Why have make, white working class teenagers stopped forming bands and making classic pop records?

 I work at the coalface of the British music industry. I run a music rehearsal studio that is where the stars of tomorrow are nurtured. We have been extraordinarily lucky with the artists that have passed through in the last couple of decades. How's this for a list? Amy Winehouse, Brit Award winners Kate Nash, Flo and Raye more recently. We are on a bit of a roll. It seems that North West London has a wonderful supply of talented female artists, many of whom come from very ordinary backgrounds. I am proud of them all. But there is one massive change that I've noticed since around 2004. We just don't seem to get white, working class boys forming great bands making classic pop records. I am not really referring to put together boy bands, I am referring to bunches of scalliwags, who beg, steal and borrow guitars, drumkits etc, to form bands playing self composed pop songs. It used to be that around 50% of the studio customers were boys aged between 16-23 putting bands together. The quality of local bands was amazing. In our little locality, when I started the studio and my band, The False Dots, there was a plethora of bands of all shapes and sizes playing locally. Perhaps the most enduring have been Mill Hill's Rockabilly Rebels, The Polecats. Several TOTP performances and a major deal. We laso had a higly influential Mod Band, The Mods, from Burnt Oak and Mill Hill East, who had several tracks on the seminal Mods Mayday album. I could list a dozen other local bands from the era, who were amazing. In the 1990's Mill Hill Produced another bunch of great bands, my favourite being The Sway, who even managed to get Helen Terry of Culture Club fame to sing backing vocals on their minor hit Going Blind. There were all manner of great bands popping up, but around 2004, something changed. 

We still have a fairly healthy bunch of young blokes in leather jackets playing Death Metal and other rather heavy genres and that is great, but teenage blokes just seemed to decided that the UK's musical legacy from The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, T Rex, Slade, The Clash, The Specials, The Happy Mondays, Suede, Blur, Oasis, etc was not for them. There are all manner of other subgenres that have sprung up, the various offshoots of the Rap/ Hip Hop genres, there are loads of great musicians forming cover and tribute bands, but there seems to be so little good quality original male created pop music. Of course it may well be that it's there, and it's just not making the charts and the gatekeepers have decided that we aren't allowed to listen to it? I do wonder, but whereas 20 years ago, I was always getting such bands asking for advice on getting deals and gigs, it is a rare thing indeed for a bunch of teenage lads to form a band, write a bunch of their own pop songs and kick on. Again, when I refer to pop, I am not referring to boy bands singing ballads. 

Another thing which to some extent rather puzzles me is the fact that since the New Romantic movement in the early 1980's, we've rather given up on the idea of youth movements, where fashion, music and hip venues all collide to a create a scene.  I suspect that part of this is the fact that our country has decided that teenagers aren't allowed to enjoy themselves. Now, they need ID and if they are under 21 it is hard to get into many venues. If they are under 18 it is impossible. I started going to gigs aged 14 and by sixteen, I was having a beer whilst I watched them, without an adult to supervise me. Now as a responsible parent, I understand why it isn't great for young people to get bladdered in pubs, but they have nowhere to go and nothing to do. It is no wonder that there is no excitement. When we formed The False Dots, I was sixteen and our expectation was that we'd be playing proper pubs and clubs within a year and our mates would be watching us. I don't know if I'd have bothered if I'd had to wait five years to realise that dream. Sadly another aspect is that local youth clubs, where many teenage bands did their first gigs are a thing of the past. Councils shut them down and sold them off.

It occurred to me that the reason we see successful female artists, is because they are by and large recording and doing PA appearances, where the age issue is not such a problem. If you were to form a band like The False Dots, The Polecats and The Mods today as a bunch of teenagers, you'd have no outlet for the sort of high energy crazy shows we'd put on. The False Dots started by renting Church Halls and putting our own gigs on. We didn't know what we were doing, had no insurance and no security. The Polecats also did gigs at places like St Pauls Church Hall. The Mods played Canada Villa in Mill Hill East. Ir eally don't know what the answer is. I hope to God though, that some bunch of herberts is lurking out there, doing what we did, organising their own gigs, setting up their own networks and building a scene.

The saddest thing of all is that playing in a band is the best thing in the world. That's why I am still doing it, in fact we'll be doing it on Friday at The Dublin Castle at 8pm. Come along and see what all the fuss is about!