It must be so bad to be in a band and realise this has happened.
I mean when bands get a buzz about them and then, for whatever reason, they don't capitalise it and then the buzz dies down away and, though they carry on, they maybe deep down know that this was there chance and it probably won't come back round again.
I remember a quote by a band that split up (although I forget who the band was) along the lines of "it's depressing to realise your best days are on someone's cameraphone taken last Christmas". I always found that really sad.
Cheer up!
It's Friday!
Is it?
Is it really though?
I want to sell the zoo.
But do I really want to sell the zoo?
The cooper temple clause
are a classic example of this.
There've been loads.
There must have been a point when Campag Velocet thought "fucking hell, we've made it, we'll never have to work again". Fischerspooner too...
Not that I'm especially advocating the qualities of either of those acts - just saying, regardless of what you think of the music, it must be depressing as hell to feel like you're a 'dead cert' and then be nothing.
There was that girl band a few years back too - Girls on Top they might have been called. Clearly fuckloads had been spent marketing and promoting them and they'd spent two years living together 'training' to be pop stars.
Then the first single only reached #8 despite a mass load of publicity, second one #25 and that was it. Then presumably they had to go back to 'normal' lives...
at least one of them wore silly hats
ah
they were called Girl Thing. the song was called Girls On Top.
thing is, there was some hip electro (maybe?) thing at the time that i wanted to buy because NME told me to, with the artist name Girls On Top.
made life difficult.
silly hats:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FDL2g-iocNM
That was it...
I worked on the plugging
and marketing for Girl Thing for RCA....yes.
whooooaaaaaaaah
i'll be the last one standing...
The Bandits
Young Heart Attack
Cleopatra (Comin' at ya)
I'm
really hoping The Twang fall into this category as soon as possible. Also, would Hot Hot Heat qualify? I really liked them but they never really seemed to blow up...
it was gutting
to see the pretty guitarist from Hepburn had become a policewoman when she was on buzzcocks, I almost wondered whether I should go to her district and see if I could get arrested... :D
Spin magazine have been hugely hyping the new Against Me! record as a possible new Nevermind, it must be awful to try and live up to that, it's an impossible task, surely?
Hepburn played at my school when I was 15
I got told off in the Q&A/assembly afterwards for asking wht they hadn't played live.
Such a rebel
they played
at my secondary school as well. i actually left 1/2 way through to do revision - they were quite bad
She lives in an annex
in my friend's garden!
I was never impressed with Campag Velocet.
I bought the album on my friends recommendation. Most disappointing.
Fischer spooner however, brilliant band. The first album was awesome, but they just sought of fizzled out didnt they.
WTF?
Oddessy, the second Fischerspooner album, IS AWESOME.
In fact..
I'd argue their second album is actually better.
james
Really, I must admit
I havent listened extensively. I only listened to the stuff that was on myspace. I will get hold of a copy, if it is better than the first album then it must be damned good!
They did make it though,
they had two sucessful albums, you can't say they missed the boat so to speak. They just made a poor 3rd album but they still have a pretty decent cult fanbase.
What I meant
was that the gap between their 2nd and 3rd album was so big that they became largely forgotten outside their loyal fanbase.
i remember speaking to ben ctc
a good while before that third album came out (maybe even before didz left).
he described the band as being 'like a slowly deflating balloon'
:(
as soon as Didz left
that was it really. Its such a shame, I genuinely loved them, and they weres uch nice blokes as well.
:(
They were one of my favourite bands, a couple of years back.
TCTC were fantastic I reckon
It also had a lot to do with label problems though.
yes indeed
i think it all went wrong when they spent all the promo budget on theta 'same mistakes' video (might not be what happened, but it seemed to be the tipping point to me)
I remember
I think just before the second album came out, they were being touted as the next Radiohead.
Not quite.
The Coopers have split up,
no?
oui
i was just thinking that!
.
Gaydad LOL
The darkness?
though i suppose there wasnt anything they could have done about it....
They did make it for a while though
And I guess, although I did confuse things by bringing up Girls on Top etc, I as much mean the bands who start to get buzz on sites like DiS but never go any further.
And there's so many bands like Vincent Vincent & The Villains, the Holloways, Mower etc. that have been knocking around the indie scene for ages and at some point looked like they might 'break out' but, having failed to do so so far, it's hard to imagine it happening for them now...
This is why I didn't think the Coopers were a good example.
.
What ever happened to
Terris? Saw them at Bedford Esquires on that tour with coldplay. I thought they were quite good, the album was alright too. A few years later one of them was headlining glastonbury. Sadly it wasnt Terris...
this is why
it's better to do music you enjoy and not worry about 'making it'.
But
you know they all want to make it, they just say "Its just about the music" when they fail.
Kids of today are just lazy, there's no punk ethic let alone any work ethic.
Well, of course.
But I imagine that if suddenly everyone starts writing about you, it's hard not to get carried away.
I mean I don't doubt your integrity for a second but if suddenly every magazine and website in the country claimed you were going to be the "next big thing" (or at least big enough to not need to do your dayjob any more), you'd have some regrets if it never came to anything...
i don't listen to magazines when they tell me who the next big thing are at the moment
so it wouldn't change if they happened to be talking about a band i was in.
if life
has taught me anything it's that both good patches and bad patches come and go. I'd enjoy it whilst it was happening but I'd always be expecting it to end, or at least to wane.
I think it's representative of a band's true motivation if a wane in popularity made them stop making music.
That's a good opportuniy.
I can't ever imagine not making music. Even if no-one ever took any interest in anything I did ever I'd still write the songs...
i don't know about that really
a wane in popularity, if you are a succesfulish band, also means, in effect, a pay cut, which is a pretty good reason to leave your job really.
but they could
just go back to having a day job and continue being in a band 'part-time' or as a hobby.
Another example. I'm not familiar with his music but I know the singer from Carter USM does tours once or twice a year playing a mix of his old band's hits and new songs. He does gigs at the same small pub in Bolton I used to play at. Every single time he plays it's rammed and everyone's always raving about it afterwards (i've never been to one though).
Then he goes back to his office or whatever.
My point is he still gets to go out and have all the fun of being in a band. presumably makes a bit of extra cash and doesn't have to 'only' be someone who works.
Why would you quit doing music just because it ceased paying the bills?
well...........
i guess i can see how....
popularity wanes,
record company gets annoyed,
band gets paid less,
band member's girlfriends get annoyed because they want to get a mortgage and the band member scan't afford that anymore,
band members start to bicker with each other,
band splits up.
i think most people who have been in bands probably continue to play in some facility, but i totally understand why a dip in popularity forces a band to break up.
it's a buit different for you as you are a solo artist, you can't break up with yourself
Yeah - but I think most bands do this
A theoretical situation: if you came up with a big hit single that you really liked but was quite different to the rest of your stuff, would you turn down a major label contract knowing that you might never write another song like that again, and that once the hype around that song faded away it's quite possible that you'd fade back into obscurity and be regarded as a failure - or would you take the chance on becoming a big success?
i think
an 'almost' example if this is cornershop. the music buying masses regard them as an absolute one hit wonder but they're bloody brilliant. people who know music know that. i think.
i mean that
because it was only the norman cook remix of brimful of asha that got massive. the album version is much much slower and would never have been as popular, i reckon
exactly
another good example of what i said below.
it would depend
what happend to the rest of my stuff.
Take Ian Dury. He only really has one big hit song 'Hit me with your rhythm stick' (also possibly 'sex and drugs and rock and roll').
For most people who think in terms of a musician's success as being solely tied into sales Ian Dury is a failure. But his albums always sold and his legacy is of a succesful artist with a consistent body of work.
'Hit me...' is the blip. It means you can say 'I like Ian Dury' and if people say 'Who?' then you can point to that song and they know who you mean. You can then say 'but his better stuff is this & this'.
I'd be happy to be in that position.
I wouldn't want to be a 'one hit wonder' who has a hit then gets dropped and fucked over. But only being known widely for one song would be fine by me.
Certainly for me...
I see absolutely no compromise in making commercial music if it's good and I'd say I try to write pop songs anyway (even if I no-one else sees them as pop songs) - not 'cos I want to 'make it', just 'cos I love pop records and would love to make something as good and long-lasting as "Come on Eileen" or "Dancing in the Dark" or "You Can't Hurry Love" or whatever.
At the same time I'd be more relucant if the song was of a more 'novelty' variety. I love the Divine Comedy and I actually do like National Express as a song but it's release as a single, whilst giving them a top ten hit, pretty much killed their chances of wider success. Which is a shame 'cos I think they're a fantastic band.
you've made me want to listen to Dexys Midnight Runners now
I've also made me want to listen to Dexys Midnight Runners now...
Jockey Wilson
FTW
rrrrrrrreet petite
Yeah, that makes sense
I suppose what theguy's probably on about is middling indie bands whose sole success was to appear on The OC, and will never top this - rather than bands who've already proved themselves but happen to fluke a hit single.
Pretty much yeah.
And particularly the ones that clearly did want to make it but it never happened for them.
Yeah
you wander if the reason they lost it is because they started chasing what they thought would be popular (understandable to an extent I suppose - no-one would want to return to a desk job after managing to support themselves as a musician) or if they naturally just peak and never manage to write anything as good again.
I suspect
bands do a good album with some individuality and get some success. then their management (or whoever) tell them that to become more famous their next album must be more commercial so they water down what made them good, get some bland producer like John Leckie to hump the faders and people don't like it as much.
Such bands deserve their place in the bargain bins.
I doubt the three of us talking here will ever have this problem with our respective bands. :)
I think it's probably party that:
Probably partly feeling a pressure to write songs like the ones that have worked so far and then bordering on self-parody.
And also maybe in some cases being removed from the frustation that led them to write the songs they wrote. If you're a band that's main theme as a lyricist is capturing the boredom and frustation of suburban life and then you spend all your time on a tour bus then you aren't gonna be writing the same songs anymore. Or at least not writing them and meaning it.
So then it comes down to whether a band has the songwriting ability to adjust their themes to express themselves in a new way or can do nothing but write empty versions of their older songs.
You're right there
this is why the second Cats in Paris album is going to be about the hollowness of fame.
It's a shame in a way.
I did a first album absolutely nobody bought with loads of quite twisted fantastical songs pretty much about loneliness and isolation and I can't really write those songs anymore so if I ever get 'successful', it'll be doing something different.
I mean it's obviously not a shame not to be needing to write songs about loneliness and isolation but I was pretty good at it...
and
'reasons to be cheerful (part 3)'
and 'what a waste'...
both top 10
Ian Dury
Was massive at the time. There's no way he was anywhere near being a one hit wonder. And his fame didn't fade either. He was still famous and loved when he died.
i don't think it's that sad
if a band come up with the goods then stuff will happen for them. if they're past their best in terms of writing then they absolutely deserve to be past their best in terms of recognition. they only have themselves to blame
I think that's true to an extent
but I also think that a lot of bands have a moment when it could all 'happen' for them and, if they don't take it, they're seen by the music business as last year's thing and whatever they do in the future, it's almost impossible to convince people otherwise...
Engineers...
a bit more radio exposure and they could have been fairly big.
The Subways?
They seemed to be riding a wave of hype, good reviews, loads of television/radio support, buzz in the US too, but, they've fallen off the radar.
I hope to God they stay that way
Awful, awful band
I thought they were not so much awful
as a run-of-the-mill teenage garage band who sounded like pretty much any teenagers that have formed garage bands ever.
Didn't understand the hype for that obvious reason.
I always felt sorry for the drummer.....
what did he do to pass the time whilst his brother was bumming that moderately attractive bassist?
he was videoing it.
I don't know
One of them was on with Zane Lowe not long ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if they came back all PR guns blazing.
I think the real interest is in bands who rode a wave for a while and had a decent selling first album, and then the second album comes out to complete silence - Boy Kill Boy are about to release the follow-up to a top 20 album, for instance.
Warners
have just this last week had them play a showcase at Air Studios in front of media bigwigs. They were average. Bye bye.
Yep.
A friend of mine used to be their manager. They're local. And! they happen to be working on new material at the moment (however much we wish they wouldn't). They'll be back. Mark my words.
WATCH IT
first its the Lightning Seeds, now its Gay Dad. GET OFF MY BACK.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
'Nuff said.
Yes.
Milk Kan.
Get up and go got up and went.
Tapes n Tapes
.
^
Harsh
Aye.
When they were getting the Radio 1 Breakfast show airplay etc. it really did look like it was gonna happen for 'em and it must have been pretty crushing for 'em that it didn't explode in the way they might have expected.
Moco
Saw them live in a tiny pub in Birmingham - quality band, quality album and the lead singer sounds just like Julian Casablancas. It's a shame they never hit it big cause they're way better than a lot of indie bands out now. Check it: