Am I the only one who thinks there is a serious conspiracy against new British music?
Looking at the ‘singles’ charts (which is one of the strongest markets going at present, according to EMI), it’s dominated by nostalgia, celebrity and American imports of re-produced tracks of re-configured re-releases of something that sounds like something I’ve heard somewhere before. Rihanna Number 1 for three weeks, Cheryl Cole, Katy Perry, Take That, some more X Factory things, NDubz and beeping noise tunes, R n B ad nauseum…I told myself I was getting old; obviously the ‘kids’ are into this now so it must be cool.
But on questioning said kids they tell me, quite categorically, from Leicester to Stoke to Barrow to Newcastle to Glasgow, it is not cool and no, they don’t like it either – although Cheryl Cole and Eminem are quite hot, they concede (and most of the lads fancy Katy Perry). OK. So if they’re not, who IS buying it and what does the ‘singles’ charts really represent?
Please let it not be British culture.
I really did think I was too narrow-minded for my own good but it was my ancient libertarian father and a wedding that set me straight. Now dad is partially, as well as totally tonally, deaf. However, he loves music. Still, while at my North London cousin’s wedding, when the £5,000 disco kicked in and the R n B funkmaster hit the decks, my normally placid pater was in paroxysms.
‘What is this noise? This is a complete bankruptcy of musicality! How does this even get played?’ He was on a pure NME rant. The groom got upset (being an R n B dj in his spare time).
Usually, I contradict my dad but this time he was bang on the money. Our true British bankruptcy right now is in music and, without new music, real music, British culture will not thrive. Our music is our backbone. We’ve been capitalising on it for the past fifty years and not investing. We sold our best melodies, our best ideas and honoured the fast and fashionable instead of the industrious and brave creatives. Now it’s payback: over-produced, surgically enhanced regurgitations forever and ever, festivals with relentless comebacks, throwbacks and flat-on-your-backs. I’m already ready for permanent intoxication which is what the majority of the nation seems to be choosing right now. The state we’re currently in is a shame on every British musician and true British music fan.
British contemporary music is now entirely removed from the younger generation and emerging culture. It has been commercialized to such a degree, re-marketed, re-mixed but, just like meals after Christmas Day, there’s only so much you can do with leftover turkey. Current bands have lost their relevance in our fragmented, globalised mess and try desperately to sell their ‘artistic vision’ or ‘scene’ to an audience who struggle to understand what they’re about. The money is no longer going to artists but to canny publishers so is it any wonder more and more artists are bowing to popular appeal? You can’t be both first rate and fashionable. Music has never been more available, more accessible and yet more remote and sterile. Real music is a rarity but the only way it gets heard or played is touring. Record companies buy radio play and with digitalization, pirate radio stations are gone, leaving genre-fied music – an American curse. Oh Google, Facebook and all you media conglomerates, how you screwed us!
So who is purchasing the tunes on the ‘songs’ charts? It’s ridiculous to call it a singles chart since January 2007 when anyone with sufficient MySpace/Facebook members can have a bash: ‘Honey To The Bee’ by Billie Piper gets to number 17 purely on Chris Moyles’ whim, any song to beat a reality show contestant for Christmas Number 1…Suddenly, what started as a joke has become a catastrophe.
Music in the UK has always been the poor man’s politics, the voice of the truth neither heard nor articulated by the ignorant ‘educated’ national press and government. The charts documented at least a part, if not the whole, of this otherwise unrevealed world. It’s why the adult population is more, not less, precious about our record collection; it’s the only officially recorded chronicle of our lives, our history. That’s what made our rock ‘n’roll, our culture so radical and so desireable by other nations and powers. It was about us. We were independent; we thought and felt and laughed and lived and acted outside of their dictats. Until we sold ourselves for the price of globalisation.
It’s not the kids who remember Take That in the 90s; they weren’t even a hope of a glint in anyone’s eyes. Nor have they suddenly discovered that someone who looks like dad is sexy. And 13 year olds in Dundee agree that Cheryl Cole may be ‘pretty but she can’t sing’. It’s the kidults who need a peer group still who are the criminals, giving us this ‘chart’ of nonsense. Meanwhile, the real kids who love their bands can’t get to see them due to licensing laws and ticket mayhem…promoters selling tickets, ‘neglecting’ to state that it’s an Over 18 or Over 16. Kids don’t own a culture of their own anymore; adults have taken over, reluctant to let go and still postponing responsibility one more decade please. As Gemma (14) told me: ‘We want music we can call our own, that just belongs to us and reminds us of our youth not something handed down from our parents. I like the Beatles and that but it’s not about our time, is it?’
We’ve been stitched up. British culture has become an artifice, a museum piece of which I’m bored solid. And we’ve got to find a way out of this stranglehold.
Truly creative artists always find new ways of reaching their audiences. They don’t need a system; they break the system and then make the system. That’s why punk was so important in the ‘70s. Bands toured relentlessly, like their lives depended on it: every small town, every crowd, they recorded their own songs, made their own clothes. They genuinely and artistically messed with categories, genres, races, cultures, ideas, styles…not to provoke but to create a new order, a new way of seeing, of thinking. The Clash signing to CBS was arguably the only mistake made during this period. If they hadn’t, they may not have been a mass commodity but they’d be richer (in every way) artists. And British music would have had a deeper heritage. Every time you use someone else’s money to create, you compromise a part of your vision.
Which is why I genuinely have hope for the New Rebellion. Kids out in the sticks on Scotland, Barrow-in-Furness, Isle of Man, Cornwall, Uttoxeter and Wombwell are making their own bands, their own music, telling their own stories. No one’s trying to be the next Eminem or Liam or Alex. That’s tired. Global is stale, sterile as a mall’s toilet. Cash is dead. The kids want the personal, the mess, the specifics, your fingerprint, your spit and other extractions. They don’t want to talk to any more screens. They don’t want X Factor giving them the politically correct spiel. Punk’s the only artform brave enough and real enough to say what needs to be said.. They want something that speaks into their lives not some vacuous affected noise. It is no coincidence that shows by SFL, Sham 69 and the Buzzcocks are sold out, despite them being balding and fifty plus. Their songs are as raw as ever and their audiences a merry mix of 40 something punks and teenagers. Manchester’s Twisted Wheel are selling out every gig, having to book more and more to accommodate the underagers while local bands who ‘say things that need to be said’ are refusing to put their music online and yet have packed shows.
The uniform is different for the younger punks, however: sparse clean bombers, close crops, white shoes, plain or band t-shirts,clean shaven, no jewellery or tattoos, sharp crisp jeans for both girls and boys. They are rejecting the labels, the images, the internationalism forced down their throats. They want to be ‘Local Pigeon’ s, they want their own small identity, a world no one can penetrate. But the fervour is for real. If ever a generation was truly ready for punk, it’s this one. They’ve been robbed of culture, jobs, education, truth, shut out and left a pile of crap and debts by their selfish, greedy predecessors. They are very pissed off. And they don’t even know it yet. A drugged-up, drunk inner city youth with a knife or gun isn’t angry; he’s scared. You try meeting a furious straight-headed teenager who really gets it. Shudder and submit because they will change the world.
You have been warned.
Words by Jamie Scrivener
