So...I’m trying to keep up a bit of food for thought with this listings flyer every month. I’m sure it will be hit and miss as far as my views are concerned but I also want to use it as a wee soap box to spout about bands and the like that deserve some exposure. Lets start this one with something close to all of our hearts, thoughts and fingers...the internet.
The internet has done so much for music in good ways and bad. It is now so easy for bands to get their music heard, gigs promoted and tadgers felt. But on the other hand, it’s getting harder and harder to make money and sometimes it feels like there’s just too much music out there for you to filter through, finding an exotic or underground band nowadays is as easy as turning on a light. I remember when your music taste was dictated by what CD’s your rich pals or siblings had or what you read about in a magazine. It seemed simpler, and it seemed like there was a system at work. If a band was good enough to get to you then they must be worth their salt surely? The most appalling thing I saw recently was a top music journalists top 50 for 2010...I mean, come on!! Top 50! Could you narrow it down a bit please? It was basically every band kicking about at the moment...which really takes no imagination, care or opinion at all. I feel sorry for the 2 bands that weren’t mentioned! Enough exclaiming I think.
Look at John Peel, a champion of all things eclectic that he believed in. He went on about the fucking Undertones for 30 years! Because he loved them and didn’t give a fuck, that’s what it’s all about. Maybe I’m wrong but there are only so many times you can hear a DJ or whatever going on about how ‘Faaaan (pause) Tastic!’ bands are that happen to be kicking around whatever region they represent. Most of it I’m afraid to say is ‘Faaaan (pause) Fucking Average!’ and they, you and I know it. But they need to garner listeners somehow I suppose. It’s almost like when dubious promoters prey on bands that are still in high school to play over 14’s shows because they know that kids at school have a guaranteed market to sell tickets to and more importantly parents who will pay the cash for their child’s recreation. A guaranteed audience holds no real merit in my eyes.
So, is this really a bad thing or...is it a credible platform for new music? I think it may be a bit of both, definitely a necessary evil and almost certainly a par for the course. Live shows are where it’s really at. Any band can sound good with the technological advances in modern studio warfare nowadays but live is where a band can really shine. I would like to see the resources of the government, regional councils, arts councils, television and radio stations put firmly on the development of live music. This should include helping the band equip themselves with rehearsal time, tour funding, gear, qualified sound engineers, decent venues, breakdown cover and PR support.
Scotland is the first to pin down their local heroes as national treasures (e.g. homecoming) but the last to offer them a grassroots support system to further their development. It seems that you have to be unemployed to qualify for all the grants and courses that are already in place and I know that any self respecting human being isn’t going to give up their jobs and careers (which fund their musical ambitions) simply to go on a funded HND in musical performance or free recording.
Look at Canada or Norway for example, their government support bands and artists, whom they understand are always on the breadline to further their own heritage and offering to the world, and they are much bigger countries than we are. We are lucky in Scotland to be from such a small place but still have so much credibility in the world, great bands, great people and generally an air of style, substance and quality. It’s a real shame to see what our country spends it’s money on when it could be put to much better use.
Anyway, rant over. Hopefully there’s a bit of food for thought there for all of you who frequent our humble bar. I’ll have more content through blogs on our webpages as there isn’t much room on the flyer. Keep an eye out and get in touch if you have an opinion yourself and we can pick it up in the next flyer.
As Columbo would say, One more thing...
As I said, we like to shout about the worthwhile every month. Not so much ‘ones to watch’ as ‘ones worth a watch’. So, let’s introduce ‘Song of Return’, a band born of odd circumstance. Having finished an album with Atticus Ross (nine inch nails), Chris Gordon and Craig Grant of Glasgow veterans Union of Knives had an overstock of material and time on their hands (owing to a lengthy debacle over the release of said album) and so, with the attitude of being empowered by thwarted ambition rather than exhausted by it, they now take their new material into the live arena with a Glasgow all-star cast of members from 'take a worm for a walk week', 'galchen' and 'brother louis collective'. Grant and Gordon draw on a spectrum of influences and endeavour to create an atmosphere of both dysfunction and hope. They hope to release their new record in 2010 and in the meantime cut their teeth on the live circuit with a fresh band, approach and attitude.
www.myspace.com/songofreturn
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