TomBlog - mercury deriding
Here summit I wrote for music week last week....thought you might be interested.
As the last festival closes the last of its heavily secured and poorly signposted entrances. As autumn leaves begin to be trod underfoot, the anticipation of another Mercury Prize drifts in, and does a pretty good job of joining the leaves, under our feet. It's not that I'm bored of talking about the Mercury Prize, well perhaps a little, there's just a touch of mettle fatigue.
Winning the Mercury Prize was truly the most astonishing event in my life. I was 21 years old, had joined some friends in making some music for pleasure, had suddenly and quite unexpectedly got a record deal, made one, and within six months won the biggest single award for music in the land. It was a freak occurrence. I doubt very much that a story such as ours could happen again. Untouched by a marketing man, unfettered by stylists, without any of the nauseating fake mythology that the press loves to devour. How ever you perceive us, we were just trying to be unlike everything else.
It changed our worlds. We went from being a few lads who wanted to put out a gate-fold album simply to see what it would look like to skin up on, to selling over a million. 10 thousand was our highest hope. To this day I travel the world playing music. I think it's clear that wouldn't be the case if we hadn't won the prize. I am indebted to it, its media whirlwind and its support of originality.
Though not abroad, the prize has considerable negative ramifications at home. With an establishment/critical stamp of approval we were bound to be re-assessed almost immediately. In fact, its inevitable you'll be called crap and told to leave the dancefloor within seconds of winning. Unlike other industries where people might just put this down to envy, an ugly desire to see others fail or the vanity of critics, the British music world is too fickle to be true. If the prize duth make you, the prize duth break you. We were a sacrificial lamb. Within months of winning, music people seemed to just ignore our music and then our growing sense of indignation. It's possible that part of the problem with the prize is it dispossesses the media of its king-making role and a sort of bitterness pervades.
The Mercury Prize is, theoretically, a prize for British innovation. Its 'curse' is not in its delightfully naïve hope for innovation, but in its being British. The scope and range of music with any visibility (or is that audibility?) to British people is so frightfully narrow, commercial or conservative that an award for originality is really quite a nonsense. Does anyone in this industry really support music that genuinely doesn't fit in? It's like winning a prize for most likely to succeed at a suicide training camp.
Nevertheless, there is hope elsewhere. I'm now 29 years of age, we're appearing on Jay Leno's Tonight show for the first time in our ten year career this month, we have just embarked on a sold-out tour of Australia. Our present release is out-selling all our previous ones in the US. Whatever was initially so attractive about our music doesn't seem to have been such a glamour to others. Our music is now heard on radio, tv and film more frequently around the globe than ever before. Three cheers for the Mercury! Yet in the UK, and forgive the hack irony from my jet-lag decamp Adelaide hotel suite, we can't get ourselves arrested.
As the last festival closes the last of its heavily secured and poorly signposted entrances. As autumn leaves begin to be trod underfoot, the anticipation of another Mercury Prize drifts in, and does a pretty good job of joining the leaves, under our feet. It's not that I'm bored of talking about the Mercury Prize, well perhaps a little, there's just a touch of mettle fatigue.
Winning the Mercury Prize was truly the most astonishing event in my life. I was 21 years old, had joined some friends in making some music for pleasure, had suddenly and quite unexpectedly got a record deal, made one, and within six months won the biggest single award for music in the land. It was a freak occurrence. I doubt very much that a story such as ours could happen again. Untouched by a marketing man, unfettered by stylists, without any of the nauseating fake mythology that the press loves to devour. How ever you perceive us, we were just trying to be unlike everything else.
It changed our worlds. We went from being a few lads who wanted to put out a gate-fold album simply to see what it would look like to skin up on, to selling over a million. 10 thousand was our highest hope. To this day I travel the world playing music. I think it's clear that wouldn't be the case if we hadn't won the prize. I am indebted to it, its media whirlwind and its support of originality.
Though not abroad, the prize has considerable negative ramifications at home. With an establishment/critical stamp of approval we were bound to be re-assessed almost immediately. In fact, its inevitable you'll be called crap and told to leave the dancefloor within seconds of winning. Unlike other industries where people might just put this down to envy, an ugly desire to see others fail or the vanity of critics, the British music world is too fickle to be true. If the prize duth make you, the prize duth break you. We were a sacrificial lamb. Within months of winning, music people seemed to just ignore our music and then our growing sense of indignation. It's possible that part of the problem with the prize is it dispossesses the media of its king-making role and a sort of bitterness pervades.
The Mercury Prize is, theoretically, a prize for British innovation. Its 'curse' is not in its delightfully naïve hope for innovation, but in its being British. The scope and range of music with any visibility (or is that audibility?) to British people is so frightfully narrow, commercial or conservative that an award for originality is really quite a nonsense. Does anyone in this industry really support music that genuinely doesn't fit in? It's like winning a prize for most likely to succeed at a suicide training camp.
Nevertheless, there is hope elsewhere. I'm now 29 years of age, we're appearing on Jay Leno's Tonight show for the first time in our ten year career this month, we have just embarked on a sold-out tour of Australia. Our present release is out-selling all our previous ones in the US. Whatever was initially so attractive about our music doesn't seem to have been such a glamour to others. Our music is now heard on radio, tv and film more frequently around the globe than ever before. Three cheers for the Mercury! Yet in the UK, and forgive the hack irony from my jet-lag decamp Adelaide hotel suite, we can't get ourselves arrested.
posted by Gomez at 8:34 PM
1 Comments:
Wow. And so often I get disillusioned with my own, Australian industry. But we ain't so bad. Nobody's perfect. The Brits, however, are shooting themselves in the foot here. But, what do I know. I'll tell you - I know that your music does wonderous things for millions of people, and I am honoured to be one of them. I also know that sometimes having random strangers tell you that you're fabulous is like a drop in an emotive ocean, but I do hope it helps. You are massive in our eyes, and we each of us love you, yes we do! Stay Mez.
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