The sheer number of bands on MP3 is astounding. Click on alternative music and page after page of bands like Acid Whisper, and Dark January have a place to hock their albums and wax about who killed Kurt Cobain and how nipple piercing reflect their inner pain. Are we sure about this whole freedom of speech thing?

Its hard to imagine any band standing apart from the masses of undiscovered wanna bes trying to use the web to showcase their talents worldwide, on a cyber sea that is vast and unfamiliar.

Ethereal rock band Fisher did just that. Managing not only to get noticed but also to have 2 million fans log on and download their music before they even had a record deal.

It wasnt groundbreaking marketing or music that got them there, it came down to a skill that eludes most artists -- good timing. Kathy Fisher and her partner Ron Wasserman, started Fisher seven years ago, and up until March of 1999 they were just another band on the verge. That is until Rons friend told him to check out this MP3 thing-referring to the digital-music format that allows people to swap their favorite tunes online. The rest is a success story thats the first of its kind.

Enthusiastic about their recent success and confident about what lies ahead Kathy Fisher talked to Zap2it about paying her dues, Tori Amos fans, and singing for Nestle Chocolate.

Zap2it: How did you meet your partner Ron Wasserman?

Kathy Fisher: We met several years ago. He was writing and scoring stuff for childrens shows and I was brought in to sing on some of the songs. So we just started writing some stuff together, realized it was a great collaboration, and then we began on our constant quest for a record deal.

Zap2it: Is that how you survived before you got a deal, by writing childrens music?

Kathy Fisher: That and a lot of secretarial work. In more recent years I started singing jingles, so Ive also made my living doing that. Ive done lots of commercial jingles; I did one for Vorizon, Hyundai, actually I just finished one today for Nestle Chocolate.

Zap2it: So your still doing jingles.

Kathy Fisher: You know I still do jingles because its a great income and you never owe anybody anything. With a record deal if your record doesnt sell you owe the record label and you go bankrupt. With jingles its like 20 minutes of work and the checks start coming in and they dont all of a sudden call and say, Hey, nobodys buying Hyundais give us the money back! Its beautiful.

Zap2it: Then Fisher got a song on a soundtrack?

Kathy Fisher: Our first break before turning to the Internet was getting on the Great Expectations soundtrack. We always submitted our stuff to any movie we could get our hands on, and that one just happen to hit. A friend of ours took our tape to the Atlantic/Soundtracks division. They loved our song Breakable and put it on the soundtrack.

Zap2it: What made you turn to the Internet as a means of getting your band heard?

Kathy Fisher: We accidentally got involved with the Internet. Ron wrote a lot of music, he wrote the theme for the Power Rangers. A friend called him up one day and said, you know you gotta check out these message boards, you have a lot of fans out there. And we discovered this whole little world. We decided that we should have a page or something that people can click through and at least E-mail us. So we started a really modest contact site as a link from the Great Expectation site.

Zap2it: What do you think drew people who hadnt heard of Fisher to your site?

Kathy Fisher: A couple of interesting things happened. Tori Amos fans bought the Great Expectations album and I guess they thought we were on the same wavelength sound wise. We started getting E-mails from all those folks and then the Web Master for a Tori Amos site Emailed us wanting to do a link to the Fisher site. We then did some Lillith Fair shows that year --summer of 98-- and we got more traffic from that. There were enough people asking us for a CD so we thought we better make one. Zap2it: You didnt have a CD prior to that?

Kathy Fisher: No, we held off on doing an indie CD because we knew too many musicians who had done them and they never sold and all they were left with was a thousand unopened CDs sitting in their garage mocking them. We didnt want to go down that road.

Zap2it: I can see why.

Kathy Fisher: When we played Lillith Fair people were asking, Wheres your CD? Wed say, well we dont have one but you can buy the Great Expectation soundtrack if you want to hear one of our songs.

Zap2it: Yikes.

Kathy Fisher: Right, they were like, Thanks Ill wait till your record comes out.

Zap2it: So when did you release your indie album?

Kathy Fisher: Early 99. Then around March of that same year is when we first heard about MP3s. A friend mentioned it to Ron and from then on he started pouring over the Internet twelve hours a day for about two months. He made sure to find every music site and made sure that we were on it. Timing was everything for us. At the time MP3 was really new, it was a small company, there werent a lot of selections yet, the employees did reviews of CDs, they used to really do things to sort of help lift artists up which they dont do anymore.

Zap2it: Thats for sure. They cant, it changed so quickly.

Kathy Fisher: Just blink and its completely changed. Its too bad because when it was just starting Ron told friends, get yourself online. And theyd say, oh man, I dont have a computer. Get yourself a computer and get it happening. Still they would just brush it off laugh and say, sure man whatever. They call him now like two years later, OK now Ive got the computer what do I do?

Kathy Talks About Making It In Music.

Listen to Fisher Now!