SOUND BITES

I MOTHER EARTH We Got The Love From: We Got The Love (single) Released: March 21 A labour of love if there ever was one, I Mother Earth recorded and released We Got The Love this spring for fans who had been desperately craving new music from IME for the better part of a decade since the well-received but poorly sold Quicksilver Meat Dream . The idea was basic; here's a song, throw a couple bucks if you like it, and we'll go from there. No string of business meetings, no label pressures, no plan at all. And yet, its simple brilliance connected; a fan-helmed grassroots campaign got the tune its much deserved spins at radio, making We Got The Love I Mother Earth's biggest hit since the Edwin days. On their own terms, and with the fans top of mind. Take that, mainstream hit machine!

You have to feel bad for any band that slowly and helplessly falls into obscurity, especially a band as musically gifted as I Mother Earth.  After all, this is a band whose first two albums (1993's Dig and 1996's Scenery and Fish ) not only kicked ass back in the day, but completely hold up nearly twenty years after the fact.  However, when you're on a roll, sometimes egos come into play.  Once Edwin defected to flirt with mainstream acceptance in the late 90's, taking much of the fairweather IME fans with him, the band's hand had pretty much been dealt.  Their decidedly difficult, meandering and considerably mellower debut with new singer Brian Byrne, 1999's Blue Green Orange , didn't exactly do them any favours.  Tragically, their last album (2003's The Quicksilver Meat Dream ) was simultaneously their most musically satisfying and most commercially disappointing release. As is so often the case, interest waned, the money started drying up, and I ...