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November 14, 2005
Arctic Monkeys, Buzz, Craigslist delusions
The British buzz machine (always much more excited and prone to excitable statements such as "ROCK IS BACK" and "BEST BAND EVER!") is currently salivating at web-born sensation - The Arctic Monkeys. The group has scored a #1 hit in the UK with "I Bet You Look Good on the dancefloor." The story goes like this, postings on a Libertines message board begins hyping up new band called Arctic Monkeys, fans start talking about them. Demos spread around the web and suddenly thousands of music kids are in a frenzy about the group. They play shows in front of thousands of fans, without a record deal, traditional promotion, or even an album! A member of the band weighs in:
“What’s happened has been proper hysterical.” grins lead singer/guitarist Alex Turner, acknowledging the hurricane of hero worship his band have been swept up by in the last few months. “If I say ‘phenomenon’ it sounds like I’m right up my own arse, but we’d be daft to act like we didn’t realise how incredible the last year’s been. When it all started we were like ‘fucking hell, what’s going off here?’”
If this story sounds familiar, its because you heard it already. Blog praise and an influential review on Pitchfork Media launched Clap Your Hands Say Yeah as 2005's official indie rock darlings, deservingly so.
The jury is still out on these Arctic Monkeys, but the Merry Swankster is a fan of "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," . That being said, WTFs all around for the awful band name.
From the See You in 2... blog comes a Guardian article discussing both CYHSY and the Arctic Monkeys rise on the "bleeding edge of a new musical revolution."
Arctic Monkeys entered the charts at number one with I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor. They had just played their second London gig, before an audience of 3,000. Even by the hyper-speed standards of modern rock and pop, this was a remarkable rise, apparently made possible only because the band had posted their songs on their website and thus built up a vast virtual fanbase before even securing a record deal.
And this:
"[T]he notion of the internet as a hotbed of new talent has been further bolstered by the story of a Brooklyn-based quintet called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. They self-released their Talking Heads-influenced debut album via their website and managed to shift 25,000 copies after a glowing review on another website.
Read the rest of the article here.
//Listen and watch Arctic Monkeys on BBC Collective.
Sidenote to be filed under Hype gone terribly wrong or ambitious bastard in NYC.
Tags: Arctic Monkeys, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Guerrilla Marketing, craigslist
Posted by Merry Swankster at November 14, 2005 02:23 PM
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Comments
Hi. Thanks for dropping by my blog and leading me here, I've enjoyed reading your posts with my morning coffee.
The Arctic Monkeys (aargh, that is such a rubbish name) really caught me by suprise. Like you said, we in the UK will hype any band that can hold four chords together, but the speed with which the Monkeys emerged was definitely something different. Although I'm not exactly blown away by the song, it's refreshing to have something "good" at no. 1 of our much maligned charts and hopefully will be a sign of things to come in the music business as a whole.
Posted by: Gary Parsons at November 15, 2005 12:43 AM
