Posted By: Leigh TV Well, that stirred up a hornets nest didn't it!! Firstly, a massive thank you to you all out there who have been campaigning
on our behalf to get things changed. I'm not sure how effective this will turn
out to be, indeed a few of you have expressed fears to me that it could
ultimately backfire and strengthen others determination to ignore the band. But
a very large cheers for trying !!!!!
First point. Radio 1 have had the single for about 7 weeks, so to try and say
they didn't play it because it has been cancelled is bo**ocks. The decision to
shelve it only came about 1 week before the release, and solely because they had
ignored it so completely (Steve Lamacq excepted - Cheers, mate!!)
It was Papillons decision to cancel the release, and frankly we do not blame
them in the circumstances. They had just found out that a band they loved and
had just invested heavily in were to be ignored by the ONLY national Fm pop
radio station, the station that shapes virtually every other playlist in the UK,
be it local radio, TV, MTV, VH1 etc. etc. Apparently an executive decision had
been made that Terrorvision, along with a list of other guitar bands popular
throughout the '90's were deemed irrelevant and no longer popular with Radio 1's
target audience. Now this is their opinion and there is very little the band or
the record company can do to alter this. Believe you me, every time we have
released a single over the last 10 years we go to the ends of the earth to try
get it onto Radio 1, so that the general public can hear it, decide if they like
it, and then go out and buy it, so we can make enough money to pay the rent,
feed the nippers and go out on tour and play them all to you lot, the real fans
!! And to be fair, they have supported the band pretty well over the years,
Tequila got so much hammer even we got fed up of hearing it!!
So because of all this, not enough shops wanted to take enough copies of the
single to make it worthwhile releasing. Even if 20, 000 people wanted to buy the
single, there would have only been, say, 3,000 in the shops.... maybe scraping
into the top 75 if we were lucky. Papillon lose yet more money, no one really
gets to hear thesingle, and consequently we don't get interest in the album
going again (which is what singles are for). Listen, there really is no one to
blame on'our' side of things. Everyone is as shocked and pi**ed off about it as
us. And remember lots of other bands are or have been going through the same
thing of late.
What I believe is wrong is not what someones opinion is of our band, more
that this one station can wield so much power over the music business.
Monopolies commision anyone ???? It's probably this that we should all be
ranting against if anything.
I think that should answer most of the questions posed..... as for the
band....well we are looking at all the options now left open to us, and we're
going to take time to decide were to go next.
In the meantime we have a couple of gigs in the pipeline to look forward to
(Bulldog Bash etc.), and you lot will be notified first once we get confirmed
details of these. So see you down the front, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrock on, ya muthafu***rs
and a million thanks all over again !!
Love
Date: Friday, 4 May 2001, at 1:21 a.m.
Evening all,
I have received loads of personal e mails regarding the cancellation of the
'Fists of Fury' single, some to which I have replied at length, but it appears
we need to fill everyone in a little more on what has been happening.
TERRORVISION