Benton Paul and Other Indie Goodness

Today's entry is about a friend of mine named Benton Paul. These days he's trying to make it as an indie singer. He's got a good voice and he's got a knack for both the guitar and the piano. He's got an album on iTunes, and if anyone who reads here is feeling particularly generous they can go and buy it. If you just want to hear a bunch of his music for free, you can do that too, or you can visit his own website.

Most of his music is about girls, as seen from the perspective of a single guy in the Utah dating scene. If this strikes you as relevant, you'll probably relate to a bunch of his songs. For the record, my favorite song is "Here's to the Boys."

So, off on my tangent: One of the things that's kind of cool about the Internet is its potential to act as a medium for creating popular culture. As little as twenty years ago, there were gatekeepers for public taste--if you wanted any kind of publicity outside of your hometown, you needed a soul-sucking contract with one of the media gatekeepers. Nowadays, all you need to do is, say, make a fool of yourself and post it online, and very occasionally you'll achieve nigh-celebrity status.

It seems that we are gradually achieving an alternative to content aggregation using social networks, but I don't really have any special insight into that, so I won't bore you. In the meantime, everyone go check out Jonathan Coulton and wonder if it'll all work out.