I’ve posted about them before (their excellent and funny Canary Wharf video I think as part of their ‘Everything is OK’ series) but I love how Charlie and co. deal with the Fake Bacon (aka Hobby Bobbies, aka PCSOs). They really do seem to be a menace, as they pop up a lot in Section 44 mistakes. Love the comment about the Louis 14th beard, and it seems that even at the end the PCSO is smiling…
More about The Love Police, and the disturbing State of the Nation in Britain which is getting more and more like V for Vendetta and 1984 for my liking. Sadly the ending cuts out but you get the drift.
Sad news I heard via the radio today about the suicide of Mark Linkous aka Sparklehorse. Maybe not a name/band you know of, but Good Morning Spider and later Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot were an important part of my life in the late 90’s. It’s a cliche to say ‘got me through some bad times’ but yes, his music did at a time when really most UK music sucked and I felt little if at all about it…So I got into Sparklehorse, Grandaddy, Radiohead, Super Furries, Flaming Lips et al, as well as a less serious diet of speed garage and drum and bass! But it was Sparklehorse and Grandaddy’s music I’d come back to if I needed someone that expressed that particular confused/down/mid-late 20’s state of mind, where you have the long post-University come-down and realise real life is much harder, and the dreams you had might not be possible. Also wrapped up in that would be coming out and painfully falling in love for the first time…
‘Cause everything beautiful is far away’ ‘I just want to be a happy man’ ‘I’m so sick of goodbyes’ ‘There`s one thing we still got, This one last dance in this parking lot, Oh yeah, I got a heart of darkness’ ‘Summer here kids! Summer here really lies’.
And this comes a few months from the suicide of Vic Chesnutt who with Dangermouse and Mark Linkous worked on the now-to-be-released ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ which last year was embroiled in EMI politics/legals. Sad they didn’t actually get to hear it released while they were alive. Here’s a track off it – certainly was well rotated in my iPod last year when the tracks ‘leaked’ – Mark co-wrote and produced all the tracks and appeared on several, as did Vic, it is a truly collaborative work – the cynical (me!) would say that it’s interesting EMI sorted out their legal problems just as the eagerly awaited and much praised Broken Bells album is released. Hmm.
Here’s The Flaming Lips with Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse with ‘Revenge’ – a beautiful track:
And finally a track off his first LP:
And one that became an anthem of mine – Happy Man (not sure where I heard this – I think it’s a bonus hidden track on Good Morning Spider? Certainly didn’t buy the EP)
Just sent this…gotta go, aiming to be at the flashmob at 6pm and I’m late typing this!
Dear BBC Trust,
I am writing to complain and also question the proposed closure of 6Music and Asian Network. It seems to me strange in a Strategy that quite rightly puts quality in the forefront that it would close some of it’s best stations (in my personal case 6Music is the only BBC station I listen to) as part of that strategy. Where are the Reithian ideals of community service and coverage in this strategy? It seems to ignore diversity, community for a retreat into a monoculture of a hazy ideal of better shows, which are yet to appear…I am not confident this is not a smokescreen for a numbers exercise; that the bigger stations won’t go on as before. Radio 1 has incredibly and crassly commercial programming, as does Radio 2 – I see no ‘home’ for my and the nearly 800,000 people (it would be more if 6Music was allowed to have a wider reach, say with FM or a better signal with the digital switchover) there.
It seems the BBC wants everyone in their own demographic bunker, their own ghetto, without actually understanding there are those who don’t want to be boxed in, marketed/advertised to as if they were a tin of beans – those whose love of music goes beyond genre, demographics, and easy pre-digested babychunks. I think this is a wider malaise at the BBC, the move towards niche demographics – 6Music is a niche in size only but not scope, it’s breadth and open minded approach should be a model for the rest of the BBC, rather than stomped on because it doesn’t fit. I think a lot of the 6Music listeners miss the days when Radio 1 would play a wider range of music, rather than a few token late night shows, and the BBC would represent a wider range of interests rather than just go for a bland middleground that satisfies no-one.
As an ‘emigre’ from XFM – who decided to change it’s strategy and mostly abandon the same ground that 6Music picked up (including many of the DJs and hosts) – shows that commercial interests can’t be trusted to promote newer and alternative less covered genres of music, when sponsors and advertisers are in the forefront of their m ind.
The idea that the BBC shouldn’t compete with commercial stations and ratings is a good one – so why then close the exact exemplars of this creed? The stations that carry community service and the ideas of people like John Peel that new, unsigned and alternative music needs a home in a morass of middle ground mainstream? I’d hate to think what Peel would think if he was alive, it’s a sad day for the memory of him and new music in the UK and outside – the artists, the DJs, the music industry and even the Shadow Culture Secretary (bringing the spectre that this will be an election issue now) are all dead against this as they realise the value that 6Music gives in breaking newer acts, and unlike other BBC channels really adding something. So why not you?
Well it’s official – the ‘not going to happen’ axing of BBC 6music, the only real music station now worth listening to, is going to happen.. Or will it? Let’s see.
What can you do?
Firstly there’s a flashmob protest at 6pm tonight outside Broadcasting House, dunno who’s organising it (the nature of flashmobs says: No-one! It’s beautifully organic) but they want you to print out and bring this flag . I’ll see you there.
Strange that the Strategy voices wanting to increase quality, but is doing this be restricting the amount of choice, a monoculture that allows the travesty that is BBC3 to exist (Sorry Andrew Collins, I know it’s part of your money stream but it’s an expensive carbuncle) and funds audience dropping Radio 2 far more, as Nigel Jenkins posted over on the FB group:
Radio 3 (2 million weekly listeners, annual budget £51.1 million, cost per user per hour 6.3p) No real changes detailed.
Radio 1Xtra (0.6 million weekly listeners, budget £9.6 million, cost per user per hour 4.5p) Links with Radio 1 will be “strengthened”.
Radio 6 Music (0.7 million weekly listeners, annual budget £9 m…illion, cost per user per hour 3.4p)
So if that’s true Radio 6 costs LESS than 1Xtra, and much less than Radio 3 (I’m not calling for Radio 3 to be closed, John would kill me…and like Radio 4 that would never happen, those in power listen to them).
Also the whole ‘making it bigger will make it commercial’ is a fallacy – as we know DAB and digital radio is still early-doors; and if ‘we don’t want to compete with commercial radio’ ethos was true then Radio 1, 2 and 4 would be for the chop for the start – especially Radio 1 which KissFM should be especially pissed off about. The idea Mark Thompson is upping the quality is a smoke screen – this is just a numbers game ignoring the Reithian ideals of community provision.
I strongly doubt that the mass produced banal pap the corporation produces will actually be less (it’s a mixed message – we need to concentrate on quality; so let’s axe the quality niche products and focus on the mainstream – eh?) and that Radio 1 or 2 will change at all, or as Mark Thompson alluded to start catering for the 6Music audience (in fact Radio 2 is going to go older, and Radio 1 gets off scot free for some reason, and 1Xtra’s audience won’t want 6Music’s breadth).
Really it is a victory for genre/demographics targetted radio, that you are all in little ticky tacky boxes and should stay in your ghettos – obviously new, unsigned and eclectic music isn’t going to be everyone’s bag, but to kill the station pretty much at birth without ever letting it have a wider (FM, or when DAB covers the whole of the UK) audience or promoting it, is totally short sighted.
Facebook group: Save 6Music 88,000 people and counting!
Another petition:
PS. I’d use the email address for the consultation rather than the flakey online form to contact the BBCStrategy Review – just got this lovely error after the first page:
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Nice. Great public consultation if the form doesn’t work? Of course they don’t want the form to work, they’ve decided their route…interestingly it looks like it might become an election issue, so sorry BBC, this won’t go away. I think it’s going to be hotly political, fast.
And resist. Nicely.
