Blog: We Were On The Radio!

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As our tube emerged from the tunnel at Leyton last night I got a txt message from Twitter, from someone saying we'd just been played on Gideon Coe's show. Excitedly I got on the interweb and found that Mr Coe had INDEED played My Grandad Is Nuts - you can listen again, it's on about half an hour in!

After the last couple of days' worth of WHITTERING this was rather a wonderful surprise, and a wave of RELIEF came over me. It's been on the radio! PHEW! I listened to the rest of the show and was amazed to find that, coincidentally, PROLAPSE were in session, making it a Tim Pattison THEME night. Oddly, Mr Coe had The June Brides on in session last night. He also, funnily enough, had the Occasionally Confused With Me RM Hubbert on later, and the Playing At Totally Acoustic Allo Darlin' on earlier too. The stars were obviously in ALIGNMENT!

Shortly after this I was alerted to a TWEET from a former Melody Maker journalist and Architect Of Romo saying "Sweet Baboo, MJ Hibbett there's a horrible wave of sub-TV Personalities/HMHB/Sidebottom shamateur tweeness on the rise." Now, fair enough, hearing My Grandad Is Nuts directly after Joy Division DOES make it sound possibly a BIT twee, but the rest of it is a bit WEIRD. I really LIKE Sweet Baboo, TV Personalities, HMHB and Frank Sidebottom - who in their right mind doesn't? - but a WAVE of bands sounding like us? Is there? WHERE?

I mean, there must be - if The Architect Of Romo says there's a genuine MOVEMENT happening, then it MUST be true, right?

The thing that really RANKLES is the word "shamateur", which I think is an accusation that a) we sound amateurish b) that's a bad thing c) we're doing it on purpose. For goodness sake, we spent THREE WHOLE YEARS working on this album trying to make it sound as good as possible, if it sounds in any way cack-handed or poorly done now then that's because it's AS GOOD AS WE CAN DO IT!! And of course, there's also the assumption in there that if somebody not APPROVED by Proper Journalists is doing something for fun, then it must be crap.

This last bit has been addressed on TWITTER today, with various people PILING IN and pointing out that old music weekly journalists used words like "twee" to denigrate acts that were happening without their permission. It's very true - i remember Belle & Sebastian being SLATED repeatedly by many of the dreary old print media, who couldn't cope with the idea that a band was becoming popular who didn't even do INTERVIEWS, let alone hung around in the same clubs as the journalists. That's why Belle & Sebastian STILL don't get the credit they deserve as a band that inspired HUNDREDS of other bands, labels, and internet groups to take up arms and start MAKING music, rather than waiting for the weekly newspapers to tell them what to like.

There's tons of other stuff around this (much of which has been addressed on twitter where, DELIGHTFULLY, the indie band people have been friendly, thoughtful and have a sense of humour, where The Other Side have been pompous, self-righteous and humourless) but I'm trying really hard to stay away from it... apart from, you know, writing a really long blog about it. You'll notice i've spent LOADS more time here RANTING about a tiny little poorly thought remark than a whole SLAB of National Radio Play, so in future I'm going to try and IGNORE trolling like that and stick to the good stuff.

Fingers crossed, let's see how I get on!

posted 11/1/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

The good news is - there's a wikipedia article about Romo that I'd not heard about before. This has got to be worth a look. Does it mention that one of Plastic Fantastic had previously been in Scorpio Rising? It'd better be thorough.
posted 11/1/2012 by Gaz

haha - Simon Price SO wrote that ridiculously long wikipedia article on Romo! Oh and he was heckling you FIFTEEN years ago at the Scala remember? Now he's saying you're "on the rise". Almost sounds like he's a bit scared of the fact?
posted 11/1/2012 by Francisco

"i remember Belle & Sebastian being SLATED repeatedly by many of the dreary old print media, who couldn't cope with the idea that a band was becoming popular who didn't even do INTERVIEWS, let alone hung around in the same clubs as the journalists. That's why Belle & Sebastian STILL don't get the credit they deserve as a band that inspired HUNDREDS of other bands, labels, and internet groups to take up arms and start MAKING music, rather than waiting for the weekly newspapers to tell them what to like." An excellent (and sadly not celebrated enough)point extremely well made.
posted 17/1/2012 by PhoeniX PhiL

Francisco: Simon Price didn't write the Romo article - I wrote (most of) it. (There was a short piece there but I properly expanded it in 2010 and have done various fixes since.) I've only met Simon once ever and we didn't get on, although both Orlando members and Xav from DexDexTer were nice people. Anyway Pricey didn't invent Romo - that honour goes to Paul "HiFi" Nugent and Kevin Wilde, th co-promoters of Club Skinny.
posted 5/9/2020 by Wikipedia User:Romomusicfan

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