My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): Payday and Hey Hey 16K

< previous

next>

Putting out a single is GRATE. No matter what happens in the future, there'll ALWAYS be a space for the humble single, whether it's on Holographic 4D TESSERACT or beamed directly into the LIVING MIND, The Kids of The Future will always have room in their hearts (or, as I say, LIVING MINDS) for the stand-alone upbeat dance boogie hit.

Similarly, BANDS will always be drawn to the form, not just because there's something INTRINSICALLY SEXY about a single as a way of having ONE song penetrate the yielding face of ROCK, but also because it allows you to do a B-Side. B-Sides are ACE - unlike a Single or an Album Track, A B-side almost HAS to be a bit RUM, being EITHER something a bit DAFT and throwaway for a LARK OR an unusually TOUCHING song of which, one hopes, people will say "I can't BELIEVE it was just a b-side!" As in all things, The Beatles were masters of this, with "You Know My Name (look up the number)" and "This Boy" being perfect examples.

So yes, doing a single is GRATE for everybody, and doing so also means you can make out like you're having a Big Promotional Push For The Album. You always want to have a Big Promotional Push around the time you're releasing an album - it's an EXCELLENT excuse to do some gigs ("Yeah, we've got an album out, so there should be a lot of interest" is the CLASSIC Lie To Gig Promoters) and similarly is a Surprisingly Effective way of getting local radio Indie shows to play one of your songs, especially if you can get one of the aforesaid gigs in their catchment area. Above ALL of this, having a Big Promotional Push For The Album legally entitles you to a whole YEAR'S worth of complaining bitterly about not getting a review in the NME.

The only downside of releasing a single is that it tends to cost almost as much to put out as the album itself (especially on CD, when the physical product is pretty much IDENTICAL) but there's no WAY it's ever going to pay for itself. THUS, when we were gearing up to unleash our first album, "Say It With Words", on the world I tried TWO single release strategies, both designed to get round this cost ISSUE.

The first was to release an INTERNET single. Nowadays EVERYONE is doing this as a matter of course, but back in those primitive days of the last century it was UNHEARD OF. There are several bands who claim to have released the first ever Internet Single, but I say IT WAS US - "Hey Hey 16K" came out in October 1999 as a mini-site with two b-sides, proper front and back covers and... well, it was a proper single. And it was THE FIRST! I know Elastica did a thing around the same time where you could email them and they'd reply with a ZIP attachment containing AN mp3, but that's hardly the same thing is it? First? US!

Cunningly I'd chosen that particular song because, I REASONED, the sort of people who'd have ACCESS to the interweb would be EXACTLY the sort of people who'd be interested in a song about ZX Spectrums, and I was CORRECT. Again, it may seem strange now when everyone and their NAN is online, but back then the internet was the preserve of Academics, Computer Nerds and Scandinavian Indie Kids... and if you drew that demographic as a Venn Diagram you'd've found there was a LOT of coloured-in space in the middle.

The good thing about this is that we got a LOT of hits (in the thousands, which back then was about 10% of the entire interweb) but the downside was that... well, what with most people still wandering around the information super-second hand garage rather than on the actual HIGHWAY, it only ever got heard by the aforementioned Academics, Computer Nerds and Scandinavian Indie Kids.

HENCE - the OTHER plan, an actual VINYL single! As the marvellous Johnny Domino were releasing an album at the same time as us on AAS I REASONED that a Split Single featuring us and them, released a couple of months before both albums, would be the IDEAL way to publicise them. I also REASONED that getting someone else to pay for it would be an IDEAL way of cutting costs so GENEROUSLY decided to offer it to another record company. Yes, I am very kind like that.

The lucky target of my scheme was Tom From Reveal Records, who I chose for three reasons: I knew he was wanting to put some singles out; I knew he could afford to do so; and having got him to give us a gig supporting Half Man Half Biscuit simply by telling him it would be a Good Idea I thought the same tactic might work again. Remarkably, it DID, and soon we were sending off CDs to a pressing plant ready for MASTERING. In no time at all we had TEST PRESSINGS back for checking - in a fit of excitement I washed mine with washing up liquid and a SPONGE. I would not recommend this course of action.

Things took a turn for the FATIGUING when we actually had to put the records together. In a bid to have a Uniform Look for his releases (and also to save money), Tom had bought a huge load of cardboard record sleeves stamped with the Reveal Records logo, to be used for all singles. All we had to do was get some stickers printed and stick them on. Stupidly I thought "Well, if we're releasing 200 records, I only need to get 200 stickers made" and spent four NERVE WRACKING hours, PAINSTAKINGLY placing every single sticker JUST right, full of DREAD in case I got one wrong and had to go back and get a whole other batch.

When that was done I ran into another problem - Tom felt, understandably, that as he'd paid to manufacture the singles, he didn't want to pay out for anything else, including publicity. On the one hand, I saw his point - he ran a record shop, and as far as he was concerned records are for SELLING, and certainly not (as I'd always believed) for FOISTING on people when drunk. However, this meant that having reluctantly agreed to give us one each per band he expected to sell all 198 remaining copies for MONEY. After some DEBATE I ended up buying 25 copies off him, at cost price, just so that I could give some to The Validators and have a batch to send out to Radio stations.

Unfortunately this was all just AFTER all radio stations had completely given up on vinyl and gone over to CD, and just BEFORE they all realised this was daft and started buying record players again, so hardly anyone played it. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! It also meant that the only people who knew about the single were record shops, partly thanks to Tom's contacts and partly due to us having proper distribution, so although it DID get into the shops quite well, nobody knew that it was there to buy, and so a few months later they pretty much ALL came flying home, like 7 inch pigeons.

And so it was that my GRATE idea to publicise the album completely backfired - we soon discovered that, having sold precisely ZERO copies of our single, independent record shops were somewhat LESS likely to order copies of the album, so they didn't. Luckily, not many people wanted to buy it, otherwise we'd have been in real trouble!

< previous

next>