Rage Against The Freeloaders
Ex-Blizzards mainman and Voice of Ireland mentor Bressie has extremely forthright views on the way musicians are taken for granted – and on subject of free music downloading.
Stuart Clark, 05 Mar 2012
One of the highlights of this year’s Music Show will be the launch on Saturday of the global Artists’ Charter, which aims to begin a proper process of engagement between artists, music companies and telecoms, and to ensure that the erosion of the earning capacity of ordinary musicians is reversed.
Taking part in the accompanying panel discussion will be the barrister who drew the charter up, Gavin Bonnar, Horslips’ Barry Devlin, Gemma Hayes, Steve Wall and Bressie who believes that our government and State bodies don’t do nearly enough to support Irish musicians.
“I’m sure they’ll point to the Artists’ Exemption Scheme as an example of giving musicians a dig out, but there are only a handful of people making enough money to benefit from it,” he proffers over a rocket-fuel double espresso. “We went for an artists’ grant a few years ago in Westmeath when The Blizzards had just released their first album and were starting to move, and they assumed that because we were signed to a label we had lots of money. Even though we were in fact totally skint, they gave it to some obscure English artist living in the back of beyond. For fuck’s sake guys, I was born and bred in this country and trying to create employment in terms of roadies and sound guys and lighting crew.”
Bressie has emerged as a very independent and provocative voice. His views on piracy and the whole SOPA debate are equally forthright.
“You keep hearing how piracy affects the music industry. I’ve a 360 deal – my label Sony get a piece of everything – so it’s affecting them a little bit, but not nearly as much as it affects me,” he resumes. “At the end of the tour, the person who makes the least amount of money is yours truly, who’s written the music and created the project. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that. Plumbers expect to be paid for their work. Doctors expect to be paid for their work. The people running charities expect to be paid for their work. Why should musicians be different?”
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