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The audacity of hype - when the music industry failed

Started by Pepotamo1985, June 05, 2013, 09:00:41 PM

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Pepotamo1985

Hey gang.

So, today, I was introduced to the sublimely pathetic story of Viva Brother in the Worst Album Titles thread.

Long story short - four boys from Slough who'd clearly decided they wanted to make it in the music biz play in a series of terrible emo bands together, before deciding that recycled Britpop tribute acts were the future, and dubbing themselves 'Brother'. Displaying monumental arrogance from the word go (they started their second ever gig with the line "If anyone here doesn't want to see the future of music, leave now"), within a matter of months they're inexplicably signed to Geffen for a quarter of a mill advance, appear on the front cover of NME and get a sizeable publishing contract out of EMI, despite not having released any bloody music. They're then packed off on an extensive and extravagant countrywide tour (during which they were sent to America five times) before they've even released their first album. When they return, they're duly informed that an Australian band – which combines didgeridoos and bagpipes – is also called Brother and wants their fucking name back.

They finally release their album in August 2011, the release date marked by a press release issued by the band denying rumours they've been unceremoniously dropped already by their record label. Needless to say, it's almost comically shit. It also does pretty poorly in the charts.

They then break up on April 1st via Twitter, without much explanation (of course, the date means what few fans they have think it's a prank). Reams of vitriol is directed at their empty fucking heads from all angles.

Now, this is clearly a rather graphic example of the music industry deciding they're going to control and dictate public taste, picking a fresh out the box trophy group, pushing them relentlessly, and failing miserably. I wasted some time this afternoon looking for other particularly egregious, or hilarious, examples of semi or wholly manufactured bands and 'artists', and I didn't really find anything. I'm well aware of Menswear (which was a fucking brilliant ruse), and Milli Vanilli (similarly clever, and rib crackingly funny, until the armed robberies and the drug-induced death), and pretty much every 90s/early 00s boy/girl band was presumably fabricated whole cloth, but there must be more substantive examples. In fact, I've read enough about how major labels operate to be pretty much 100% certain that there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of this shit. Can anyone help a brother out? The bands themselves don't even necessarily have to have failed, or at least, not failed from the off.


23 Daves

Billy Reeves has often claimed that theaudience were only formed as a result of a bet he had with a friend that he could get a Britpop-styled band signed to a record label for a significant advance.  Deliberately trying to pick the most photogenic singer he could who was also capable of holding a tune, he happened upon Sophie Ellis-Bextor and the rest is history.  Except, of course, Bextor's career has had a hell of a lot more of a run than his, so she unquestionably got the last laugh out of the whole deal and carried on modelling and fronting hit singles long after he spent his advance. 

More glam rock bands were manufactured than I have the time to list, certainly plenty of bands were happy to jump on the bandwagon in the hope of a hit.  My favourites to overegg the pudding were Starbuck, who previously had some history as members of psych-pop outfit Mandrake Paddle Steamer and seventies controversy-hounds Prowler (who released "Pale Green Vauxhall Driving Man", a song about nonces picking up schoolgirls).  In typical fashion, they fucked themselves over by issuing the single "Do You Like Boys?" and making limp gestures with their wrists at every gig to accompany the chorus.  Even Bowie didn't do that, and God knows why the record company thought it would shift units. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFR2_FsOoxA

Urinal Cake

And now stand-up is following in the same path with Whitehall, Ramsey etc.

lazyhour

Fucking hell, Daves! Hopefully that's not the same Starbuck who did the brilliant Moonlight Feels Right...

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Various late 90s attempts at having "real" bands with females in them, aimed at teens: Hepburn, 21st Century Girls, and others, none of them achieving much. I thought the reason Kenickie were signed up by EMI was hoping they'd be a hit with the "ladette" audience, but that demographic preferred All Saints and similar.

Squink

Quote from: 23 Daves on June 05, 2013, 09:55:07 PMExcept, of course, Bextor's career has had a hell of a lot more of a run than his, so she unquestionably got the last laugh out of the whole deal and carried on modelling and fronting hit singles long after he spent his advance.

Blimey, bit harsh. Wasn't his performing career cut short after he nearly died in a car accident?

Gavin M

Quote from: Mark Steels Stockbroker on June 05, 2013, 11:20:33 PM
Various late 90s attempts at having "real" bands with females in them, aimed at teens: Hepburn, 21st Century Girls, and others, none of them achieving much.

Though this method hit paydirt with Avril Lavigne, a highly manufactured attempt at creating an 'unmanufactured' female star.

Gulftastic

'Girl Thing' had a massive push behind them, hoping to take up the slack from when the Spice Girls split. 'Last One Standing' was played to death on the music channels, but only made it to number 8, a disaster in those days when a number one was expected following any kind of build up. They followed it up with 'Girls On Top', one of the most by-the-numbers records I've ever heard. It flopped miserably and that was it for them.
They also recorded 'Pure & Simple' before Hear'Say did, but their failure meant it never got released as a single.

Jodi Albert, who was in Hollyoaks and played a prostitute in the Comedy Central thing a few years back was the only really notable member, and also the fittest.

lazarou

An example that stuck in my mind were The Faders, Josie & the Pussycats wannabes fronted by the daughter of Midge Ure. They had a minor hit with "No Sleep Tonight", one of those "Lust for Life"-ish songs from around the time everyone seemed to be doing them. Their second single sunk, the proposed album only ended up getting released in Japan (Spoiler alert: it's not great), and that was it. I've always been a sucker for that kind of thing, but even to a soft touch like me it was pretty obvious they just didn't have the songs.

After the split, lead singer Molly had another crack at "No Sleep Tonight" as a solo act, to increasingly diminishing returns. These days they're mostly remembered for a prominent cameo in an episode of Veronica Mars.

23 Daves

Quote from: Squink on June 06, 2013, 12:10:03 AM
Blimey, bit harsh. Wasn't his performing career cut short after he nearly died in a car accident?

If that's true, I'm sorry to say I didn't know anything about it (and the car accident would have happened after theaudience split, as he left under his own steam).  And I suppose I should add that while theaudience were definitely a cynical ploy to get into the charts, I don't rate them as being an awful band - Reeves definitely had the songwriting chops to create something better than Menswear ("A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed" is a particularly good single).

If I'm being harsh, it's probably because he came across as a total berk in the last interview I read with him, which was published quite recently.  "I forged a cynical plot to get a huge record company advance, and you'll never guess what, I've even seen Bextor's tits!!!! LOL!!!" - that was about the tone of it.  He might have been drunk at the time, I suppose. 

23 Daves

Quote from: lazyhour on June 05, 2013, 10:46:17 PM
Fucking hell, Daves! Hopefully that's not the same Starbuck who did the brilliant Moonlight Feels Right...

Pretty sure it's not!  I don't think this particular Starbuck lasted very long or had any hits.  Briley and Engel (who were the two key members of the band) did eventually go on to have some success as session musos and songwriters though, I think.  Their initial career history always seems more interesting to me than their output, kicking off with John Peel airplay through to highly dubious singles about paedos then on to fake homosexual glitter pop.  "Strange Walking Man" is a brilliant track, mind.

Goldentony

Quote from: lazarou on June 06, 2013, 11:34:32 AM
An example that stuck in my mind were The Faders, Josie & the Pussycats wannabes fronted by the daughter of Midge Ure. They had a minor hit with "No Sleep Tonight", one of those "Lust for Life"-ish songs from around the time everyone seemed to be doing them. Their second single sunk, the proposed album only ended up getting released in Japan (Spoiler alert: it's not great), and that was it. I've always been a sucker for that kind of thing, but even to a soft touch like me it was pretty obvious they just didn't have the songs.

After the split, lead singer Molly had another crack at "No Sleep Tonight" as a solo act, to increasingly diminishing returns. These days they're mostly remembered for a prominent cameo in an episode of Veronica Mars.

Tell you who was best out of all those Busted-lite bands who got shat out by labels around the time Busted got huge/split up and McFly turned up - Love Bites. They had this one single -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6BYHiQHko

About beating the fuck out of people who've broke your heart. Forget sleeping with the light on and rooms on the third floor and whatever the fuck else everyone was trying to shovel - just beat the tar out of them and vandalise their shit. Brilliant. Definitely less contrived than The Faders, better songs and seemed SOMEWHAT like a real band, but I don't really know any details about them because as far as I remember they just sort of stopped after this, I think.

Who was that band who were like Rooster but weren't? they covered Basket Case. Also shite!


Natnar

Quote from: Goldentony on June 06, 2013, 03:01:41 PM
Tell you who was best out of all those Busted-lite bands who got shat out by labels around the time Busted got huge/split up and McFly turned up - Love Bites. They had this one single -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6BYHiQHko



Another Busted clone group around about a decade ago were The Noise Next Door who at least had the gimmick of being identical triplets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXnohlErexM

They did have a couple of top 40 hits but were then dropped by their label before they released an album.

Phil_A

The late nineties was kind of a weird time for pop music, on the whole. It seemed like a lot of record companies were desperately flailing around looking for the next big thing once the Britpop teat had been suckled dry, which presumably fuelled the kind of thinking that led ZTT to believe Leilani was the future of pop.

This was her big single, Madness Thing, in at No. 19 like a bullet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0gDm4Zh4jc

Her subsequent singles fared even worse, and her apparently finished album was never released. Aww.

A couple of years before, Sony had signed some pouting streak of piss known as Jimmy Ray, who's debut single "Are You Jimmy Ray" did well enough to chart in the UK and the US, but the follow-up didn't even make the top 40. Dropped like a particularly greasy potato.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnO40AGRSc

lazarou

Quote from: Goldentony on June 06, 2013, 03:01:41 PM
Who was that band who were like Rooster but weren't? they covered Basket Case. Also shite!
Freefaller. Digging around for info brought up a typically great old Popjustice piece with gems like "Does it concern you that literally the only celebrity who has said anything more favourable about you than 'THEY ARE THE WORST BAND IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC' is only six years old?"

I'd forgotten all about Love Bites, though I remembered the song vividly about ten seconds into it. I'd agree with you there, that was a cut above most efforts in that vein.

sirhenry

#16
No mention of  Zigue Zigue Sputnik?

I'm definitely getting old.

Quote from: sirhenry on June 06, 2013, 05:21:26 PM
No mention of KLF?

But the KLF were massively successful and operated outwith the normal record industry conventions, no?

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: Delete Delete Delete on June 06, 2013, 04:03:46 PMI recall this load of hyping nonsense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lean_%26_The_Jing_Jang_Jong

Three members (minus the cunty lead singer) went on to form TOY who, by all accounts, are not bad.

sirhenry

#19
Quote from: Clatty McCutcheon on June 06, 2013, 05:25:53 PM
But the KLF were massively successful and operated outwith the normal record industry conventions, no?
You seem to be misreading my original post.

23 Daves

The mad thing about these late nineties/ noughties one-hit wonders is that whilst I remember their names, I can't remember a single note of what they did.  I'd hit my late twenties by the turn of the decade so was at a point in my life where I neither had the time nor the inclination to investigate pop acts I'd been reliably informed were pure tosh.  A move from Portsmouth to London meant I could tune out of Radio One and into XFM, and with that I blocked the flow of all kinds of manufactured pop.

There's also the minor issue here that singles sales were so screwed at this time that you only needed to sell a few thousand copies of your record to get on Top of the Pops, so I think the decisions taken by record companies to rapidly drop some of these acts seems less harsh in light of that, and it also explains why they seem a bit more obscure than Belouis Some or Wang Chung. Their sales probably wouldn't have got them to chart in the Top 60 if the records had been released in the eighties.

The Faders had almost slipped from my memory banks, but the mention of Midge Ure's daughter above brought them back into glorious technicolour inside my noggin, remembering as I did her bright red hair and the mainstream press/ internet geeks gasping: "She may be Midge Ure's daughter, but you would, wouldn't you? Eh? Eh?"

Midge Ure was actually a perfectly respectable pop songwriter, I'll have you know. A-ha stole everything they knew from him. I'd happily sleep with any daughter of his if she took my fancy, provided he didn't turn up at my house pounding his fist on the door in a red-faced Glaswegian rage about my bedroom activities.

Serge

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on June 06, 2013, 05:32:11 PMThree members (minus the cunty lead singer) went on to form TOY who, by all accounts, are not bad.

Nah, they're shit. It's staggering that after all of the ridicule they deservedly got as JLATJJJ (if you think I'm typing that name out again...), they decided to nick The Horrors' successful formula of hitching shoegaze and (I hate this word) motorik beats together, but subtracting anything that Faris And Co had that made it sound good, and served up an album so piss-weak and underwhelming that I felt sure that they'd be laughed out of the building a second time. But no, apparently this time, the hype worked and they got away with it. Purson seem set to pull the same trick this year.

dark now my pies

Quote from: sirhenry on June 06, 2013, 05:46:22 PM
Yes, but a huge part of their success was pure hype and the music industry failed to incorporate them or even appear to learn from them how it was done.

Yes but they were responsible for their own hype and success. And the music industry didn't fail to incorporate them - the KLF pulled out entirely after fucking them hard on their way to the top and getting what they wanted. So yeah bad example of failure for the thread, please unmention them kthanx.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: Serge on June 06, 2013, 06:41:19 PMNah, they're shit. It's staggering that after all of the ridicule they deservedly got as JLATJJJ (if you think I'm typing that name out again...), they decided to nick The Horrors' successful formula of hitching shoegaze and (I hate this word) motorik beats together, but subtracting anything that Faris And Co had that made it sound good, and served up an album so piss-weak and underwhelming that I felt sure that they'd be laughed out of the building a second time. But no, apparently this time, the hype worked and they got away with it. Purson seem set to pull the same trick this year.

I literally have not heard a note of what the have done, but know two Horrors fans that liked the album. I was willing to believe it because the lead singer of the Ching Chong Chinaman was such an unmitigated wanker. But I will err to your review Serge.

What the fuck is 'motorik beats'?


Serge

'Motorik' is a favourite term of music journalists to denote 'sounds a bit like krautrock'. It was originally applied to the drum beat that Klaus Dinger played in Neu! Dinger hated the term 'motorik', he referred to it as 'Apache Beat'. When used now, it generally means 'rips off the drums from 'Hallogallo' by Neu!' but is often so meaningless that it basically now seems to mean 'has drums on it'.

I think some of The Artists Formerly Known As Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong are friends with some of The Horrors, so there is a crossover, I guess. Just not in this house.



Johnny Townmouse

Aha, so Mother Sky / Sea Within a Sea classic Krautrock style drumming. Does Cope mention this style of drumming as 'motorik' in his book? I really have no recollection of coming across this term before at all, but feel like I should have.

Toy are off my wishlist, although given that I have Spotify it says something that I have never bothered searching them out.

Paaaaul

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on June 06, 2013, 07:23:09 PM
Aha, so Mother Sky / Sea Within a Sea classic Krautrock style drumming. Does Cope mention this style of drumming as 'motorik' in his book? I really have no recollection of coming across this term before at all, but feel like I should have.

Toy are off my wishlist, although given that I have Spotify it says something that I have never bothered searching them out.
Krautrocksampler, Chapter 5 - 'Neu!' , page 41 "...taking in the classic motorik Hallogallo-style they always found so hard to avoid"

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: Paaaaul on June 06, 2013, 07:27:29 PM
Krautrocksampler, Chapter 5 - 'Neu!' , page 41 "...taking in the classic motorik Hallogallo-style they always found so hard to avoid"

Then given I have read that more than once, and some portions quite a few times, I have no excuse.