Having just proofed this interview with Garrison, I'll set it up while it's fresh. This artist is so strong, so real, so talented. In these days where so many are completely manufactured, or just in it for the celebrity, or marginally gifted, it's getting harder to find these and other absolutely necessary qualities from which greatness and inspiration spring.

And a lot of people don't really care about greatness or inspiration. I just don't happen to give a damn about any of them. (Like they say in The Godfather, "They're animals, anyway, let them lose their souls.")

But seriously, if you're looking for your next great thing and haven't experienced the music of Garrison Starr, her new record The Girl That Killed September is her best yet in a long line of singular recordings.

There's a lot of new stuff on this record for diehard fans of G's, too: covers of Neilson Hubbard and Jason Wilkins songs, great vocal percussion forming organic "loops" on which songs get built, less acoustic guitar, so the songs get a more pop feel. It's a brilliant step in the right direction, and a direction co-steered by Sharal Churchill of Media Creature/12x12, an L.A. publishing company turned multi-media label that sounds like the new music business to me. The new CD is only ten bucks, and the mp3's are only 75 cents--you can own the eleven-track downloaded version for $7.50.

If that sounds like a sales pitch, it's not. It's about not following the example of the vanishing labels, or even iTunes. The new music business has to be dreamed up and executed by the musicians and their champions, because the suits are going away.

Get The Girl That Killed September, it's great. (That's a sales pitch.)       continue to interview