<a name="top"></a> <br> <A href="mailto:someone@somewhere?&subject=beatmag?&body=Take a look at this Beatmag.net page... www.beatmag.net/xmasnewyear05/music-business.htm *NOTE*TO*SENDER* *CHECK*RECIPIENT'S*EMAIL*ADDRESS*" class=tagLink><img src=../styles/july05/mail.jpg border=0 hspace=0 vspace=0 height=11 width=13 alt="send this page to a friend"> www.beatmag.net/xmasnewyear05/music-business.htm</a> <br><br> <font class=headerFont> MEDIA SLAG </font> <br> <br> <img src=../styles/july05/media.jpg height=66 width=360 vspace=0 hspace=0 border=0> <br> <br> <font class=standfirstFont> A monthly rant on the tepid traits and tawdry interactions of the music business with its rabidly sycophantic ally, the music media. And if you think Media Slag is going to let anyone off because it's the season of good will, think again...</font> <br> <br> <font class=HeadlineFont> Please Be Rock and Roll </font> <br> <br> <font class=copyFont> There was a time when rock'n'roll bands were the antithesis of acceptability. This was a good thing. From Little Richard to Jim Morrison to Sean Ryder, these were not the sort of people your mum would want to invite round for tea. So much the better. The broadsheet media understood this. Once upon a time they would write mainly about classical music and jazz, particularly when it came to live performances. There was no way the old-fashioned bow-tied career arts journo wanted to go anywhere near a gig when they could have a fine claret at their club before heading out catch the Proms, or on a daring night, Humphrey Littleton. Those times have long-vanished and the broadsheets, from the Telegraph to the Guardian, now have extensive pop and rock coverage. This is also a good thing, representative of how music is really consumed. Having said that, one has to ask how much it's within the broadsheet remit to devote whole pages to bands even the NME hasn't written about yet. One has visions of a pensioner in Devon reading an introductory piece about Bell Orchestre that refers to Arcade Fire as if they were a household name. <br><br> No, the problem is the gradual shaving away of rough edges that rock bands are now willing to undergo for the sake of profile. I noted in the Guardian the other weekend that the band The Editors were in the housing and mortgages section talking about house-sharing, with a nice photo of three 'presentable young men' (as my Grandma used to say) standing on their stairs. The piece had an air of clean-living about it and the pic was all fresh-faced normalcy and Breton shirts... not much Wild Turkey in evidence. All newspapers have such regular slots and, more and more, we see musicians willing to do their bit to fill them. <br><br> Do we want our up'n'coming rock stars featured in the food section, in the family section, in the media section talking about their favourite adverts? Whatever happened to enigma, charisma and outlaw spirit? Sure, rock music has always been about front and even the most depraved icons indulge in a degree of hamming it up, but now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Travis and Coldplay introduced this idea that, while they were rock bands, they were also nice young men who didn't consider themselves any different to you and I. They weren't flamboyant, excess was acknowledged but faintly frowned upon; they were sensible and not especially arrogant. Pop, they seemed to be saying, was just another profession and they'd been lucky. They were diplomats who, if an interviewer suggested Cliff Richard was a boring twat, would um and ah and say that he was “just doing his own thing and that isn't especially our thing,” or something equally insipid.<br><br> Following this template a whole host of Xeroxed indie bands started popping up everywhere being thoroughly uninteresting. Even when these amiable mummy's boys talk about the causes they feel passionate about they don't do so with the spittle-flecked fury of Rage Against The Machine or a young Paul Weller. They make it dull. <br>The Bono/Sting axis of political action has its place in modern rock but without a few more cantankerous gobshites of the Geldorf variety, it's just a turn-off. PR-ed to the eyeballs, there's a wave of young indie rockers who've forgotten how to let rip, except occasionally on stage. They may rate the music of the Sex Pistols and the Stooges, even wear the tee-shirts, but they've forgotten that confrontation and provocation are primary tools in the armoury. <br><br> Liam Gallagher, on the other hand, may be a conceited oaf whose music in recent years hardly sets the world alight, but he positively radiates silent venom and sneering cool. It seems doubtful that, even when Oasis were an unknown quantity, he'd have agreed to talk to a broadsheet about financial planning, what vitamins he takes or how to cook a Christmas turkey. He'd be more likely to set off into an incomprehensible swear-filled rant about how he's going to have to give Paul McCartney a kick-in on Primrose Hill. <br><br> It's the Mark E Smith school of dealing with the media, and young bands would do well to learn from it. It needn't be the booze, drugs and groupie cliches, of course, though that's always more interesting than the usual bland blah. It's more about hauling out the inner eccentric, the dreamer, the ideas-inventor, the Blakeian visionary, the attitude merchant, the limelight hog, the catalyst, the spokesperson, any or all of these. Whether it's the Robin Hitchcock school of demented surrealism, the Scissor Sisters' campy comic decadence or Martin Tomlinson out of Selfish Cunt being, well, a cunt, we'd all prefer something to get our teeth into. It's rock'n'roll, after all, not a jobs fair. <br><br> Put it this way. A budding young rock act behaving as pleasantly all the time as a politician greeting constituents, is just as naff as a hoary old rock act pretending, with no irony, that they're the crazy young buck they once were (Hello, Gene Simmons). <br><br> Provoking debate and argument, kicking off, just plain running at the mouth; these, rather than signing up for the mainstream media's allotted windows of publicity, may provide a small defining cultural moment. Whatever, it's more entertaining than The Editors talking about how their neighbours fixed their fence when the wind blew it over while they were away on tour. <br><br> <A href="mailto:someone@somewhere?&subject=beatmag?&body=Take a look at this Beatmag.net page... www.beatmag.net/xmasnewyear05/music-business.htm *NOTE*TO*SENDER* *CHECK*RECIPIENT'S*EMAIL*ADDRESS*" class=tagLink><img src=../styles/july05/mail.jpg border=0 hspace=0 vspace=0 height=11 width=13 alt="send this page to a friend"> www.beatmag.net/xmasnewyear05/music-business.htm</a> <br><br> <img src=../styles/july05/business.gif width=200 height=200 border=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 align=right> <br><br> </font>
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