2004-08-20 12:52 PM CST
Last night I made my second online music purchase (for download). The first album I bought was from iTunes (the Five for Fighting album). That was just under $12, so I could have bought it at WalMart for the same price most likely. Since I did a label and put it in a case, it actually cost me more. (Well, I guess I saved gasoline.) Anyway, I did it that way just to do it.
This week, the RealPlayer people announced that they are temporarily cutting their prices in half. 49-cents per song sounds like a better deal. Real also allows you to save your music in Apple's iPod format, although I don't have an iPod so I don't care.
I was disappointed in the download time: It took over 30 minutes. In fact, I don't know how long it took because I went to bed before it finished. I don't know whether the problem was with my Cebridge internet service (which gives me only about 300K download speeds), or with RealNetworks. The speed was around 30K bits per second, so I should have been able to go about 10 times that fast. I don't know where the problem lay.
Anyway, on to the primary discussion, the album itself: Los Lonely Boys:
This is a cool album! You've probably heard the song "How Far Is Heaven?" on the radio. I would describe that the way Austin musician Christopher Cross described his music back in the early 80s: Pop and Roll. It has a nice rock beat, and it gets stuck in your head. Some of the other tracks on the album are that style as well, and there are a couple of ballads.
The surprise is that most of the songs are real Texas Electric Blues. Think "Stevie Ray Vaughn" with a little bit of Spanish language thrown in. Mix in some Santana influence. I love the guitars. I love that style of music. The difference here is that instead of a solo vocalist, you get harmony from the brothers who comprise the group.
If you were planning to buy this album and expecting that most of the songs would be similar to "How Far Is Heaven", I think you'll be a little bit surprised, but I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you've never cared for this form of blues, I think you may like it here. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this'll be a good way to expand your tastes a bit.
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