Black:FAQ

Posted on Sat 27 Jun 09

Will you be playing live again? When will you come to Estonia/Spain/Outer Mongolia/my house?

Colin would love to play live again. And as soon as there is a promoter who will pay enough to cover all the musician’s fees (including rehearsals), travel, accommodation and sundry production costs and still have enough left over to make it worth Colin’s while to take time off from writing and recording songs and having a life to leave his home and his family and travel around the planet, get jet-lagged, plane delayed, interviewed by people who have no knowledge of who Colin is or what he’s done, sit waiting endlessly in empty venues while technicians sort out the stuff they are paid to sort out, drive down endless foreign roads and eat countless re-microwaved plasticised meals – all for the sake of an hour every two days on stage – he’ll be there! If you want to know when this is likely to happen, please join our mailing list.

Why no comment facility?

We hate spam. Open comments mean we get 35,000 adverts per day for body-part extensions and invitations from someone called Cindy. But…. we’re are going to have moderated comments open for each download to see how that goes – we really do like to hear from you. Obviously if someone wants to comment about how full of excrement they think the music is, it’s not likely to be published through our site (unless it is particularly funny) but if you really want to have a rant and talk to other fans about anything that suits you, there is a forum open on single black spot – enjoy.

Colin’s blogs are a bit sporadic – we want to hear from him more often.

Sorry that’s not a question, this is frequently asked QUESTIONS.

Jeez! OK then; why are Colin’s blogs so sporadic?

We’ll get back to you on that one.

I subscribed to your mailing list and I haven’t heard a bloody thing are you still alive?

Yes, we’re still here – we just don’t like filling your inbox with trivia. However, we have been upgrading our mailing list server because we weren’t so confident in it cleaning out old/failed addresses so if you are sure you’re not getting our precious pearls, please re-subscribe – it can’t hurt because the system will ignore duplicate addresses anyway. If you’re bored, you could subscribe a hundred times a day, or alternatively, you could take up a hobby or spend your time telling as many people as possible about Black.

What’s with the RSS feeds?

We don’t know… that’s a technical question. It’s supposed to make it easier for you to keep up to date with our site. Some people like news agregators/feed readers/RSS this and Atom that. But even if you don’t know all about that stuff, you should still get an email from us when we do a mailout as long as you join the mailing list, here.

Why don’t you have many reviews up on the site.

There are lots of print reviews from the distant past – but so what? We binned most of them years ago. You want us to dig out a Melody Maker rave-review from 1984? Why? What we’d like is to get Colin’s music reviewed today – and that is the hard part. In our wonderful world of ‘everyone can and so everyone does’ we are struggling hard to be heard. The truth is we have a hard time getting noticed when we send out CDs to reviewers. Out of the thousands of artists who hit reviewer’s mailboxes every day, it’s easy to be ignored in favour of the new, the news-worthy, the latest fads and already very famous. We’re not crying about it, it’s just the way it is – we try to get some attention, but it’s not easy and you can help by making more noise about Colin.

You are great, fantastic, wonderful, have the best voice in the world, write seriously brilliant songs and are way better than all these other bands who get far more attention – how come?

See above.

Why don’t you get on Top of the Pops?

Huh? You mean the TV show that was cancelled TWO YEARS AGO?

OK. Sorry, why don’t you get on {name the latest music TV show}?

Well, as long as it’s not ‘Noddy Pokes Fun at People You’ve Never Heard Of’, we’d be delighted to be invited to perform. So you can guess the answer to this one.

Can I have a signed photograph?

You can if you send a suitable stamped, self-addressed 10“x8” envelope to P.O. Box 109, Liverpool, L18 8WX. U.K.