I Eat Music

Having bad ideas while on drugs is not a new thing, but I’m impressed that anyone could stay stoned long enough that this song not only got recorded but also had a video made for it. The rap section is a particular highlight.

Via Robert Popper

Channel 4 cut Shane MacGowan’s epic and entirely incoherent introduction to the video for his Haiti charity single, I Put A Spell On You, from their coverage of the NME Awards, which is a shame, because it was one of the highlights of the evening.

Here’s an interview he did with NME Radio’s Jon Hillcock earlier in the evening, when he was a bit more sober:

But, being able to drink dangerous quantities of alcohol is not Shane’s only talent. The group of musicians he managed to pull together for his cover of I Put A Spell On You, which includes Bobby Gillespie, Johnny Depp, Mick Jones, Glen Matlock and Paloma Faith, makes an impressive list. And the song itself is fantastic, as well. A charity single you could actually listen to? That doesn’t happen so often.

The single’s released on 8 Mar. You can pre-order it at 7Digital, here, or by texting SPELL (all in capitals) to 78789 (texts cost £1.50).

So, now that Rage Against The Machine have made it to Christmas number one, the conspiracy theorists have moved into overdrive. People all over the internet are devoting their Christmas holidays to uncovering the mechanics of the ’scam’. The claim being that the whole thing was planned and run by Sony Music.

“Look at all you people,” the conspiracy theorists say with a smug grin. “You all mindlessly bought into this campaign and you were just lining the pockets of Simon Cowell and his cronies.”

Of course, both Killing In The Name and X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s single The Climb were released and published by divisions of Sony Music and the company stands to gain the most financially. The same was true in last year’s unsuccessful campaign to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah to Christmas number one ahead of Alexandra Burke’s. As rats go, this one stinks.

Then, of course, there’s the question of who Jon and Tracy Morter, the people behind the RATM campaign, are. A couple of people who love music and hate X Factor? Or evil scheming marketing people? There are those who are determined to prove the latter, who will tell you that Simon Cowell’s claims that he offered them marketing jobs after they beat him on Sunday were empty, as they are already working for him in exactly that capacity. His apparent anger at the pair in the last few weeks wouldn’t be the first time that he’d used clunky misdirection to boost the popularity of something (Jedward being just one example).

I have a feeling these questions are going to hang around for some time. But should we care? Is it really that shocking that a company whose sole reason for existence is to sell records – gasp – might have tried to sell us some records.

It’s not the first supposedly grass roots campaign of this type, of course. And not the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other. Or even the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other run by the Morters (though, if you’re looking for consistency in the conspiracy theory, the Jeff Buckley campaign wasn’t them). All of which does make it easy to think this wasn’t as spontaneous as we’ve been led to believe.

Sure, either way, it’s all money in the bank for a major label, but this campaign had to be fought on major label terms. Yes, the message of Killing In The Name can be bent to fit the message of the campaign, and that is partly the reason it was a success, but it’s the major label money that was put behind it seventeen years ago that sealed the deal. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there in the world for whom that song meant something in their teens, and who also grew up at a time when the charts were an exciting and important part of pop culture. What’s more, they’ve also had time to grow nostalgic for both of those things. A more worthy, independent artist is unlikely to have had the fanbase of the right size and age to pull this off.

Even if it was orchestrated by Sony, it still needed that public feeling to work. And the intent of all those people was to stop X Factor’s monopoly of the Christmas number one and make the charts more fun in the process. On those terms, I’d say it was a job done. I don’t think many went in without knowing that both acts were signed to the same label. No one thought they were supporting independent music, surely. It was just something half a million people thought might be funny.

That’s why I forked out 29p. I loved Rage Against The Machine when I was a teenager, my entire childhood was mainly planned around hearing the charts on the radio on Sunday and watching Top Of The Pops on Thursday or Friday, and I think that inappropriate swearing is funny. I don’t think I stuck it to Simon Cowell and I don’t think the charts will be changed by this. Joe McElderry will almost certainly be at number one this Sunday, and he’ll probably be followed by something equally tedious at some point in January. But I don’t care that much.

I did consider the possibility that Sony could be behind the whole thing, but I went and bought the song anyway. If anything, I think this is the sort of thing the record labels should be doing all the time. If all music marketing enthused people like this, maybe things would be going a bit better for them.

Okay, if it turns out the Morters were in the employ of Sony (and I’m still pretty sure they weren’t), all those claims of independence are going to irritate a lot of people. But it’s marketing, people. Even if they were acting alone, they were still running a marketing campaign. Companies lie to you every day and some of them lie to you about things that actually matter.

Bill Hicks used to come on stage to Killing In The Name and rant about the manufactured pop acts of the day, like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, in a routine that peaked with a scream of “PLAY FROM YOUR FUCKING HEART!” He didn’t care that both Rage Against The Machine and those pop acts were products of the major label system. Still, he also used to say, “If you work in marketing or advertising – kill yourself.”

[Taken from this morning's CMU Daily]

Hey there people, welcome to the CMU Daily for this lovely sunny Monday morning (feel free to cross out ’sunny’ and ‘morning’ if neither of these are true wherever it is that you’re situated, though we can’t be held liable for any Tipp-Ex or permanent marker applied to PC screens). There’s a note here at the top of the CMU Daily to let you know about two big developments happened around these parts this week.

First, CMU has a brand new editor. Well, not ‘brand new’, in that it’s Andy Malt, who has been working on CMU for eighteen months now. But it’s as of today that he does so with the editor hat on. Which is a very fetching hat to wear. If you like mauve. Yes, Andy, who already edits both of CMU’s weekly bulletins – the CMU Weekly and Remix Update – will now be heading up all of our editorial operations, including this here Daily bulletin, the most read daily news bulletin in the UK music business.

In case you’re wondering what this means for me and my fellow former editor Caro – well, we’ll still be here, as co-Publishers of all things CMU and co-directors of all things UnLimited Media. I will also continue to have a daily involvement in CMU editorial as Business Editor, continuing to oversee all of our music and media business coverage, including this week’s launch of Sky Songs and the latest shenanigans in The Pirate Bay saga. I’ve also written today’s Courtney Love story, though this is a blatant step outside my new remit, and may as yet prove controversial. Caro, by the way, is not giving up her editorial ways; she will be editing a brand new UnLimited service of which we will talk more in a future Daily.

A lot has happened here at CMU in the last twelve months, and even more is going to be happening in the next year. Andy has played a key role in these developments, and we’re all excited about him expanding his editorial role as we head towards 2010. Andy shares mine and Caro’s passion for great new music, our fascination with the way the modern music business works, and our slightly irreverent outlook on the world. Basically, your daily dose of all things music is in safe hands.

Talking about more happenings in the next year, that brings us to development number two. We are in the process of ‘refreshing’ theCMUwebsite.com, and the refreshed site will slowly emerge this week before going properly live next Monday. Part of that refreshed website is the CMU NewsBlog, which will present all the stories that appear in the CMU Daily in an easy-to-navigate fashion for those who prefer their music news on a website rather than in a daily e-bulletin. The NewsBlog will also make it easier to link directly to CMU stories, and means that for the first time you can subscribe to CMU, or sections of CMU, via RSS. Check the blog at newsblog.theCMUwebsite.com. And watch the new site materialise at www.theCMUwebsite.com.

And here ends the big developments. For now. Expect more soon. Meanwhile, let’s get on with the CMU Daily. Right now.

Chris Cooke
Co-Publisher, CMU Daily

Things for the team behind The Remix on Xfm were all a bit exciting last Friday night. Shortly before going on air, we heard that Akira The Don, who had been working hard on his All Time Top Ten mix for three straight days, was going to be close to Wizard’s record of squeezing 204 tracks into his ten minutes of Xfm airtime.

Now, when Wizard broke that record back in May, we pretty much gave up on the idea of it being broken any time soon. We thought it would take years. The competitive element, we felt, had been removed, because he’d just set the bar too high. Even though Wrongtom still claims he could do a 1000 track ten minute mix. We’ve advised him not to try, for the sake of his health.

But when Akira announced that he wouldn’t be with us in time for the usual 10.30pm slot, things started looking more interesting. He’d been working on the mix almost up until the point we went on air and he’d managed to cram a few more tracks in. So, when he finally arrived in the studio brandishing alcohol and a large grin, we knew something good was about to happen. And happen it did.

Yes, we have a brand new record – 210 tracks in ten minutes. Actually, it was more than that, but it was 210 recognisable tracks with many, many more tiny samples tucked away filling out any space there might have been left.

Akira has put together this YouTube video to accompany the mix:

Here’s the current leaderboard:

1. Akira The Don – 210 tracks
2. Wizard – 204 tracks
3. Wrongtom – 100 tracks [download]
4. Stereo:Type – 64 tracks
5. Slyde – 54 tracks