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humour: How to get a hit single
posted by david on Sun 6 Oct 2002 @ 10:29 PM
I don't fully understand the story of English performer John Otway but his current antics warrant a little attention. It seems that once upon a time, he had a bit of a hit and for his 50th birthday, his fans decided to give him another hit single. To do it, John recorded a bunch of songs and sent out a CD to his fans for them to choose the best song. For a b-side, he recorded a cover of 'House of the Rising Sun' complete with a cast of 1000 backing vocalists (all fans). The song they chose as the A-side, 'Bunsen Burner', was released this week in the UK. Predictably, the fans have all rushed out and bought all three formats of the single release so that it managed to make it into the top 10 in the mid week charts. Some radio stations have been supporting it and now everyone is sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to see how it fares in the final charts for the week. The announcement will be made as part of John's Sunday night show at the London Palladium. While the success of the single will be mostly due to the novelty of the whole fan-run project, it does prove that generating a hit single requires more money than talent - even with fans trying to buy the single, some music stores have been worried about it preventing them from stocking releases that they've been paid to promote. It will be interesting to see the final results of the fan effort. update: According to the BBC, the single debuted at number 9 on the UK charts. I wonder whether all of the free press coverage will help the single do any better next week?

press coverage: BBC - Guardian - The Sun

humour: John Safran does music
posted by david on Thu 20 Jun 2002 @ 09:08 PM | read or post comments (1)
In the media industry, it sometimes seems that all the so-called celebrities are clambering over each other as they attempt to climb the ladder. When John Safran famously confronted Ray Martin outside Ray's house, the thought that John was not interested in playing that game was heavily underlined. When things get a little too pompous, people like Safran can be a breath of fresh air. I've heard mutterings for a while that he was going to do a SBS series on music and while this article doesn't give us a lot of details about what exactly "John Safran's Music Jamboree" will entail, I have a feeling it will be interesting TV. It starts on SBS Monday 24/6 at 8:30pm (I like the way the JSMJ website is credited to SBS New Media and SBS Legal).
humour: Songs that give supermarket muzak a good name
posted by david on Thu 22 Mar 2001 @ 09:04 PM
Spice Girls? 'N Sync? Mariah Carey? And you thought it couldn't get any worse than that? Hah! How about a song about KPMG? Or a ditty for PricewaterhouseCoopers? You think I'm joking don't you? This piece tells the whole sorry tale. My only question is: why can't I find these on Napster?
humour: So you wanna fake being an indie rock expert?
posted by david on Tue 22 Aug 2000 @ 03:21 AM
Cos sent me a link to this moderately amusing piece titled "So you wanna fake being an indie rock expert?". I say "moderately" because I suspect record company A&R folk would decide it was quite useful.
humour: The Millennium Strum-A-Thon
posted by david on Sun 13 Aug 2000 @ 03:27 AM
It's good to know that even obscure fields of musical endeavour have a mechanism for acknowledging achievements of note. The upcoming Air Guitar Championships will undoubtedly be a hard fought contest.
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