And then the heart sinks :

• "We're fed up with being lumped in with [xxx genre]"!!!!
• [yyy band] are Rock 'n' Roll personified." (Wot?!?!? Like Bill Haley & The Comets!??!?!)
• "After honing his DJ skills under the ample talents of [overpaid overhyped DJ], [DJ zzz] went solo, and is making waves with [Club Night] an electic and innovative night of melodic/jazzy/soulful house with a difference." (Wot!??!?! He DJs in his birthday suit or something!??!?!)
• "I'd like to think I am tasking my listeners on a journey"!!!!!
• "[Band aaa] might be considered [insert fatal flaw here], but who cares?"!!!!!!
• "[Mouthy member of band bbb] snaps: 'I F@£$ing hate Pop Idol!!!!!!!'"
• "[Mouthy member of band ccc] lights another cigarette and waxes philosophical: [Cue crap conspiracy theory!!!]"!!!!!!!!!!
• "[Band ddd] look nothing like your normal band"!!!! (This is one of the most common cliches I've seen BTW!!!!!)
• "... with their trademark brand of surreal humour..."!!!!!
• "But it's not all laughs with [Band eee]: 'We take our music very seriously'"!!!!!!
• "Small woder they now number amongst their fans [Insert current It-girl laddette trying to keep with-it!!!!], [Insert current Radio One DJ trying to keep with-it!!!!], [Insert current fictional writer trying to keep with-it!!!!], and Damon Albarn."!!!!!!!
• Erm, I'm out of ideas!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's kick it up a notch then.

Take a fist full of Beck, sprinkle it over a liberal helping of Massive Attack, and splash a dash of the Black Eyed Peas to add that special va-va-voom - and what have you got?

A veritable sonic banquet of goodness, with big, meaty basslines and savoury, bubbling synths rocking your body till you are practically sweating beef juice. Your ears' tastebuds will be a-tingle with the spicy cayenne eclecticism, and, possibly, you may shed a peppery tear. You won't have a problem getting phat to this band. Bon appetit!

i.e. one band were slightly more honest than the other...

Bad sign.

It's a real one is why I put it in. That's how wrong a certain label got a certain artist in an opening press release leading to him being pissed off with them until . . . well now, really.

No, every so often you see it dropped into a review with no obvious irony.

This is venturing off the subject a bit, but there was another classic in new UK monthly Bullit (which I finally got to read properly and was sadly quite awful). In the Suede interview it said something like,

'"I don't do coke anymore," Brett snorts.'

Do you see? SNORTS like he was taking DRUGS! That's really clever! Fuck.

"St John's Wort with a Scottish burr"

guess the band...

or, just as bad, [x band] serve up an eclectic pastiche of [genres a-z]

(granted, the interviewer was asking dumb questions like that all through the interview and there might be snideness/sarcasm in that answer that the printed word doesn't transmit.)

i'm helping with a friend's new label and one of my duties is writing copy for the website, bios, press releases, etc., so I'm furiously taking mental notes here on what not to say.

nate who are you talking about here?

Especially when the acts aren't that far apart (eg the 'everyone from Paul Weller to Blur' line in the NME news piece about Ray Davies linked to elsewhere).

I have now reached the stage where I complain about this so much that I can't remember if I made up or read the line 'everyone from Frank Zappa to Captain Beefheart'.

(That's how Avril Lavigne's UK press bio ended)

• "Hope of the States deal in the kind of emotional yet immediate guitar music that reached an apogee with A Rush of Blood to the Head. Yet they take it on slightly skewed journeys; songs are lengthy, there's a soundscape quality to much of their work that suggests a depth not seen since Radiohead at their peak."
• "They could easily have approached a big-name producer to fashion a chart-conquering debut record. Instead, they've gone for Sigur Ros's knob-twiddler, Ken Thomas"
• "The buzz around their debut single..."
• "... brooding opening three minute climax in the marvellously infectious chorus..."
• "Hope of the States are in it for the long haul, then" (And you just they were just a cheesy pop band a la Cheeky Girls, eh?!?!?!)

That is outrageously ill informed, if nothing else. Post Ken's CV...

"Okay, so you know the facts. He's got the royal seal of approval from Madonna. He swaps remixes with Fatboy Slim. He sprinkled a little something onto Plecebo's Special K. Oh, and he hangs out with young and fresh Kelis. But forget the hype for a moment and listen to the debut album. "It will completely kill you", he chuckles".

This is very much from real life, from a Timo Maas bio I had lying around. It's almost too good to be true. Comments?

"The enigmatic dreamchild. The delicious atrocity. The sinuous barbaric tomato furor that is Elysian Fields".

Again: from real life.

"Sia's unique style of music and effervescent character are an explosive combination - an antidote to the formulaic pop that too often saturates the contemporary music scene". [sic!]

"Rave, house, techno, ambient, punk, pop, industrial, downbeat. The genres are many, but the person is the same. Richard Melville Hall aka Moby has in the past 13 years set his mark on the whole music industry with his records, and it seems amost impossible to pigeonhole this giant talent"!!!!!!

Once again: This is from a real bio! I have proof!

"Rock’n’roll. A blistering three dimensional mind-melt of frantic sex-inducing sound, dazzling good looks and moral code -defying anarchic spirit, right? Yet in late 2003 it spends most of it’s time droning on about blues authenticity and generally being about as lascivious as a sponsored silence in Skegness. Cue The Glitterati. They are here to bring the sleaze back into rock’n’roll.

“I’ve always had pretty girlfriends” sighs singer Paul, scanning the tables of an upmarket West End beer garden for inspiration.

“It’s not that it comes easy to us but we do seem to get a lot of attention after our gigs and the next thing we know we’re getting all sorts of offers.”

Fair question. But do, no really do, expect an unfair answer.

"16B is the sound of escape from reality. Amusic which will wrap you up in clear vision of heavenly calm. A sound which will spirit you away from the crushing disappointments of everyday life. Dreams of flight through warm blue skies, falling through emptiness into infinite softness, of glowing light and effervescent vitality".

Whydont you just give up on life, you wanker?

"Omid doesn't see himself in any kind of house music tradition. From Putney whose musical mentors included Neil Young, The Cure, Hendrix and My Bloody Valentine. One day, sometime in 1991, he stumbled into a dance music shop, bought a few Djax twelves and opened himself up to the breakbeat techno sound of the time. He built up a home studio. Set up the label. The rest is history. Poin´t is however - and this bit's important - even though Oakenfold, Sasha, Deep dish and Stacey Pullen are fans of his sound, he's never felt like a dance music insider, never been a trainspotter".

Aaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!

"Welcome back to the leaders, the movers, the darkside groovers, the one and only Primal Scream, mow in their 15th glorious year with Creation Records, and sounding more than ever like an iron fist in the face - youi know, like all tose "exciting" new bands should, but don't. And at last, meet the world you know in musical form, a world riddled with violence, hatred, and disease. Felid cities, no fun and one political party. Crap food and unremiting gunfire (the beat you can eat, baby!). Squadrons of fucking great bombers spewing fireover every last country that hasn't surrendered to Sky TV".

Subtle, eh?

"Sure, you've heard that 'next big thing' tag being bandied about too many times already this year. But take it from us - My Morning Jacket are the band to fall in love with in 2002." - NME

Notice how that is clearly a non sequitur and you're just supposed to read it like it ain't no thang...

The whole point of band bios is that they're *supposed* to give the reader some information re: how long the band have been going, how they met, how many records they've released, who they've toured with, which label/s they've been/are signed to, what the band themselves think of their music and what some other people think too.

Sure, it'd be pretty easy just to list the above information in dry form, but you'd be hard-pushed to find a label/manager/press officer prepared to be quite so prosaic.

I see nothing wrong with including quotes from blogs or Amazon, since as argued above, these reactions are no less valid (and indeed often more pertinent) than those of "established" journalists/critics; all the more so, if the quotes in question actually have a valid point to make as opposed to just some meaningless doggerel/hyperbole.

Personally, I prefer to receive a simple release/tour/etc timeline with a record, rather than somebody else's idea of writing, but I'm sure there are scores of idle/thick/time-poor hacks who'd be only too happy to regurgitate a bio and get paid for it.

ps. Jay Kid, who sent you Sia? I'm after the new album to review...

Too much more gets the stuff headed binwards.

1. The comparision is accurate!!!!
2. They're not trying to impress us into liking a new band just because they have some superficial similarities with another more famous band, in a "peer pressure" stylee!!!!!
3. The new band aren't just a tribute band for the more famous one, and have a few ideas of their own!!!!
4. These ideas are represented well enough in the write to allow the reader to make up their own mind!!!! (OK, that's a hard bit!!!!)

   ― Old Fart!!! (oldfart_sd), Tuesday, 6 January 2004 16:17 (twenty-one years ago)