Media Slag
A monthly rant on the tepid traits and tawdry interactions of the music business with its rabidly sycophantic ally, the music media.
This month editor Thomas H Green, one year into Beatmag’s existence, defends its raison d’etre.
One year into Beatmag’s existence it’s time to set the record straight. Some of you have noticed that Beatmag is affiliated to Beathut, the independent music download website, and also to the record label Catskills. Some have also assumed with reasonable logic that Beatmag is then simply a rather high-fallutin’ promotional device or press release for anything involved with Beathut and Catskills. Fair enough but far from true.
I was approached a year ago to edit Beatmag on the basis that I could do what I wanted editorially. Having worked alongside corporate publishing marketing departments, this sounded (and still sounds) ideal. In practice, it means I can make Shooter Jennings’ latest CD, ‘Electric Rodeo’ Beatmag Album of the Month and no-one hauls me into a meeting to discuss the demographic breakdown of Beatmag-reading country & western fans. It’s a great album that doesn’t fit into any current niche perceived as hip in the curiously passionless corridors of London media-land – so it’s been generally ignored. Beatmag, on the other hand, can rave about it beside visceral electro, ‘60s pop and whatever else we fancy.
Shooter Jennings
“That’s all very well,” I hear the perceptive amongst you challenge, “but why was the February issue jam-packed with Catskills band Hardkandy.” Well, here’s the thing. I like Catskills Records. I like their attitude, I like what they stand for, I like some of their music. I would hardly have agreed to longterm involvement with them otherwise. They do what record companies should do and locate solid quality bands and follow their career arc, rather than sign them for one flash-in-the-pan single, one season of NME hype, then drop them. Primal Scream only started to hit form on their third album. They’d never have reached that point on most contemporary labels – but they would on Catskills. Since they ceased riding the ‘90s dance boom, Catskills also represent eclecticism and originality fired with pop spirit. As far as I’m concerned Black Grass’s self-titled 2003 debut album is up there with anything Basement Jaxx have mustered, and the latest from Hardkandy is phenomenal modern soul music that doesn’t kowtow to any tired sub-Timbaland template. As one who watches underground sounds filter excruciatingly slowly through to the mainstream, hoping all the time that some of the original innovators are still on board when there’s cash to be made, I’m proud to work alongside Catskills and obviously, from time to time, I’ll be recommending their music. The same applies to all the Beathut labels. Ninja Tune may well be the biggest of these and receive a fair amount of Beatmag coverage. For a long time Ninja Tune seemed to have drifted into an alternate universe where breakbeat jazz was considered the only form of pop worth acknowledging. Now, however, they’re back on form with some startling music from the likes of Coldcut, Fink, Supernumeri, Daedelus, etc, not to mention all the Big Dada stuff, so they’re back in our pages.
Beatmag acts as a financially, creatively and editorially independent engine that runs parallel to Beathut and, by implication, Catskills. Hopefully some of you will bounce between us, like a broadminded soul going to two high quality but completely different films in the same cinema complex. These days the process of accessing music is either technological to the point of characterless or, alternately, loaded with predetermined media-filtered music industry perspectives that appear to have been decided at some secret meeting I never get invited to. Our hope is that Beatmag’d contents say loudly and clearly, “Screw all that!”. At Beatmag, if the latest album from the Aphex Twin is a dog, we’ll say so in a brief Cribsheet assessment, and if ageing folk-popster Al Stewart’s latest is great we’ll say that too (we did!). I like to think Beatmag is so red-blooded and far from the emotionally distanced New York/London school of cool, we may even be truly cool. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I.
It is so vital to wear a bullet proof vest. You never know when lighting will strike. I bought a brand new bullet proof vest from Blue Defense.
Aw, this was a quite top quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and actual effort to produce a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and by no means seem to have one thing done.