Living With War is by all accounts a scratchy, muddy, unproduced protest record that was written, recorded and distributed very very quickly by Young and his band. And Young is using all the tools at his disposal to get the album into fans’ hands quickly. He started streaming the tracks on his website on Friday and his label released the record for commercial download today, long before the physical records will appear stores. He’s also been using the new Web from the blogosphere to MySpace to YouTube to get his message across and sell his record.
Not that the record is having a lot of trouble selling itself. With song titles like “Let’s Impeach the President” and “Lookin’ For a Leader,” the controversy is already so red hot that we’re expecting everything associated with this album to go like hotcakes.
Young bashes Madison Avenue pretty heavily on this record. Still, he’s obviously not unaware of the power of a good marketing plan. Young and his label are due a lot of praise not only for creating such a viral product, but for marketing it so virally
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
-b- 05.02.06 at 1:58 pm
ok, so crap, I tried to listen to this and like it but it sounded like music that had been blanched then poured through a strainer. MP3 or not, the poor quality was too difficult to hear.
Darren 05.02.06 at 2:50 pm
“Living With War is by all accounts a scratchy, muddy, unproduced protest record that was written, recorded and distributed very very quickly by Young and his band.”
Which accounts are these? I haven’t read any such accounts, so I’d be curious where you did.
Also, I think when you say “unproduced” you mean “underproduced”. In either case, that’s not necessarily a criticism.
-b- 05.02.06 at 4:14 pm
I hadn’t seen that either, but listen to it, and you’ll hear the mud. For me at least, protest record or no, it was unbearable.
Darren 05.02.06 at 9:24 pm
I’m guessing that it’s not being streamed at CD-quality, and Neil Young has often favoured a rough, ‘grungy’ mix. It sounded like much of his Crazy Horse material to me.
Teresa Valdez Klein 05.03.06 at 11:55 am
Darren: I’ve heard the album called scratchy, muddy and unproduced/underproduced by the DJ’s on 103.7 The Mountain here in Seattle. My stepfather reinforced the muddy part.
That wasn’t meant as a criticism of the record though. I’ve heard it compared to Crazy Horse before, and I think that’s an apt comparison. I tend to like that grungy feel from Young.