Screaming Into The Abyss

Already six months after my last technically-qualified haircut, some might say I’d started to resemble a slightly less-approachable 1955 version of Dr. Emmett Brown, (although in reality I’m nearer in age to his 1985 self.) The evidence in the smashing little video I recently made for the latest Bikini Test Failure single makes it clear my Hugh Grant-esque, youthful good looks are now a distant memory. Post-session with my Amazon-purchased clippers and wearing my severe, black-framed Ray-Ban varifocals, the best I can aspire to these days is a Once-In-A-Lifetime-era David Byrne.

Said single, “Are We Having A Good Time Yet?” has been out and about for the nominal couple of months and whilst it is essentially a remake/remaster of a BTF golden oldie, to the current audience, some of whom were barely born when it was first released, it’s effectively a “new” single and I treated it as such when approaching radio stations and music reviewers. 

After the hard slog it took to research and contact these folk in March-April about the previous single “Uncomplimentary”, I’d imagined those weeks of effort might be compressible into a few days of swift communication this time around, but whilst information about US radio is plentiful, with details of specific “Music Directors”, the patchy nature of my UK files led me back to re-research stations down to DJ and individual show level; if “Radio Knutsford” has an alt.rock show at 11pm on a Wednesday evening but no Head of Music to speak to nor serviceable submission system, I need to try and find the actual human behind it. Tricky and very time-consuming. However, whether contacts were firm or fuzzy, it’s been a universally poor response across the board.

I’ve chosen tonight to close this promotional effort and take stock. Simpler than it sounds, but I’ve picked some representative measures and counted up the plays, views, reviews, friendly radio stations and stuck them in a spreadsheet in an attempt to glean any pattern of “progress” since “Uncomplimentary”.

Sad to say, whilst views of my lovely homemade video compare favourably with “Uncomplimentary” at this point in its cycle, and streams, followers and written reviews are up, that old-fashioned, most-fundamental measure of promotional success, “radio plays” barely crept beyond single figures both here and abroad.

Granted, there’s a lot going on in the world at the moment taking people’s attention away from the latest Bikini Test Failure masterpiece, but even so, my initial “comeback”, zero-level-starter single ("Uncomplimentary") had twice as much confirmed radio attention.  

“Are We Having A Good Time Yet?” originally featured on the first Bikini Test Failure CD, the “Nobody Knows Anything EP” released in 2001. When promoted in the shadow of the esoteric title song, “Nobody Knows Anything”, “AWHAGTY” garnered plays on around four HUNDRED radio stations, playlisted on many of them for several weeks. I’ve written here before about shows that once boasted tens of thousands of listeners, now taking their shoes and socks off to count them on fingers and toes. But wake up, James! This is the new “normal” after all!

Throughout August, I listened to Daniel Kitson’s excellent midnight show on Resonance FM. One night, broadcasting via laptop and phone from his campervan parked outside his friend, poet Tim Key's house, Tim mocked Daniel for knowing he had “at least 69 listeners” (based on the emails he’d received when asking earlier if the signal was working.) 

“Screaming into the abyss!” declared Tim. Good name for a Bikini Test Failure album.