indie rock band that the Harvey Danger guy(s) formed after HD? Their album that came out a few years ago was incredibly good. I hope this doesn’t mean that they’re broken up.
I saw Harvey Danger perform at the 9:30 Club once (they opened for either Cowboy Mouth or Grant Lee Buffalo), and while musically they were good enough, they totally looked like they didn’t want to be there. Very little audience interaction, no smiles, no enthusiasm … I remember being so glad that they weren’t the headliners.
Maybe I just caught them on a bad night, but the 9:30 Club is a “big” enough venue that they should have made more of an effort to at least pretend they wanted to be there. I can’t respect a band once I know that they’re crappy live, even if what’s crappy isn’t the music.