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Are Koopa the next Arctic Monkeys?
By David Smyth, Evening Standard 12.01.07
Super Koopa: the unsigned band is set to make a significant dent in the chart via downloads
Look here too
Last Sunday's singles chart, the first to incorporate all downloads rather than just those accompanied by a CD release, was disappointingly free of bizarre new entries, despite the new rules meaning that any track can now enter the Top 40 if it sells enough copies online. A few of last year's biggest singles made a comeback, including Gnarls Barkley's mega-hit Crazy, but otherwise it was business as usual.
This Sunday, however, something much more interesting could happen. Koopa, an unknown pop-punk trio from Colchester incorporating two brothers and some very silly haircuts, look likely to become the first unsigned band ever to enter the Top 40 on download sales alone. Given that band members Stu and Ollie Cooper's father died from a long illness last Sunday, this could be both the best and worst week of their young lives.
Download Blag, Steal & Borrow here
The lyrics of their lively single, Blag, Steal & Borrow, make their imminent triumph over a lack of music industry interest even more appropriate: "You think you have all the power/The public listens to what you allow, yeah/You use people like your puppets/ Churning out your cheesy rubbish". Hardly Morrissey, but still a bold two fingers to the major labels from a band that has had more than its share of knockbacks.
"Until now we've been basically ignored," says bassist and singer Joe Murphy, 26. "We've been plugging away for three or four years, speaking to the radio stations and MTV all the time. Usually the big organisations tell us they won't play anything not on their playlists, or we get told we're not ready yet. We always took that to mean that they hadn't bothered listening."
Steve Lamacq is the only big name DJ who has played their music on the radio, although a shared love of Colchester United FC may be the principal reason for his enthusiasm for their unchallenging, Busted-style guitar pop.
Now they have been able to bypass the process of signing away their independence thanks to a download site, Indiestore.com, which enables bands to sell their music in a chart-eligible way without record company involvement. Their mostly school-age fanbase can buy the single online or by text message, and it seems enough of them like the song to get it into the charts, and under the noses of the music biz bigwigs.
Then what? A record deal, at last, surely?
The band think not, hoping to follow the lead of fellow self-made successes Enter Shikari and release their already finished album themselves. Like it or not - and the major labels probably don't - this looks like the first creaking of the floodgates separating the charts from hundreds of home-made superstars.
AN EARLY LISTEN TO ...
BRYAN FERRY Dylanesque (Virgin)
There were two Dylan covers on Bryan Ferry's last solo album, 2002's Frantic, and on 5 March he capably attempts 11 more. Cover versions often signify artistic laziness, but Ferry has made them an important feature of his work away from Roxy Music, and in this case he has rightly compared the task to "an actor tackling Shakespeare".
The originals are complex and strong enough to withstand endless reinterpretation. There's nothing too radical here - the vitriolic Positively 4th Street becomes a smouldering piano ballad, while All Along the Watchtower owes as much to Hendrix's famed version as its composer's and The Times They are A-Changin' rocks politely - but Ferry is in fine voice throughout.
Recorded in just a week, this is the sound of one of pop's most refined men kicking back and relaxing in the company of a legend.
GIG FOR THE BIRDS
Californian rockers the Eagles of Death Metal have just announced a show at the Soho Revue Bar on 22 January which will be for ladies only. The band, a spin-off from bigger successes Queens of the Stone Age, play a dirty blues boogie that may not tempt the largest female fanbase in the world, but the gig should still appeal simply because it's likely to be the first rock concert ever at which nobody in the crowd spends two hours staring at an expansive male back.
It also makes me think that more acts should consider restricting their audiences. If boybands admitted only the under-13s, their shows would no longer be half-full of suicidal parents. Equally, if metal groups banned the under-50s, all those mosh pits would be far less intimidating places.
DOWNLOAD IT
I am giddy as a schoolgirl about the live return of Arcade Fire at the end of this month, the Montreal band whose extraordinarily manic concerts started a buzz around the septet in 2005. Intervention, the first downloadable song from March's second album Neon Bible, keeps the excitement at molten levels, a vast orchestral ballad dominated by a cavernous church organ. It's in the iTunes store now.
Elsewhere in the world of arty North Americans, prolific troubadour Conor Oberst returns as Bright Eyes in April. His surprisingly straightforward new track Endless Entertainment is available for free from www.thisisbrighteyes.com now if you sign up to his mailing list. And the MP3 bloggers seem slightly less eager to evangelise about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's quirky jangle pop this time around, despite the ready availability of two fine songs from their imminent second album for free at www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com.
