Friday, April 24, 2015

Lauren Mayberry won't be hassled

Some asshole sent a horrible rape threat to Lauren Mayberry.

Lauren Mayberry isn't taking that shit:

My band is lucky enough to have some of the most awesome, supportive and respectful fans in the world and we are so excited to be in the studio making an album to share with them. Yet, on a daily basis, we still receive communications like this. These people never learn that violence against women is unacceptable. But they also never learn that women will not be shamed and silenced and made to disappear. I am not going anywhere. So bring it on, motherfuckers. Let’s see who blinks first.
There shouldn't be a "right way" to deal with someone threatening to rape you, but while we live in this golden era for angry men with access to communication technology, it seems we need one.


Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Two cheers for Marina Diamandis

Oh, Marina out of Marina and The Diamonds, you are ace for calling out the 'I love the gays' demographic-box-tickers:

"When you're an artist, you giving a shit does not equate to going 'I love you guys!' five times a day on Twitter," said Diamandis during a telephone interview, "If you want to do something, you do it in action.

"I am always up for supporting anyone who has suffered prejudice or discrimination -- and I always will be," she went on to say of her LGBT following. "But it's not something I have publicly done a lot of yet. We'll see. It is important to me, because it makes up a significant part of my fan base."
Sort of aces - "it makes up part of my base". It? But let's let that one go.
"Sometimes I feel it's a little contrived," she stated, "I hope you can see what I mean by that, in terms of female pop stars going, 'I love my gay fan base' -- making that a thing. I don't believe in that.

"I would support that all of my fanbase is equal," Diamandis continued, "I hope I can support straight guys as much as I can teenage girls."
Yeah, Marina. Straight guys are under so much yoke of prejudice, you really should ensure you can support them as much as possible.

But that's quibbling. Standing up and saying 'if you really love your queer fans when they're buying tickets for your shows, what are you doing for them?' is something we've been waiting for for a long time.


Toyota: They're great at social media

Last month, Toyota launched a terrible crowd-sourced band idea that, mercifully, seems to have gone nowhere. I did a thing about it here, mainly because when I said something about Toyota recalls, the company responded by saying how they did all their recalls because they valued safety and how it was totally voluntary.

To which my response was 'what about that time when a guy ended up in prison because you hadn't recalled cars with a serious fault; you might remember having to pay a fine of over a billion dollars; what about that?'

And that was that.

Except, because it's automatic, that post also appeared on No Rock & Roll Fun's Google+ feed. (Yes, Google+ is still a thing.)

I was a bit surprised to discover that Toyota's US arm has added a comment to the post:

Hi, thanks for that link! We never heard about that campaign and hope to make more noise worldwide with #feelingthestreet! 
First of all, great news for Toyota UK's social marketing gurus that their expensive 'forming a band' campaign not only failed to make any impact amongst real people, but even the people who do the social media for the company in America apparently had no idea it happened.

More importantly, this was a post that really was about how the company had known their was an accelerator fault and not withdrawn the cars resulting in accidents and even death. Which they're thanking me for, almost as if they hadn't bothered to even click through to read the full story or something.

But even without clicking through to read the piece, the extract shown on Google+ had the words "god this sounds terrible" in it. So even if you didn't make it to the bit where - admittedly confusingly on a music blog - there's something about how Toyota let people have accidents rather than fix their cars, you can still see that I'm basically saying crowdsourcing bands is a terrible, terrible idea for a marketing campaign.

Which Toyota are thanking me for.

One further point: Given your accelerator problem saw some people being catapulted from their cars onto the pavement, you might want to rethink the "feeling the street" hashtag.


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Karen O, baby

Yes, Karen O is going to have a baby.

But more importantly, this:


Madonna: What's the opposite of clickbait?

Yeah, let's just pretend that this isn't happening, shall we?

Madonna
Pop star caught eating a man's butt
The photos showing the pop star leaking a man's buttocks just leaked!
It doesn't help that Nigeria's Pulse website seems to struggle with the idea of how buttplay actually works, but... yes, you'll find things are better if you just don't think about this again.


Monday, April 20, 2015

Charli XCX appears to be answering her own Smash Hits interview in her head

Talking to Maxim, Charli XCX cuts to the chase:

"Would I sleep in a bin? As long as I've had some champagne, then probably, yeah."
That's a brilliant pop star quote, but more importantly, she's just made it a hell of a lot easier for whoever is organising the Aitchison family Christmas this year: "excellent, so we can put Aunt Gemma on the sofa bed, as Charli's going to be happy out with the recycling so long as we pop a bottle of Moet down there. And cousin Dave can spoon with the dog again as he seemed to enjoy that last year."


Sunday, April 19, 2015

Mumford And Sons hate "Mumford And Sons"

There are many things that annoy people about Mumford And Sons. The name which makes them sound like a faux-artisan cheesemakers that's really owned by Tesco is one of them.

The band hate that, too:

[Marcus Mumford] said: ''I definitely regret the band name. If I'd known it was going to go this way I would have wanted to call it anything other than my last name.

''It's a ball-ache. We thought about changing it but it's a bit late now.''
It's not, you know.

It's possible that changing your name would cause your band to sink without trace, but let's not just focus on the upside.


This week just gone

April's most-read so far:

1. RIP: Jess Marquis
2. Video: Garbage's RSD release
3. Mick Hucknall turns out to have been a Tory all along
4. All Shook Up comes to iPlayer, but here's some bits not on iPlayer
5. Manilow marries; Telegraph suggest this is "curious"
6. RIP: Josie Jones
7. Kate Jackson has named her album
8. Sandi Thom insists the cheque was in the post
9. Coachella bans nearly everything excepy hats
10. Having sex with Leapy Lee


These were the interesting releases:


Slug - Ripe


Download Ripe



Wire - Wire


Download Wire - Wire



The Leisure Society - The Fine Art Of Hanging On




Calexico - Edge Of The Sun


Download Edge Of The Sun



Gallows - Desolation Sounds


Download Desolation Sounds