Too much, too young

Did it start with Vampire Weekend or Razorlight? No, it was probably before that. Gay Dad, I think it began with Gay Dad. I'm talking about a phenomenon I call 'flash-in-the-pan (FITP) bands.'

A great band needs some resistance. At least initially, it does a band no end of good if they have to struggle to be heard, noticed and appreciated. It makes them stubborn, determined and even a little bit angry. The mighty Manic Street Preachers were met with pretty widespread derision in their formative period. Fake punks, poseurs, Welsh yokels, rock fakes - the metropolitan intelligentsia had a field day, heaping accusation and mockery on the group. Did it ruin them? Did it hell. It gave them the belief and grit they needed to become the consistently interesting and hugely popular act we know today. When they first appeared, The Clash were dismissed as a hopeless garage band; Pet Shop Boys were labelled irrelevant Europop; even The Beatles struggled to find a label willing to take them on. No, a bit of a shoeing gives a pop outfit the depth and character required to mark them out as special. The friction gives them traction.

Barking

First a clarification. One would think from the chatter across news outlets and social media that the HMV retail chain is in the process of locking the doors and boarding up its stores. It’s isn’t, but the news is not good. The company has been taken into administration and that will inevitably mean, at the very best, closures and redundancies. A buyer is being sought and in the meantime, the business is in a hinterland of anxiety while it continues to trade.

Naturally, many people have expressed alarm and sympathy, but a noisy minority have taken to the web to gloat. Somehow they imagine the collapse of the country’s only surviving, high-street music retailer represents a victory for rock and roll and a new dawn for the independent shops. This is nonsense.

Horseplay

If you’re going to be rumbled loading beefburgers with something other than beef, try to ensure it’s not horse. Oats would be better. Or sweets. But, not cat or hamster – and definitely not horse.

As Tesco has discovered, people like horses. They like riding them, giving them sugar lumps, combing their hair, betting on them as they career dangerously over hedges – that sort of thing. They’re considerably less keen on chewing their dead flesh with a slice of cheese and some tomato relish.
Although, having said that, I’m only really talking about British people. In France, horse is a much enjoyed, culinary treat. I suppose it makes a welcome alternative to slugs and toads flash fried with a ton of garlic. But no, in the UK, it’s a big thumbs down for gee-gee fillets.

The Man Who Sold The World

It doesn’t matter if Sky TV project their logo onto the moon for three months. If Tesco book Al Pacino to front their 2013 campaign, it will make no difference. Should Galaxy build a scale model of the Hoover Dam from solid milk chocolate, they’ll still be lagging. Because the most impressive marketing campaign of the year is already with us.

In the run up to the release of David Bowie’s ‘Where Are We Now’, the phones on the desks of the nation’s music magazines lay silent; the churn of press releases from the world’s entertainment PRs carried not a word; the burble of the web and social media bore nothing so much as a whisper. Perhaps the most innovative and creative pop star of the rock era was about to break a ten year silence and we had no idea. This then was Bowie’s anti-marketing masterstroke and its brilliant audacity was breathtaking.

The elephant in the chatroom ...

Twitter has over 100 million users. Facebook over one billion. Even Spotify has 18 million subscribers. If anyone imagines social networks are a fad, or a new-fangled thing for kids (a view to which many venerable BBC presenters appear to subscribe), then they are manifestly wrong. In fact, we are rapidly accelerating away from the position where these platforms represent a distracting media accessory, towards a destination where they become the mainstream media. There is no good reason to think this tipping point won't be reached in the next five years. It will certainly draw ever closer throughout 2013.

Is this a communication revolution? Undoubtedly. The democratisation of mass media? Yes, pretty much. So our sails are full and a brave new utopian world of tweets, pokes, streaming and feeding is unfolding before us. Well not quite. Because in the room of social media there is a mighty elephant. And before long, it will require intense attention.

Unfortunately, for all its wonder, innovation, potential and delight, this new technology is rather poor at making money.

Much later ...

Tonight, as I write this, BBC2 is screening a biography of Jools Holland: presenter, pianist and default guardian of popular music on BBC TV. This doesn't really surprise me. The BBC has been scattering projects and plaudits before the erstwhile Squeeze geezer for a couple of decades now. The thing is, I don't really know why.

I should say that I have never met Jools Holland and have no reason to think he is anything other than a lovely chap who is kind to small animals. But as broadcast professional, I take him to be the luckiest man in the business, because he is largely hopeless.