buy a friend
one of the most contentious things about the social networking sites is the friend/follower count. be honest… who has a friend with over a thousand friends and has thought to themselves “what the hell is wrong with me?”
some people like to pretend that they are happy with their 7 best friends on facebook and 3 followers on twitter but for us big-headed divas, this just will not do. not when, for just $450, you can have 10.000 followers on twitter. bargain! and for $397 you can buy 5000 fans and as they very sweetly point out on the website, that’s just $0.079 per fan. well worth it ,don’t you think?
i remember being horrified when i came across an automated friend adder for myspace but myspace sucks anyway, so what do you expect? these cheats take all the fun out of being an unpopular git. or having a band fan page that has been at a standstill for months. i love checking my stats and seeing them drop every week, don’t you? and being unrecognised for the blood, sweat and tears you put into promoting yourself is the whole point isn’t it? puts you firmly in your place when you attempt to compare yourself with the real celebs.
so i’ll go on blogging and tweeting into the ether, not caring if anyone is listening (apart from you lovely 5 readers here). back to nonsense blogging on our shiny new template….
ps anyone got $847 ?
mountain of love
if you haven’t done so yet, go and join mountain of love on facebook. our mate piers marsh is feverishly working away in the studio and has posted a tasty teaser on the fan page.
there is something deeply wonderful about friends working on creative endeavours and being fuc*!ng good at it. it’s not about whether they get famous (or even any recognition) for doing it. it’s the fact that they have the guts to do it anyway. in this case though, i’m pretty sure that this album is going to be big and us fans of mountain of love can boast that we heard it first.
best of luck piers.
we’re with you all the way
beware of the dog
contrary to popular (and malicious rumours), my recent absence was not due to checking into rehab. i was on holiday with a small and very amusing dog (i won’t link without guardian approval but if you follow bad mathematics on twitter, you’ll know who i’m talking about).
those who think that looking after a smaller (but perfectly proportioned) dog is easier than the larger variety, are sorely mistaken. i was taken on four or five walks a day, which is not easy on steep slopes in heels.
and what is it with people that think that all dogs will instantly love them if they stick their hands in their faces? how would they like it if an eighteen foot rugby player run up to them and shoved a mitt up their nose? i would be tempted to bite it off too!
and to all delivery people… when someone says “please wait, this dog is not friendly to strangers”, knocking loudly over and over again is not going to stop the barking and is not going to get the parcel delivered any quicker.
thank you to the aforementioned pet and guardian. the former for not biting me and being incredibly sweet and putting up with me for a while. the latter for trusting your precious little canine with me and for the twiglets (eaten for breakfast) and other goodies.
i’m back home now and hoping to get back into the habit of writing some nonsense each day. at the rate i’m going, i predict 6 readers by the end of the month. mind you, my crystal ball has been a bit cloudy in recent times. it seems i will be completely sober for the world cup final… (see here)
autopsy of a gig
the gig came and went way too fast and i have left it for a few days, as usual, to comment on it. i hate to write anything about what went down straight away. i’m usually too caught up in the emotion and adrenaline of the night to be coherent. i also don’t want to do an autopsy, as the title suggests, because it’s not particularly constructive to obsess over what could have been or should have been.
i’m happy about what we did and i think everyone who made it had fun and that’s what counts.
which brings me to my gripe…
why so few people ? our lovely friends and fans, who wade through hell and high water to get to many of our gigs (if not all, amazingly enough), are fabulous. i am still amazed by the strength of their support and i thank you for making it all worth it. other people had very good reasons why they couldn’t make it. and this rant is not about them.
what i am utterly pissed off about is that not one person came to after dark on the off chance of seeing a good band. i know we were competing against european music day (free concerts in virtually every main square in town) and it’s june and people are almost pathological about going inside in the summer but really…
is it too much to ask for a venue to actually advertise bands ? i don’t just mean us. i mean send out listings to magazines/newspapers/online. when i was touring years ago, our publicity department (one person) used to send out the press release and venues themselves would flood the city with advertising. isn’t it in the interests of the venue to get punters in? we do a pretty good job of selling ourselves about the place but i strongly believe that the reason why good bands fail here is because they are totally unsupported. venues judge you on who you can personally drag into your gig. i felt like saturday was a prime example. we were (probably) invited because it was a difficult night. if we’d got a big crowd there, we might have been given more saturdays in the future. right now, i think it’s more a case of “well, you didn’t get people there last time, so why should i put you on again. i’ll give you wednesday (a notoriously slow night).
i’m not asking for anything than i would expect any business person to do. it’s not like many venues are thriving! there are hardly any left.
but i don’t want to feel used. to fill in for your popular cover bands. or to bring in a few punters on a difficult night. or to be blamed for not succeeding, having worked hard to get a gig together.
i know we’re not cool. we’re not the next big five minute wonder. our music demands a little work on your part. you can’t just come to our gigs and have a few drinks, nod your head and feel like you had a brilliant night. we want to make you think. to listen to the words. to feel those moments when it feels like you’re going to fall off a cliff but somehow you don’t. but if you do, it’s into a thrilling freefall. our music is not for kids… or sheep.
having said that, we know how to have a fucking great time.
rant over for now.
we have to come up with new strategies. obviously free porn wasn’t enough to get people through the door… 😀
the day after the night before
i have just one word to say..
wow
here's another diva
go and check out this blog from our friend bea. top tips for divas who hate housework (don’t all divas hate housework ?). it’s quite new but there is already some very funny stuff… looking forward to more from bea.
the day after the day after the day after
so we are well and truly back to earth. feet planted fairly firmly on the ground.
i was in the supermarket the day before yesterday and no-one recognised me. so there you go. i am now full of cold and feeling horribly ill.. not the sign of a superstar… but there you go again.
we are getting ready for the next gig. an acoustic set with various great people like the velvoids, the ducky boyz and all. all our friends. scary prospect. very exciting and can’t wait.
i am feeling much better about the last gig. it wasn’t our best but that’s ok. you can’t always be at your best. i’ve listened to the live tracks and they’re very serious. none of the fun of the last gig but with a dimension that we can play with.
we suffered from a lack of people. that is something that we try to avoid but it does affect you.
i’ve been told off already because i didn’t do enough local publicity. next time right ?
i am working on the blog. trying to raise our profile! if you have any ideas please let me know.
postmortem
i am not going to be hard on myself or the band.
i refuse to be depressed because the gig was not our best ever.
i had a lot of fun and i think others did too.
i would have liked to have pulled a bigger audience but it wasn’t bad for a wednesday complete with transport strikes, blackouts and various other problems usual situations in greece.
my designer top (which probably cost more than all my clothes put together), that was a gift from my brilliant friends, probably upstaged me. but that’s ok. it is gorgeous.
it was great to see all our friends and die-hard fans.
the velvoids were fabulous. and are the loveliest people. happy birthday dora.
thank you katerina for coming and taking photographs. i can’t wait to see them.
looking forward to the next gig.
more from me soon.
myspace sucks
we made it to over 10,000 profile views on myspace without cheating.
and we’re going global. we had our first friends request from africa and we are looking forward to contact from asia (the only continent we haven’t reached)
myspace still sucks but we are not ready to give up on the whole thing just yet. why ? because to take over the world, you still have to have a myspace. and that’s our goal… to take over the world.
it’s painful to have to cross-post over there but to achieve anything in this world, you have to be willing to suffer.
see you in one week. at after dark !
last night was fabulous
i just want to thank each and every one of you who came last night for making it a night to remember. i haven’t laughed so much on stage for a while now and i was reminded again about why we do it. get up on stage i mean…. i know why we laugh ! thank you peter for the heckling that will go down in history. thank you vice for the first (and hopefully not last) strip show that we have ever had at a live gig. thank you to everyone who danced, who clapped, who cheered, who begged us for more, who gave us hugs and love and wonderful words after the gig. thank you to nikos at after dark for recording the whole thing. and thank you (honestly and seriously) to all our friends who support us as much when we are crap as when we are good. and thank you to the people who couldn’t be there because of various bugs and ailments but still sent their best wishes and were there in spirit.
we had a hard time building up to the gig. i’ll be honest… i wasn’t looking forward to it at all. i am not going to go into details, it’s enough to say that i am proud of the way the band handled the difficulties and i am bursting with love for all of the bm members. i love you all and look forward to many more years of madness and mayhem.
to everyone who asked why the set was so short… it wasn’t what we wanted. we were asked to play 30-40 minutes and that (being bad mathematics) is what we did. but thank you to everyone who asked for more. next time….
today i went to the supermarket and although i was just a civilian again, i was walking at least 2cm above the ground.
thank you
strangly enough after yesterdays post about the holy rug, i left it at after dark. that’s what happens when you have too much fun ! so we have to go tonight to pick it up. vicky b is playing so it really won’t be a drag to get our bottoms down there, pick up the rug and (probably) stay and hear some great music. what a voice. I wish …
life is hard.
a gig approaches
so i’ve been shopping because let’s face it, you don’t want to see me in the same old rubbish, do you? and what you wear on stage is the most important thing…
but seriously, what i wear on stage is significant. they are my stage/party clothes and give me a feel of diva-ishness™ that jeans and t-shirts just don’t do for me. after all i slob around most of the time in them and rarely think about dressing up.
i don’t wear make-up on a daily basis so putting a bit of slap on is something a bit different for me. and let’s face stage lights can make you look pretty bloody awful whether you like it or not.
so what’s with the bare feet i hear you scream very quietly from out there in blogland ? simple answer… i like it. long answer… well, it started because i am not really a shoe person and i had nothing to go with my skimpy outfit for our first gig. so instead of going out and spending a small fortune on appropriate shoes, i went barefoot. I also spend most of the year here in greece barefoot. i don’t like shoes. i remember as a kid, my mum nagging me to put on shoes because it was cold/my feet could get cut/proper people wear shoes. well, i didn’t grow out of the barefoot thing. friends have remarked on my horribly dirty feet because i do the gardening barefoot too. i love the feel of earth on my sole. they clean up well though. i have performed once with shoes. if you can name the venue where i was on stage with shoes, you get a prize. seriously, you will get a prize. answers on a postcard… just name the venue in the comments.
and what’s with the rug i hear you sigh weakly after reading all the above nonsense ? it ties in with the bare feet. now those of you who get up on stage from time to time (mad fools that we are) know that rock venues have a tendency to be full of smoke, booze and… glass ! so the rug started off as protection for my feet ! seriously. and it stuck pretty fast. now, it’s the holy rug and other bands we’ve played with actually get it and treat it with the utmost respect. our friends who we pay huge amounts of money to come and support us our die-hard fans have come to expect the rug and have even asked about it on the couple of occasions we didn’t use it. if you can name the couple of occasions (even i can’t remember but i’ll check), you get a prize. and if you can name the venue where we used a different rug, you are a stalker and need to get a life. 😀
enough of this waffling and nonsense, i have to focus. we have a gig tonight!
ps we love our friends and die-hard fans without exception. any offense caused in this post was totally unintentional. love you guys… seriously.
here it is…the holy rug
party animals
it was the big party on saturday for my birthday. i went down with the nasty bug on friday and for the first time as far as i remember i cut short a rehearsal and went to bed feeling totally lousy. despite feeling snotty and crap for most of the day, the party, the company (and copious amounts of wine) got me up and dancing till the small hours. i had a great time. it was a wonderful night of friendly, drunken fun. thanks everyone.
most of sunday was spent huddled in front of the telly with lots of hot soup and tea. busy week of rehearsals etc to prepare for the big day.
more tomorrow…