Dispatch Reflects on “The General,” Napster, and Current Mentality

Every fan of the independent band, Dispatch, has a favorite song. The group, which was born from three singer-songwriters in Vermont’s Middlebury College in the mid-90s, released its fair share of underground hits. Some like the melodic “Two Coins,” others like the edgy “Headlights.” All Dispatch fans, though, can agree on one thing: “The General” is a classic. But the track, which after its release would go on to be one of the biggest file sharing success stories of the early 2000s, almost never came to be thanks to a passed out engineer and some rickety equipment.

“The recording of ‘The General’ was really ramshackle,” says Chad Urmston, one of Dispatch’s co-founders, along with Brad Corrigan and Pete Francis. “Pete was sick. And the guy recording it – we were just doing a one-off with him. Brad and I had to press record on the tape machine and run into the room to lay it down because our engineer drank and smoked himself to sleep on the couch.”