Entertainment For Lively Minds
With PRs like this, who needs enemies?
Posted by David Hepworth on 14 July 2009 - 2:37pm.
The latest biog to flutter into my in-tray starts like this:
"Imagine a young British singer whose music summons up the spirit of Scott Walker, the heart of Cat Stevens and the soul of John Martyn."
If you were me would you spare the young man's blushes by avoiding listening to his record or would you think 'that seems like a billing that any talented singer-songwriter should be able to live up to'?
Come on. I'm poised.
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Give it a go
If it gets close to one of them, it would be quite good. And at least he doesn't have the liver of Shane McGowan.
Or his teeth!
Mind you
nor does Shane now. He has the teeth of Pete Shelley*
* I'm guessing.
He looks like Steve Coogan now.
Really...
Better than having ....
Spirit of Cat Stevens, the Soul of Scott Walker and the Heart of John Martyn I suppose.
nothing about the 'wheezy cackle of Keith Richards?
I'm not interested.
Does it have a photo accompanying it? Does this earnest troubadour have a beard, perchance?
Bin It
Put it in the bin. Put the bin in another bin then send it back to the PR company without a stamp on it. That'll learn 'em.
Hardly the young chap's fault
cut him some slack and give it a spin.
What I would find interesting would be to hear how you would describe him if you were his PR.
Come on, how hard can it be?
Suddenly it's John Martyn this, that and the other
Every new artist bio has them banging on about how they grew up on their parents' Nick Drake or John Martyn records. These records would have been some of the best-selling albums of all time were it actually true.
The key thing is:
listening to and enjoying records by an artist does not necessarily make you sound like that artist when you compose your own music, any more than reading Dickens will make you write like him.
Also, as I recall, John Martyn and Nick Drake albums weren't massively huge sellers at the time either.
I've said this before but
"reminiscent of Scott Walker" - or variations of that phrase - are lazy PR/journalists code for "he has a deep voice, and there are strings on the record".
I suspect that John Martyn comparisons are code for "slightly obscure for the general public but will show music journalists that he is serious artist" - as Five Centres points out, it would have been Nick Drake before this year.
Cat Stevens = "spiritual and sincere"?
Please listen to it...
...or else you are just judging the PR firm's YTS-boy's first press release.
If you like who they've mentioned, give two tunes a go
Although building an expectation like that (even if it is ready-to-wear referencing) can only end in disappointment for all.
Send it to me
I'll listen to it. I'd probably like it too, if the comparisons are justified.
Is there a feature/ blog quiz in this?
Track down some early PR blurbs for famous artists and see if it‘s possible to guess who is being trumpeted. Might be hard to get hold of old press releases though.
The artist in this case will be an earnest, self-absorbed young man who plays an acoustic guitar and sings rather melodramatically. He will, I imagine, be terrifically dull and a bit annoying. Amongst his repetoire of despair and woe will be a song about the futility of war - he’ll ask why we can’t all just get along - and one about climate change.
I’m seeing curly hair and a crumpled linen shirt.
nicely put
that's where i was going with 'earnest troubadour'...you put it so much better, Richard, although you forgot to say 'probably needs to get laid'!
He be from a musical family
and come from Devon
Surprised it didn't also invoke...
The voice of Jeff Buckley
The orchestral arrangements of Robert Kirby
This is good
Anyone care to draw a picture of him?
He'll be rocking the...
...'more than stubble/less than a beard' look
i'm sensing the photo
will be either in the desert or some beachy sand duney scene there'll be some winsome lovely to wrestle with, he's got to be wearing jeans he's not going to be a ginger with a big nose or the least bit over weight, or with a sty in his left eye and over bite. No shoes!
No shoes indeed
Although there may be espadrilles.
There will certainly be no socks.
And he'll be gazing
Either A) Into the distance, lost in his own thoughts. Or B) At the floor.
That won't be a richly
shag pile carpeted floor either artful bare boards and no mistake
So what we appear to be saying is
he looks like James Blunt
Tangental
but on the subject of useless PRs, I got a press release yesterday with this title:
"Stilton cheese signs celebrity chef, Gizzi Erskine, to help change perceptions of the King of Cheeses"
Change perceptions of the King of Cheeses? To what? The peasant of cheeses? Cheeses Christ?
I hate that 'commas round names' thing too...
Gizzi Erskine
how come I never get those tiles at scrabble!
Cheeses Christ, who the yarg is Gizzi Erskine?
Is it male or female? How can it be a celebrity if the celebration of it hasn't even registered in these parts? Not even the faintest tremble on the Richter scale of cultural registration. So obscure we neither have any bloody idea who they are nor care a jot anyway.
Who the mozzarella is doing the PR for poor bloody stilton? They need sacking.
Calm down Vulp...
There's no need to go complete emMENTAL over it.
(gets coat)
Jesus of Cheeses?
I think he said blessed are the cheese-makers.
Do the lyrics go something like this?
And like the sands of time, through my fingers you slipped
And I cursed the weakness of my grip
Like the time, you cursed all I did
Oh why did I - keep my feelings so well hid?
Come on you musos out there - can I get a melody?
I'm thinking delays, dampened pedals, minor chords...
As someone who used to write press releases on a daily basis...
it is a tricky thing to get right. Make comparisons like those above and the bin beckons, but if you play it right down and say nothing of interest it probably goes in the bin anyway.
I once sent a Raymond Scott CD ('Manhattan Research Inc') to the NME's reviews editor. I made a follow-up call and was greeted with the words "Fuck off." Then a couple of weeks later I got a call from someone calling on behalf of the reviews editor who wanted 2 more copies for the NME office. Did I send them? Of course not. But I didn't tell them to go fuck themselves.
I got out of that profession while I still had a shred of self-respect left.
That Raymond Scott record is
That Raymond Scott record is aces!
soul-less game really...
I'm into my 15th year of churning out that sort of shite
Mind you, I'm mainly responsible for washing powder, choccie bars, crisps and fizzy pop...oh, hang on that doesn't make it better, does it?
Pays the bills *shrugs*
Do you think they'll have some vacanies at the post office next week? I could do that.
I don't think I was really cut out for that job...
so it's probably good that PR and I parted company. If you've been doing it for 15 years then you're obviously good at it. I wasn't.
Having done the odd CD review...
I've seen a few of these awful press releases, and am never surprised by just how stupid they are. My favourite so far being:
"*** ******** are an anarcho gothic nu-grave band from the capital city, and **** ****** is the soundtrack to the financial and cultural recession of 2008”.
The song was awful, and I can promise that the most enjoyment anybody ever had from it was during the three minutes it took me to use its press release as the basis for a scathing, yet equally half-arsed review.
Bad biogs
This is a fabulously overblown biog that I found of an artist on the same bill as my band. I include edited highlights, however the full piece can be found in all its glory on Kieran Leonard's band facebook.
"Kieran Leonard has become in one short year one of the most engaging, controversial and ultimately intriguing artists in the contemporary musical climate. It would be presumptuous to make any predictions as to the ultimate career destination of this incandescently talented young man, but where there’s so much smoke, there must certainly be a serious blaze; and his growing popularity suggests that a crowd certainly seems to be hastily attracting more of a crowd.
‘He Looks Like Kurt Cobain, He Sounds like Bob Dylan' NME.COM
Kieran’s debut EP ‘OLD’ scheduled for release this Summer, showcases some of his unique song-writing ability, “old songs that sound new, new songs that sound old, depending on if you have the right ears or the wrong mind”- as he puts himself in his own inimitable fashion. Many are heralding songs such as ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The King my Father’ as a return to a song-writing form hitherto witnessed only in the mythology of the radical Sixties music scene. Produced by the celebrated Carl Barat (The Libertines) and mixed by renowned Chris Sheldon (Radiohead, Foo-Fighters), the results are uninhibited, unpredictable, and undeniably opinion demanding."
yadayadayada, here is the link to the artist performing
Dear me.