One of the best online music resources to emerge in the last couple of years has to be The Hype Machine. For the uninitiated, The Hype Machine is an aggregator of MP3 music blogs that allows punters to search for blogs and websites that have both written about a particular band and also made an MP3 available ‘for evaluation purposes’.
Type in the name of a band and it returns a list that you can plough through and listen to right there on the page, or alternatively follow the links to the original sites and read more. Think of it like a Google that returns nothing but music and reviews, and to understand how comprehensive the service is, how deep it digs into the lonely corners of the internet, you can even find reviews on and music by Friends of the Stars.
A statement such as ‘it’s an aggregator of Mp3 music blogs’ would have made absolutely zero sense as little as 5 years ago, so we’re very much not in Kansas anymore, and it hasn’t taken long for savvy folk to cotton on to the fact that blogs are a great way of reaching a wider audience. Equally, it hasn’t taken most music bloggers long to realise that there is a living to be made and free music to be had by producing a regular and trustworthy source of new music and comment. PR and Record Companies are now desperately cosying up to the very people they recently wanted to shut down and it seems even your Grandparents could explain to you what a Tastemaker is. We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time.
So, does the fact that a lot of people have written about a particular record make it a ‘good record’? Obviously and categorically not. I won’t name names here, but there were one or two albums released in 2008 that were both underwelming and overexposed, but what’s new…..
Does the fact that a lot of different people, each servicing their own niche audience (of whatever size), have chosen to feature (for whatever reason) the same album during the same calendar year make for a more interesting list than most 2008 lists? Yes, obviously. The Hype Machine’s 2008 Zeitgeist is, then, a quantative list of the artists, albums and songs written about by thousands of independents worldwide and online during 2008.
Each section is being released in chunks of 10 over the next few days. Yesterday saw the release of 50-41, today is 40-31 and so on and so forth until Friday 9th January, when we find out who and what is Top of the Pops. Aside from this being a clever way of making us all return each day, it also infuses this particular list with some authentic, old-fashioned tension - the like of which the actual charts haven’t had since the Top 40 countdown actually meant something….and that, by the way, is a good thing.
I thought that playing golf was dangerous for me because of the days I waste on the course, losing my patience, never really improving much and that this all combined and lead to a frustration and loss of mojo that hampered my musical creativity.
We’ve recently engaged the services of Jake Dubber, a very talented young man indeed, who will be looking after the back-end and general design of the site.
He’ll be making some changes to the look and feel of this place, so things might look a bit strange for a while before he settles on something we all like.
His first task, however, will be to unravel the massive ball of string that is the mess we’ve made of things on the server. Once he’s done that, and providing we haven’t gone to jail for using child labour, Jake will be redesigning the whole place.
Welcome, Jake…
….and remember, you’ll be working with a lazy bunch of shiftless souls who have a collective inability to take anything seriously, least of all their career in the music business.
Tonight is Prog Rock night on BBC4, an evening of telly devoted to the much maligned and misunderstood genre. It kicks off at 9pm with Prog At The BBC, “a compilation of some of the greatest names in progressive rock, filmed live in the BBC studios in the 1970s. Includes Yes, Genesis, ELP, Caravan, Barclay James Harvest, Gentle Giant, Family, Atomic Rooster and more”, and continues with the documentary Prog Britannia at 10pm.
It’s almost the end of 2008 and End-of-Year lists will be popping up all over the interweb, so here’s me adding mine to the growing online pile
Mine is a random mixture, shown in no particular order, of some of the cool/weird things that happened to me in 2008. It also has some of the things the band got up to, some of the music I happened to like and also just a little bit about some of the interweb doohickeys that caught my eye.
Here goes…..
1: THE RISE OF FLEET FOXES
This time last year no-one had heard of them, then back in March Campbell played me “White Winter Hymnal” and I was straight away smitten. In May I saw them play in Nottingham and got hold of The Sun Giant EP. Their debut album came out in the summer and I saw them play again in October, a much bigger show this time, in Birmingham. The album, also called Fleet Foxes, is currently sitting near the top of many end-of-year music magazine polls, rounding off quite a year for a band with quite a sound
2: “I AM BURIAL” = TABLOID NEWS
This was a strange one. During the summer months there were a lot of column inches devoted to the real identity of Dubstep artist Burial, and there was even a daft rumour that Burial was actually Fatboy Slim. All of this gave me an idea to start selling t-shirts with slogans such as “I am Burial” and “I’m With Burial >>>” etc and so along with Andrew Dubber I set up a shop at iamburial.com and less than 36 hours later it had made page 19 of The Sun. Seeing something go from the inside of my head to the eyes of 4 million Sun readers in less than 2 days was very odd indeed. During that time the designs caused quite a stir on various Drum n Bass message boards and even got mentioned on telly before we were eventually asked (very nicely) by Hyperdub Records to remove the site, which we did. We sold 1 t-shirt.
3: THERE WAS ONLY ONE DORIAN WOOD
In March we put on a night at Kings Heath’s fashionable Hare and Hounds. Dorian Wood from California USA played, and so did Dorian Wood from Kings Heath UK. The boys from Hot on the Heels of Love did a DJ set and we also did a turn. It was a great night, and Anna singing with Dorian Wood (USA) was a real highlight…
4: POP STARS SAT ON MY SOFA
To cut a long and strange story very short…in July our neighbours had their wedding reception at a local pub, the local pub double-booked the room and the also double-booked Kevin Rowland ended up DJing at the wedding. When the party at the pub finished most of it moved back to our street and Kevin waited for his taxi at my house. He sat on the sofa drinking a glass of pop and we had a chinwag for about half an hour. I’m a huge fan of Dexys Midnight Runners and it all went down a bit like this.
Other popstars on our sofa this year were Stephen and Hannah from The Accidental, who stopped over after playing at The Moseley Folk Festival in August, and Mike from Bentley Rhythm Ace, who lives 2 doors away and popped round to ask if I had any hair gel (I didn’t).
5: BIG LADS REGUARLY PINCHED MY DINNER MONEY….
In 2008 there were plenty of new interweb doohickeys to keep my inner geek happy. There are far too many to mention here, but Blip.FM and Spotify were two new music services that came my way, as did the excellent way of sharing mixes using Drop.IO. Twitter became both indispensable and a worrying obsession, and Tweetdeck was the best of the services I used in connection with it. Then there was Remember The Milk, which was my spare brain and secretary until Gmail launched it’s own version recently. Finally, Profilactic helped me ‘prevent an online identity crisis‘ and similar service Ping.fm meant I could update my Facebook status without ever having to bother to log in, which was nice.
6: WE WROTE NEW SONGS FOR A NEW ALBUM - “FAITHS MEAT KIOSK”
We’re not a band known for working particularly quickly, but during 2008 we have not only written, demoed and arranged the songs for our next album, Faiths Meat Kiosk, we’ve also started to record it. Things are going very well so far and we are yet to shoot ourselves in the foot with any random acts of self sabotage….but it’s early days. Here are demos of two songs that will be on the record.
We saw him play at The Robinin Bilston, the very same venue I saw Stephen Seagal’s band play in 2007. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Richie was many several times better than Thunderbox.
8: JAMES SUMMERFIELD WAS ON COMMERCIALLY INVIABLE RECORDS
In August our label, Commercially Inviable Records, released the quite lovely album Count To 10 and Start Again by James Summerfield. Thanks to some nice people buying our wares the label is miraculously halfway solvent, which is as much of a shock to me as it is to anyone else. Next year the label will be releasing an album by Glaswegian dustbowl balladeerSleepy Eyes Nelson.
Listen:James Summerfield - “Another Day With You’s Like Torture”
9: PODCAST GOLD!
2008 was the year when we pulled our fingers out in terms of podcasts. The 6 individual podcasts released this year were downloaded by hundreds of people and subscribers to the feed went into uncharted territory (double figures!). The podcasts themselves settled into a formula, each being a 40-minute mix of swearing and music that came into being whenever Executive Producer Robson and a member of the band found themselves sitting around, talking and drinking in front of a microphone. Should there be a large swearing and music shaped hole in your life you can subscribe here.
10: THE PHANTOM BAND
A late addition, this, but definitely worth mentioning in the round-up. I went for a pint with my pal Clutch last week and he told me to listen to The Phantom Band. He said they were a band from Scotland making music that was a mixture of Folk and Krautrock, which sounded very much up my street. He also said they were the best new band he had heard in a long, long time. I managed to get an advance copy of their forthcoming debut album, Checkmate Savage, and everything Clutch said is true. Wait until you get a load of a song called “Folk Song Oblivion”, or the crazy Doo-Wop break 3 minutes into a song called “Throwing Bones”.
Episode 9 of our Podcast sees Executive Producer Robson and Campbell reunited for the first time in a long time. Tune in and listen as they fondly reminisce times good and bad, and then cover the ears of nearby children as they bicker like schoolgirls who have drunk too much lager. Occasionally they can be heard to discuss actual subjects such as The Economy, Dog Allergies and The Official Secrets Act.
As usual the swearing and cussing is punctuated by a selection of great tunes. In the past we haven’t published a tracklist because we were offering prizes to people who could name the tunes featured in the podcasts. We were under the impression that someone may enter such a competition and we were wrong. Despite the podcasts proving increasingly popular, with subscribers around the globe now in double figures and downloads approaching the heady heights of triple figures, not a single soul bothered to enter. Ever. Additionally, it was pointed out to us by someone who knows these things that punters are more likely to download a podcast if they have an inkling of what it contains, which makes sense.
So, from now on we’ll be posting the tracklist….here is FOTS-POD#9: “It’s a Ronderful Wobson”
“Hot Stuff” - The Rolling Stones “Trudi’s Song” - Mott The Hoople
“Public Execution” - Mouse & The Traps
“Run of the Mill” - George Harrison “Billy Budd” - Morrissey
“I’m The Slime” - Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention “You Got It” - Roy Orbison
“Short Stopping” - Veda Brown “You Make Me Feel Like Someone” - PJ Proby
At this time of year the world of music Blogs goes collectively crackers for weird and wonderful musical alternatives to the Christmas canon.
However, the nice people at Leather Canary have blown all comers out of the water this year with (count them) 218 alternative Christmas songs from down the years and a wide variety of great artists. The songs are available across 9 seperate mixes, which should be enough to keep you going all the way to New Years Ever.
If the green light is on then there is somebody home.
Welcome!
Friends of the Stars are a Country / Folk band from Birmingham, UK and have been Commercially Inviable since 2000...The purpose of this site is to tell our tale.
We are releasing records on our own Commerically Inviable imprint. The first album, "Lighting & Electrical" is available here and at various other locations on the interweb.
How we go about releasing our records and subsequent others remains to be seen, so this will document that experiment and journey. To writing, recording and performing we are now adding 'releasing records' to our list of activites.
We have been friends for a long time, playing and sticking together through thin and thin. We are prone to horrendous collective errors of judgement and have made some mistakes in our time. We'll no doubt make more of these in the near future. We also make some pretty decent tunes.
If you have any questions then please feel free to email info@friendsofthestars.co.uk and we'll get back to you.
