About a week late with this thread, but anyway ...

I thought about this one, after seeing a news item that some record will go straight to Number One in the UK charts, after having been pushed hard as a downloaded tune by iPod service providers.

John Otway is the famous "two hit wonder"; he had a hit in 1977 with punk single "Really Free", and then his fans mounted a campaign to get "Bunsen Burner" into the Top Ten in 2002.

Whatever you may think of Otway as a performer, he gives "serious" lectures to Universities etc. (and the "Globe" in Glossop) on the subject of "Making Success out of Failure", which have audiences in stitches.

His final comments, afterthoughts on the campaign to make "Bunsen Burner" a hit, ought to give pause for thought. Some music stores in Britain (HMV, for example) are decent enough when it comes to music; if a record, in any style, has been published and a customer wants it, they'll order it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of other stores who said, in effect, "We make our money out of vapid, impressionable twelve year old girls, who go either for pre-packaged boy bands, or girl bands with a vocal range of two and a half tones, the looks of Victoria Beckham and the intellect of her husband. If you want anything else, tough. We intend to ignore its existence."

No other lectures (as opposed to gigs) seem to be scheduled on Mr. Otway's website, but I know several people who are agitating for him to do more, once he's back off his "World Tour".