5 August 2010

One recent dark and sleepless night I remembered some film images I took over ten years ago of Muse and the Frames. I wondered if I still had the negatives and a few days later started my search through boxes of envelopes full of musical history. I suddenly had the thought that these early images of both bands were important and so I needed to preserve them digitally if all possible. Well, I found the negatives pretty quickly as, thankfully, I labelled pretty well everything. And what musical memories were rekindled…

Muse had just released a promo EP prior to their debut album and I had conducted two interesting, early interviews, in addition to witnessing a couple of great live shows. I had received the Frames album DANCE THE DEVIL and quickly got to interview them at a live gig at the tiny Picket Club in Liverpool. I was blown away by the band and a few months later went to see them play again but this time at a music festival in Western Ireland alongside some of the worlds greatest musicians. At one point in the ten-day outdoor festival the band played to a handful of people by a large pond (Jarvis Cocker also played a DJ set by the same pond) - unique events, great music and memories.

I found out about David Gray while in Ireland as everybody at the festival was talking about him, and he was massive there. When I returned home to Wales I got hold of his latest album WHITE LADDER, and raved over it. Over 12 months later the rest of the music media industry caught up with us. Anyway, those images are now stored on disc and on my hard drive and are actually better than I thought they were, taken as they were by cheap film cameras.

I completed the exercise at the time the 2010 Barclaycard Mercury shortlist was announced and couldn’t help compare the quality of albums back then in 1999 - 2000 with those just announced. Is it me or has the music industry and its judges dropped their appraisal standards? Is mediocrity the new excellent? Of the albums short-listed and heard by me only Mumford & Sons comes close to making my personal shortlist (just!). Dizzee Rascal’s album is nothing but a crowd-pleasing/radio-friendly/meaningless rant, while The Foals album contains just one good song. And this is supposed to be the best music Britain produced in 2009/2010?

Where were the Maccabees, Swell Season, The Enemy, Elliot Minor, Portico Quartet, Neil Cowley Trio, and other great releases from the past year? Were they even entered? Were they even interested? Looking back over Mercury Prize history is an illuminating exercise, for example, 1997 when OK COMPUTER was short-listed alongside Roni Size’s NEW FORMS - two innovative, fabulous and historic albums in a single year. But what were the judging panel thinking of when they also included the Spice Girls alongside them? And why didn’t Nitin Sawhney win in 2000 with his multi-cultural masterpiece BEYOND SKIN? In fact this was the year when things started to wrong (with a few exceptions) with the prize culminating in last year’s ultra-dubious winner Speeche Debelle (especially so after her very poor live performance on the award show).

I’m left wondering if 2010’s short-list is really the best the UK and Ireland produced (of course it isn’t), and I guess the only way we will ever know for sure is by being shown the total list of entries. Now that would be interesting…

An editor of a ‘hyper-visited’ UK music website writing in a national broadsheet proclaimed that the years of great song-writing are well behind us. After attending an LA concert given by a couple of 60s greats he decided that certain more recent song-writers and albums really weren’t as good as he originally thought. And this from the guy who made the Phoenix album, with lyrics that made no sense at all, the best release of 2009. Carol King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Simon & Garfunkle, the Beatles plus many more did indeed write great lyrics married to equally excellent melodies, and it was this combination that was at times pretty special. However, as a fan of singer/songwriters I can tell you with absolute confidence that song-writing amongst today’s solo artists and bands can be as good, you just have to know where to look… And you can forget finding them on the radio or in the charts. Of course, certain older tunes are classics which I grew up with, and shaped my taste and judgement of music - just as Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Glen Hansard, Tom McRae, Elliot Smith, Phil Campbell, Ani DiFranco, Ryan Adams, Damien Rice, David Ford, Carina Round, Metallica and others set my standards now in judging all new music I hear. The problem is that concentrated marketing dollars buys hype that smothers the best and promotes the worst - in all media. And annual awards miss the best by a country mile - when Lily Allen can win the Ivor Novello song-writing award, you just know something’s badly amiss.

In short, way back then great song-writing and performance talent sold millions of records, day-in day-out, whereas now it doesn’t. It’s up to us as editors to recognise and push only the very best; to set our own standards and stick to them like super-glue. And as radio producers/presenters to mix the best of the new with the best of the old to illustrate to listeners that quality is infectious, ageless and mediocrity will not be tolerated.