You didn't expect that, did you. Did you? No!

Earlier today on Twitter - and who'd have thought you'd ever read a sentence like that here? - music writer Rob Fitzpatrick tweeted this: 'Why do the sort of bands who get "Record Deals" have to sound so depressingly like the sort of bands who get "Record Deals"?'

He's got a point. But - and you'll be happy to hear I tweeted (twat?) this back - more pertinent is how the sort of bands who get record deals always look like the sort of bands who get record deals. In fact, I'd go so far to say that it's more likely that they'll look the part rather than sound it. After all it's easy to make a bunch of cool looking guys sound great than sell a bunch of ugly-stick-prodded losers who write a good tune. Right, kids?

Well, that's the received wisdom, isn't it? And I have to say I'm as guilty as anyone for subscribing to the looks fascism that has always existed in the music business. Or entire entertainment business for that matter. Half of the reason I was excited about Ride was that Mark Gardner was just so good looking. And the reason I, like a lot of people, passed on On A Friday wasn't that the demo didn't have enough strong songs on it - it was that the singer had a paralysed eye and we just couldn't imagine audiences getting past that.

You can see where this is going can't you? Two words: Susan Boyle. The three of you out there in the world who have not yet heard about this singer or seen the clip from Britain's Got Talent - well, here's your final chance. It's astonishing that her clip (almost 13 million views on Youtube as I write) has become such a global phenomenon so fast. People are clearly angry about the way looks are prioritised in pop - just take a look at some of the comments: "IN YOUR FACE. Cowell!" or this one: "look at that ugly girl in the audience who pulls the horrible face when she says she wants to be a professional singer, take the look of ure face you ugly little bitch"

Whilst it's nice to think that someone who doesn't conform to the stereotypical talent show winner levels of attractiveness can create such an impression it's also worth thinking about why people buy music - what gets them excited about music? I could be wrong but my experience is pop music that works, invariably has a dynamic between the music and the way the performer looks. It's a dynamic that doesn't necessarily depend on the performer being good looking but there has to be a relationship between the two things: the looks and the voice. I always asked myself: does the act look like it sounds? So many demos would come in with a very groomed and styled Walkerprint (look it up, people under 30) and a demo which sounded like a different act - like someone dressing up for a job interview to work in a coal mine.

The acts that made it past this first hurdle were invariably ones who had identified something about themselves and were milking that rather than doing what they thought was the best way to get the attention of an A&R man. The majority of acts were getting it wrong on a basic level - like a writer who hasn't found his voice and slips from funny to angsty with no warning or an artist who draws a painfully accurate sketch of a face except there is something slightly wrong about the chin rendering the whole picture comical. Bad artists make art look hard.

Once past the first hurdle the acts who had something unique about them would then be judged on all the arbitrary and unfair things which people who create new art are judged on: lyrics, trousers, colour of cassette inlay... And very often they would get a rejection letter because despite having a spark they weren't ticking as many tickboxes as the A&R person wanted ticking. Sometimes the A&R person would venture forth and see the artist perform live or in as showcase and maybe the Walkerprint would have made them look better than they looked in real life and despite really liking the song, the A&R man couldn't get over the fact that the singer had a receding hairline, or oversized hands or maybe a mannerism involving his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth while he sang. I'm talking generally here - don't for a moment think I was ever this shallow...

But sometimes there was a a magic from the demo that was undeniable. It normally came from the voice. The Verve came through unsolicited - I phoned them up because I really liked the voice. In the end I just didn't like the songs enough but crucially I didn't see a picture of the band - if I had I think I would have taken the unconventionally attractive Richard a bit more seriously. Sometimes it took a visit from a band to convince - I met Crispin from the Longpigs before he'd even formed the group and not only were the three songs on his tape amazing (On And On, Far and one other) he was also cripplingly cool - even when he was flicking the ash from his cigarette into his top pocket during the meeting "Why are you doing that?" I asked "What?" he drawled. "Flicking the ash into your pocket?" "Oh that - it's just an affectation..." I was sold. It didn't harm him that he was ludicrously good looking too but crucially he knew exactly what he was about.

Susan Boyle clearly knows this too. The Rev. Angela Tilby on Thought For Today this morning isolated the fact that Boyle sang with authority - she knew she had a great voice and no amount of criticism was going to take that conviction away. As she said in front of the judges, she'd just never been given the opportunity. And isn't that the way so many of us feel? Did I write that last sentence? Blimey, stop me before I start openly weeping.

Anyway, you can tell that this woman knows she's good from her eyes - the usual talent show crazy desperation is absent, she's just happy to be on stage singing. And the dynamic, how does my theory fit with her - does she look like she sounds? Well, actually yes. If she was trying to be Beth Ditto or Michael Jackson then her age announement would have warranted the cruel titters she got. In fact after she says she's 47 she does a mock sexy gyration "And that's just one side of me!" and we are briefly back in familiar talent show freak territory. But she's not a freak, she knows who she is, she doesn't want to be La Roux, she wants to be Elaine Page and even though the world of musical theatre that Paige emerged from is just as body fascistic as the record business, you can imagine Lloyd Webber getting her into one of his shows like that. She'd be perfect.

But the people who love the whole IN YOUR FACE, Cowell aspect of the Boyle saga have been fooled. Of course Cowell knew about her before the show was filmed - he was raving to Max Clifford about her a week before it was aired and I'd imagine that most of those involved with the show knew what they wanted out of the performance. I mean listen to Dec crowing to the camera "You didn't expect that did you?" when Boyle starts singing - it's clearly scripted. And Cowell's raised eyebrows of surprise as Boyle's goes into full throttle are about as believable as Roger Moore. He is probably already working on song choices for her album - he's publicly said she could have a number one in the US. The clip is a massively manipulative bit of telly - it lulls you into expecting to see another freak, showing cutaway shots of all those audience members who are not in on the secret rollling their eyes to their neighbours "Who does this old fatty think she is?" then turns on a sixpence using gently lifting ooohs and ahhhs and spontaneous clapping as Boyle starts. Yes, the voice is good but the reaction is too fast. And who started that standing ovation? Some prudently distributed runners? Cynical? Moi?

The IN YOUR FACE, COWELL brigade who want the 'ugly little bitch' in the audience to "take the look off her face" would have done the same had they been in the audience that night. It's human nature, or at least modern human nature; we are a deeply shallow and cynical generation prone to judging people on their appearance. The violent emotions of the Boyle reaction was manipulated by the direction of the show but also by the guilt felt by everyone who would have dismissed Boyle from the moment she bounded onto the stage.

There was a euphemism used in A&R departments about artists who had slipped past the ugly police and made it onto the roster - unconventionally attractive. And actually some of the biggest stars are genuinely unconventionally attractive - Shane McGowan, Jarvis Cocker, Michael Stipe... But more often that not, singers lean towards good looks. Have a look at your record collection - how many unconventionals or just plain old boots can you find? For a brief moment in the Bob Harris part of the 70s there was a value placed on musicianship over looks but mostly pop music is about style, fashion and looks, it's about being young and sticking it to the man and all the other cliches. So even literate, 'serious' pop stars like Dylan, Cohen and Mitchell (J) were supremely attractive - all the icons from Marley to Strummer to Morrison (J) to Gaye were gorgeous but, just for the record, here is a Top 10 of Pop Boyles - but before you read it, remember that whilst none of the below are or were heartbreakers, they all have it - they look like they sound, no one else is like them and all the better for it.

10 Joe Cocker
9 Mama Cass
8 Van Morrison
7 Elton John
6 Shaun Ryder
5 Lemmy
4 Meatloaf
3 Ian Dury
2 Beth Ditto
1 Thom Yorke

PS: Next week, I annexe the Sudetenland.
PPS Check out Mike Skinner's Susan Boyle remix with a Donk on it

We've signed a fucking chicken!

I'm back in our office. No one else is here, it would be deathly quiet were I not listening to Anthony & The Johnsons: The Disco Album and I'm wondering where summer has gone - not only is it cascading with rain outside, but it's the third of September, my brother's birthday, always the start of autumn in my book, was yesterday, my daughter started big school today and Isosceles are mixing their next single as I write. I should be excited about everything but I've got that going-back-to-school feeling that I always get around this time of year.



It's an odd thing being your own boss. I mean, obviously I'm not really my own boss - that's my wife's job, she really the one in charge - but I mean, not having a permanent job other than the one of managing the bands and doing freelance writing means that it's very easy to suddenly discover I've spent two hours online finding out how many skinny tie albums from 1978 I still don't own ... (unbelievably I still don't have The Cars debut!). I'm back here after almost a month working on that music web site. I may be back there next week too because another thing I keep discovering as my own boss is that I'm not paying myself any wages. Meet the old boss, same as the new boss, as they say.

Back to school, back to work, it's the same deal - working to other people's agenda's. My daughter expressed the same feeling about going back to school: but the teachers will make us do things! (it was much better expressed than that, but like all child aphorisms, if you don't write it down immediately, the genius is gone). But it's true: the teachers will make us do things and sometimes, there's other things we'd rather be up to. Although obviously Maddy would consider surfing the web for new wave CDs a waste of time. How much has she got to learn?

But how much have I got to learn too? I'd love to make it being freelance, being my own boss, but increasingly I feel torn between getting a job so I can afford to carry on. I went out with my friend Tony Fletcher a couple of weeks ago, who as far as I know hasn't had a proper, salaried job since we first met 15 years ago while he was doing A&R for an American record company. Tony's a proper writer - always has been, even when he was an A&R man. When he was a teenager, inspired by his love of The Jam, he wrote a fanzine called Jamming, which ended up becoming a proper magazine and he now has a bestselling book about Keith Moon under his belt. He lives in the States and we don't see each other that often, so we were trying to catch up over the course of this one evening. The last time we met was about a year and a half before when a band I was A&Ring were supporting Radio 4, whom he was managing at the time. And of course, despite both of us having a good idea of the general content of our respective lives due to the blogs, (Tony's, iJamming, has been going since before they were called blogs) despite this, there was bloody loads to tell each other and added to this, I'd kind of double booked Tony with another friend I hadn't seen for ages. This friend, David, is a senior lawyer at a major record label who is one of the funniest men I know. Frankly, I think he's wasted in law and in an ideal world would be playing piano in a bar by night and writing poetry by day. He arrived in the pub where Tony and I were, accompanied by a beautiful Russian blonde. "She's not my girlfriend," he protested. Anyway, the girl wisely left us when we did what 40-something blokes do when they're having a night out: went for a curry.

David, of course, has a salaried job and is doing very nicely, but ultimately he and everyone at the label is in some way beholden to X-Factor and the whims of Simon Cowell. Cowell's empire Syco is one of the few record labels which doesn't seem to be affected by dwindling sales. A friend of mine at Sony told me that Cowell stood up in a recent meeting and, with his usual iconoclasm, suggested that he had no idea what all this fuss about illegal downloads was - his sales were not affected in the slightest. I suspect this is because the demographic who listen to Leona Lewis et al are either children or middle aged parents who haven't fully grasped the potential of the Internet yet. David told us - possibly ironically - that he has to organise his holidays around the periods of the year when X-Factor is not happening. The rest of the year is kept busy because he has to do deals with every single one of the finalists so that Syco have the rights sewn up for the winners. And remember, X-Factor is now a global phenomenon and Sony/BMG have the international rights to it - so all of David's colleagues around Europe are doing the same thing. Apparently someone in France had called David earlier to compare notes on how they were getting on. "Signed anyone interesting?" he asked, the word out was the French favorite was some sort of poultry-themed act. "we have signed nothing!" they lamented,"apart from a fucking chicken!" Now there's job satisfaction for you.

When I was at RCA, I ended up in an office next to Simon Cowell. This was before he was Simon Cowell, of course, but even back in the 1780s he was riding high in the charts with Robson & Jerome as well as scraping the bargain bins with Steve Coogan. And he always knew what he was doing. Once in an A&R meeting he played a single (possibly by Zig & Zag, I can't be certain), and possibly because these were the days when singles were format crazy, with 2 CDs being the mode du jour, I asked him what he was going to put on the b sides, "I don't know, darling, but let's be honest, who cares?" he answered quite reasonably. He was always a very polite man - never the bad-tempered tyrant he plays on the telly.

So Tony, David and myself finished the vadai, the dosai and the vases of Cobra and wandered off down Cleveland St to find a tube station. Not that it's a question that anyone could reasonably answer but I wondered who is happier?- David, being an important lawyer but wanting to write poetry and or Tony, being a published writer but, like all writers, not knowing if the next book will be as successful as the last. The security of a salary versus the freedom of self-employment.



One thing I've noticed is if you are your own boss, things tend to grind to a halt if you don't constantly MAKE STUFF HAPPEN. You have to be permanently phoning and emailing and well... selling. Occasionally someone will return you call, offer a gig and occasionally send you a cheque. I invoiced that advertising agency yesterday - you know, the ones who are doing the acne ad with Isosceles' song. It felt bizarre - to be invoicing somebody else as opposed to be weeping over piles of unpaid invoices from others. It was such new territory that I forget to even put in an address. They phoned me today asking where they should send the cheque.


If my wife was here, she would probably have spotted my kindergarten error. I wasn't joking when I said she was the boss - it's not that she's always right, it's just that she has sufficient distance from the stuff I do to see the wood from the trees. It would of course be a nightmare if she really was my boss - my hairdresser mate told me about a colleague of his who went out with the female owner of the salon where he worked: his girlfriend was literally his boss. He was, apparently, a bit too fond of the old Charlie & Lola and prone to being a bit moody as well. After one particularly shouty day, she summoned him into her office and told him that his work was less than satisfactory, his client-base was dwindling and the other stylists were finding him hard to be around - in short he should find another job. He was speechless, and just as he was about to walk out of her office, she added, "Oh, and by the way, I'm pregnant - see you back at the flat."

There's another story about the same hairdresser and a ill-fated weekend trip to Spain with 'the lads' but I'll save that for another time. I've got to go off and make some things happen...