CU Music, Parasol and Angie

A while back Lee clued me into eMusic, a cool indie music mp3 site (subscription based, but their high-quality, mp3s unencumberd by any crappy drm). Managed to stumble over Angie Heaton who has a few albums out. Was listening to her when Amanda asked me who that was… when I told her, she said Rachel had listened to her. I took that as a cue to ask Rachel what she listened to next time I saw her. She clued me into the fact Angie’s local and also recommended another local act, Sarge. Loved their 3 albums, and found the lead singer Elizabeth Elmore is currently in The Reputation up in Chicago. All good stuff, but like all good things I hungered for more.

Found out the bassist from Sarge, Rachel Switzky (turns out she played with Sarge while in grad school at UIUC), had also played in Corndolly… that also happened to feature Angie on drums. This was the first item I’d run across that wasn’t available on eMusic, but was available from Parasol Records. Richy had mentioned they had a brick & mortar shop over in Urbana, so I checked their website and noticed Liquorette, another band featuring Angie. Headed on over there after work and part way through checking out it came out that the person helping me was in fact Angie herself. Very cool. She was even nice enough to walk around with me and make recommendations… suggested her albums, which I already had, and Sarge’s albums, which I also already had… :). Very cool though.

I suppose that while I’m at it, I should mention that CU has traditionally been an indie-pop hotbed. You’ve got the aformentioned artists, Red Hot Valentines, Fiery Furnace, Wofie, The Blackouts (now The Living Blue), Beezus, and who knows how many more. Oh, and REO Speedwagon was from here too, for what that’s worth.