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Apol, I think (at least here in Britain) digital radio and satellite TV is helping out on that front. 250+ blandstations just doesn’t work – so all the niche material finds a home. Even the holy-homogeneous MTV splits its output on satellite. MTV2 happens to feature the kind of alt-guitar I like, and there seems to be a lot of it about at the moment.
It’s now getting to the point (I admit, Blighty is a small country) where the alt-acts chart very well, and the mainstream radio has to pick up on it. TV’s still obsessed with “audition 50,000 people to find an ‘idol’ who can sing covers” shows, though.
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Well yes one must factor in the consumer but how does one (the consumer) know what’s out there and have the ability to appreciate that which they are not allowed to hear?
For example .. I had a friend of mine listen to Gretchen goes to Nebraska .. and he was blown away wanted to know if it was a “new”:lol: band etc .. I said nope .. been around since the early 80’s friend .. but ya aint gonna hear them because clear channel will only feed us their popculture vomit .. yes true the consumer returns to the vomit time and time again but surely some competitor out thre can point them to a plate of filet mignon a tad more often eh?
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I still hold Clear Channel as primarily responsible for choking us with pantloads of “we’ll all sound the same to make money” .. bands because they feel that if they don’t they wont get airtime .. we need more diversity or at least radio guys that wont play by clear channels rules and will play great bands like uhm saaaay King’s X for example a top notch band that it seems mostly musicians have heard of and few others.
MrByngBell: Got the Cow Dolphin Icon from a site that offers JPG images for your MSIMS .. so long ago I don’t remember site but do searches whthin those parameters and you’ll likely find a suitable desktop size image of it. 😉
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Mike, I actually (hit me, everyone) watched “World Idol”. If it makes you feel better, those “Blink” types don’t even make it to the last ten here in Blighty or the US. Even if it does, they don’t know what to do with it. If you can bear to click on Waste ‘o’ life’s “Frying Chicken Wings” (OK, to help the Googlers, it’s actually Westlife’s “Flying Without Wings”) sample clip, this is the only sort of pap that these “judges” understand.
Everything else even slightly off-target gets squeezed through the same letterbox until it sounds just like it – but maybe with tattoos and unplucked nasal hair. It ends up sounding just as revolting as it reads… 😥
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Just on the subject of Idol here in Australia atm my biggest gripe is the complete lack of emotion put into any of the songs. It’s not that I expected otherwise but the ignorance in regards to some of the songs they are singing gets me plenty pissed. Eg: The punk rocker (“Blink 182”) doing his “punk” rendition of Roxanne and completely slaughtering it beyond belief. Jump around a bit and get the teen girls cranking away on their phones. It’s the same performance for each song no matter what it is.
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Blimey, Byng! I’ve just noticed even “Most Holy” Michael has a piccy under his name. Namely, Hall and Oates (did those guys save on touring costs by hiring a shared hotel room?)
I’m feeling a bit nekked and must get a thumbnail. “Best of Hondo?” or “Dave Brock of Hawkwind Squats at Glastonbury Like it Should be Done?” Maybe I should go for the famous “Tennis Girl” poster, but with a twist. Bassleft hitches up shorts to scratch hairy buttock as a ten-year-old sends a sideline passing shot whizzing past him to go six-love up in the third set. Mods, I leave it to you to decide…
On the topic, I do hear you Lee. A lot of middle-class eyewash has maintained a career that should’ve been throttled at birth (IMHO) or sterilized in middle-age. But, dammit, they’re still there. If I may say so, the reason is (yes, OK they ‘knew’ someone maybe) that they can cut it. Privileged snotters like The Stones, Floyd, Genesis can go through ‘stinky bits’ (and they all have) but they get through because they can play and write.
I feel sorry for the likes of the ‘talent show winner’ because, as soon as the songwriting/production/distribution pack of horses disappear – they’re toast. Ex-stars, aged 23, £20,000 in the bank, and someone deep in Walthomstow is laughing his head off and planning next year’s televised Xmas #1 competition. Robbie only goes to prove that even a talent-seeking audition can actually find real talent. Not that they realized it at the time…
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Is there anything wrong with creating a pop group out of 5 nobodies, suiting them up, giving them a career, giving them a great pop song, making a shed load of money out of them and then dumping them back in the sewer? if they have any talent they last the distance, Robbie Williams has some talent, he was dumped and he lasted, the others had 5 years of memories, and a bit invested in the bank, there is always going to be an appetite for this kind of pop music, and there will always be people that control it, i seriously cannot see a problem with the pop mincing machine, it’s your choice if you want to jump into it, or if you have a real talent then maybe you should take the hard route, write your own songs, rehearse, go out and gig night after night for no money at all, and then get yourself a following, and hopefully a record deal, what i find hard to swallow are the ‘Middle class nigels’ who go to University, join a band, make contacts, cos as we all know its not how much talent you have, but how many contacts you have, and then all leave tp pursue a music career, they all write songs about life experiences they have never had, nor ever will have, make 2 albums, 1st is very mediocre and the 2nd is as imaginitive as Duff beer, and then break up, but then cos of the contacts they have they always get to stay in the industry on some 200k per year job, and they all have manage to drop their middle class accents. Ive got no time for them.
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With respect (always a bad opener), I think you’re both missing the point. Personally disliking Madonna, or The Smiths, is just a POV. They’re not killing r’n’r. “Moguls” kill popular music because they always want to control it, and tell us what we should be buying. They cream their briefs when a genre takes off and they don’t understand it (so can’t manipulate it).
Back in the 50s, they’d find a waitress with a pair of lungs, pay her $500 to sing and rake the money in. Then came acts who wrote their own material, chose a producer, negotiated their own cut. You can bet the suits didn’t like that, but they had to hand over the big cheques to keep the likes of U2 in their stable. So, in the 90s, you started getting these audition processes for the likes of “Back Passage Boys” and the suits were back in (along with those sausage-machine, pop-pap songwriters).
Now, they’ve discovered they can televise the whole, excruciating ritual and make money out of it. The Cowells of this world. Audition 10,000 people, highlight the worst of the stinkers, get people voting ($1 per call) for the not-so-stinkies. Then have a “Grand Final”, guarantee yourself a number 1 and guess what? The poor saps have signed up to a $1500 per week deal and can be dropped off the label even before a 2nd single is cut. The suits are already onto “Idol 4”, auditioning another 10,000 aerosols and the whole crud-fest resurfaces, like a blocked sewer.
Fortunately, they’re not winning. “Proper” acts (whether it’s guitar bands or wubba-wubba dance types) outsell this TV-hype rubbish. Just say “no” to glorified talent competitions on TV.
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