The RPM Jukebox is home to more than 16,000 songs from independent musicians all around the world. The music spans every genre and style imaginable, and anyone can log on, browse, and listen at www.rpmchallenge.com/jukebox. To give you a head start in your exploration of this new world of music, here’s a sample album that caught our ear!

‘REC-PLAY-FFWD-RWND-NVR-STOP’
by 1Inch8Track, Cambridge, England, 2007

Although self-described as a religious album, “RPFRNS” is religious music only in the sense that band members Big Brother and Lil Brother mention Jesus, heaven and the devil a couple of times. Really, it’s just an album of interesting, catchy songs and clever lyrics, built on the foundations of decades-old greatness. The opening song, “Drinking Pepsi Cola Watching How the West Was Won,” has a solid drum beat that brings the vocals back on track on the couple of occasions when they start to lose their way. “Why Do You Want to Buy a Guitar?” switches up from an early punk sound to a little Black Sabbath tribute and back. “Sell your soul to the devil / that sounds like a good idea to me / swap your woman for a night / swap your living for a life,” sings one of the Brothers on “Jesus Shaves,” the album’s strongest track. It has the lovely simplicity of an early Kinks tune with sweet, albeit slightly twisted, vocals. In “900 Seconds,” it sounds like the singer is trying for a Lennon-imitates-Iggy Pop sound with the great late-’70s trick of dropping the instruments occasionally for some sturdy chorus chanting. In all, 1Inch8Track has managed to take all our favorite parts and, while the stitches show a little, sewn them up into a fun album. Sadly, 1Inch8Track did not repeat its effort for the 2008 RPM Challenge.