Erm, Nominated For An Award…

Tags

aim, awards

Sometimes I’d like to pretend just for a moment that there was some faceless administrator running this website rather than me. Then I could post some third person news story about being nominated for an award and then quote myself giving an endearingly surprised statement about what an unexpected honour it is (and it is both unexpected and an honour).

But everyone knows it’s me because this is clearly a wordpress do-it-yourself site and any suggestions to the contrary would be preposterous. And besides, I’m supposed to be DIY anyway.

I have never been overly fond of awards ceremonies as a phenomenon or the associated back-patting that goes with them but I am pretty thrilled to be part of this one. Why have I suddenly changed my tune? Why am I getting my suit dry cleaned? Why am I polishing up my wedding shoes? Is it just a simple case of hypocrisy?

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New Article: “Expert Exposé”

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album, albums, bedlam six, experts, marzipan, music industry, pundit, release, vinyl

Each day I read a bunch of articles written by people involved in or associated with the music industries.

I do not do this because I want to learn all I can about the creative economy or how best to navigate the modern music marketplace or what trends I should be keeping up with (for that way madness lies…).

No, I mostly do it to reassure myself that I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.

I’m not being flippant. It needs saying (and saying often). We should all be very suspicious of those who speak with too confident an air about “the future of music consumption” and “strategies for independent artists” and all those other rent-a-panel issues that fly around the conference circuit and blogosphere.

Many balk at the quantity of new bands jostling for attention on social media platforms. But that’s nothing compared to the infestation of so-called media experts popping up at every opportunity like so many sardonic meerkats…

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New Article: “‘Twixt Underdog and Overlord: Amanda Palmer”

Tags

amanda palmer, crowd sourcing, kickstarter, money, musicians, pay

The problem with success is that it can be expensive to maintain. You might enter a raffle and win a Rolls Royce but what is the point if you can’t afford the fuel?

There’s been a lot of Amanda Palmer bashing going on over the last few days. If you haven’t heard about it (or her) here’s the brief gist:

Former Dresden Doll famed for dramatic and inclusive stage shows raises over a million dollars ($1,192,793 to be exact) to fund her self-released album and its accompanying tour through the crowd-sourcing website/phenomenon Kickstarter. As a consequence she is promptly crowned empress of the modern DIY model, “Exhibit A” for any anti-label argument and general pin-up for the “pay-what-you-want” philosophy. She then angers the artistic community for putting an advert on her website asking string and brass players to join her regular salaried ensemble for selected dates on her tour and perform for NO PAY.

Impressive numbers and recent controversy aside, she is pretty amazing, proving to possess almost Christ-like powers in converting her audience into acolytes, not to mention investors and contributors.

But the rules change when you become one of life’s winners. Palmer has drawn damning criticism for extending the crowd-sourcing model into the human realm, calling for fans to accompany her for “beer and hugs”.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. As a fellow chancer she has my sympathy. As a card carrying member of the Musicians Union I must, however, wield a pointedly arched eyebrow in her direction.

But my first reaction to any shit-storm is to find shelter rather than start flinging any of my own…

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New Article: “Writing”

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alabaster deplume, kirsty almeida, sustainability, un-convention

Sustainability is the biggest buzz-word on the circuit at the moment. Not just in music circles, it’s a hot topic in every industry.

When I’m invited to speak on panels this is the subject I’m most often asked to comment on: How To Build A Sustainable Career In Music. Well that subject is going to get it’s own article one day (or perhaps a book) but for now I thought I’d write a little piece about the first thing that suffers when one is wrestling with the finer points of a so-called-sustainable self-managed independent music career…

The Writing.

When we talk about sustainability at music industry events it’s almost always placed firmly in a financial context rather than a creative one (usually stuff about corralling people from social networks into online stores, keeping touring costs down etc). But there’s a persistent worry I’m having trouble ignoring: In the early days of the band (and prior when I was a solo artist) I wrote about twenty to thirty songs a year – two or three a month. Some good, some dreadful but all songs. Fast forward to now: we’re half way through August 2012 and I have written two and a half songs. Last year I think I wrote five.

Of course there could be all sorts of reasons for this. Indeed, my “bullshit filter” is far more stringent these days, I kill my weakest offspring early to give the other fledgling ideas a fighting chance; I have more experience in this field now and am able to predict the compositional dead-ends before I crash into them headfirst – I can (to plunder a term popularized in Hollywood westerns) “head them off at the pass” when the horses of my imagination start galloping blindly towards a canyon…

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New Article: “Musicians Exposing Themselves In Public”

There is one word you hear more than any other if you’re an independent musician. Especially if you are relatively unknown. EXPOSURE.

It is more than a word though, it is a unit of currency. And like all currencies it is subject to an ever-fluctuating rate of exchange, not to mention the manifold peculiarities of our society’s notion of value.

Being asked to play for exposure (rather than money) is nothing new. I get emails every week from promoters asking me to do that. My refusals are always courteous and explanatory; their replies (if any) usually tend towards baffled indignation. These little conversations go on in private every day in every part of the country. But now the argument has gone public as it turns out the musicians booked for the various Olympic/Paralympic ceremonies are to work for no fee (despite reportedly being £476 million under budget). That story has been circulating quietly since the Musicians Union began an investigation in April, but when it was reported by the BBC and The Quietus at the end of June my social media news-feeds were suddenly buzzing with activity. The central query was this: Can the benefits of exposure to a wider audience outweigh the embarrassment of being the only profession contributing to the £9.3 billion event without getting a penny? It is a classic debate that can be summed up in three words: “What price dignity?”

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New Article: “Un-Convention Uganda”

Tags

airtel, hip-hop, uganda, un-convention

Like many relatively privileged Westerners visiting foreign lands I spend a lot of my time searching for something I already know about the place, rather than being swept up in the things I don’t. But the known “something” will be exotic, while the unknown “nothing” mundane. My emails home will be about famously strange customs rather than unexpected similarities, recognised examples of “the other” rather than common threads; my photos will be of red earth and barefooted children, not the bar where I sat and checked twitter.

If the country in question falls under the category of “developing nation” then it’s time to get on the trail of what one might call academic tourism, eschewing typical hotspots (like the source of the Nile in Uganda’s case) and going on the hunt for examples of poster-boy globalization, usually poetic juxtapositions that could double as a metaphor for our muddled era – the prize being a collection of smug little snapshots depicting rickety huts next to international logos, that sort of thing. It helps if you have one eyebrow raised when you take the photo, that way you can hide behind a veil of irony if questioned by the locals.

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New Article: “My given name is Louis… and I’m doing VERY WELL!”

Tags

bedlam six, blockheads, influences, inspirations, john otway

The Bedlam Six and I were in London recently and met a couple of Blockheads.

That sentence came out a little too easy. If there’s one thing that every member of my band can agree on it is that The Blockheads are among the very best live acts on the circuit (and have been, off and on, for over thirty years). It was a real pleasure hanging out with vocalist Derek and manager/guitarist Lee, swapping gig anecdotes and personal bugbears. Lovely people.

I can only think of two bands that have successfully survived the death of an iconic lead singer: Queen and The Blockheads. The difference is that Queen are now more brand than band, their post-Mercury live shows being a tribute to their past glory rather than a creative continuation – like a traveling carnival exhibiting a frozen wooly mammoth or embalmed despot. That sounds cruel but I don’t want it to be, I have a lot of love for Queen and their formidable legacy (even though that word “legacy” is now so easily interchangeable with the word “franchise”).

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New Article: “The Day I Found Out I Had Finally MADE IT”

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ambitiion, beatles, cliche, downloads, dreams, making it, music, music industry, rock, stats, success, thomas the tank engine

Enjoying a special place in the book of popular cliché is the story of the dream that comes true but then fails to measure up to the dreamer’s expectations. This is what makes the human such a poetic clown. We are amateur dreamers – anything attainable is somehow flawed, anything unattainable is a joke. It is this pattern that makes tragedy so much more entertaining than comedy.

The seminal rock stars that didn’t die young are now dying old. Those of us who followed in their footsteps can now look back on the Rock & Roll myth in its entirety, we can make judgements based on the full span of those that carved life-long careers out of what is essentially a fragile, duplicitous and unpredictable industry. We are in a position to make informed decisions. But, for the most part, we don’t…

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New Article: “Children’s Entertainer”

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children, cool, hipsters, live, london, manchester, scenesters

I do not idealise the innocence of youth or view children as society’s one true hope. The way I see it, an absence of corruption only emphasises the tragic inevitability of corruption itself. Our timeless frailties – past and future – know no tense.

And though I am not particularly comfortable with children in a social context (I tend to get more serious rather than less when confronted by one) I really love it when they’re in the audience at one of my gigs…

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