Webs’ Random Ideas

I can’t believe I spaced on this! A few days ago the DVD for the Dispatch Zimbabwe concert went on sale. If you don’t know, Dispatch is the greatest band ever ;P . Anyways, I will have more about Dispatch below the fold.

If you want to find out more about the DVD, or order it, click here.

The DVD contains over two hours of concert footage, special outtakes and interviews, and “Tree With No Name”, a beautiful documentary covering the situation in Zimbabwe.

The pre-order is for a special edition DVD. If you don’t want to pay the money, or just want to wait for the regular DVD, it will be cheaper and will be released mid January.

Now about the best band in the world

Dispatch is an underground or independent music group. It’s nearly impossible to place them in a genre, which is part of their appeal, but they play a lot of music with alternative and reggae beats. They started touring in 96 and played a lot of small clubs. They never signed to a major label because the labels wouldn’t let them do what they wanted, which was to play the music they wanted to play. So they stayed independent and produced their own records. Promotion for records and concerts of the band was straight word of mouth.

Once they started selling out shows, and fast, and the audience started singing along to all theirs songs, they new they were starting to make it big. Which is surprising considering their CDs were sold out of their van and at concerts. Then they started playing larger venues in 99 and were selling out 3,000 or more attendance shows and again everyone was singing their songs and new all the lyrics.

The band was playing too many shows too quickly and their personalities conflicted to some extent and this lead to a fallout around 2001. They played on Late Nite with Craig Killborn late 2001 and then broke up. They came back together for a final concert in Boston at the Half Shell in 04. The concert was free and open to anyone.

No one knew how many would show up, best estimates said no more than 20,000 since the promotion was all word of mouth as everything was with Dispatch. What happened made history. The concert brought in over 120,000 people from more than 23 countries around the world. After this amazing concert the band members did their own thing.

One of the songs Dispatch created, “Elias”, came from Chad Urmston who spent some time in Zimbabwe. While in Zimbabwe Chad met a man named Elias and was touched and inspired by him. Elias, the song, became a popular one for the band and led the band to do more work for Zimbabwe as a whole. Which spun off the idea of doing a relief concert for Zimbabwe.

So they got back together in 07 to get ready for the concert which would be played in Madison Square Garden New York. Back in January of 07 they put tickets onsale from their Myspace page. Within 30 minutes the first show sold out. So they opened up a second show the next day (something they weren’t planning on doing) and that show sold out within 12 hours. Then they announced they would open a third show and opened up those tickets sales a week later or so I think. The third show sold out in 23 minutes.

So I got my tickets on eBay and went with three other individuals. It was the greatest show I have ever seen and the documentary on Zimbabwe that played between sets was insightful and very emotional. More can be said about Dispatch, but I recommend listening to their music and find your own meaning. Click here to go to their site, with a flash enabled browser to listen to all their records and songs for free.