No Rock And Roll Fun

WE NAME THE SPAM BANDS - UPDATE: We've seen rather less direct spamming by bands (and their agents, the "electronic street teams") in the last year, although one band, violane, has continued to over-enthusiastically send out promotional emails. In fact, they've now started to steal another trick from the Viagra salesmen and style themselves v-i-o-l-a-n-e. We're sure this is just because it's pretty and isn't a sucky attempt to try and work their way round the spam filters of people who are sick of them.

In the second half of 2003, the most heavy spamming acts we came across were Suture Seven and Camera. They haven't stopped mithering our mailbox since. (By the way, we're not saying we don't like hearing from bands - indeed, we love it - but only if you're actively writing to us, thanks).

You might recall that we infiltrated Soulhooligan's Official Street Team, to see what the members of a group for a proper band on a grown-up label (Maverick) were being instructed to do. For the last five or six months, the list has been more abandoned than a fairground in Scooby-Doo, with only porn spam giving us the gentle reminder that it's still there. There's something pleasing about a group set up to orchestrate spamming itself falling down under a light dusting of spam, but if we were in Soul Hooligan, we'd be checking our contracts pretty closely right now.