My infallibile music advice is to ignore fashionable bands in favour of good ones. There is no correlation between hype and quality.

What, no correlation at all? The Beatles became more successful than Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Titch through mere coincidence? That Menswear and Gay Dad failed to become world-straddling stadium rock gods had nothing to do with the quality of their output?

And you're hopelessly out of touch if you think The Verve are particularly fashionable just now.

They may not get the same level of hype as Pete bloody Docherty, but The Verve are still an awful lot more fashionable than just about every band I've seen live this year

And "There's no correlation" means just that. Everyone can name the odd crap band that got hyped but still flopped, or someone both critically acclaimed and hugely successful. But there are just as many great bands trudging round the toilet circuit, or mediocre talents getting massive promotion.

> Everyone can name ... someone both critically acclaimed and hugely successful.

In other words, there is some correlation between hype and quality.

No - imagine a scatter diagram. X axis=hype. Y axis=quality. What I'm trying to say is that there will be no discernable pattern.

Yes, I understood what you were saying, thanks. What I was pointing out was that you have confused "no correlation" with "unreliable correlation".

Here's an illustration for you. You say that you "ignore fashionable bands in favour of good ones." Great. So how do you find these good bands? You just turn up to the rehearsals of lots of unsigned bands throughout Britain to see which ones are good? No, of course not. I imagine you go to gigs, listen to radio stations and podcasts, and browse the Web, Myspace perhaps. And I'm guessing that a lot of these unfashionable bands you listen to are producing singles and albums for you to listen to. Well, at the stage bands have reached at the point you discover them, the popularity-based quality filters have already kicked in. You may think you're buying a CD by a band who've had no hype at all, but I suggest you have no idea of the amount of hype necessary to get to the stage where they can produce a CD (assuming the CD's being sold in shops, that is). Even if the band have put out the CD without the help of a record company, persuading a shop to stock it generally involves a certain amount of popularity. Getting a decent gig is a major pain in the arse, so either you're going to decent venues to see bands who've built up enough hype to persuade the venue to give them a slot, or you're going to pay-to-play gigs to see bands who are good enough at the publicity machine to make such gigs viable. As for the Web, you either browse it completely randomly or you follow recommendations and links. And then there's the money: making music is expensive enough that musicians who don't get some positive feedback -- i.e. popularity, or hype -- tend to give up. There is the very occasional musician out there who needs no popularity to keep going because he's doing it all on daddy's credit card, but those guys are usually unutterably awful. Even the very worst amateurs on Myspace have already made it through the first hype-based quality filters, in that they've got enough encouragement to go to the effort of recording stuff and uploading it. They may be awful, but the ones who didn't get that far were even worse.

On a slight tangent, I suspect you are unaware that record companies have specialist marketing departments whose job is to create quiet "this band have no hype" hype, especially so that people like you will get into them.

I've found music-related blogs and online discussion forums have pointed me at far more good music than I can actually keep up with, and random music fans tend to have a better hit-rate than so-called professional critics.

And I'm not as ignorant as you seem to think I am. Yes, I am fully aware how these 'MySpace phenomena' are hyped.

Can't remember who said it, but this quote is very true. "If you make no effort to seek out music by yourself, the only music you will have is that which somebody else wants you to hear".

> I've found music-related blogs and online discussion forums have pointed me at far more good music than I can actually keep up with, and random music fans tend to have a better hit-rate than so-called professional critics.

In other words, there is a correlation between hype and quality. A correlation upon which you rely to find music that you like.


> Yes, I am fully aware how these 'MySpace phenomena' are hyped.

I wasn't talking about the Myspace phenomena. I was talking about the deliberate non-phenomena. It is in the interests of record companies to maintain an "underground" scene in order to obtain money from music fans who like to feel they're listening to the unpopular undiscovered stuff that the plebs don't know about. So they do.


> "If you make no effort to seek out music by yourself, the only music you will have is that which somebody else wants you to hear".

Sure, that's very true. Thing is, if you make lots of effort to seek out music by yourself, the only music you will have is still that which somebody else wants you to hear. Obviously. The only method of discovering music that doesn't boil down to "because someone else wants you to hear it" is to make it yourself. Again, obviously.


Out of interest, have you listened to my band yet? I wouldn't want to be caught hyping, but hey. We're dead underground. Or just dead.

If you're just going to argue about semantics, I'm done...

You obviously haven't a clue about music if your saying the verve are basically crap and were crap live in Belfast. Total belfast fuckwit by the sounds of it.

Ah, the classic "arguing about semantics" defense. Protagonist says something wildly incorrect, someone points it out, so protagonist accuses them of merely engaging in petty quibbles about the meanings of words. That's the meanings of the words that the protagonist chose to use to express their thoughts. Quite how you're supposed to argue with a person's point of view without addressing the meaning of the words they use to express it, I've never quite grasped.


Richard, you obviously haven't a clue about reading comprehension if you think that I said that the Verve are basically crap.