Could Chicago electronica darlings Prairie Cartel have better luck? Could their misfortunes seem any crueler? After making their name on the soundtrack to the Grand Theft Auto video game series, P.C. seemed about to make some serious noise amongst the big boys, were lacking no acclaim from the underground music scene (being called “the next big thing out of the Windy City” by countless rags), and even receiving that rare accolade of being featured on NPR. The road to success has been anything but simple for these lads, filled with rabid dogs, Motor City Witches, and the overall flakiness that is par for the course in the business side of rock n’ roll. This is a track from the band’s Where Did All My People Go, which might help you judge for yourself:
The Prairie Cartel – Keep Everybody Warm
Over the course of the next week we’ll be giving an inside glimpse at the band’s damaged psyche, the trials and tribulations of an up-and-coming young rock band, and all the perils of rock and roll decadence (that a studio and Lincoln Square can offer).
PART ONE: SPRING
by Blake Smith
Mike and I had just gotten dropped from a major label. Again. And again we had taken a perfectly good band, gotten it signed, and then proceeded to watch it get bent, spindled, and mutilated by the machine. What started as something respectable was now a junked-out shell of a group hunkered out in the alley trying to blow you for radio play. The problem was that we were in the alley voluntarily. When fed that classic label bit that our album was great, but just needed that one immediate track that radio couldn’t possibly refuse, we didn’t fight it. Fuck, we would write you four songs for radio. By tomorrow, if it meant the good songs got to stay on. But to get on radio you have to write shit. And once you showed an A&R guy how easily you could turn shit out, you were doomed. Your record quickly ceases to resemble what you thought you had made. We were screwed (again). Why couldn’t we learn?
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