Catching Up With The Black Keys

It is so hard to have a hit record these days…hell, with all the music out there it’s nearly impossible to attract any kind of attention…all the noise and distractions and competition… If you’re a new band with a debut record, you’ve got anywhere from six to thirteen weeks to make an impression once that first single comes out….if you fail to achieve significant traction with radio and retail and with fans during that short window, you’re in trouble…and if your record label doesn’t make it happen for you with the second single—well, I hope you didn’t quit your day job… It wasn’t always like this…back in the day when music was harder to come by, a record label could afford to wait for a band to develop and mature through two, three, four, five albums… Look at U2…they stumbled through their first two records before settling down with “War”… Look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers…warner brothers let them discover themselves through three albums before they could deliver the a little breakthrough with “Mother’s Milk” and then the big breakthrough with “Blood Sugar Sex Magick”… And look at REM…they released five indie records, each better than the last, before they were signed to a big major record label deal…that was hard…they were on a treadmill of recording and touring and recording and touring with little downtime…but they wanted it bad, so they did what they had to…it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock’n’roll, y’know?... You can say the same of the Black Keys…a lot of people might think that these guys have what, three records in their catalogue…nope… They have eight full albums, two eps, one live album and close to two dozen singles…and unless you’re a longtime or hardcore fan, you may not know about some of the stuff they’ve done…  Let’s fix that for all the latecomers…this is catching up with the Black Keys…