Hayley’s gone blonde? OMFGZ!

A sell out arena tour and what looks like a top 10 selling album? Not bad for a record that’s only marginally better than average

Swelling

The new The Swellers record is really quite good.

That is all.

I want this man’s job

Clip clop

I’ve received two requests for news items today from new-ish bands who want me to promote new music on their myspace pages. Fine, have no problems with that. Except both bands have uploaded 30-second clips of new music, not full songs. Now if your band is Green Day you can negate piracy issues and do as you please. As Brand New have just shown, you can release an album akin to farting in the bath and people will still lap it up (joke. Or is it?)

But if a band who I’ve never heard of, so I’m assuming millions of others are in the same boat, do the exact same thing is it not a bit pretentious to assume people will randomly check you out just to get that half minute of pleasure (or pain, come to think of it)? The simple answer is no. And anyway, why would anyone think it’s a good idea to give a sample of a new song? If it starts half way through a verse and ends mid-way through a chorus how on Earth does that work out? How can you form a real opinion on, if you’re lucky, one-sixth of a track?

If any PR or marketing guru can explain the reasoning behind it please try and convince me by dropping me an email at paul@punktastic.com and I will do a blog reply so others can see.

In the meantime, Punktastic is going to be a ‘no clip zone’ from now on!

I love Lily. But…

I love Lily Allen. Srs. Check out my early blog posts, I think she’s lovely, someone I’d love to go for a pint with and just have a chitchat about music. And cricket. Here’s a photo:

Anyway, recently she’s been featured in the press talking about file-sharing Lily’s of the opinion that filesharing is bad and that it harms the artist as much as the label, so we shouldn’t do it. At face value I totally agree. Filesharing is bad and it does harm the artist. But we don’t live in a black and white world. Not everything is so obvious that the theory works in practice. I read this thread on Punktastic today which brought artists together and split opinions on whather Lily’s right or wrong.

I believe that we are now into a generation of freeloaders that trying to use the ‘downloading is bad’ argument just won’t wash anymore. People have now grown up with music and movies being free. They’re not interested in paying for the product, they want it there and then. And they want it free. And while I agree with Lily Allen from a moral standpoint, simply crying out that people should pay for a product won’t change their minds. Neither will suing people. It’s interesting that her label, EMI, has made plenty of people redundant and has suffered greatly from decreased sales as people steal music. The trouble with EMI is that they’re a totally useless, badly run company. £200,000 on flowers? £20,000 a month on candles? How about Robbie Williams’ £80m contract which he failed to fulfill? Or even sell any records…

Perhaps one of the reasons so many of the bigger labels are fucked is because they still run their businesses based on a model which went out of date in 1983? Times have moved on. Things change. Whether the moral fight continues or not, downloading is here to stay. You either embrace it or not – but those who fail to grasp the concept will be the ones laying off 1,000 members of staff and cutting back on the candles…

Pereztastic.com

People shouldn’t put ideas in my head.

PT got described yesterday as ‘like perezhilton’. I’m 99.9% sure it wasn’t a compliment – it shouldn’t be as the guy is a total tool. Anyway, it made me think of something…and the result of that thought is this blog… Sadly I’m on a mac and I’m useless at editing photos, otherwise I’d do a few scribbles on them like Perez does. Anyway, as I can’t do that, I figured I’d post a few ‘fashion’ photos from the red carpet at the VMAs the other night and in true Perez fashion, let rip.

Starting with Hayley Williams. WTF!?! I’m guessing she was getting changed and she said something to her stylist who, mockingly, must have said ‘dude, go for it’. Or something. How else can you excuse that monstrosity of an outfit?

I may have hammered Gabe Saporta in recent weeks, but dude has style. Smart suit, clean cut…man looks fine. Pity you can’t say the same about Victoria Asher. I know my fashion sense only goes as far as America’s Next Top Model, but…well…the bottom half of that dress is a bit messy. Right?

OK, it’s not a great look, but Cassadee Pope’s a sweetheart. My claim to fame is the fact she stood next to me once. Right. Next. To. Me. But yeah, the fake bow tie thing isn’t quite so cool, but she’s cute enough to pull it off. So Gabe wins the VMA fashion show.

ps – if you’ve read this far and think any of the above is in any way serious…

Jenny was a friend of mine

My last blog post caused a bit of a stir. Not surprising really, people like to have a good old moan and whinge. I received an email from someone working in the music biz this morning who said she agreed with most of what I’d said, but if I kept saying that type of thing ‘you won’t make any friends in the music industry’.

Which got me thinking. Do I want any friends in the music industry?

Let’s face it – if you’re a journalist, blogger, writer or anyone who has an opinion and you want to be best mates with all your favourite bands, believe me when I say it ain’t gonna happen. There are certain writers/bloggers/website owners who may profess to being best buds with all the top acts, sending Bemis, Wentz and Williams but I’ll tell you one thing for free – said band members are only interested in ‘friendship’ for one reason.

Publicity.

I can count the number of ‘friends’ I have in the industry on one hand. Sure, I have a lot of acquaintances, lots of people who I would say hello to at gigs, maybe even share a beer with them if I bumped into them in the street. But not that many friends. Friends are the people within the circle of trust, the people who you can tell anything to. Then there are mates, those who you go out on the beers with and those who you have a good time with. Then there are acquaintances. That’s how it works.

The music industry is such a fake so-and-so; you need to be able to sniff out the BS otherwise you end up hugely disappointed when you’re not flavour of the month anymore. It usually works like this: PR/plugger sends you an email acting all interested in what you did at the weekend asking for news item. Convo continues telling you how great the band they’re plugging is. We all know it’s a copy+paste job, something sent to everyone on their mailing list, but we all go along with it anyway. It’s such a fake ritual but it seems acceptable. But you know the PR isn’t your new best mate – they just want the column inches and will send you a CD, put you on the guestlist and give you ‘exclusive, unrivalled excess’ to their act (until you open up the next Big Cheese magazine). 99.9% of those people don’t care about you or your magazine/blog/website – they just want the publicity and off they go to someone else. I’ve had band members who would ring me every day and then suddenly stop. Once they’d got what they wanted they didn’t need me or PT anymore. When you’re younger and more naive it’s pretty harsh to suddenly be cut off from more famous people. It’s a harsh lesson in how
the ‘industry’ works.

There are loads of people who hate PT in the ‘industry’. I know there are. I get told all kinds of stories about Band X having a pop on stage, or PR person Y telling someone how we suck down the pub. But they know as well as I do that websites like ours are needed to get the news out there. Paramore announce a new tour with ticket sales starting on a Friday – think the kids are going to wait until a week on Wednesday to read their precious Kerrang! before buying tickets? Think again* If current trends continue by next year more people will read Punktastic than buy Kerrang, Rock Sound, Big Cheese and NME. Of course anyone can manipulate statistics, but the internet has a huge role to play in defining musical tastes. You only have to look at how Drowned In Sound do and how much money and resources NME have put into their website for proof.

There are so many bands out there who happily have a pop at PT yet send me nice-as-pie emails begging for a news item to be published or asking for a review. I’m not naive enough to think for one second everyone loves us because they don’t. And frankly I don’t care. I’m not doing this to be loved and I’m not doing this to find a new best friend. It’s the ‘business’ – bands want you and you want the bands. And as long as everyone knows where they stand then that’s just fine and dandy by me.

* I must stress that I do not think I alone sold out Wembley Arena for Paramore. I did not. The internet, as a whole, did that. The printed media was nowhere to be seen.

Become what you hate

On August 7 I did a review of Cobra Starship’s new album. In typical internet fashion it got as many negative comments as it did positive, mainly because people (as usual) missed the point and took it a bit too seriously. The point I was making then was that, as a lyricist, Gabe Saporta wrote a song about six years ago blasting someone, or somebody, for ’selling out’. Fast forward and I feel those lyrics needed to be put to Gabe – he needed to be reminded of where he came from. In my opinion he’s become everything he hated when he wrote ‘Become What You Hate’.

Today I saw a video of You Me At 6’s show in Edinburgh where singer Josh called out Punktastic for being full of shit. As a bit of an attention-seeking joke I posted this as news on the main page and predictably way too many people have taken it way too seriously and called me out on it. Some of the comments in the forum are hilarious. Apparently doing it was “massively damaging to the site’s reputation” like a) PT was some kind of professional outfit, b) we give a shit and c) anyone who cares gives a shit. Then there was “This is hardly news is it”, “its posts like this that are resulting in people clicking on punktastic for news less and less these days”, “[it] seems a bit arrogant as if to think punktastic are powerful enough to destroy any bands reputation”, “Punktastic, the new perezhilton.com” and many others. All people taking things way too seriously.

But that’s not really the point of this blog. The point is the same as the one I elaborately made about Gabe Saporta – bands should never forget where they have come from. And that point was inspired by one of the comments criticising me in the PT forums – “probably the most pointless news post I’ve ever read – seriously get over it. those people ripping on yma6, 5 ordinary guys playing music they love and are supporting one of their favourite bands at WEMBLEY. I think I know who wins here. just a clue, it’s not the internet.”

Y’see, if it wasn’t for the internet that particular band would probably still be toiling the UK toilet circuit. Don’t get me wrong, the band have done amazingly well and have worked hard to get their success, but if it wasn’t for their early efforts of using myspace to whore themselves, would they be at the level they are at now? If it wasn’t for small websites and zines (like PT) would bands of that ilk be noticed by ‘higher powers’? I can think of a fair few bands who have got the love of kids on forums such as ours (but not solely ours) and been snapped up by bigger labels. My point is that bands need to remember where they’re from, because I can guarantee when their five minutes of fame runs out – and it will, it always does – and the next fashion trend comes along, it’ll be those very same people there from the start left to pick up the pieces. My long winded point is that you shouldn’t forget the people at the bottom when you’re on your way to the top – because they’ll be the only ones left to catch you when you inevitably fall. Humility is everything.

Oh, and for those fact fans who didn’t know, a few years ago Josh and YMA6 asked me to manage them. I said I’d do it if they signed to my label which wasn’t what they wanted. So I passed up the opportunity. More fool me.

Tales from the crypt part 2

So last month I did a blog “exposing” a few industry secrets. When I say secrets I mean sordid sex tales. Well it got an amazing reaction and I keep having people ask me to write more, so here goes…

Heard about the UK band that’s so-hot-right-now with the band member who gives it all from the pit of his stomach…literally? Rumour has it (from two separate girls who don’t know each other), that this particular dude likes nothing more than to puke his guts up during sex. He particulary enjoys it when the passion puke is returned…all over him. Yum. That reminds me, freaky sex tales seem to be endless. Whenever someone sends me some gossip it usually starts ‘have you heard that XX fucks little girls?’ or something very similar. One pretty well known UK starlet, who has flirted with indie and major success, got so immersed in the groupie scene when he first got a taste of fame that he could allegedly only get off whilst filming his conquests. I think the endless drugs that seemed to ruin that particular band’s recent career not only put paid to their mainstream success, but also to his budding porn career. No-one likes a non-performer…

Speaking of wannabe porn stars, one particular vocalist enjoys nothing more than secretly filming doing the deed with his girlfriend when he’s not on tour, then sharing the videos with his bandmates on the bus. And while they’re watching the videos in the front, allegedly watching them while eating Digestives, he’s banging groupies in the back – with his secret camera hiding away catching the moment for prosperity. When this particular band lost their bags at Heathrow following a not-so-successful US tour, Mr Singer shit his pants as his camera was among the missing items and it’s safe to say certain Red Top tabloids would have no doubt enjoyed publishing pictures of this his knob.

Anyway, if you have a sordid story email me at paul@punktastic.com and I may well include it in a future blog…

Lights, camera, action

I can’t say I’m that in love with Lights’ electro-pop stuff, but this stripped down version is pretty impressive it has to be said…