Dipping into the archives (introducing a new feature, w/ one free & legal MP3)

Fingertips has been reviewing free and legal MP3s since mid-2003, which first of all means yikes, that's a lot of songs by now. And second of all this means no way anyone following this site in 2010 has read all the reviews and listened to all the songs lo these many years.

Some of them, by now, and alas, are gone with the digital wind, free and legal no more. The older they are, the more likely is this to be true. But a good many of them are still available, against all odds, and what I plan to do once a week is revisit an old post, complete with the link to the still-existing free and legal MP3. Let's say we call it the Fingertips Flashback. Or Flashback Friday, as I'm planning on doing this every Friday, pretty much. Could be Fingertips Flashback Friday for that matter. Or we don't have to call it anything at all, as the names are sounding goofy. But it is going to need a name. I'll work on it.

This will be a feature-in-progress but the idea is to present the original review and the link, and then maybe follow it up with a few words looking back at the past through the lens of the present, because we are all older and wiser now and have so much more interesting things to say than we used to say. In theory. Here we go, the first Fingertips Flashback:

[from "This Week's Finds," week of May 8-14, 2005]

"Glorious" - A. Graham and the Moment Band
There are certain sorts of on-and-off-pitch voices that are so immediately friendly and unassuming that they welcome you in like an old friend handing you a beer. Andy Graham has one of those voices. Then again, this entire song is kind of like an old friend handing you a beer, most of all the loose-limbed, sing-along chorus, featuring four of the English language's finest words--"Glorious/ Triumphant/ Optimistic/ Transcendent"-- woven together with spot-on pedal steel accents. Like Doris Henson, A. Graham and the Moment Band are another endearing, worthy band from Kansas City, Kansas. "Glorious" is the lead track on the band's 2004 CD This Tyrant is Free, released on Sonic Unyon Records. The MP3 is available via Lawrence.com, one of the better (if also unassuming) local/regional music resources on the web.

ADDENDUM: Well, even Google can't seem to inform me of the fate of this crazy little band from the heartland. Nothing, apparently, has been recorded since their 2004 release. In its listing on Lawrence.com, the band claims to be "alive and kicking" but there are no signs of it I can see. The song remains as friendly and approachable as ever. I don't always feel those four words but this song reminds me it's never out of the question.