Nashville Music Blog

Steve already blogged about my cover story last week on local rock bands who rumble with the major-label beast. I wanted to highlight a companion story that we ran online alongside it but forgot to link to here. It's about Be Your Own Pet--a band whose deal went right and who stood to keep climbing the ladder of indie-rock fame (on major Universal), but broke up in the face of constant touring and the pressures of being overexposed. Sure, the label pulled a few classic label moves--putting the band on Warped Tour, censoring a couple of songs--but overall, it was reasonably hiccup-free.

Or as guitarist Jonas Stein puts it: "The people we worked with were great, but I think there's a lot of outdated morons at major labels spending too much money on young bands," he says. "And we were fortunate enough to be one of them."