New readers start here

Welcome to A Few Words, a writing blog I have been maintaining since 2004, off and on. Most visitors end up here after searching for a Marks and Spencer food advert parody , analysis of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row, Highlands, or Blowin' in the wind, or background about Sandi Thom's mysterious rise to fame. None of which represent the best or most interesting of the material.

Good places to start are:

Change and Decay:
a long short story about an archivist's visit to a crumbling gentry estate (this was posted in chapters here but is presented in the right order in its own blog; it can aslo be downloaded as ae pdf, or bought on paper, in the volume File Under Fiction.
Written in your heart:
a radio play about Friends Reunited, old girlfriends, and midlife crises;

Dooced:
a radio play about an employment tribunal for an employee sacked for blogging about her work (life shortly therafter imitating Art, or at least artifice, in the form of Petite Anglaise);

Martin Amis criticism:
A long-term endeavour to cover all of his works, eventually, if I don't lose patience with his current rabble-rousing geopolitical insights first;


Stuff which won't be found here is poetry, which is at Complete and Utter Poetry, and archaeological project management, which is at 10 Simple Steps.


This post is a sticky and will stay at the top until I get bored with it.

Sandi Thom: a last farewell

I have been an accidental archivist of the Sandi Thom saga for four years now, fighting a guerilla war over her Wikipedia pages to correct the more extravagant and lazy claims of her PR company. In the course of doing so, I have learned a little of how conventional publicity works: the sudden stream of 'lifestyle' features that precede any new record release, the positive gloss on any events in which the start is involved, the attempt to promote controversy by being banned from YouTube or criticising Lily Allen, and , underlying it all, a deliberate vagueness about tour dates, audiences and record sales.

What is funny is that not long ago this could have gone on largely unnoticed: if the media picked up on it, it was true, if not, it was forgotten, consigned to wastepaper baskets overnight. But thanks to the Internet, nothing ever really goes away. This means that everything is potentially 'on the record', and potentially therefore a future embarassment.

Just in the last few weeks, Sandi has said that she is:

* writing songs for films
* moving to Brighton
* moving to New York
* planning to marry and have a baby
* concentrating on becoming established in America
* touring Europe
* releasing another single off the last album
* recording a new album
* undertaking a tour of small venues in Scotland

Well, that will keep her busy!

But I won't be watching. If I am going to spend some of my time in monitoring Internet activity relating to an artist, I think I'd rather it was someone whose work I admired. So long Sandi - it's been, well, you know.

End of the road for Sandi Thom

"Did you know that Sandi Thom is working at Abbey Road with Will Young, Michelle McManus and David Sneddon?"

"Are they recording?"

"No, they're the night shift at St John's Wood MacDonalds."



I have been following the story of Sandi Thom with, perhaps, more interest than it deserves, especially since I have no strong views on her music. It happened to be one of those news stories, like the WMD dodgy dossier, where it was obvious at the time that the media had been fed a line. At the time, those unfamiliar with the Web might believe that electronic word of mouth might increase nightly webcast audiences from zero to 40,000 in three weeks, but nobody else did. In the rush of skepticism that followed, many were left believing that the whole webcast thing was a stunt and that she had been signed to RCA/Sony beforehand, which isn't true (or at least is specifically denied by those who would be in a position to know).

It seems that the sands of time are running out on her career. The follow-up album charted for a single week, the single for two, despite media and personal appearances, interviews and advertising on YouTube. Any day now, RCA will surely pull the plug. It remains baffling that of the 300,000 people who were happy to buy the first album, only 1% wanted to buy the second (whatever its merits): she just seems to be one of those people who can sell large numbers of records without inspiring loyalty or affection from the purchasers. It looks as if "Punk rocker" will suffer the same fate as the Diana version of "Candle in the wind" as a record people are reluctant to admit having bought.

Last thoughts on Sandi Thom

Sandi's been down in Australia, which would account for the lack of promotion of her current UK single, 'Lonely Girl', which was scheduled for release last week. 'Punk rocker' is their song of the year, having sat for 14 weeks at No. 1. In an article in the Melbourne Age, the webcast myth is taken at face value:

But while her webcasts attract thousands, her popularity doesn't necessarily translate to the clubs. After details of a "secret show" in the city were released online on Tuesday, a crowd of only 25 turned up. The concert was then cancelled.

The article is respectfully titled "Very modern artist longs for age of innocence", but their web editor lets their feelings through by giving the page url as "that-blooming-punk-song".

Sandi Thom: What if I'm crap

The moment of truth for Sandi Thom is nigh. On 31 August, her follow-up single to the No. 1 international smash "I wish I was a punk rocker (with flowers in my hair)" will be released, and we will see once and for all whether it was all hype or if she has established a fanbase. She has spent much of the last few months appearing at numerous festivals, a trick employed with some success by Roy Harper in the 60s, so it is still unlcear whether people will actually pay to see her (and in the light of the webcast saga, it is notable that so few of the people who saw her live in 2005 liked it very much).

I did quite like "Punk rocker": it was at least original in arrangment, going for acapella and then full band, when it could easliy have been Katie Melua style acoustic wibbling. I even smiled at the start, although I tended to get bored by the end. But it was catchy and instantly memorable and energetic. I've only heard "What if I'm right" once on the radio, but it seemed to be none of those things.

Lyrically, it is different (Full lyrics here): the nostalgia of Punk rocker led those who are cynical to suggest that the song was largely written by the co-writer rather than Thom. "What if I'm right" sounds more like a young person's view of the possible future. But it's not very good: here's my comments:

It wont be an uphill struggle, on you I can depend
...
you'll cover me in diamonds, there's nothing I want more

"On you I can depend" has to be one of the most awkward lines ever written, and all to achieve a poor rhyme.
Nothing she wants more than being covered with diamonds?
An odd ambition.

...
And you'll always tape the football
And let me watch my soap

Nothing like being a modern woman, is there? He'll 'let you' watch your soap (which nearly rhymes with coat).

And when I give birth to our children
I will feel no pain

Planet Earth calling Sandi: don't be so superficial. And you know, birth might hurt. You'd certainly thinks so from the screams from the delivery suite.

And you'll bring the showers

What? Showers?

You'll say I'm thin and bring the washing in

What a charming domestic vignette: you're thin, and here's the washing.

And when you need to change the light bulb
You won't hand me the chair

I'm not sure is 'handing you the chair' is some obscure euphemism: it certainly isn't a conventional phrase.

You'll sell your vinyl records
And go get us a loan

She obviously knows someone obsessed with vinyl, since it also came up in Punkrocker (unlike, I would add, Bob Dylan and Neil Young who have always been keen to explore what new technology might bring). As I put it in Written in your heart:

ED: Yes, they ought to warn you when you're 18 that you are forming your musical tastes for life. I've just been buying the Dylan remasters. It's not the same, though. There's something about vinyl. You HAD to respect it- no finger nails, keep it clean, put it away. Not like CDs - Is that a CD or a coffee mat? Answer: both. And the little booklets in one-point type. No substitute for a lyric sheet.

CHARLOTTE: Still, all my vinyl records are unplayable: scratched and warped.

ED: Oh, if you want to be practical! Spoil my Nick Hornby moment!

You'll be my sympathetic lover
And won't steal the covers
But I've got my doubts and what if I'm right?
You won't forsake me
Your mother won't hate me
...

Now, there is a strong tradition of near-rhymes in popular songs, but this is usually used to allow the use of informal and idiomatic language, not drivel about stealing covers, forsaking (FFS), and mothers in law.

It looks as if Punkrocker was a fluke and that Sandi's natural role is as a teenage wordsmith, indistinguishable, apart from by PR, from all the millions of MySpace 'friends'.

Update: a sad statistic from the Sandi Thom official website Forum:
Most users ever online was 24 on Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:53 pm

Sandi Thom: I wish I was a PR man with money in the bank

Her CD has a sticker: "The singer who webcast to the world from her Tooting basement". It is becoming clear that, far from being an impoverished artist using new technology to reach an audience, her success is a triumph of conventional marketing. The webcasts were effectively showcase gigs intended to garner major label interest, after last year's small-label release failed to get any higher than No. 55 despite Radio 2 airplay. The vagueness of ST and her backers about the numbers of viewers of the webcast smacks of fiction: if there really were 70,000 (or, later, 40,000) people tuning in having picked up on an Internet buzz, it is astonishing that so few blogged about it, mentioned in on a website measured by Technorati, or visited her MySpace site: the Internet buzz followed the press reports, not the other way round. It looks as if she used the webcast angle as a way of making unverifiable claims for popularity in order to get the labels hungry. They did, and RCA (or rather Sony BMG, trading as RCA) eventually snapped her up.

Her current success has been driven partly by expensive PR: when was the last time a debut (or 'debut') single was released (re-released) with two weeks of TV adverts? But more than that, there has been the collusion of the press, which has picked up on the webcast thing and given her massive exposure in the print media. A little digging, or even the application of memory or common sense, would have led to a more critical approach, but everyone seems to have concluded, with the editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty valance, that given the choice of telling the truth or printing the legend, you should print the legend.

The 'new star created by the Internet' story is a popular one, one that people keep trying to foist on any act with enough savvy to register their own web domain. I think the appeal lies in the Cinderella myth: the daydream that someone can become rich and famous overnight, without having paid any dues. ST has been plugging away for years, touring, recording, session singing, but that's not what people want: they want Chantelle success, similar to the daydream you enjoy in the period between buying a lottery ticket and finding out you haven't won. This is nothing new: when video first came along, Toni Basil found instant stardom (although Wikipedia tells me that her first single was recorded 15 years before 'Hey Mickey'); when Paul Macartney 'discovered' Mary Hopkin, she was already an experienced and well-trained singer in the Welsh music scene.

What is perhaps surprising is the fury that ST's success has unleashed. The air is thick with complaints about a 'cynical marketing ploy', a phrase that has always seemed to me to be redundant: what, you mean it isn't a good old philanthropic altruistic marketing ploy? Yet those who continue to be amazed at the antics of the music business always seem to forget the 'business' part. Music involves money. I can remember one rock god saying despairingly that you could tell you had made it when you were employing people you didn't even know about. Music is expensive. Mainstream acts can revel in this: the manufactured nature of the Spice Girls, Westlife, the Sugababes is part of the fun. But for left-field acts you're supposed to ignore it, so that U2, the Rolling Stones, Sting, retain some credibility (or are supposed to) while also raking in money faster than many small countries. Again, this is nothing new: Pink Floyd appeared in the 60s on the Harvest label, an EMI owned company which was intended to obscure the corporate nature of the organisation behind the band.

It would of course be totally cynical to suggest that the press gave the Sandi story such an easy ride because Sony BMG places so much advertising in their papers. It wasn't like that in '69 or '77. Except it was- as Patrik Fitzgerald said at the time, it was "Come and get your punk in Woolworth's / Bondage trousers - twelve pounds" (Make it safe).

I was going to put a link to Sandi Thom's website, but then I thought, 'Why should I? She never links to mine!' (Copyright the estate of Spike Milligan) Her website needs Flash to view it. These crazy web nuts!


Update

Sandi appeared on BBC Radio 4's arts magazine, Front Row, on Wednesday 19/7/06, and was asked specifically about the webcast/PR controversy. She said the whole 'penniless songwriter' thing had come from the press, not from her, since she acknowldedges she had the backing of a small record label, a management company and a PR firm before the Tooting webcasts started. This is a little disingenuous, since her she has certainly seemed keen to emphasise the squalor of the 'piss-stained basement', as if to imply that she had no backing. Quized about the webcast audience figures, she preferred to talk about how cool it was that people [however many there were] were viewing from all over the world. That doesn't impress me much: even this humble blog is regularly visited by sleepless people in Southeast Asia who want to know what "Blowin' in the Wind" means , or about megalomaniacs. Sher did end by endorsing the Web as a place where people can say what they think, which is good in its way, I suppose.