Songs from the New Album

Wednesday, 6th November 1996

overkill - short story.

....

The single got its UK release on the Monday after three weeks of airplay on national and commercial radio. "Beast" by The Riders was received by the musical community with some disdain at first, being as some thought a multi-sampled over-produced mishmash and, at first, a rip-off of "See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd. At first.

But the song was a grower. And no-one could deny that. NME described it as "eclectic", Smash Hits as "'Bohemian Rhapsody' for the end of the century" and Q as "*****". The song "Beast" seemed to take its references from modern pop, dino rock, classical, you name it, it was there. People reported playing other CDs in their collection and hearing echoes of "Beast" in all of them, then switching off.

A strange coincidence: during the weeks before the single was released, the music industry suffered its worst month for nine years. Companies which relied on radio advertising for its customer revenue experienced a slight downturn in profits. And possibly the oddest; Radio 1 lost three million listeners while Radio 4 gained two.

Our Price, Virgin, HMV, all the big chains noticed this inexplicable dip in sales. Shelves stayed full. Singles went unbought. As a leading statistician of his time was noted as saying, "you could hear the crickets in Woolies and see the tumbleweed roll through the Megastore aisles."

Then Monday came. "Beast" by The Riders, on a small independent label, came in and flew out. Re-order history was made. There was little doubt it would go straight in at number one the following week, and at this rate, stay there to be the first number one of the millenium.

Interviews with The Riders were scarce; they seemed to have disappeared from the address the label had on record, and no-one had heard from them since the recording of "Beast". The engineer for the session claimed the four-piece band had said little between the eight takes or the re-mixing and post-production. And then they'd left. Did they seem happy, the interviewers had asked him, did they seem sad? No, said the engineer, they just looked like they were doing their job.

From cities everywhere in the UK, and then Germany, France, and then Japan, and after a week, the US, reports of "Beast"'s similarity to other pieces of music avalanched in. A mum from Luton told of her sixteen-year old son throwing out all his records saying "it all sounds the same. It all sounds like 'Beast'". A Tokyo violinist said the noted conductor Daisuke Kimahoto had hurled his baton into the orchestra at random and caught her forehead by accident, before storming out shouting "that infernal song, when will I stop hearing that infernal song?" Everywhere people were burning their Springsteen, their Stones, their Dylan, their Mudhoney, their Tchaikovsky, their Hawkwind, their Velvet Underground, their Oasis, their Beatles, their Spice Girls, their Beethoven, and finally their Riders....

Within a month, music radio had proved unprofitable. Movies had become soundtrack-free. Nobody, anywhere, played music, nowhere could it be heard, nobody sung. The earth had been robbed forever of what one poet has called "the language of the soul". For perhaps six days it was very quiet everywhere.

And within a year, it was silent.