Islet live. Photo by @edhombre
I’m at Un-Convention in Swansea this weekend. Lots of talk with lots of interesting people about the independent and grassroots DIY music sector. It’s held in a cafe/bar called Monkey in the central city, and in the evening, bands play.
I’m here with a bunch of people I know from these sorts of things – and I’ve been spending a fair bit of time hanging with the very clever Ben Walker (@ihatemornings), who you know as the guy who wrote the Twitter song.
One band played last night that blew me away. And I don’t just mean I liked them, or really loved their gig. They BLEW. ME. AWAY. I can’t remember being this excited by a band in years. Possibly decades.
Ben was excited too. We came back downstairs, had a beer, and raved about how amazing they are. We were instant fans. So we went straight online and looked them up.
We Googled: “Islet band Cardiff” and various other combinations of the band name and their city of origin. Nothing. They’d played one support gig for Shonen Knife (how cool is that?!) – but no website, no MySpace, no nothing.
And we were stuck. They had no CDs for sale. Nothing we could do. We just didn’t know how to be Islet fans.
So we made them a fan site…
What we did
In fact, what we did was very simple – and we’d encourage anybody else with an internet connection who has the same Road to Damascus experience with a band that we had to try something along these lines.
1) Posterous
We set up a Posterous account. It’s really simple – and it means that anything we want to put up on the blog, anything the band wants to put up on the blog, or anything that any other fan wants to put up on the blog can be done with a simple email.
2) Domain
We found a domain name (http://thisisislet.com) that we thought was good, and paid pretty much exactly what it would have cost to buy their CD, had they had one for sale. By following some very simple instructions on the domain provider’s site, and on the Posterous site, we made the URL point at the Posterous page.
3) YouTube
I had my Flip camera handy, and had shot some footage of the gig. We also collared the band on their way out the door, asked them to sit down on the stairs and introduce themselves. Upload the video to Youtube, email the link to Posterous – and Bob’s your uncle.
4) Flickr
Someone else at the gig had a flash looking camera, and he’d been taking some shots. We asked him to send us the photos, and he tweeted us a link to the Flickr set he’d made. So we used FlickrSlidr.com to make a nice, compatible version of the slideshow, and emailed that to Posterous. Job done.
5) Words
I wrote a quick review of the gig, and emailed it to the Posterous email account. Again – very simple, and there it is.
Really simple stuff. We made it, tweeted about it and got excited about it. Less than 24 hours later, close to 1000 people have visited, checked out the band and have, at least, now heard of the amazing band that is Islet.
The band were a bit bewildered, and possibly a little bit frightened by it all as it happened. They thought we were from the future. But we’re not. This is what can happen now, and it can happen easily.
So the big question is… are YOU amazing enough for your fans to be inspired to do something simple and thankful like that?
UPDATE: We just made them a t-shirt on Spreadshirt. Buy it here – all profits go straight to the band! (and of course, you could do the same yourself – it’s really simple).
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[...] Andrew Dubber, one of the foremost tangential thinkers and writer of a great blog “New Musical Strategies” and Ben Walker (writer of “The Twitter Song” ) were somewhat distraught at this and decided to make Islet a website right there and then: ThisIsIslet.com (Read more about how the ThisIsIslet site was made here) [...]
10 Comments
Nice one Ben and Andrew!
So unusual to hear of a really good band at a point where they have no recordings and no web history at all. Bill Drummond would probably have it that the fact of having no recordings at all makes Islet themselves from the future: http://freshonthenet.co.uk/?p=151
So maybe there’d be more mileage for them in NOT taking up the offer of free recording time – at least for the present. The Bays http://www.thebays.com/profiles.html have have had a ten year career without ever making a record or putting up tracks on MySpace and it gives them a singular mystique. It might be much more exciting if live gigs (and in due course bootlegs) were the ONLY wau of hearing Islet.
The other thing that’s odd about this situation of a band’s profile having gone from 0-60 almost literally overnight is that we haven’t (yet) heard anything from the musicians themselves other than on the video. We’re busily and publicly talking the talk without the involvement of those who’ll actually have to walk the walk. What do THEY actually want to happen?
Economics and internal politics at 6 Music means I can’t snap my fingers and get em a session on either of my shows anytime soon – the way to go for that is DEFINTELY to involve Adam Walton at BBC Wales http://adamthomaswalton.co.uk/ and Bethan Elfyn at Radio One Wales http://www.myspace.com/bethanelfyn at the earliest opportunity. This is exactly their area.
And frankly if you have Adam and Bethan on board it’s then only a short leap to involving Huw Stephens at Radio 1 Introducing and major national airplay. All they have to be is good – and you’ve assured us they are.
The other thing you could do for them in the meantime would be to use the wonders of the web to actually get them gigs. A real lot of gigs and get them out there playing live and winning people over face to face, so that a demand builds up. It’ll work wonders for the band as a unit too. These don’t have to be on the conventional barfly-style indie club/pub circuit which forces artists to go through a lot of demeaning crap. The gigs could be as unconventional as everything else. No reason why individuals supporting this project can’t wheedle around put them on in a local library or art gallery or museum, or arts centre foyer, or a scout hut, church hall – or simply in their living room with all the furniture pushed back and forty mates and neighbours crammed in to see them.
Tour first, record later.
@Tom Robinson:
PS Just seen the billing – if they’ve been presented by SWN and Huw Stephens was DJing that night he’s clearly already on the case. The road to Maida Vale beckons…
That drum says TLR … i am [tlr].
HEEHEE!
[tlr]
Really? Blown Away?…I gave the songs (videos) a few listens….seemed a bit pretentious to me. There were some creative arrangements, I’ll give them that. But the whole rolling-around-on-the-floor-because-I’m-such-an-ARTIST!- vibe really turns me off. It feels like the blank pure white canvas thing…it’s art!…dunno, I’d rather see music/art coming straight from the heart and soul….thems my two cents…I know you didn’t really ask for them…and I also know musical taste and religion are the two things you can’t ever argue….Maybe it freaked me out a bit because that’s not an approach I use, but it yielded such devoted fans for them. I’m gonna give it another listen/look to try and figure it out…
thanks for the heads-up regarding Posterous, not heard of it before, already got a blog of all the films i’m making for local (shrewsbury) bands up in about 20 minutes. very handy, that
I am based in Ireland and work with allot of independent / DIY bands and artists and I am so taken a back when they come to me for advice to hear discover they haven’t even done the basics i.e. Have a myspace or if they do it is tired and out of date, don’t sell CD’s at shows or even collect e-mail addresses to build and stay connected with their fan base, us twitter/facebook pages or bandcamp.com.
Steps as see them for any DIY artist!
Write, Rehearse, Gig, Record, Gig, Build and Interact…. Sounds simple but its not….
Tools like bandcamp.com which enables an artist to sell at a fixed price or throw it open to the fan to set the price. The act can also give the track away for free in exchange for an e-mail address which I think in the long term is the better option. OH ya, you can print off download codes for tracks and hand them out at shows and again the user has to give an e-mail address in exchange….
The one tool I am having trouble finding is a good Myspace profile editor. For those of us who are not CCS or HTML gurus we need a strong tool that will enable us to design strong layouts which we can change and edit quickly to reflect an event. If you know of one please do let me know ASAP.
Well that’s my two cent worth… I feel allot better know…….
Agreed on the MySpace editor bit above. Don’t know that you’ve done this band any favors; they seem rather unseasoned to my (admittedly jaded) ear. The first phonecam video nearly put me off them entirely, but I could get a little sense of what inspired the authors from the Vimeo-based clip.Still, living in a university town, I’ve seen and heard forty-odd dozen bands as good or better in basements-that never left those basements, but hey, thanks for the Posterus tip. ;-).
Boo on slow to nonexistant updates on NMS..
YAY on frequent NMS updates until the end of time.
praise dub.
hey Ben and Andrew – thought you’d be interested in my preview of Islet http://ilostifound.wordpress.com/ – including them in my Swn piece for virtualfestivals.com tomorrow as well
great work setting up the islet site! Kai x
almost 2 months and no new post? :( I used to come here almost daily…