The Daily Swarm

blaggg kindly gave The Daily Swarm permission to reprint this article. Our original post on the story can be found here.

The world was bemused a couple of days back when Shakeys Brother let slip that they’d somehow scored two Grammy nominations despite being an unsigned pub band from Blackburn with a hundred myspace fans, who play to an average of about fifty people. Most bemusing perhaps was how they managed to get a nod for best pop vocal album despite not even having a single yet alone an album to their name.

Their story relating to the nominations has been a little here and there. In one account referring to a friend in America who submitted them on their behalf, to their myspace blog which says “We got intouch with a guy in America who loved the music” to their BBC Lancashire interview which says that someone from Big Noise contacted them after hearing their demos on myspace and signed them up before submitting them.

The irony comes in thick and heavy from their BBC interview where band member Phil Parker states “This is about music; not album sales or money or how big your contract is with major record companies.” The irony is firmly in their own hands here as Big Noise have a reputation of getting their acts on the Grammy ballot. In fact Shakeys Brother are not the first or only unsigned band they’ve got on the list.

Kurt Crasper may have unfortunately outed Shakeys Brother in a single defence of Big Noise founder Al Gomes while replying to a dispute about Al alegedly asking for money up front to promote an unemployed Scottish singer. Alas Kurt first points out that Big Noise did ask for money up front and that the promotions helped him get two Grammy nominations, he then returns to clarify that the $1,400 paid was not for nomminations, but general promo, which lead to them.

The irony Phil Parker dripped over the above quote comes from the chance that they only made the list because of Big Noise’s heavyweight involvement and if similar to Kurt’s story that money was involved. Of course, we can’t assume that to be true. Either way he must recognise that their nomination for best pop vocal album for an unrecorded twelve inch is clearly not about the music. So to surmise: The cost (in promotion) of a Grammy nomination is about $700, the value of a nomination is $0 (Kurt’s not exactly setting the world on fire, playing second on to less than a hundred people) and the sad truth is that while Grammy awards have long been regarded as worthless aside from making nice doorstops, in this all coming to light they are now worth even less.

Stay tuned for Blaggg’s assault on the 2011 Grammy awards! See if our house band Katie Price & The Goatlords can beat off the contenders and become the first unsigned gothska band without a record to win dongs in the gospal, metal and rnb sections!