WORLD GOTH DAY LOGO ON BLACKBERRY BILLBOARD ADVERT? Actually, no.

Unfortunately, the integration of the email address function into Myspace leads to some rather interesting occurrences that don't quite make it into the Spam folder despite all attempts to prevent online crime being prevalent within its system.

 

Here's an email trail which demonstrates the Great British tradition of "if it sounds too good to be true, it normally is".

(Being an email trail, you sort of have to read it from the bottom up for it to make sense.)

Using my own email address instead of the World Goth Day account was so that I could bring it outside of the work-restricted internet and construct a meaningful response in my own time (c/o the office of course).

 

At the time of posting this blog, I'm still awaiting a reply. I doubt I'll get one...

 

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cruel Brit@nnia <cruelbrit@googlemail.com>
Date: 18 Aug 2010 10:09
Subject: Re: BLACKBERRY BILLBOARD ADVERT.
To: "BLACKBERRY BILLBOARD ADVERT." <blackberryadvert2009@live.com>

 

Hi Mr. Larry,

 

In my rush to respond to you at the very thought of being able to roll around on my bed in a blanket of used ten pound notes like they occasionally do in tired old '70's bank job flicks, a flash of common sense annoyingly took me & compelled me to stop in my tracks to send you over just a couple of pointers.

 

(1) The last time I looked, and to be fair I haven't travelled to London an awful lot recently, the unit of currency in our glorious capital was to the best of my knowledge the Great British Pound, exactly the same as the rest of the country. You'll find that this sort of pattern is followed in several other countries, if not all of them.

Being from London yourself as your address suggests, you might have noticed this too.

Consequently, I'm a little curious as to why I might have been sent the somewhat automated response below asking for details in a manner befitting an American application form for use of the World Goth Day logo in an advertisment for Blackberry on a poster in Luton station, or whatever the location you initially stated was.

 

(2) I'm hardly going to find use for, or ever want an agent who lives in a different country to me, or for that matter be insane enough to merrily send vast quantities of cash to one on the basis that something that took me an evening to create in Photoshop would be used to advertise a mobile telephone.

 

Don't get me wrong. I like the Blackberry. I beleive that the co-founder of World Goth Day whom I've BCC'd into this email regularly likes to use his to have a wee chuckle at emails such as this one (who says us goths have no sense of humour?). An image which I have given to the entire world to use how it likes to promote World Goth Day can, as long as I'm paid for it, be used to promote a cool gadget, because if any finanical gain is to be made from the logo, it should be made by the guy who created it.

 

You came to me via Myspace to ask permission to use the WGD logo in a Blackberry advertisment.

That's absolutely cool by me. It's about time I earned a bit of cash from my dabblings in graphic design. Just send me a cheque or better still, get Blackberry to send me a handset (the new Torch looks fantastic) & email me a photo of the poster in all its glory in Luton station to stick on Myspace before some jobless hoodie scrawls a huge Victorian moustache on it or a big cock going into its mouth or something (to my knowledge, that's what tends to happen to great works of art mounted on the walls of any public area).

 

But never, ever ask me to sign a 'legal' contract or send vast sums of money to an invisible agent.

It would have been quicker to just have sent an email with the word 'SCAM' in it & click 'send'.

 

However, if by any chance you're actually legitimately asking permission to use the World Goth Day logo, do accept my apologies for wanting to press the matter a little further. All you need to do is follow what I stated above and I'll be happy.

 

Understandably, I don't get a lot of emails asking me to send money to the People's Republic of Americania. They tend to come from the family of a recently deceased rich relative I didn't know about in Nigeria, the Euro Lottery office in Holland or wherever and land in my spam folder.

 

Actually, totally ignore my request details for a Blackberry.

If you don't mind, can you just pay me with a nice bottle of Zinfandel, as it seems that you happen to share the same address as AdVintage Wines, whom I've also BCC'd into this email just to let them know that someone is using their address as a business contact? I'm sure they're aware of this, but you never know, do you?

 

 

Have a wonderful day, I look forward to hearing from you soon.

 

Kind regards,

 

DJ Cruel Britannia.

www.worldgothday.com

 

 

On 18/08/2010, BLACKBERRY BILLBOARD ADVERT. <blackberryadvert2009@live.com> wrote:

Hi,

We quite appreciate your swift response concerning the modeling contract.Your profile picture has been accepted by the agency, "DREAM MODEL AGENCY" as one of the preferred pictures for the BLACKBERRY Billboard advert @ Heathrow  Airport London, We don't discriminate sizes or shapes of individual models, we just acknowledge gorgeous pictures and use it for commercials. The financier will dispatch payment to you by courier service.

You will receive a Cheque or Money order ($3,000) as payment for the billboard contract. You'll also be sent an agreement Form M20 via email. When you receive payment you will take out the 20% of the total sum for your gorgeous pictures that is being used, after which you proceed to sending the balance over to your appointed agent  for Legal Documentation of the deal. This payment will also be used as "sign-up fee" with the agent. I'll be waiting your urgent response with the following information:

FULL NAME: 

HOME ADDRESS:  

CITY:  

ZIP:    

COUNTRY: 

PHONE: 

AGE: 

OCCUPATION:  
 
Hope to read from you soon.

Mr Larry.

Financier:Dream model agency. London
 58 Buckleigh Avenue, Merton Park
London SW20 9JZ

> Subject: World Goth Day logo
> From: cruelbrit@googlemail.com
> Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:00:28 +0100
> To: blackberryadvert2009@live.com
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Further to the correspondence initiated by your email regarding the use of the World Goth Day logo in a Blackberry advertisement, as the designer of the logo I give you permission to use the design pending further details in what context you wish to use it, and any other information regarding your offer to pay for its use.
>
> DJ Cruel Britannia
> Co-Founder,
> World Goth Day.
 

Campaign to get The Wake to play live again.

DJ martin oldgoth convinced them that releasing a best of would be a good idea. They released BLACKlist in 2008.

He pushed them a little more and they released a new track, 'Emily Closer'.

He tried to get them to play live again, and all the band are really up for it.
...except vocalist Troy who feels that there's not enough people  who would want to see them again. 
 
oldgoth, of course, wasn't going to settle for no as an answer. He's funny like that.
He's campaigning for The Wake to play live and rightly so. They're a fantastic band with an enormous roster of great songs, the type that deserve to be blasted from a venue's PA system with a live band as the source of input. Nightbreed Radio will no doubt be thrusting quite a bit of The Wake into the airtime because promotion of the goth scene is what it's all about for the station. Especially the stubborn, hard to motivate areas that normally require scrubbing or boil washing.

You can find martin oldgoth's FaceBonk group by searching for "campaign to get the wake to play live again". Join it and get Troy to change his mind. You know you want to, and deep down, you know he wants to as well.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wake_(US_band)

The Wake (official myspace page)

 

 

 

Tags: The Wake, gothic, rock, bloody ace, oldgoth, stubborn, git, won't, take, no, for, an, answer, thank, god

Album Review: Grooving In Green, 'Post Traumatic Stress'.

By nature I don't write reviews.

They're often carried out by journalists who have a couple of decades of musical knowledge behind them either as a fan or a failed musician (you can usually tell which type by the amount of negativity & pickiness you read in the review).

Besides that I tend to ramble off on a tangent.
 
I know it doesn't sound like one, but when you're presented with the opportunity to give a constructive opinion on an album by a band consisting of a bunch people you already got to know well, consider mates AND you're a fan of their music, it's a sodding tricky job.
 
'POST TRAUMATIC STRESS' is the forthcoming album by Grooving In Green. It follows the release of two EP's, 'Ascent' and 'Dirt', selected tracks from which are included in this album. At just 10 tracks and a tickle over 35 minutes long it's seems almost too short, but when I think back to some of the stuff I've bought in the past that ran well into the 65-70 minute arena, I also remember skipping through the odd track regarding them as 'fillers'. I'm pleased to report that if this album lacks anything other than length, it's fillers. No prog-rock episodes, no pointless remix versions of album tracks at the end, nothing like that. Just ten songs with a reason to be there.
The golden fingers of Steven Carey (Eden House/Adoration) are all over the production & recording yet at the same time, held back enough to display the band's capabilities in the manner which they deserve. Production is glossy yet aggresive; Tron's vitriolic delivery is well balanced against Simon Manning & Pete Finnemore's wall of guitars and the pace of the tracks throughout the album is kept relentlessly constant, driving and soulful. Only one track, 'Some Kind Of Saviour' relaxes the pace a little, but even then it swiftly attacks at its chorus, backs off for the second verse to allow you to breathe only to get a run-up for another ambush...
Apparently Steven Carey's guitar & Tony Petitt's bass make a guest appearance in the album, but I was hard pushed to tell even though I knew already. Any guest efforts are made to build the songs here; not to feature, and that's a good thing in my books. Simon delivers some tasty bass alongside his guitar duties. The brief is uncomplicated playing with justified flourishes here and there to give the songs foundation.
As I mentioned before, selected tracks from their previous EP's make an appearance here; 'Premonition' and 'Dirt'. They bear only a slight resemblance to their previous incarnations after they've been put through the 'Gok Wan' treament of sleek production, double-tracked vocal takes and mystically enhanced guitars. In comparison, the EP's only gave you a rudimentary taste of what was to come much later from the now expanded, enhanced and steroid-fed creatures they are now.
I tried putting the whole album on 'shuffle' on my iPod after the second run-through to see if the playlist would bear rearranging. Most of the songs still flowed from one track to the other well, which is a rare occurrence. Try it yourself with an album of your choice and you might see what I mean.
 
'Post Traumatic Stress' is a finished product; a tight album with all the right noises you'd expect to hear from them. Guitars are the weapons here; minimal keyboard work is used throughout because it's a rock album; a 'Top Gear' CD for the darkly inclined.
I haven't seen the finished cover art yet as I was sent the album via email but I'd put money on the physical CD version looking as sexy as it sounds. Maybe they should release a limited edition CD version that comes with a housebrick to hit yourself in the face with at the start of each track, because frankly, I can't think of any other way of improving it.
 
Much has already been said time and time over about their origins (2/3rds Children On Stun, 1/3 Solemn Novena, blah, blah, etc.).
I personally think it's time to start referring to them as a band in their own right, justifiably resurrecting the good elements of '80's & '90's gothic rock. They've grown hairs in all the right places & stopped using as many Stun tracks to build their live sets.
Ladies and Gentlemen; Grooving In Green are open for business. Please obtain your copy of 'Post Traumatic Stress' the millisecond it's released.