Boney M: classic or dud

DL, it's time for the most important work you'll ever do in your life. Find out about yourself. Get to know yourself. Enjoy life.

plus, jitterbug

However, for Bowie/Official Charts Company and other reasons, we're winding up TPL: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/we-cant-go-on-like-this.html

I haven't been following the Bowie hype - why does it break the rules?

The reason is that part of the single sales are tied in with promotion of his new album, i.e. buy the single now and get the album when it comes out. Even if these sales could be separated from actual "single sales" I don't see how (a) OCC can't separate them with the technology available to them and (b) they merit separation in the first place. Hype has been an occupational hazard in the singles chart throughout its entire existence, but I think this is a classic example of an old organisation unable to come to terms with new means of selling music, and if they're going to purposely leave out the nation's most popular song then why should their chart be taken remotely seriously?

I haven't paid attention to the singles chart in well over a decade now, so I can't really answer that one. So do people who buy the single get the album free?

No, people who buy the album get the single now, the rest of the album later. Or you can just buy the single on its own.

I agree with much of what you say about the OCC Marcello (and disagree with you on "Scream and Shout" but let's leave that). But it seems obvious that the singles chart, which started life as a promotional tool, is increasingly unnecessary and irrelevant as a promotional tool. Popular music has outgrown the Top of the Pops mentality, for better or worse. Where the form of "the chart" remains it's only as a nakedly dishonest structure for music TV or radio stations to mould playlists around. the dishonesty itself tho was probably always there.

^

So, this was similar to 'inserting a voucher into the sleeve of the 45" of old?

It's funny, rules change and then they change back..

One time, it was expressly forbidden to get your fan base to buy your single in specific shops to guarantee a high chart entry, then one day John Otway decided to do exactly that with a view to staying within the rules, and got a lot of help and advice from the chart compilers to do exactly that. I guess they liked him..

I can only remember two instances of voucher, one involved the Art of Noise and a press-out voucher on the sleeve of "Close to the Edit" (allowed), and the 12" of "Sheenah is a punk rocker" where you could send it off for a Ramones t-shirt. (for a price I think)

I 'lost faith' when 'Crazy' Gnarls Barkley got 'excluded' by the record company from the chart for no other reason than they 'said so' but continued to sell the single anyway and it had 'phantom' top 10 placings for a long time.

Still, the current method of selling things that the company does not have to 'manufacture' is something the industry has been pining for for decades...

i'm surprised there's no method of determining which copies were given away as freebies and which copies were expressly bought, but if there's not, then it seems pretty reasonable to exclude it from the chart imo

The OCC are saying that they can't distinguish album pre-order sales from single track sales, as the info isn't provided to them by the retailers - but if the retailers did provide the info, they would count the single sales towards the chart.

You'd have thought the record company would have looked into the workability of this whole thing in advance. Bit of a cock-up imo.

Would the individual singles sales be significant enough to make a decent entry in the chart anyway? January record sales are notoriously slow anyway. And didn't Bowie or someone in his organisation think of this? Is the same thing happening in the US, incidentally or are their charts based on airplay as well as sales? Sorry, a lot of questions there.

"The OCC are saying that they can't distinguish album pre-order sales from single track sales, as the info isn't provided to them by the retailers"

i don't think that's right. it's that if you pre-order the album on iTunes you get the single free. and those freebie numbers are being added to the column for actual sales of the single, and can't be disambiguated (supposedly). like i said, it seems like a reasonable decision to exclude the song if the figures are that polluted.

can't they just subtract the number of albums pre-sold? are they a bit thick or something?

I just think they need to consider compiling these charts on the basis of "songs" rather than "singles" as such. Maybe that gets us back to the pre-1952 days of sheet music sales but I'm not totally optimistic that streaming charts will remedy the situation.

In any case, it was the straw that broke this particular camel's back - there are, as I said, a number of other factors contributing to TPL's demise, not least my stroke a year ago but also the generally low number of hits the blog's been getting, the failure of the BiA book, etc. Time maybe to be doing something else with my life.

Well well well...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/10/david-bowie-single-eligible-charts?CMP=twt_fd

hray!

Put this on Twitter, but I'm thinking of what else to do with TPL; I think it would work as a book, like David Thomson's Have You Seen...? but with albums; one 500-word entry per page (different from but related to the blog) and No Received Opinions. Who would publish it, or would it be e-book/Kindle time?

i wd've thought eBooks might be the way to go in terms of stress vs accessibility?

Woebot's just published an eBook of his blog writings:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Big-Book-Woe-ebook/dp/B00AY0D4GI/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1357828940

I also saw that today. Have a lot of respect for young Matt Woebot; unlike me, he gets off his backside and gets things done. I should follow his example.

I wouldn't now publish CoM as a book because on the rare occasions I look at it now I just put my head in my hands and sigh: "Did I REALLY think that ten years ago?" But I'm sure TPL, given the right sort of push, would.

Speaking purely from a reader's POV, I'd prefer a physical copy, because a TPL book would have future value as a reference work. I imagine it would feel trickier to dip back into an e-book.

had a dream where boney m's "el lute" segued into leonard cohen singing "take this waltz" and it was just perfect

lol

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/19224896_1534004596673119_486616542806894906_n.jpg?oh=94405d3770789c47475b1a5b232c9c34&oe=59D3ED3B

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/boney-m-complete-9lp-vinyl-box/

boney m are good but vinyl is bad

Nightflight To Venus is a front to back flawless album and this is a hill I'm ready to die on

maybe you can draw strength from the fact that you won’t be dying alone up there

I shazammed something a few days ago that I thought might be some sort of clever disco throwback song but it turned out to be "Children of Paradise" by Boney M. I'd never heard that.

An updated (but still credited) version of "Rasputin" is currently #21 in the UK singles charts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZwYpAh3bXQ

(Oh, and Bimini Bon-Boulash from UK Drag Race S2 is in the video)

I hear this version of Rasputin in the wild every time I leave my house now (not that often but still)