The first time I saw Daniel Earwicker he was tearing through a cover of the Smiths’ “How Soon is Now?” on an old Rickenbacker. He was doing it without vocals, so the screaming lead guitar poured in like a crashing wave. I thought he was impressive for a guy with no head.

The people who watch Earwicker play, in fact, usually only see him from about the shoulders to the knees. That’s because his primary audience is on YouTube, where Earwicker, 36, has established his presence as a self-contained Internet band, complete with a growing base of rabidly loyal fans. (Me: guilty.)

His band is the Primrose League, and the lineup is as follows: Guitar, Daniel Earwicker; bass, Daniel Earwicker; drums, Daniel Earwicker; vocals, Daniel Earwicker. Production … you get the picture. He records on his home computer in the south of England, videotaping himself on each instrument. He then cuts it all together into a homemade music video, featuring himself as all players. As of yet, he has about 14 original songs in his catalogue, which he’s made available in album form to anyone who wants them. And yeah, they’re good.

“I’ve never sent a CD off to a record company or anything like that,” Earwicker said over an email interview last week. “YouTube is the first time I put music out to somewhere that the general public could find it.”

At first, he said, he had only posted a few covers to his channel – a pretty common phenomenon among “headless” YouTube musicians. He only began posting his own material at the request of listeners, never imagining people would start following him.

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