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After talking a bit to Scarlet Red in chat and then listening to some of her music on mp3.com (Liquid Element is the band), I got a hankering to share with her some of the bands that I knew in college whose sound she shares.

While that's not much to speak of in itself, it pains me to find out that both bands have broken up now. In fact, one band I knew about a few years ago, but the other I only found out by searching and reading some links on them...

My Scarlet Life (the link shown goes to Scarlet Life, a band that formed after MSL and does not play MSL songs...totally new thing) is a band that I "discovered" while up at Iowa State University. They played at the M-Shop a number of times, a venue they describe as their favorite to play in, and it also is my favorite venue in the world to hear a band in (200 capacity alcoholic-selling basement on campus with a purple/red/blue stained glass window background to the stage...). If you combined Portishead with Garbage with Enigma, out would pop this "trypnotica" band called My Scarlet Life. The band featured chilling dual-female lead vocals along with heavy bass, beat, and electronica to fuse Garbage-like dark pop-rock with a gothic underflavor and ambient passion.

Now, to switch gears a moment, this sort of story is what the RIAA and the music industry simply do not understand. To back up a bit, I never used Napster to download all my mp3's. In fact, I didn't need to because I had a 2000+ computer network with full sharing and search capabilities on the ISU network. I never downloaded my illegal stuff from the internet because I never had to...programs, games, mp3's, and even movies were available within minutes. Needless to say, one night I was bored and browsing random mp3 caches that people had shared. I browsed on a whim to a computer called "Vampire" and noticed this user shared several similar tastes in music to mine. Always one to expand my horizons, I noticed he (or she) had more than several My Scarlet Life mp3 files. I downloaded a few and was literally blown away...I was in heaven. I downloaded them all and then, after some research, found that they played out of Chicago and also played in town...on campus even! So I took in two of their shows in two years, bought 4 albums, and made fans out of my friends. From mp3's....from mp3's I spent more money on music than I would have otherwise in my poor college days. So fuck you RIAA.

You're Pretty opened for MSL the second time I saw them, and I loved the show so much I bought their only album (at the time). It's still a favorite with even more of a gothic tilt than MSL, coupled with extremely passionate female lead vocals and very rocking music. Despite not hearing the songs in maybe 8 months, they quickly fill my head with the memory of them. The link above actually describes their very last show, which also happens to be (not in their home town of Milwaukee) but in my loved venue at Iowa State U.

Because of the recent news of each band's demise, I plan to host a few sample mp3's on my website once I get it up and running again. Considering the bands are no longer in service, I doubt they will mind much. And even if they do, fuck em, because I love this music and plan to continue to play it in my times of need.