Indie Stars: Buck Up Your Ideas!
See these fellas? They're called Empire Of The Sun. The chap with the hat on is Luke Steele, who proper indie-boffins will know better as the main man in the Sleepy Jackson. Empire Of The Sun is one of those side-projects that people in bands do from time to time, a bit like Andy from Razorlight's solo album, or Gary Barlow doing the Britannia High songs.
What you will notice from even the briefest glance is that they are not the Enemy, and the way they have opted to show this is to hit the dressing up box with a vengeance. Something which, frankly, not enough people in music do.
It's one thing to brag about singing to The Kids about things which happen on The Street, but there are other things, other people and other places to sing about, surely? And this is where dressing like idiots comes in very handy.
So, because they are displaying a bit of imagination, because they have ideas which are not rooted in everyday life, and because they are clearly Making The Effort, I decided to have a chat with Luke about all this stuff.
He's an extremely laid back man, it's fair to say. But there are ideas in here which may be food for thought to any band looking to make a bit of a splash...
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Here's the video for 'Walking On A Dream', which is out in January...
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* Right-click on the link, then select 'Save Target As...' and pick the folder on your PC that you'd like to download the file to.
Comment number 1.
At 29th Nov 2008, thranjax wrote:Hello,
This article has brought up a problem for me which I constantly run into when writing about music, is it is or is it are?
"Empire of the Sun IS one of those side-projects.."
"Empire of the Sun ARE also available in MySpace form".
And it gets worse when you need to use a possessive, e.g. "the jonas brothers' new album", or the jonas brothers's new album"?
Which is it, seriously?
Thranjax
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Comment number 2.
At 29th Nov 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:The rule of thumb for this would be that in the UK, we tend to refer to bands as a plural entity. This, I think, goes back to the days of the Beatles, Hollies etc, when all band names were basically plural in nature.
Hence "the Beatles are coming to town" reads better than "the Beatles is coming".
In America they've gone for the singular. I'm not sure if this is a more recent development or some quirk of US grammar. They would say
"Linkin Park is playing a gig tonight", rather than "Linkin Park are playing a gig".
However, in the case of the first sentence here, I referred to Empire of the Sun as a side-project, and it's the singular nature of the project that made me put "is".
The MySpace thing is about the band themselves, and following UK grammar, takes the plural, hence the "are".
I am perfectly prepared to be wrong about all this, of course. Grammar isn't as precise as people think!
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Comment number 3.
At 29th Nov 2008, Fraser McAlpine - wrote:Oh, and as for the possessive, I would always want to put "the new album by the Jonas Brothers", and avoid possessive apostrophes at all costs, in case it reads like you're spluttering!
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Comment number 4.
At 29th Nov 2008, thranjax wrote:Hi,
Thanks Fraser! I might have known that the Americans would be contrary, that may explain some of my confusion.
As for possessives, I even looked on the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú branding style guide, but that is strangely quiet on the subject of what to do with band names. Like you say, I think no one really knows what the rule is and just avoids the problem by rewording.
As a related aside, I seem to recall that movie posters advertising a film by Hitchcock had " 'The Birds' is Coming!" as a headline, which must have caused no end of headache to the copywriters in working out if it was ok or not, and whether the film title needed to be in inverted commas.
Thranjax
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Comment number 5.
At 30th Nov 2008, -RachelS- wrote:The possessive apostrophe thing is a bit odd, when you think about it... I seem to remember being taught that when a word ends in "s," you always put the apostrophe after the "s," whether the "s" is a plural or just the end of a name, as in "James' apples." But that doesn't represent how you say it aloud - everyone says, "James's apples."
But since then, I've read that you should actually write "James's," so I give up! Anyway, the Jonas Brothers are plural, so it definitely wouldn't be "Jonas Brothers's"... unless you're thinking of them as a single entitity, like the American group... and they are an American group... help! What do the Americans do?!
In any case, it can end up sounding ridiculous if you follow the grammar accurately: "Look at those two boys over there. The pair of them is larking about!"
... shiver me timbers, so they is!
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Comment number 6.
At 3rd Dec 2008, Kim-ley wrote:We would say "the Jonas Brothers have a new album out"!!! It sounds either like you are writing a very clunky sentence or stuttering.
And I took a lot of English classes at the university level, and I still have trouble with little niggly things like that. the rules are so all over the place.
Yeah, and I don't know anything about Empire of the Sun. :)
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