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Sandi Thom (The Great Rock N Roll Swindle?)

Started by 23 Daves, June 01, 2006, 01:53:08 PM

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Goldentony

The bit that annoys me the most is when she says record shops stocked vinyl, awesome, vinyl what? at least say records, unless record shops doubled as vinyl flooring specialists back then.

chand

Quote from: "Goldentony"The bit that annoys me the most is when she says record shops stocked vinyl, awesome, vinyl what? at least say records, unless record shops doubled as vinyl flooring specialists back then.

Sandi Thom's album is, as yet, unavailable in vinyl. Fingers crossed, though!

She's also the only person who calls the internet the "super info highway". There's something that bugs me about people who get nostalgic for a time before they were born. By all means study history and the music of the past, but really...actually I think my problem with her has to do with the fact that she's not given it sufficient thought to decide which was cooler out of '77 and '69.

Jemble Fred

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"'When God saved the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale' - that's the worst bit. Two rock references forming a 'clever' line that doesn't make any kind of sense on any level, metaphorical or otherwise.

Fucking hell that is pretty regrettable, that.

Aha, I heard a little bit of this for the very first time this morning, as BBC Breakfast were trailing an appearance from her or something. Perhaps this thread has prejudiced me somewhat, but... in what way is her singing not of equal quality to 90% of the female population singing in the shower?

Not that I listen to 90% of the female population in the shower, obviously, I'm a very busy man. But I'd imagine that 2 or 3 out of 5 random women on the street have singing voices as good as that, if not better. It just sounds like any girl having 'A Mariah Moment'. People on here may slag off the likes of Katie Melua or Corrine Bailey Ray, but at least they have distinctive, professional sounding voices.

LadyDay

Charlie Brooker strikes again..

Supposing ... Sandi Thom is the musical antichrist

Charlie Brooker
Friday June 9, 2006
The Guardian


I've not heard that Sandi Thom single all the way through yet, but I've seen the TV ad about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if her sudden rise to stardom WASN'T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this shit online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.

There's a simple way to settle this once and for all, and that's for the huge crowd of people who apparently watched Thom's inaugural bedsit webcasts to step forward and make themselves known. Come on. Hands up. I want to see your faces. And then I want you smacked to death with brooms. You people are the enemies of fun. Your bland emissions pollute the atmosphere, threaten the environment. For the sake of humanity, you must be stopped.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Sandi Thom genuinely touches some people. Whoever they are, I can't relate to them. Woody Allen once marvelled with horror at "the level of a mind that watches wrestling", and I'm the same with Sandi Thom fans. All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like music but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.

There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.

Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take Angels by Robbie Williams. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, Angels is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official theme tune for thick people's funerals.

Anyway, back to Sandi Thom. As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just heard I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Bollocks in My Mouth) on the radio, and the real braintwister is the lyric, in which she yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, sung in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.

Wait. It gets worse. I've just looked it up on Napster - oh Christ. I didn't realise how far this had gone. The B-side is a cover of No More Heroes by the Stranglers. "Whatever happened to the heroes?", she warbles, knowing full well she's replaced them. She's the musical antichrist.

This is too creepy to be mere coincidence. Someone's messing with us. The replicant kings are trying to mangle our minds. Plug your ears. Block the signal. Final phase. They're taking over.

Jemble Fred

Musos – is there a technical term for that kind of croaky bit that women do when they're pretending to be a professional singer, and want to think that they sound like they mean it? It's a kind of stage school groan effect, purely added by amateurs, and this song's got it in spades.

Shoulders?-Stomach!


Jemble Fred

Nah, it's almost the opposite of 'warbling'. If there is no word for it, I'll coin the term 'gruntemoting', ie one who attempts to hide their lack of singing talent by trying to sound as if they 'really mean it, man', via a few added emotional grunt effects.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Do you mean like that Joss Stone does, or would that be more a case of emoaning?

Jemble Fred

No, she can sing. If you want to know what gruntemoting is, just listen to the first line of Sandi Thom's song.

The Mumbler

"If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion", says Brooker of Robbie Williams' Angels.

Oddly enough, that's exactly my reaction on reading Brooker's copy.

23 Daves

I dunno, I think he's made some very valid, very angry points.  He's certainly summed up how I feel about the whole ridiculous affair.

I just cannot understand how the equivalent of an average London Underground busker has scored a UK Number One.

The Mumbler

But it's like writing a Very Angry Column Indeed about James Blunt.

Where would Charlie-baby be without the world wide web?

Ciarán2

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Dosn't it occur to Sandi Thom that she can be a punk rocker with flowers in her hair?

She'd have to like punk-rock, I suppose. There's no evidence of that on her single. Crass - they were punk rockers and they were hippies. So she should make a record called "I Wish I Was In Crass".

23 Daves

Quote from: "The Mumbler"But it's like writing a Very Angry Column Indeed about James Blunt

Come on though, James Blunt - awful though he may be-  is ten times more talented than this Sandi Thom character.  

QuoteCrass - they were punk rockers and they were hippies. So she should make a record called "I Wish I Was In Crass".

Well, the Anti-Folk movement has elements of acoustic folk, psychedelia and punk in its make up, so why she just doesn't go the whole hog and perform things in that style is utterly beyond me.  She may find that the scene has many of the aspects that she's been craving.

Mind you, I think that particular movement could do without another wannabe-disaffected performance arts-type girl trying to cling on to its coat-tails and getting it hopelessly wrong.

The Mumbler

Quote from: "23 Daves"
Quote from: "The Mumbler"But it's like writing a Very Angry Column Indeed about James Blunt

Come on though, James Blunt - awful though he may be-  is ten times more talented than this Sandi Thom character.  

But it's still a pointless column, and directed at a readership that's going to hate her anyway.  What about the hype of the really terribly ordinary Arctic Monkeys, Charlie, or is that - whoa there! - going just a bit far?  Just as there'll be Sandi Thom gags on the next series of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Brooker grinding his teeth (or pretending to? I'm never quite sure) about her is only the  musical equivalent of getting annoyed (or pretending to? I'm never quite sure) about The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Godzilla Bankrolls

It tickles me that the author of Nathan Barley and presenter of Screen Wipe is making pleas for 'authenticity' and 'anger'.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

I wonder why journalists are starting to point at Sandi Thom and yell 'PR spin!' when there are tons of other things (past and present) guilty of the same charge. Is she being made a safe target, someone that it's OK to be cynical about?

The Mumbler

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I wonder why journalists are starting to point at Sandi Thom and yell 'PR spin!' when there are tons of other things (past and present) guilty of the same charge. Is she being made a safe target, someone that it's OK to be cynical about?

Yes, basically.   They won't do it with an NME-friendly band, though.  Thom's about as threatening as Katie Melua.  Yes, I've heard the record, and it sucks, but I might as well write 5000 words about The Closest Thing To Crazy and how it makes me stamp my feet with dismay.

Peking O

Quote from: "The Mumbler"But it's still a pointless column, and directed at a readership that's going to hate her anyway.

Couldn't you say the same thing about this thread?

The Mumbler

Quote from: "Peking O"
Quote from: "The Mumbler"But it's still a pointless column, and directed at a readership that's going to hate her anyway.

Couldn't you say the same thing about this thread?

Possibly, which is why I didn't bother commenting until Brooker's mewling nonsense got reproduced.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Quote from: "You see what I've done here?"

Supposing...I'm the comedy antichrist

Barlie Chooker
Friday June 9, 2006
The Guardians

I've not seen Nathan Barley single all the way through yet, but I've seen the viral trailer about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if my sudden rise to stardom ISN'T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this shit online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.

There's a simple way to settle this once and for all, and that's for the huge crowd of people who apparently liek Nathan Barley to step forward and make themselves known. Come on. Hands up. I want to see your faces. And then I want you smacked to death with brooms. You people are the enemies of fun. Your bland emissions pollute the atmosphere, threaten the environment. For the sake of humanity, you must be stopped.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I genuinely touch some people. Whoever they are, I can't relate to them. Woody Allen once marvelled with horror at "the level of a mind that watches The Office", and I'm the same with my fans. All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like comedy but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.

There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.

Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take TV Go Home. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, TV Go Home is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official anthem for thick people's funerals.

Anyway, back to me. As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just seen Nathan Barley (With Bollocks in My Mouth) in full, and the real braintwister is the satirical message, in which I yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, spoken in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.

Wait. It gets worse. I've just looked myself up on YouTube - oh Christ. I didn't realise how far this had gone. The second series is a re-make of The Day Today. "Whatever happened to the heroes?", I warble, knowing full well I've replaced them. I'm the comedy antichrist.

This is too creepy to be mere coincidence. Someone's messing with us. The replicant kings are trying to mangle our minds. Plug your ears. Block the signal. Final phase. They're taking over. Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Ayoade.

chand

I didn't hate Brooker's review totally, but it misses quite a lot of the reasons why Sandi Thom's song is especially shit, most of it could just be some article he'd written about Keane or Norah Jones or Maroon 5 or Natasha Bedingfield.

23 Daves

Quote from: "The Mumbler"
Quote from: "Peking O"
Quote from: "The Mumbler"But it's still a pointless column, and directed at a readership that's going to hate her anyway.

Couldn't you say the same thing about this thread?

Possibly, which is why I didn't bother commenting until Brooker's mewling nonsense got reproduced.

Well, I'm also writing Chris Morris' new series with him, so the link doesn't stop there, does it?  It'll be really good.  It's a satire on the music industry and PR and shit like that!

[Actually, I really shouldn't joke about stuff like this on here...]

The Mumbler

Yeah, more stuff about Dangerous Dave Stewart, the rotter.

23 Daves

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I wonder why journalists are starting to point at Sandi Thom and yell 'PR spin!' when there are tons of other things (past and present) guilty of the same charge. Is she being made a safe target, someone that it's OK to be cynical about?

Hmmm... it's an interesting point, but I think the main reason the press are pissed off is, as I predicted, they didn't check their facts when the original "Internet fans miracle!" stories were run.  Hence they've been made to look stupid - it was quite obvious to me at least that there would be a backlash, I even predicted it earlier on in this thread.  PR works fine if the journalist is on in the process, being given fancy meals and drinks and wined and dined, but if they're outright fooled or tricked, it damages their credibility, and they bite back about how "false" the whole affair is.  

I just hate the bloody record not only for the way it was marketed, but the truly trite "let's try to make this radical and authentic" lyrics spewed up within it.  I genuinely think it's one of the worst records of recent years.

rudi

Quote from: "Gazeuse"
Quote from: "Ciarán"I'm going to spend the summer making a record, and I'm thinking about the possibilities of using the internet to get my stuff out there.

I hope that you have better luck than me!!!

Please see my 'Direct experience of an independent artist' thread in this forum.

could you link me to this? - me cannot find - durr.

thanks in anticipation.
x

23 Daves

I might be shot down in flames for this, but I thought it would be interesting for us to take a look at where Thom's career presently sits two years down the line... and lo and behold...

The first single from the new album flopped, resting just outside the top 50.  The new album has nudged its way into the top thirty album charts - several places higher than the Fall's effort, I'm somewhat depressed to realise - but hardly the performance the record company would have expected from a number one selling artist.  I think the game's up.

And right on the front page of Sandi Thom's website (www.sandithom.com), she's still protesting about the authenticity of the whole "stunt" of two years ago, so it's clearly still distressing her.  She's doomed to turn up on "I Love 2006" in twenty years time ranting about how it destroyed her career. 

Strangely, this thread seems rather like a storm in a teacup now, I freely admit (and apologise).  It's astonishing what time can do.  Always nice to read Thom's political views on her site, though:

QuoteYo yo schmoo's,
How goes it??
So whats going on with the fuel prices?? I tell you what since Gordon Brown became prime minister theres been so many strikes!! I cant believe those lorry drivers lining the m40!! ha ha!! I think we definately have to address the fact that the worlds resources are dwindling, theyre not renewable energy sources and they wil run out one day!! but raising the price of fuel and taxing older cars might not be the answer?

What do you think??

I think its safe to say that most people in the country who own an older car cant afford a new one so what good does it do to tax these people more??!! what do you think? is is fare?? Do we think that its going to reduce emissions by getting older cars of the road while yummy mummys drive around in their stupid big ridiculous diesel filled hummer style tanks and pay lower tax!!!! its just ridiculous!!

And raising the cost of things like fuel isnt going to stop people from driving on the roads cos its probably a hell of alot cheaper than taking the bloody train!!

Where the hell is Robin Hood when you need him!!

I wanna know what you think,  Write your thoughts to me on the forum peeps
x x 

Fucking hell.

jaydee81

That's hilarious... maybe a career as a BBC.co.uk over-by-over cricket correspondent beckons for Ms Thom.

drberbatov

I think sadly she's eating cold custard and filling her shoes with jelly beans

What do you think?
I wanna know what you think, Write your thoughts to me on the forum peeps

boki

Why doesn't she just come right out and say, "help me write sum moar lyrx bout the st8 ov thngs kthx"?