Everyone has his / her own musical tastes. Unfortunately, judging from the current music sales, I would say that many people show an enormous lack of imagination, spending their money on software that brings in nothing new and, more importantly, helps to shift what should be important on an artist, from vocal and technical skills, to looks and permeability to the industry.

Long gone are the days when George Michael decided to fight SONY, because he felt the contract was exploiting him and cutting his creativity; long gone are the days when lyrics like Pet Shop Boys' "when you're coming" could cause a bit of shock, with a background of oh-so-recent-synths :)... these are different days.

Today you have MORE better music than yesterday, but, on proportion, that music probably reaches fewer consumers, because the Market is building itself on top of poor Pop stereotypes. This means that if you leave at an important cultural spot, you'll have the chance to listen quality stuff; on the other hand, if you are far from capital cities, then the music industry, won't risk bringing alternative software to your door. Money obliges. Money rules.

I don't have the slightest solid idea of what role can the Internet play for quality music. And I won't think much about it. If you want to burn a few neurons on such a reflection, try vectors such as #1) is "everyone can be an author and his / her own publisher", good or bad?; #2) is free, and possibly illegitimate, distribution of poor audio quality music files, more promotional or more damaging, for sales?...

Today, this site debuts 1 minute music files, on MP3 format. The sole purpose of these MP3s, is to call your attention to some great GREAT songs, and their great GREAT performers. They deserve your neurons, not exactly like half of what you listen on MTV and alikes (what happened to the majority of music TV stations?! - they mostly promote crap!).

Today, you can download:

- 10000 Maniacs, track 07, from "Love Among the Ruins" (the first 59 seconds);

- Bomfunk MCS, track 11, from "In Stereo" (the first 59 seconds).

The 10K Maniacs formation you'll listen to, isn't my favorite, because Natalie Merchant, the original lead vocalist, is gone solo; still, contrary to tradition, her replacement is absolutely brilliant, and my preferences are as mentioned, mostly because of the souvenirs she sparks. Merchant's departure was in September 1993! As a trivia, guess who replaced hear.

Bomfunk MCS are very new to my knowledge. I was asked to listen to their multimedia (CD Plus) "in stereo" work and... ouch!!!... spectacular! Powerful! Quite impressive lyrics; quite impressive bass; beyond (my) words energy! This is far, far better than 99% of the RAP and Funk that plagues the planet.

Enjoy. If you have a legal issue with these 59 seconds long MP3 @ 128kbps files, just e-mail me, and I'll remove them from the site, as soon as I read the message. Again, I don't intend to harm any business, and I believe that no harm comes from less than 1MB of MP3 data. Thank you.