OK - I got a reply from those nice people at "Rough Guides" and surprisingly they are gagging for an entry on B&S (well sort of). Peter Miller's submitted a first draft and no-one else sent any more boo hiss. I think it would be GREAT if this list sent a "combined" entry to Rough Guides, got it published under the list's name rather than an individual and sent the 25 quid to David's poor PC. But to do that we need more contributions, corrections and maybe a bit more band history. Can anyone help? Any old rubbish happily accepted as long as you're all prepared for some fascist editing in the long run. I'll send on Peter's first draft again in a minute - here's the reply from Mr Rough Guides to inspire you. Paul mailto:owner-sinister@majordomo.net ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 17:35:27 +0100 From: Alan Spicer <aspicer@roughguides.co.uk> Reply-To: al@roughguides.co.uk To: psm@Majordomo.net Subject: Re: [Fwd: Belle and Sebastian] Hiya Paul, thanks for dropping by...
I'm mailing you to ask whether you would be interested in a submission to the Rough Guide about the band "Belle and Sebastian"?
Yup!
I know this all depends on the quality of the submission(!) but I would like to know what your criteria are for inclusion for the band themselves?
Our criteria are sometimes rigid, though more often made up on the spot...I've been on the lookout for a B&S bio for sometime...so they've passed the first hurdle.
I am asking because I run the mailing list for the band (details at
Oho! Any chance of a freebie CD then? [shameless scrounge I know, but the record companies are so tight fisted these days you have to be Paul Du Noyer to even get on the list]
). There's a suggestion that members on the list submit an entry to your esteemed publication, which seems to support the best in music just now.
[preen preen] Ta!
We'd like to see an entry, and we'd like to see a collaborative effort - currently 260 people on the mailing list, many of whom know more than the band themselves and some wonderful writers - we are currently judging a writing competition. So we might also want the submission to be from the list itself rather than an individual - IF that's possible.
Oh but that'd be marvellous...I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the 25-quid fee though...perhaps you and I should invest it in drink?
Anyway can you advise whether we should try? It's understood that there's no guarantee of acceptance but I suppose I'd just like to know if we'd be ruled out from the beginning...
Try, old thing try...here's the blurb I send to all my wannabes, edit away as you wish but there's the rough idea... =================================================== ROUGH GUIDE TO ROCK II - THE AWFUL TRUTH Essentially, you'll be writing for nothing except the glory of seeing your name and writing on our site. If you can parlay that up into a full-time career, great, but you won't get rich writing for Rough Guides. So....what happens next? Well, you write up your piece - preferably in Word or something similar so you can email it to me - and let me have it at this email address or the snailmail address at the end of this message. Then I do a swift edit on the piece to polish it up and to justify my paycheck. The edited version is submitted to you for your approval and, once we're both happy, it goes online. At this stage, you go tell all your friends and everybody gets to see your name on the WWW (wow!). Eventually, assuming the entry makes it into the printed version of the book (which won't be published till '98 at the earliest) you get paid the princely sum of $40/�25 and we get all the rights. Here are a few guidelines If you go online to http://www.roughguides.com/rock/entries/BUZZCOCKS.html, I've been using that as a reference. You might want to do a bit of browsing around from http://www.roughguides.com/rock to get a feel for the style we like and check out a few of the other entries. First up, apart from the name of the band, we need born/died or formed/split up dates. Next up, if you can come up with a great quote about or by the band (except lyrics) that would be great, if not, no sweat. A 1000-word biography will generally be sufficient. The biog should be more than a simple history of who joined, who left, which album came out next etc: we're looking for writing that'll convey what the music sounds like to those of us who don't know, that makes the reader shiver with anticipation, that'll convince couch potatoes like me to get out and spend lots of money - if you can fit in a few interesting anecdotes and bits of gossip, even better. You have to keep the laws of libel in mind though. Next up; a selective discography, their best full-length recordings and reviews written to convince me to buy them. Finally, though this isn't in place yet for the Buzzcocks piece, a list of websites run by fans or the record companies - if there are hundreds of sites, recommend the best only. The whole guide was assembled on the assumption that each review would be generally favorable, though not afraid to criticise where necessary. And that's it. ================================================
Of course, we think they'll be massive..!
Despite not having heard anything BY them, only ABOUT them, I hope so too.
Paul Mitchell mailto:psm@Majordomo.net
-- _________________________________________ Al Spicer - Rock Editor - Rough Guides Ltd 1 Mercer Street - London WC2H 9QJ - UK aspicer@roughguides.co.uk - tel 00 44 171 379 3329 _________________________________________ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------