Pop Apocalypse

It was fun walking through Belfast city centre in the days preceding the MTV European Music Awards. With kids laying high-pitched siege to hotels, and stalking through shopping precincts on a pop star safari, for a while it felt like the city’s walls (supposing it had them) had been breached and the old joint was undergoing a very welcome (as opposed to Foot Locker-worrying) pre-teen ransacking.

The good humoured, life-affirming mood around town, however, couldn’t have provided a starker contrast to the show itself. We should probably take it for granted that, like the World Cup and the Olympics, the EMAs are one of those corporate entities that roam the cosmos looking to latch onto compliant hosts. Likewise, with the City Council trumpeting the importance of the event for ‘brand’ Belfast, no-one should have been expecting Spike Island. And lo and behold: the evening revealed itself to be less a pop event than a joyless extended parade of dead-eyed, cross-platformed, auto-tuned, pop humanoids.
But hey, it was significant, wasn’t it? Hmmm.
For the hotels and gift-pack Rolex suppliers out there, maybe, but I’d argue that Justin Fletcher turning on the city’s Xmas lights was of more creative significance than the EMAs. I mean, Cliff Tumble going happy hardcore? Hello. Hello.
These days every event – from beer festivals to UK Podiatry conferences – has its significance neon-lit before it even has a line-up confirmed. It’s probably time that Belfast, in this context, moved beyond significant. It’s proven now it can run these bells and whistle beanos in its sleep. Let’s turn the sound down a bit. Let’s put the word to bed. Let’s be post-significant.
One welcome beneficiary from the Awards, though, was Belfast Music Week. Its canny scheduling around the EMAs will hopefully help embed it in the public mind.
And who knows – maybe in a few years, some of the kids chasing Bieber on Waring St. will be standing stage front on the Ulster Hall performing their own songs.
Providing, that is, they’re given the opportunity.
In a year of demoralising statistics, the revelation that while in 1990 just 2% of artists in the UK top ten had been to public school, in October 2010 it was 60%, still forced me into an emergency stop.
I don’t really know what it means. Although, after reading Chavs: The Demonisation Of The Working Class by Owen Jones it doesn’t surprise me, either.
The creative water temperature has dipped over recent years – one can’t help wonder if the deforestation of working-class voices from the pop world (which, after all, is just mirroring a trend that’s evident in the rest of the media and front-line politics) is a major contributory factor.
Whatever the explanation, these are tough times for finding an audience.
A local music blog posed the question: “Is networking necessary?” – primarily in response to the low turnout at a showcase show. The only sane response, if this is in fact the case, would be packing up now and clearing off home.
Songs, of course, should be the only real ‘networking’ device a musician needs, but pushing that logic would find us locked in a loop – taking hatchets to Bob’s amps at an eternal Newport.
So, it’s interesting to watch artists come up with interesting coping strategies.
Take Tom McShane and Pat Dam Smyth, two songwriters who, this year, have experimented with the live album format – going nose-to-nose with their listeners, encouraging involvement, taking note of responses: making the process a thing in itself.
Then there’s General Fiasco who, following a less than rapturously received debut album, could have easily called it quits. Their terrific comeback single, ‘The Age You Start Losing Friends’ is a brilliant example of perseverance and self-belief.
Patience is the watchword for Cashier No. 9. Following years of anticipation and slow building, their David Holmes-produced debut album, To The Death Of Fun, was the Northern record of the year.
Add in David Lyttle, Stevie Scullion, Katie And The Carnival, John D’Arcy, Mojo Fury, The Wonder Villains etc. and the examples of pro-active, imaginative responses to the choppy waters are many and varied and ever-evolving.
Which is great to know. Because you sense there’s a noisy musical audience coming up, who are only too ready to chase some heroes through the
streets.