Archive for July, 2010
Miller Filtered Music: The bullshit hits the fan
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Scottish people have a very tuned-in bullshit radar and it came in particularly handy when I went along to the media launch of MILLER FILTERED MUSIC, the latest gig-related venture from the American beer company.
The previous one, you may remember, was called The Mill and it gave fans free entry to watch over 200 local acts play in Glasgow and Edinburgh from August 2008 to March 2010.
The new project will see three established bands do one-off shows at Glasgow’s Oran Mor in a ‘stripped back’ capacity – this is open to the artists’ interpretation, although it is most likely to take the form of an acoustic performance.
While tickets won’t be given away this time, they will cost less than a tenner and cloakroom use will be free. The representatives from Miller said it was a good deal for music fans and it’s hard to disagree with that.
However, it was the manner in which Miller Filter Music was pitched that I found grating. I brought this issue up with Miller at the media launch so I don’t feel hypocritical writing about it here after helping myself to their complimentary pokes of fish ‘n’ chips.
Now let’s tell it like it is. Miller are trying to find new ways of getting young people to drink their beer, and associating themselves with live music is a particularly popular option for beverage companies these days. If Miller had just come out and said that was their motivation and left it that, I’d salute them for their honesty.
But, no, the assembled gathering was instead offered lines like this: “Just as Miller Genuine Draft cold filters their beer, in a refreshing approach to live music, the Miller Filtered Music campaign asks bands and artists to filter out the over-production from live music.”
It gets worse. The media launch featured three presentations. Two were given by English guys representing Miller and one was given by a Strathclyde University psychology postgraduate student who had been brought in to talk about the results of a live music survey commissioned by Miller Genuine Draft.
Here’s a sample of her speech: “Many studies on music have reported mood regulation to be among the most important reasons for music consumption, particularly throughout young adulthood where individuals are faced with many developmental challenges, many of which can lead to emotional unrest and thus a heightened need for mood regulation.”
Stay with me.
She went on: ”The key findings of the survey suggested that an overwhelming majority of young adults would prefer to see their favourite band playing in an ‘intimate venue’ (86%) and in such a way so that the music itself was stripped back to the bare essentials and thus played as it ‘was meant to be heard’ (80%).”
So the results clearly show that Miller Filtered Music is delivering precisely what the people want. Or is it? Perhaps it’s just as well Miller wheeled out a psychology student rather than a sociology one. Here are some of the questions that were in the survey – you may want to pay close attention to the bits I’ve put in bold:
Would you prefer to hear:
- Live music, stripped back to the essentials and as it was meant to be heard
- Live music, emphasized with lots of effects and high production values
Which of these answers are true of how you feel about live music:
- I am bored and frustrated with the overproduction at live music events
- I do not mind the hype and high production values of live music shows
Would you rather see:
- Your favourite band playing live
- Your favourite band playing live in an intimate venue
It’s pretty obvious from the choice of language used in the survey that Miller were clearly trying to skew the results in one direction. If you didn’t answer the way they wanted you to then that makes you a weirdo who prefers to hear live music that is overproduced, hyped, in a setting anywhere other than intimate and, most importantly, NOT AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE HEARD. What does that even mean? Seriously, Miller, who the fuck are you to define how music is “meant to be heard”.
Let’s get things straight here. I think Miller Filtered Music is very good news for Scottish music fans. Given that concert ticket prices have reached the stage where Belle & Sebastian are charging £30 for a show in Glasgow, giving punters the opportunity to see established bands for less than half the regular cost is a fantastic selling point. It’s just a shame Miller didn’t choose to focus on that as the best way of giving its latest beer-promoting idea some credibility rather than attempting to bullshit its audience with psychological babble based on some seriously iffy statistical analysis.
The first of three Miller Filtered Music gigs features Doves, supported by Pearl And The Puppets and First Charge Of The Light Brigade at Glasgow’s Oran Mor on September 2 (sold out).
Doves – The Cedar Room (*I’d forgotten how amazing this song is)
Pearl And The Puppets – Make Me Smile
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Professional music journalism is dead. Discuss.
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
Earlier this month I was contacted by a Scottish masters student called Steven Kearney, who wanted me to answer a few questions for his dissertation on the impact of blogging and podcasting on traditional music journalism.
It’s a very relevant topic of debate and I gave the issue much thought, so I’ve decided to share some of my views here and hopefully find out what your take on it is.
One of the first questions asked what I perceived to be the differences between music bloggers and professional music journalists. In my opinion, the only difference is that one gets paid while the other (usually) does not. In terms of writing style, blogs and printed publications overlap so much these days that the dividing lines have blurred into non-existence. Blogs are often every bit as informative, authoritative and trusted as their professional counterparts, while it is not uncommon for magazines/newspapers to go down a more traditional ‘blogging route’ by publishing articles written in informal/personal/first-person/diary form.
However, perhaps the most important question posed in the survey was: ‘Do you feel the role of the professional music journalist has been replaced by blogging and podcasting?’ You might be thinking my answer would have been a definitive ‘yes‘, but it wasn’t.
Music blogging, almost by definition, is a passion or a hobby, albeit a horrendously time-consuming one. Many bloggers may have enough clout to get perks such as promo albums, free concert tickets and interview time with artists, but if you’re a professional music journalist, there’s a much greater chance your work will lead to travelling to foreign lands, going on tour with bands, organising photoshoots and coming up with a 2,000-word feature at the end of it.
This commitment of time clearly requires financial backing, and right now paid-for publications are the only ones with enough money to justify the expense. The problem, of course, is that this sort of investment is becoming increasingly rare due to dwindling readerships and a lack of advertising – and that can only be bad news for music journalism.
In Scotland, The List and The Skinny can only afford to employ a couple of staff writers/editors in their dedicated music departments and therefore rely heavily on unpaid contributors to flesh out the content each issue.
Everyone who writes for Radar also does so on a voluntary basis, except for two staff members who combine the role with other (non-music) work for the Scotsman. But you have to give the Scotsman credit. Six other national daily newspapers in Scotland have a larger circulation, yet it is the only one that can boast its own music website.
In many ways, the appetite for music writing has never been greater in this country – you only have to look at the ever-growing number of blog links on the right-hand side for proof of that. However, in terms of the quality of research and writing, I’ve always viewed professional music journalism as the benchmark that The Pop Cop should aspire to. It may be a dying art but I certainly won’t be celebrating when it’s gone.
The Beatles – Paperback Writer
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Is watching local bands at a festival a bit of a waste?
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Choosing which music festivals to go to has always been a decision I’ve taken based on the quality of the headliners. If you’re going to part with three figures on a weekend of mud-dodging, it makes sense to put it towards seeing bands who don’t visit your hometown every other week.
However, it recently occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t have trekked to this year’s T in the Park if Admiral Fallow, Washington Irving and The Seventeenth Century weren’t on the bill – and all three played several hours before the big-name attractions.
When I look back at the mammoth Balado line-up, I don’t regret giving Eminem or Kasabian a bodyswerve. Instead, I think about what I missed on the smaller stages where, if time was no issue, I would have checked out at least a dozen other promising local acts such as LightGuides, Meursault, Pearl And The Puppets, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, Be Like Pablo, Lou Hickey, North Atlantic Oscillation, MOPP, Three Blind Wolves, Alex Gardner, Kid Adrift and Astral Planes.
And it’s the same story at THE WICKERMAN FESTIVAL on July 23-24. The acts at the top of the bill – The Charlatans, Ocean Colour Scene and Teenage Fanclub – are the ones the organisers have clearly spent most money on to bring in the punters. Popular they may be, but it has been at least a decade since any of them wrote a tune the crowd could sing along to.
So once again I find myself looking at the smaller stages for thrills and there are plenty to be found: Galleries, There Will Be Fireworks and Panda Su are Pop Cop favourites; Unicorn Kid, Kitty The Lion, Midnight Lion and Mitchell Museum are all fresh from acclaimed T in the Park slots; while Withered Hand, Woodenbox With A Fistful of Fivers and Rachel Sermanni are well worth a look too.
Regular readers of this blog will know I’ve never been one for getting carried away with unsigned Scottish musicians without ample reason, but it seems like these are the ones who are increasingly giving our established music festivals a sense of purpose. But if that becomes the primary reason for buying a weekend ticket, is it really worth the money?
Wickerman Festival, Dundrennan, Dumfries & Galloway, July 23-24 (tickets)
There Will Be Fireworks – We Sleep Through The Bombs
Panda Su – Eric Is Dead (Jonnie Common remix)
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