The Reach Podcast

Artist: The Reach
Title: The Reach Podcast: Episode One 8/3/05
Genre: Alternative Rock
Label: Independent

There are so many mediums available for artists to get their music out, in lieu of a major label, it is mind boggling when you stop and think about what is available to deliver media today. Craig Miller (guitarist/vocalist) and Tommy Watts (drummer) are The Reach. Bass player Dave Scott was with the band from 1993-1997. They decided to keep their fans interested and updated on their current developing recordings for a new album by broadcasting a weekly Podcast. Brilliant! (don’t you love that Guinness commercial?)

Things start with Miller making his introduction and the reason they are doing this, and then he launches into a 1995 live recording of a track called "Hang Over," which I completely enjoyed. Miller sounds like Michael Stipe of REM and so do all the jangly guitar parts. "Loving Me," is next, another unfinished track that shows a lot of promise. Then to wrap things up a snippet of a song called "Interpol," which Miller refers to "Interpol Thingy." At this point as he explains, "It is very disjointed now with guitar parts coming in all over the place."

From what little I heard I did like. For devout followers of the band this is going to be a lot of fun to participate in no doubt. For me, just discovering them it was a little disappointing that I could not hear an entire album, however that was not the purpose of the CD I received. They succeeded in fulfilling what they sought to accomplish. This could be the next hot item on an emerging artists’ list of ways to tune in and turn on all of their fans.

Artist Commentary/Craig Miller: As far as the background of the Podcast project, I got the idea from a few places. First of all, The Reach is not a live touring band anymore, so we needed an innovative way to promote our music. The Podcast gives us the opportunity to get our music in front of the whole world every week. Also, I am a huge Cure fan, and noticed that Robert Smith himself posts on the blog on their site. I thought that was pretty amazing, and realized that as a fan I would love to be able to interact more with bands I like. So I thought I would give it a try with our stuff. Also, a friend told me about a conceptual art project he had heard about, where some artists were doing something similar, asking for public participation in order to make the "perfect" painting. I just thought the whole thing would be interesting.

Yes indeed, the Internet is and always has been the window to opportunity for everyone, here is one aspect that opens many doors for artists to get the word out about their music on a regular basis.

© Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck-http://www.muzikreviews.com

August 31, 2005

Rating-7.5/10

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