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10:35 AM GMT 25/04/2013
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Come Back "The Man", All Is Forgiven!
8:00 AM GMT 26/02/2010
What we're already missing about "dinosaur" record labels and their coke-addled "parasites". By MOJO's Andy Fyfe.
IT'S NOT EASY being The Man. When your beleaguered multinational record company bleats about lost revenue because some kids in Tonga P2P your legitimately copyrighted wares you're a corporate bully. Artists you've invested vast amounts of money in hate you for doing what they asked and selling them like a commodity. And upstart start-up companies have convinced everyone else that the very way you run your business is a knuckle-dragging anachronism, bloated by cack-eared blood-suckers crazed on cocaine who squander bags of money on backhanders that would give an arms dealer the vapours.
Some, or indeed all, of these things may be true, but the decline of the record company has had one very dramatic effect: the removal of the A&R man as a filter between artist and consumer, someone to ask the question "Where the f__k's the single?", means there is more utterly awful music available than ever before. Unfortunately, as artists take ever-greater control of their means of production, the aural tsunami is only going to gather pace, and with it comes the shortening of careers and the break-up of any residual tribal musical community who need artistic longevity to justify their emotional buy-in (but that's a whole other blog).
In two celebrated instances, both The Jam and Blur were asked "where's the f__king single" about, respectively, All Mod Cons and Modern Life Is Rubbish. The results? Paul Weller was jolted out of his writer's block and realised that the album they'd handed over to A&R man Chris Parry, dominated by Bruce Foxton songs, wasn't much cop, went back home to mum and dad's, listened to some Kinks albums and wrote Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, Mr Clean and English Rose. When Food Records' Dave Balfe and Andy Ross asked Damon Albarn the same question 13 years later, he went home, listened to some Kinks albums and wrote For Tomorrow and Chemical World. With respect to Ray Davies, if it hadn't been for those A&R interventions it's arguable we would never have heard of Weller or Albarn again.
The fact is, few musicians, or for that matter artists in general, have the emotional detachment to know whether their work is actually any good or not. It's why authors have editors and publishers, painters and sculptors agents and gallery owners.
One of the loudest advocates for artist control has been Radiohead, pioneers of internet-based releases after they'd made enough out of EMI to secede from the company and become a musical republic. "They sell us like a commodity," they mewled, as if they hadn't knowingly entered into the Faustian pact of a record deal. OK Computer eventually gave them the power and money to cut the infernal record company out of the game, but a question remains: do you want to listen to The Bends and OK Computer (filtered through a record company) or In Rainbows (filtered through Phil Selway)?
Meanwhile, the internet's musical oil slick is spreading, but more in this case definitely means less. Making music for your mates and posting it on the internet doesn't give you a career, although if you're lucky you'll become an internet phenomenon. Until the second album. Because you did it "on your own" last time (chances are you allowed a record company to pick up re-recording costs and tour support, though), you don't want some corporate goon tampering with your shit, so you ban them from the studio (actually your laptop). When the record company refuses to distribute the album and drops you, you can make all the noise you want about now being free to talk directly to your fans through your own label, but when it tanks (just as the label said it would) an empty life grumbling to all-comers in the pub awaits.
Lawrence Arabia, a musician who overcame the geographical handicap of being based in New Zealand by posting his quirky videos on the internet and securing traditional licensing agreements around the world with the likes of Bella Union in the UK, believes that the internet is a case of musicians being less than careful about what they wished for.
"For a long time people have strived to make and release the music that they want to make without the industry," he says. "There's probably exactly the same amount of talent out there but for the consumer it's so much harder to pick through. I find it so daunting that I tend to shy away from the thousands of new bands you read about on Pitchfork every day and just end up listening to Revolver again."
So, there it is: hope for The Man after all. As Mr A&R's expense account is ripped from his cold, drug-seized fingers, his once less-sexy colleague Mr Heritage Catalogue Controller might just be about to enjoy his day face down snorting coke off strippers' arses. Meet the new boss...
Andy Fyfe
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 8:00 AM GMT 26/02/2010
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What in the name of holy fuckery is this shit about?
Posted by Sid Little. at 3:21 PM GMT 26/02/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Sid Little.
It's about how every piece of shit band that Pitchfork writes about could use someone telling them that their music is mediocre at best instead of sucking their dicks because they're the indie flavor of the month and telling them they're great when they are most certainly not.
Here's to quality control (no matter where it comes from) and the end of self-indugence, even if it's only 3 minutes long.
Posted by Enough is enough... at 4:16 PM GMT 26/02/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Sid Little.
It's about how every piece of shit band that Pitchfork writes about could use someone telling them that their music is mediocre at best instead of sucking their dicks because they're the indie flavor of the month and telling them they're great when they are most certainly not.
Here's to quality control (no matter where it comes from) and the end of self-indugence, even if it's only 3 minutes long.
Posted by Enough is enough... at 4:18 PM GMT 26/02/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Sid Little.
No Sid, You carry on with your uninformed comments when confronted by articles longer than "WTF, dude!". All hail the democracy of the idiotnet.
Posted by The Stinking Bishop at 4:44 PM GMT 26/02/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: The Stinking Bishop
Come again?
Posted by Frank Butcher at 2:15 AM GMT 27/02/2010 Report Abuse
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I think that sites like last fm may become that lens that focuses good music to the listener so he doesn't have to search through an ever growing pile of music.
Posted by SirSid at 3:37 AM GMT 27/02/2010 Report Abuse
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A&R men are not what they used to be. With major labels , it seems that the A&R guys are under tremendous pressure to deliver 'hits', i.e. records that will move 'units'. The actual quality of the music takes second place. The tastemakers have to have actual taste, which many do not have. When their expense accounts are more important than the artists that they sign, then that's a problem.
A&R/talent scouts/label owners back in the day had the good sense to know what was good music.The guys that sent back Paul Weller and Damon Albarn back to the drawing board were not nessisarily looking for the single, but looking for good music that they could hang their hat on. I can't think of any current A&R guys that have become household names in the industry. In the past, you had John Hammond, Norman Granz, Ahmet Ertugun, George Martin, Sam Phillips, Mo Ostin, David Geffen, yes , even Clive Davis. These guys had something called vision, not only looking for the hit, but promoting good music, maybe even changing hearts & minds. The only ones recently I can think of is Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons.
The music industry has many many problems. Blame can be spread all around. Mutual respect between the artists and the promoters of music needs to happen for the industry to rebound.
Posted by Robert F DuPont at 3:25 PM GMT 27/02/2010 Report Abuse
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Well it's no great tragedy that the industry has died on its arse. And it's no great tragedy that fewer artists will have lengthy careers either. All you're saying here is that artists work better with restrictions and we still need cultural gatekeepers to wade through the oceans of self-funded dross on our behalf.
Cultural gatekeepers such as magazine critics perhaps? Time to step up to the plate and become trusted for an opinion honestly held and clearly expressed, rather than mistrusted for being part of the industry hype machine. It's about time.
Posted by Tuppy Glossop at 9:41 AM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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Well it's no great tragedy that the industry has died on its arse. And it's no great tragedy that fewer artists will have lengthy careers either. All you're saying here is that artists work better with restrictions and we still need cultural gatekeepers to wade through the oceans of self-funded dross on our behalf.
Cultural gatekeepers such as magazine critics perhaps? Time to step up to the plate and become trusted for an opinion honestly held and clearly expressed, rather than mistrusted for being part of the industry hype machine. It's about time.
Posted by Tuppy Glossop at 9:42 AM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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Well it's no great tragedy that the industry has died on its arse. And it's no great tragedy that fewer artists will have lengthy careers either. All you're saying here is that artists work better with restrictions and we still need cultural gatekeepers to wade through the oceans of self-funded dross on our behalf.
Cultural gatekeepers such as magazine critics perhaps? Time to step up to the plate and become trusted for an opinion honestly held and clearly expressed, rather than mistrusted for being part of the industry hype machine. It's about time.
Posted by Tuppy Glossop at 9:42 AM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Tuppy Glossop
Can you repeat that?
Posted by Colston Bassett at 5:10 PM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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I think the fallacy here is the notion that there is "good" and "bad" music. Maybe some people don't want their music to be "catchy." Maybe they don't need a "single." Music is different for different people. It's hard work filtering through all the bands now that the internet has brought them all to me, but it's worth it when to find a band from a faraway land that just happens to tickle my fancy. There are as many types of music as their are people, and to say that we need "quality control" implies that there is a uniformly agreed-upon definition of "quality," which I fundamentally disagree with.
Posted by Jim at 5:33 PM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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fellacio?
Posted by Pauline Quirk at 6:10 PM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Pauline Quirk
Scrotum lift?
Posted by Andi Peters at 6:54 PM GMT 01/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Jim
Well, duh. Of course it's up to you to choose what you do and don't listen to according to whatever criteria you like. But tell me how it is you are expect to find your particular needles in the haystack without a little help and guidance?
Posted by Anonymous at 11:11 AM GMT 02/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: SirSid
Useful as they already are, there is an increasingly persuasive argument that recommendation engines ultimately serve to limit minds rather than to expand them.
Posted by Tuppy Glossop at 11:14 AM GMT 02/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Robert F DuPont
hear hear!
Posted by Lee in hamburg at 7:02 AM GMT 06/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Lee in hamburg
Where?
Posted by Trevor Brooking at 9:44 PM GMT 06/03/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Trevor Brooking There on the stair, a little mouse with clogs on
Posted by Kate Copstick at 5:24 PM GMT 08/03/2010 Report Abuse
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Musicians can find ways to emotionally detach from their work, but surely it's involving the fans directly in that decision process that makes the whole band / fan dynamic interesting ?
Posted by W14wiz at 12:57 PM GMT 28/10/2010 Report Abuse
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I find Lawrence Arabia's comments particularly nauseating. So the internet is fine for him to get his music out there but not for anyone else ? What a fool.
The author of this article is also wide off the mark as are all the major label apologists. The days of filters and trusted opinions are long gone and quite frankly I don't miss them one bit. This new age of musical democracy puts power in the hands of the actual consumers. Yes there is a lot of music out there but one thing will never change. MARKETING.
The reality is that it is marketing that drives the so called filters who are fed corporate dollars from the major label paymasters and anyone else who can afford to grease their pockets.
Let's not forget here in Australia both Paris Hilton and Kate Alexa (google her to listen to how awful she actually is) both got major prime time airtime by the big stations. No doubt this is the case everywhere else.
THE RECORDING INDUSTRY IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE NEW RECORDING INDUSTRY.
Posted by JADED AND BORED at 3:35 AM GMT 30/10/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: JADED AND BORED
"...puts power in the hands of the actual consumers?"
Are you nuts?
It's not about power it's about the music.
Consumers can only tell us what they enjoyed consuming not what they want to consume in the future.
that sort of creative thinking should be left to talented individuals and collectives usually known as musicians
Posted by jake the rake and the garden tools at 2:26 PM GMT 09/11/2010 Report Abuse
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