Mr G. and the Beautiful Art of Dreadfully Ugly Websites

by A New Band A Day on Wed, 2010/02/24 - 11:33am Post to Twitter

The world evolves quickly, and the superseded are forgotten just as fast. So as the bulk of internet users flocks away from clunky old Myspace to Facebook, Twitter and the rest, take this opportunity for reappraisal and care to wonder if what’s driving the majority away isn’t the same reason that you ought to love it.

The innate beauty of Myspace is exactly what most people hate: rank flexibility – the terrible opportunity to entirely personalise an online space. What horrors!

Oh, please. Myspace is the only place to find the scrappy home-made creativity of ‘Zines on a large scale. Spooling through a bunch of Myspace band pages is a thousand times more fun than their equivalent anodyne Facebook ‘presence’.

Mr G. doesn’t have a Myspace page. I think he’s the first band ever on ANBAD without one. Instead he has a ‘Daily Grind’. Kudos, then, for shunning the norm, and further brownie points for making his own page an old-fashioned squelch around the inner workings of his mind.

Mr G. // Up On The Shoulder

What Mr G. does have is a toe or two dipped into the sweet, crystal-clear waters of wipe-clean pop. That the rest of his body is grubby and coarse is, of course, exactly the point.

Songs like Up On The Shoulder crave attention, which is gladly lent – ears pricked by the flailing, melted pop sensibilities that seem both far too simple and far to strange to work.

Mr G. makes songs occasionally. I don’t know his real name. I don’t know what else he does. He doesn’t want me or you to know. Here’s the only thing that matters: His songs are excellent, and are available to download, for free, here: www.mrgsdailygrind.co.uk