"The UK live music scene is more buoyant than I can ever remember it.”
If I hear one more person utter those words in the press, I’m going to bounce an SM58 microphone off their heads. The live music scene might be buoyant at the O2, Wembley and Glastonbury but from where I’m standing (a 275 capacity venue in London) it’s rotten to the core, has been for years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future because no-one gives enough of a shit to do anything about it. It’s like looking at Chelsea and Manchester United and proclaiming that football is in good shape? You think? You’ve looked at the Scottish Third Division lately?
Let’s get some home-truths out of the way first, for those of you still living in some kind of delusional world where Britain rules the (air)waves. We have some of the world’s finest bands yet we house them in some of the world’s worst venues with the surliest sound engineers, rudest bar staff, most disinterested venue managers and intimidating doormen. We treat artists and audiences as if we don’t want them in our buildings and this we do in the name of entertainment. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Our small venue circuit is globally derided. Small venues are crumbling. Investment from public or private sources is almost non-existent.
There are, of course, many clubs on these isles which fly in the face of this sort of pessimism; homes for good music run by those who care and nurture, and employ excellent staff and train them well, respected and loved by audiences who attend and artists who perform. But they are the exception. This isn’t some golden age of live music. There are too many bands, too many shows, too many pubs throwing up tinny PAs in the back room. We can’t cope. The audience is being split, the promoters are being asked to front tours for bands who shouldn't actually be touring if they stopped to think for a minute because the financial model at this level makes no sense. Agents ask for more than a band is worth. Promoters struggle to make any money, or break even, or just limit their losses and so the next show they do becomes harder to pull off. Clubs are finding it more difficult to sell tickets for many of their shows. The music industry either has next to no understanding of how difficult it is for small venues, or it does, and couldn't care less.
Mobile phone operators, brewers and fashion brands wrap their logos around anything wearing skinny jeans and battered Converse. Vodafone; supporting live music! T-Mobile: supporting live music! Crap. Support, by definition, comes from below. It’s a foundation upon which an entity can be nurtured and developed. You can’t put Editors on at Proud Galleries and call it a ‘guerilla gig’. You can’t invent a new live music award show and claim you’re supporting live music. What you could do is take a small percentage of the profits from your ludicrous roaming call charges, and plough it into the small venue infrastructure, funding sound desks, mics, XLR cables, multi-cores, parcans, monitoring systems and the like. And what would you get for it? Your logo on flyers and posters? Some branding on the walls or staff t-shirts? Nope. Nothing. Nothing at all. No branding. No marketing opportunity. No audience to exploit. You’d just get a warm glow of satisfaction from knowing that you actually supported live music [though I confess I don’t envy you the task of explaining it to your shareholders].
So live music is the new cash cow and now we see the major labels scrambling around, thrashing and flailing to reposition themselves as ‘music companies’ after belatedly realising that they need a new cow to milk. And god knows they’ll milk this one until its teats are cracked and bleeding and venues are closing down around their ears, and they're wondering where they can showcase another aural barrage of creatively bankrupt, derivative indie-rock-by-numbers.
Let notice be served: live music in the UK is - in many respects - completely and utterly fucked.
Andy Inglis
What is good about touring is meeting people.
Hello,
photo by steve 'uncle' gullick
Regis and Nanou are a couple of photographers from france who came to take pictures of us last week end. the myspace = http://www.myspace.com/theundergroundofhappiness |
We asked our friend Alex Marshall to write this text for us (see below).
Alex is a very good journalist, he writes for the Stool Pigeon and some other ecology stuff somewhere else I can't remember (sorry Alex), he looks upon what the government is doing basically, which is good.
I think he was very disturbed at first about what we were asking him. I understand his confusion because what we wanted was neither a biog, nor an article, it was more like a statement, we wanted to give informations about our present and our decisions for the future.
He did his job and did it well, i mean very professionally. In spite of all the constraints.
Because we did gave him a hard time.
First, he was not paid and though most of music journalists today work for free, it is never a good position to be in. Second, we took a lot of his time with different meetings trying to understand each other about "what exactly do you fucking want me to write?". We had no idea at first, we just knew we wanted "something new".
But there is a funny story attached to this text too:
We finally made up our minds and decided that me, John and Alex should meet for a kind of informal interview. Before that, we gave him two of our new songs so he could listen to them at home. The appointment was taken: 8pm at the ICA. Because of very bad traffic we only arrived there at 9.30pm and I know Alex, he is never late, he is always EARLY. With the pressure of making him wait and the pressure of traffic, and the reality of being a couple (maybe), me and John started to argue in the car and the argument was carried on in the street and in front of the ICA... where Alex was waiting for us, hidden behind the wall, we couldn't see him. I dont know how long he waited like that, hearing us, until he dared come out and raise a shy hand begging us to stop. It had been a long time since I felt so ashamed of myself. Then he asked us "so who was right and who was wrong?". We said we hadn't decided yet because he interrupted us. But in truth, John was right and I was just too proud to admit it.
But anyway, I dont know if we managed to reach our goal, I mean, if the piece is as good as our expectations. Maybe it is not (I dont think Alex thinks it is!) but in my opinion, it doesn't matter. What we understood and discovered while going through all that process with Alex is more important now than the actual writting.
Now we can go and record, we know what we want to say.
Thanks Alex.
Jehn
John & Jehn: an update by Alex Marshall
You’d have thought John & Jehn – the exhilarating French duo – would be spending their days now wallowing in success.
But for the pair, that album seems to have been shoved into the past. In their room in a north London semi – where recording equipment takes up all space the bed doesn’t – they’ve already finished two songs for the next record and they’re hoping to record the rest in the summer.
Impressively, the few new ones they have let slip live, mark a great change in direction.
Sister, the b-side to new single Fear Fear Fear, gives you a taster of that, filled with Gallic swagger. But My Love is the pick of the bunch – a great pop record, and nothing like the Velvets-inspired noir of their past. It starts simple, with little more than Jehn’s breathy vocals, but when the chorus hits, timpani, strings and trumpets roll in, Jehn’s voice soars becoming a genuine turn-on and… Christ! It’s stunning.
“I just hate to repeat myself,” says John “I want to go everywhere. Every time someone says we’re a duo, I want to have 15 musicians on stage the next day. Every time someone says we are a guitar band, I want to use new instruments.
“We can’t be afraid of changing everything or doing something new just because it might end up sounding ridiculous.”
jehn is away in France and we meet tomorrow for the gig in Paris with the kills.
O and i made a new tshirt of the duke for the occasion.
love
john.
Hey we just came back from Ireland , we played 2 shows , one in Cork and one in Dublin . The Dublin one was part of the future days festival , we saw deerhunter , dean deacon and bonnie prince billy, amazing music... We had a great time with everyone in Ireland , it was a beautiful week end.
And yesterday night we went to see deerhunter again with liars @ koko in London , during the deerhunter show we were just behind a guy who kept farting and farting and farting. i wish this guy is gonna go straight to hell for that . The liars show was excellent as always , really shy crowd so we screamed as hard as we could , my voice is a bit fucked now.
We 're going to Paris tomorrow , we're gonna play @ La maroquinerie around 8pm , free entrance , we're looking forward to see the old friends.
today i'm listening to the dfa radio mixes , i needed something groovy.
john.
.jpg)
.jpg)
