Los Angeles Times
CALENDAR WEEKEND LOS ANGELES TIMES THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006

BUZZ BANDS

Not content with a quiet arrival

After Quietdrive signed with Epic Records, the Minneapolis quintent didn’t sit back and wait for the label’s marketing machine to turn them into stars. They took matters into their own hands – and computer mice – using the social networking website MySpace.com to build a massive cyber-following.

During breaks from recording their Butch Walker-produced debut, “When All That’s Left Is You,” members of Quietdrive solicited the MySpace “friends” of other bands on the site to check out Quietdrive’s music. “It’s a totally indie attitude,” guitarist Matt Kirby says. “We wanted to make ourselves apparent to our label – like, “Look what we can do on our own. Imagine if you help us.’”

the results were staggering. The band has more than 33,000 friends, as they’re known on MySpace, and its two songs have been downloaded almost half a million times. “We all had our MySpace work time,” Kirby says of band mates Kevin Truckenmiller, Justin Bonhiver, Droo Hastings and Brandon Lanier. “Somebody would tell us we remind them of Jimmy Eat World, or Fall Out Boy, so we’d go their MySpace and write their fans and say “hi.”

Kirby reports an increasing number of MySpace contacts showing up at concerts (next Monday at the Knitting Factory), but whether the buzz can translate to sales after the album is released early this summer remains to be seen. Purveyors of Quietdrive’s brand of hooky emo-rock, with its spit-polished guitars and soaring choruses, crowd the market-place right now. But at least the band has earned a hearing. “It’s so easy,” Kirby says of using MySpace. “The possibilities are endless.”