Has it really come to this?
The Jessie Jayne show is the leading Tribute to the Mega star Jessie J.
From the Ghetto chic costumes, the Essex accent and the unique powerful vocals and energetic stage presence the Jessie Jayne Show brings this to life being the UK’s leading tribute to Jessie J.
The show has toured the UK and abroad and has received excellent comments from many respected musicians and agents. Regularly being rebooked by many clients.
Mmm, that’s hott.
Mmm, “clients”.
This is from… a band?
it is certainly not a matter of overconfidence or arrogance to look at the works of Charles Darwin and Bill Gates and find your own close to both, in a way.
To be honest, it does take guts and, perhaps, a little eccentricity – which are main characteristic attributes to novelty, no matter where it applies. Newton’s biographers may confirm this.
They describe themselves as “avant-garde”. Obviously.
Want to want live reviews and not get paid? Well there are plenty of opportunities for you out there in the world of ‘media’, from the smallest blogs to the biggest newspapers. But ‘Guitar Media’ magazine (hmmmmm… nope) recently took it a step further by asking for a £49.99 annual fee for privilege of writing for their rag.
They try to reason
We need to make sure that we get only serious applicants. Paying for this service means that you are committed to creating informative reviews that meet deadlines. At the end of the day you will be getting into these concerts as a member of the Guitar Media press team for free and we could be sending you to many many concerts every year. If we offered this for free we would be inundated with people just wanting free concert tickets and its [sic] possible that no reviews would be sent to us. This is why we have to charge a fee.
Or you could, you know, pay your writers.
(And you could probably do with a sub-editor too.)
The blog post has since been taken down but fortunately Google’s saved a copy for you to read.
Live And Unsigned, the “UK’s largest competition for original music” (it claims), is being probed by the Advertising Standards Agency after failing to provide the prizes originally advertised. Serves the bands right for entering a pay-to-play contest, really. One band (OOH, A SECRET SOURCE) told us they went through the first stage (£10 entry fee) but pulled out of the second one when they were told they’d have to sell 25 tickets at £8 each as well as show the ‘promoters’ all the evidence of how much work the band had done to publicise the event. Oh and they were only allowed to play one song.
Hey bro, come and give us £8 so you can see us play one song.
Nah, that’s OK.
But the problem with the prizes being offered of festival slots for the winning bands? The two festivals were cancelled. Brilliant. Full story over at the Beeb.
I love a good, old fashioned, failed mail merge.
Hi. We’re back.
We are a new Gypskazz band.
We have an unique sound that combines the traditions of gypsy jazz with Londonbeat and second and third wave Ska.
The set consists of covers (made gypskazz) such as The Pink Panther, Bad, Lithium by Nirvana and jazz classics such as Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy made famous by David Bowie in Moulin Rouge, and From Russia with Love, a James bond classic. The band also plays a few original tunes such as infamous ‘London Town’ written by Melzebra.Our last gig we were described as “refreshing, different and exciting.”
As you may already know, gypsy jazz ska or gypskazz is a very in vogue sound at the moment.
So will be a great night of music and entertainment.
Googling ‘gypskazz’ will bring up the name of this band and the names of no other bands within this hot new genre. That’s hot. You can say you were there at the start.
LOL wut.
[via Buzzfeed]
Sub Pop used to send charming rejection letters in the ’90s.
From… Sub Pop
… CELEBRATING SEVERAL YEARS OF RECORD MAKINGDear Loser,
Thank you for sending your demo materials to Sub Pop for consideration.
Presently, your demo package is one of a massive quantity of commendable material we receive every day at Sub Pop World Headquarters, and is (due to time and volume restrictions) on it’s way through the great lower intestine that is the talent-acquisition process*.
We appreciate your interest in Sub Pop and wish you the best in your pursuit.
Kind Regards.
*This is a form letter. This letter is what is known as “a rejection letter.”
If my eye is twitching right now, it’s because of their erroneous apostrophe.
[Via Letters Of Note (click link for a scan of said letter) and @brooner]
YES. TIME FOR SOME METALZ. \m/
An extract.
Based out of Southampton in Hampshire (south coast of England), SUMMERS has hit the music scene worldwide with a vengeance!
This is a talented group of singers and musicians who devote time to vocal harmony, evoking memories of classic rock bands like Bon Jovi and the Eagles. The skin-tight, twin-guitar riffs of Hickling and Sepala may take you back to Thin Lizzy days.
Safe to say that SUMMERS – the charismatic new British bad boys of rock are headed for the rock and roll hall of fame! Stay tuned for more!
“You will believe Classic Rock is alive and well, you will sing the songs all the way home, you will get your daughter pregnancy tested in the morning!! SUMMERS debut album could well have as many hit singles as Def Leppard’s Hysteria”. Gary Bushell – Former music critic of Sounds Magazine and now journalist for THE PEOPLE newspaper.
How’s that going?
With the document ominously titled ‘Regional Release’, it makes one wonder what kind of press release the national press got instead.
We have taken the liberty to embolden some of it for our own amusement.
Wake the President announce Album & UK Tour Details
WTP are set to return with a remarkable second album, Zumutung!, on 31 October. Recorded at Glasgow’s celebrated Chem 19 studios and produced by Paul Savage (Franz Ferdinand, King Creosote, The Phantom Band), Zumutung! is darker, more experimental and more anthemic than its predecessor but, as ever with WTP, the brooding poetic undertow is countered by ebullient tunes.
The Sandberg twins remain based in Glasgow, but travel and displacement had a bearing on the Zumutung! aesthetic. ‘When I wrote the album I was splitting my time between Glasgow and London,’ muses Erik of its genesis. ‘The Mega-Bus provided plenty of time for catching up on the Zola or Camus novels that I’d amassed, and I actually wrote [lambent post-punk aria] ‘In Youth, There is Pleasure’ and [alt-rock romantic exodus] ‘This is New’ in a poxy bed-sit in Hackney.’
On writing the single, Erik muses thus: ‘I remember reading Kierkegaard at the time. I was in a terrible state. I took an idea from him regarding repetition (Repetition and Other Philosophical Crumbs) and ran with it. I like having my own imaginary conversations with writers about their ideas. It amuses me – especially if they’re dead…’
Bjorn identifies internal wrangles as another source of inspiration on Zumutung!. ‘Without using a cliche, it was a pretty dark time for both of us personally, for various reasons, when we were making the album,’ he reflects. ‘Tensions were high between us as brothers and friends – Paul Savage sent me home one afternoon! But I think that prickly tension and energy comes across on the album, and it’s something which I like about it,’ he says.
While Zumutung! is entrenched in literature, counter-culture and philosophy – and while its themes of love, loss, obsession and hope are as universal as its melodies – Zumutung! is musically and lyrically signposted by WTP’s home city. ‘I cycle through Glasgow’s Clyde Tunnel every day’ says Erik, a tireless seeker of new ideas and inspiration. ‘It’s a great place for stealing lyrics from the graffiti…’
This appreciation for counter-culture is at the heart of Wake the President’s charms. It’s in their association with Glasgow DIY uprising We Can Still Picnic, and their self-run imprint, Say Dirty Records. It’s in their love of Postcard, heavy vinyl, pamphleteering and graffiti. It’s in their visionary, vintage indie-pop that’s fighting fit for our dancing feet, and our curious minds, and our fragile hearts.
*slow clap*
Sometimes, bands just like to copy us in on email discussions. Well, this has only really happened one time and we never got to see the response from the promoter, if there was one.
A band responds to a gig offer from a promoter.
From our discussion I understood:
you hire a venue with a capacity of 100 people
you book 6 bands
you charge 5 pounds on the door
you keep all the money from the first 10 people there to see each band
any more than 10 people for each band and the band gets 100 percent of the money
you promote the event via facebookSo that means if the place is full, each band has brought 16 people (this adds up to 100, roughly) so each band can make a maximum of 30 pounds for the extra 6 they bring, yet you earn 300 pounds. You told me that you keep the money to cover your expenses.
Following our discussion I called the venue and asked how much to hire it. They told me 65 pounds.
We’d all like a job where you earn 235 pounds to make a facebook event and a few phone calls and to have people working for you for a tiny amount of money. Dress it up as you want but it’s clearly an attempt by a chancer to make a few bucks off of other people’s art. Bit of an awful thing to do. Why don’t you get a real job?
Thanks for the offer, but I’m gonna say no.
During the recent ‘civil unrest’ in London the UK, Twitter was alight with anguish, outrage and fear. But you could always rely on those comedians tucked away in Scotchland (Edinburgh, to be precise) who were still heroically, self-righteously plugging their shows via the social network. It was a beautiful sight. On the ground level, one man had a few aesthetic plans for the city itself and has had to issue a very important press release regarding his actions. I hope he’s feeling very, very ashamed.
Sorry About The Cocks
Kunt and the Gang would like to apologise to anyone who is upset about the ‘crudely drawn cock’ stickers that have been appearing all over posters in Edinburgh. When we had 5000 of the cock stickers printed in the run up to the Fringe Festival we just thought it would be a light-hearted alternative to flyers. The plan was to give them to our audience each night so they could go out and vote with their cocks by sticking them in amusing places on posters. It was intended to be one big jolly jape that everyone laughed along with. This I now know was a badly misjudged joke that horribly backfired.
Unfortunately it was brought to our attention that some comedians were extremely angry at seeing their posters adorned with an effigy of a male member. This culminated in myself being physically threatened by one irate comic who failed to see the funny side of his poster being decorated by a member of the public with a crudely drawn image of a man’s winky.
Further to this, after only four nights of the audience being handed stickers at the end of my show, I received a warning from the Fringe Police and was told that Underbelly had threatened action should any more of my stickers be handed out. I suspect the cock that broke the camel’s back was the penis that ended up in Christine Hamilton’s wine glass on their flagship poster on Bristo Square. The same night I received a visit at my venue from Edinburgh Council EnvironmentalDept. who told us that they had spent the day pulling off over a hundred cocks. They showed us examples of cocks they had found on posters, including the one of Russell Kane with his mouth open, the one of Richard Herring lying on a bed and the one of the Spank Comedy Club with that bird bending over. I gave them my assurance to that no more cock stickers would be given out.
I would like to take this opportunity to say my cocks were not meant maliciously or designed to annoy anyone and I sincerely apologise if one of my cocks got up anyone’s nose. Admittedly I didn’t think it through properly. I mistakenly thought everyone would share my enthusiasm for seeing Edinburgh covered in crudely drawn cocks for a month. In retrospect I realise I was like America selling Weapons of Mass Destruction to the Middle East without a thought for who my cock shaped missiles would be affecting. Furthermore I would also like to apologise to any of the performers who have had a cock removed and are now left where the sticker once was or a ‘ghost cock’. I’m sorry if my cock cheesed ayone off.
Kunt (Kunt and the Gang)
EDIT: Photos of the offending cocks can be found here.
EDIT #2: After another THREE (3) ‘press releases’ about this, we’ve decided it just isn’t funny anymore but will keep on the site for ‘historical’ reasons.
“I’ve seen this band twice,” says our submitter, “they’re actually pretty good and a decent bunch of guys.”
Oh.
Give us the biog then.
Films Of Colour produce swooning, layered indie, and describe themselves as: The light to the shades. The dark to the brightness. It was through a chance meeting that led to the final blend. An eclectic blur to begin. No more the differences impede, but lend a hand. A hand if you ever needed a new palette to draw from. Your heavy red, subtle blues. They are your understated epic. They are your electronic flourish. They will hold you close and then let you go. Delicate and floating films of colour.
Do you see? They’re called Films of Colour, so they’re talking about COLOURS. FANTASTIC.
Just cut to the chase and tell us what you sound like.
For the poetically challenged; Boy Kill Boy arguing with Bloc Party on a sodden, windy British beach, over their favourite Coldplay track.
Waheyyyyyyy!
Our submitter writes: “Here is one of my favourite music emails from last year, when I was putting a band together with a string of Gumtree ads.”
Reply to Gumtree Ad: Singer wanted for 60s-influenced garage/psychedelic band
Him: need musicians//or rather manager./producer-I sing/write songs
“Me: Could you be a little more specific?”
Him: to elaborate/the gov is to ensure every citizens talents aedeveloped and utilised-otherwise the police will be given community service/the meia tells us what is-instead of the people telling the gov and media what is/we have a crooked system in the uk-I sing/its not for fame and fortune/but if the money can help others so be it/but whilst the police go walk-about/I’ve got no venue where I can sing/and the church the academics should be spelling it out/crime is when the state does’nt utilise the talents of all the people/we need radical politics in this country but non-violent-unlike populat tv/and the police that rule by intimidation/we need to build community on arts and science-and not on uniforms//song;and I’ll meet you…. on the dark side of the Moon;when I’m dreaming-in the middle month of June. in the meadows;in the forests;by the silver stream and sand dunes too to make a home out of the impossible-because I’m so in love with you. and I’ll embrace you/and kiss you and make our life complete….on the other side of the Moon and the whole wide world will turn in their seat-and say aint that something neat…. with a church and steeple-and a gospel choir the word of love is telling us-to explore is our desire. use if you wish…[revise;are developed///an media//
“Needless to say, we did not ask him round for a jam.”
Hello! We’ve moved servers (sort of)! How exciting! BUT… It’s not as exciting as this brand new scene brewing which we can’t wait to tell you about. Back in the ‘glory’ days of the music press it was Steve Lamacq and Simon Williams who invented all the scenes so they’re probably kicking themselves about not thinking of this one.
A venue receives an EXCITING EMAIL. It is this [square brackets and bold is ours]:
I am currently looking around for venues to stage an event in London and I was wondering if you might be so kind as to tell me what might be requested on my part to make this happen in your venue.
The event I have planned is a little bit special, in that it is showcasing a new genre of music which I believe will create a lot of hype for your venue and myself. I myself am a musician in a band which is about to rename itself as [Nah, Not Going To Name Them] and the music we are promoting is called ‘crude’ and has it’s roots founded in garage punk and garage rock. We have been networking with about 10 different acts who have a similar sound to us, which I plan to organise and integrate into a movement. If all goes according to plan I expect this movement to expel into a phenomenon much like punk in the 70s, new-wave in the 80s, brit-pop in the 90s and indie in the 00s. People are crying out for a new guitar-based movement so I am very confident in the success of this venture.
We will be using many guerilla marketing tactics to get people into the venue, including promoting on facebook, myspace, using reverse graffiti (legally of course), setting up email lists, setting up blogs, listing on [lists about a gazillion listings sites so at least he's done his homework]. We’ll put up posters in all nearby shops and businesses. We will also be doing some very heavy leafleting on the day, we have about 30 people lined up to hand out leaflets [even London's biggest club nights don't use this many leafletters] and create a real presence around the venue. We have filmmakers and photographers on standby for our event and we will release press releases and promo packages once we have staged the event a couple of times.
At the moment I am still trying to bring the acts closer together and set up websites for this movement so at this point I would be grateful if you could let me know if you could stage this event and if you require anything from me to make this happen. I await your response.
Our response is that we now hate all music. THANKS!!!
My name is [blah blah] and I manage a band named the [really terrible name] who is formed of highly talented and experienced individuals resident in London.
The band is a pop/rock covers band of 4 people playing mostly popular, modern, main stream songs and currently play at some special events and parties.
Every member of the band has more than 10 years of band and stage experience and I believe we can be a quite good fit for venues such as yours.
Really no idea how they’ve come to that conclusion.
For your convenience I attach the recent repertoire of the Band also share with you the facebook page where you will be able to view some videos of recent gigs and demo records. However please do bear in mind that the audio records are of poor quality and are not the best indicator of the Band’s performance.
OK, we’ll bear that in mind! I’ve never found that listening to a band’s music is a real indication of what their music is like anyway.
They are much mor influential on stage with great reviews and comments from the crowds.
Thanks for clearing that up!!!!!!!!!11
The Geffen-signed Brother, previously emo pop band Kill The Arcade, now styling themselves on Oasis and renamed Viva Brother, a band we’re not sure actually exists outside the NME, played some festival or other called Glastonbury a few days ago on the ‘Other’ stage and dropped this quote. “‘We had an ace night, last night. Now we are having a come down, we’re coming down faster than the Twin Towers.” Just in time for their US tour as well!
Apologies for the slumber. Stuff going on.
We’re back with a brief interlude to rape your merry land of musical joy and bring you back down to earth with The Kayas. They are “the most awesome band to hit British Music since man smashed rocks together and invented rhythm”. The video below is said to be “the group’s first entry into the UK Charts”. It didn’t chart. Apparently “the band have spent years developing their sound” and “their music really is their own with a unique sound” and not like all that horrible pop stuff actually in the charts. “The Kayas breath life into the UK Music Charts in a way that hasn’t been seen since the golden brit-pop days of Oasis and Blur,” the blurb continues… which is interesting, given that they’re not in the charts. It would also appear that they recorded it at Sawmills Studios. Your ignorance on this matter could be excused given it was only mentioned three times in their blurb.
via DiS
A manager emails…
DONT MISS THIS, [Metal Band] a great new metal band up and coming already having torn apart the O2 academy… some major festivals this year
Which ones?
and more, much more,
Such as…?
are playing at “THE HOPE AND ANCHOR” Camden/Islington
I think you’ll find it’s just Islington. Unless you mean the pub next to Koko which doesn’t host live music.
on stage 8.30 come on down and see this band that everyones talking about !!!
Pretty sure they’re not.
you will want to sign them up there and then !.
Sign them up to what? You seem to have just emailled a load of venues. All they’re going to sign for is their Heineken delivery.
I feel dirty for featuring what is obviously a ‘joke band’ but it’s my blog, so I’ll do what I damn well want.
Dudezilla was created from the charred remains of Space Noobzilla combined with the semen of Gayzilla.
Dudezilla are fronted by Bovice on guitar, vocals. Backing Bovice with Drums and sex appeal is The Steve Goddard Experience, infamous noob Destroyer.Dudezilla is available for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, school discos and childrens parties.
“It’s Like The White Stripes, with heroin to the face…”
- Jamie Howes, Easter Island, 2009“Dudezilla is like making out with your fitty cousin. Your brain says no but your genitals say yes!”
- Izzy James, No Parents Zine, 2009