Are you in a hurry ? Sorry, I can't help. Because this review is, actually, a kind of scam. It is about a release that we are waiting for for years, and the latest evolutions of the story would not make me be optimistic. Nevertheless there will be in this post some information on how to listen to parts of it, so please continue reading if you feel inclined to do so.
Brainless On Line, you may already know it, is a French pop-punk act from the early 2000's and the late 90's. One of the most legendary one, for a very few ones. They originated from the merry Nord-Isère area, that is to say, about 30 km away from the city of Lyon, when heading East.
The story of this release is a bit uncommon...
You may be aware of the fact that BOL called it a quit while their debut album was being recorded... But in fact, one of their gigs had been filmed with a camcorder before this...
And years after the end of the band, they finally found back the recording, they extracted the sound track, and started thinking about issuing this release, under the title of Brainless On Live.
At the beginning, things were likely to go well. The band started to negotiate with the local right collection society in order to have the three mainstream artist covers that are part of this album available as well as the 15 other tracks, which are due to the band. Originally, it was planned to release a self-published CD that would be sold very cheap. The band decided to use Lulu.com to self-publish the CD, and also it was planned to craft a very special digipack edition for hardcore fans only.
This, was back in 2009. Then things started to seriously slow down, mainly because of lack of time from the people whose task was to design the digipack...
And eventually, Lulu.com announced that they stopped their on-demand CD production feature. Yes, I know, there's still CDBaby that does exactly the same thing... But CDBaby asks for the bands to pay a fee of about 50US$, and to send and handful of CD, in order to have their albums available trough them. I am not sure the band is motivated enough to enter such a process. Also, there is the possibility for the band to print and sell CDs directly, but once again, they disbanded twelve years ago, and I am actually not sure at all that they have the motivation of taking care of tracking orders, sending CDs and so on...
So then, the future of this release is totally unknown.
And that's too bad, because - you may have guessed it, since I am talking about this release here - this is, roughly, a masterpiece. Most of the bands members are very close friends, then I've been able, when the project was still fresh in everyone's mind, to listen to a working version of the release. It was almost a definitive version, the only planned change was to add a bit of amplification to the tracks. And I have to say that this listening experience just set me on fire. This live is so great. It sounds so rough. It is so melodic, so straightforward... JanMi and Nain+, when playing the guitar, just remind me Wayne Kramer and Sonic Smith playing together with MC5. Tao's voice is beyond perfection. L'Autrichien is definitively one of the best drummers ever. And Le morse des mers has to take care of the not-so-easy task to glue everything together with his rounded, melodic, excellent bass lines, a thing that he does with a lot of talent.
The covers featured on this release are 'Together On The Sand' from NOFX, 'Thierry La Fronde' (TV show theme) and 'La Poupée Qui Fait Non' from Michel Polnareff. These covers are excellent and they make much for the overall value of this live album... But, hey, the story is not over...
Just because, outside the covers, for which the band would have to pay rights to the local right collection society - which explains was the release was meant to be sold, and not available for free (collection societies wouldn't agree with this), outside these covers then, there's also the 15 tracks due to the band. And theses 15 tracks are their own and they can do whatever they want with them.
So, you may know I run a small webradio entitled Wumzle Radio. This radio went unmaintained a few months ago, and may go offline at any time but...
Currently, the 15 tracks from Brainless On Live that are due to the band are featured on it. Just because, this is a radio for music that is not registered to any right collection society, this way I can broadcast tunes solely with band's explicit grant and I do not need to pay the 75€ monthly fee to right collection societies.
So then, if you wish to have a preview of most of the tracks featured on this release, you can simply tune in into the station, and wait for them to come - since Wumzle Radio is music-only, this is basically a big playlist looping endlessly.
If you are motivated enough to invest some of your time in the process, you will discover gems that are not simply great, but even greater than this. 'Follow The Coffin', 'Driving On The Sky', and so on, are simply among the best songs ever written.
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