Summertime… living is easy
Some good new music news. Esteban have been played on Radio 2 and numerous local stations. Their summer tour has been a resounding success but it came with a heavy price: their mighty tour vehicle The Red Rocket is no more… and the guys are battle scarred. Woman E have been picking up blogger interest for their poptastic single Few And Far Between. Indeed, the very influential Popjustice blog gave them the coveted Song Of The Day. Exoterik, a Leeds based metal band we produced recently, have signed a publishing deal in the US. Paper Planes, a pop/rock group from Hull, signed to A&G Music. Ideals signed with Shout It Out Loud in New York.
It’s rewarding to see one’s work recognized by others in the business.
Travels With Charlie…
We took a long summer holiday this year. I took my clan to Finland, the best country in the world to live in, according to Newsweek.
I spent a bit of time in a log cabin in Central Finland. My daily routine, in preparation for the squash season ahead, was running down dirt tracks, chopping wood, clearing fields of felled trees, canoeing… almost like…
Of course, the scenery at this time of year is very different, a lot less snowy. In fact, I believe there was a drop of rain one morning. The rest was glorious sunshine in 30+ C.
Eventually the training had to end and I went to Helsinki, gagging to do something musical.On the way to a writing session in my friend’s studio, I saw a queue of people a hundred metres long. It was the queue to a soup kitchen. A soup kitchen in the capital of the best country to live in? I didn’t stop to ask whether or not these particular residents of the best country in the world to live in felt they were indeed the unknowing winners of the lottery. To me it looked a sad, horrible sight. Not one befitting a rich country like the one I was fortunate enough to be born in.
I can understand if these things happen in the USA, but in civilized Europe?
Across town that day, U2 were performing at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, where Bono met the prime minister and played his hits. Some of my friends went to the show. Most of them work for big global corporations and businesses. They got their tickets from their employers. How rock’n'roll is that?
Big shows are corporate entertainment, no matter what the main guy talks about on stage…
Still, I’m no U2 hater. I think they are ace. The set list in Helsinki was impressive. My favourite U2 song is
And What Do You Do…?
I also attended a class reunion. Not mine, but of people who graduated from high school around the same time as me. A year before, to be precise. So, I didn’t have a real emotional connection, but the faces were familiar enough. Good yarns.
Apart from one girl… ahem, woman… who worked for a real grassroots NGO, I was the only one there who didn’t have a proper job in an ordinary business. An interesting topic came up. It was about how technology affects people today in a way it didn’t use to affect people when we were growing up.
I launched into the topic that exercises the minds of people working in the bubble of music: the reason why so much of it sucks these days. I spoke eloquently about how creativity suffers when creators of art feel compelled to tweet, blog and vlog incessantly. I explained how bad musicianship remains unchallenged when every mistake can, and usually will, be corrected by a computer program. I made known my frustration with the way the media has to compartmentalize music if it is to feature it, because everyone is petrified and preoccupied by data analysis, by audience testing. How, when the past is readily accessible, there is a severe lack of forward movement. When everyone lives in the moment, the long term feels just too complicated. It’s about access, fame and quick fixes.
Judging by the blank looks around me, I was speaking in a foreign language.
Switching to Finnish didn’t help.
I walked away with the feeling that people outside the business we work in don’t really get the amount of sacrifice and commitment needed to do something special, hell, ANYTHING, in music. They really don’t care about why your band doesn’t make the playlist. either. They think that the stuff that’s played on the radio is pretty alright and entertaining. ANYTHING that takes the mind off daily drudgery on the way to work is surely a good thing.
Someone put across that they felt that practicing like a monkey for 10 000 hours just to get good at playing was unhealthy. This person, who had become the head teacher of a big school in the years since I last saw him, compared the struggle to become a great musician to being a workaholic father who’s never at home with his wife and kids. In his opinion, we’re all far better off just chilling and enjoying life.
Possibly true. But if making meaningful cool art is what you’re into, hanging with your mates isn’t going to deliver.
For us to take on the meaningless and mundane (like your favourite x-factor winner’s new single that’s on every playlist everywhere) we have to work our nuts off and still most people will just go: yeah… sounds alright… pass the parmesan, please.
C’mon People!
I sure understand the level of commitment required. I’m familiar with the associated obstacles. For real artists, who are in it for the music, no price is too high. Time, money, relationships, risk and hardship – you don’t even think about them. Whatever it takes.
Meanwhile Back In The Jungle
I played squash with a mate who works a good job at one of the majors. He was gutted because he felt that his company was being run down by fuckwits. New management from outside the music business came in recently and introduced new procedures, according to my friend, based on those learnt in the ready made pizza business.
Sound familiar? Music companies run by ex biscuit sales men and ex kitchen appliances sales men… I’m not an apologist for major labels, nor am I an apologist for indie labels, wherever they are. All I’m saying is that we are in the arts. It’s about emotional connections. It’s about stories. Things that matter more than daily sales reports. Things that develop slowly.
A story has a life span. You may not connect with it right away. For instance, there was this Finnish poet called Tommy Tabermann, who back in my youth was considered a bit of a joke by me and my friends. I didn’t get his work at all. Poetry was not high on my list. By chance, I read some of his work on my summer holiday. It was great. Inspired, I bought a collection of his work, and I want to share this piece with you, one I read on a bus ride I had taken a thousand times before, back in the day when a career in music was just a pipe dream.
The Inspiring End Bit
Tommy writes and I translate to the best of my ability: “When you hear them call you, scream at you, taunt and ridicule you for being childish, naïve, an idealist, stupid, weak, a fag – everything that scares those who have lost all hope, let out a sigh of relief: you haven’t got lost on the road that everyone should travel.”
Rock. Let’s make some music.
V.



