Why am I writing this blog today? Did you know that 2024 was the first year ever when no British artists featured in the UK top ten sales charts? I was listening to Jim Davis on BBC Radio London earlier in the week and he mentioned this fact. I was absolutely stunned and devastated when I heard this. As someone who has worked in the music industry in one way or another for 45 years and who runs a music studio, it was the worst possible belated Xmas present I could receive. It has been clear to me for a couple of years that something has gone badly wrong with our music industry. I have written about aspects of this before recently. The blog provoked some considerable debate. It became clear that the problem is not the lack of great bands and great musicians, something that I'd experienced from playing at The Dublin Castle with the False Dots this year seeing some incredible bands play with with us, as well as the all of the cracking artists passing through the studio. The problem is that, at the moment, the industry is simply not interested in promoting and developing talent. Whilst it is true that it is easy for artists to independently release music, you can get a full digital release on Spotify/iTunes etc for a tenner. The problem is that the gatekeepers, who decide what the casual listener will hear, seem to be willfully excluding anything that doesn't meet their narrow, flavour of the month tastes. Your music may be there for the world to listen to, but how do you tell them about it?
I have a wall of posters from The Dublin Castle from our gigs over the last two years. I can guarantee that 99% of the bands on the posters are amazing, Tony, the promoter doesn't put rubbish on. Sadly, the only place you will hear most of them is on Tony's 'Tales of The Dublin Castle' radio show on 365sounds - BTW you can sign up for free, so no excuse.
Sadly, you hear no such music on the mainstream broadcasters (apart from a few niche, graveyard slot shows, when none of the required demographic are listening). I totally get that they can't play new music all of the time, but they are massively failing in their public service commitment to 'be different and promote UK culture'. This pattern is followed across all of the BBC these days, with mandated playlists imposed on presenters. Last year the False Dots launched our new album. We spoke to some professional pluggers, who told us that cuts to the BBC have meant that there is almost no new music being played across the whole organisation, unless it is bland pop by major chart artists, who have the profile to buck the system. Of course, the False Dots are fairly niche, but ten years ago, we'd have got played on a few stations. What is more worrying is that there are plenty of up and coming bands that never get anywhere near airplay on the BBC (apart from if they win the bingo and get on BBC introducing, which most of the time means a single play to a niche audience).
Another effect of all of this is that younger people have no interest in the output of BBC stations. My kids who are in their 20's cannot understand why I listen to Radio London, when the playlist music is alien to them and they know I don't like it. When I was their age, there was a whole host of shows that were essential listening. The art of having radio shows that is a mixture of great new and old music, in the right balance to maintain an audience seems to be lost. What worries me is the lack of trust the BBC management seemingly have in presenters and producers to play good music.
So do younger people actually like bands, or have they been superceded by DJ's and Dance music, as a cursory listen to Radio One may indicate? From my own, experience, before Xmas, we had The False Dots Xmas gig at The Dublin Castle, supporting Radical Dance Faction. My kids came down with quite a few of their friends, for an Xmas night out. They'd not heard the music of Radical Dance Faction, but by the end of the show were all grooving to the heavy dub beats of the band. The consensus was that RDF were a very good band and the evening was excellent. For a few of the group, it was one of the few live gigs they'd been to and one commented to me "How did you hear about RDF". The band have been around since the 1980's and if I'm honest, I can't recall. It was most likely either by reading a review in NME (which isn't published anymore as a magazine), on the John Peel show on BBC Radio One (he's dead and they don't really play new music in the way John Peel did) or a mate told me about them and I checked it out. I really don't see the teenagers and twenty year olds doing that anymore in the way we did. They all listen to music but, most are not really interested in going to bands, unless the band has a profile and is already on the radar. Going to see unknown bands on spec is a bit of a dying tradition. As a music lover, I want to hear new, exciting music. If I want to listen to the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, I can stick on a playlist. What I want is to be signposted to the best new music and that is what I believe the job of radio and magazine reviewers to be,.
I am by trade, an engineer. I fix things. That is why I started writing a blog. The first stage of fixing anything is to identify the fault. So what has gone wrong with British music. It isn't that there isn't good music out there, because there is. It isn't that people have stopped listening to music, because they do. It is because the current gatekeepers of national taste simply are not interested in promoting the best British music. I suspect that the upper echelons of the BBC simply have no understanding of the British music industry at all or the importance of the BBC to the health of the UK Music Industry.
Of course not all of the fault can be laid at the floor of the BBC. The music industry and in particular the streaming services have a lot of blame to be put at their door. The owners of services like Spotify make billions, whilst artists get peanuts. I might be inclined to feel more charitably towards them, if they put anything back and helped up and coming artists get up the ladder, but all they do is sit back and watch the royalities stack up. The EU and the US government have, over the years taken a dim view of companies that have monopolistic businesses, which take advantage of this to fleece customers. The sad truth is that new bands are forced to put music on all manner of online social media platforms and get a pittance in return. It is pretty clear to me that there is an imbalance between the profits going into the shareholders pockets and the mony going to content providers, which needs to be addressed.
As for the labels, who's job it is to nurture and develop new talent, they seem to have forgotten that this is their reason of existing. They seem more interested in churning out a stream of fairly non distinct tunes from the current flavour of the month influencers. There is almost no interest in helping artists to become established and produce great music. Record companies used to have some of the most innovative marketing teams in business on their books. They were constantly thinking up ruses to get signed bands to get coverage from TV, Radio, music press and the tabloids. This wasn't always done in a way that was conducive to happy artists or good mental health, but it ensured that artists were given a platform and it was up to them to do what they could with it. Now, it seems to me that they don't want to make any investment. They want a finshed product that they can simply market and throw away. Where does all of this take us? To 2024 and no British acts in the top ten best selling UK tunes.
You may wonder how any band can move up the ladder at the moment? The big launch pads in the UK at the moment are the festivals. These give up and coming bands a chance, usually on the stages of the smaller tents. Whereas when the False Dots started in 1979, it was getting played on John Peel or getting on TOTP, now the Holy Grail is a festival gig. Glastonbury is the big one and if you are lucky the BBC may even show a bit of your set. The only TV opportunity that really matters seems to be Jools Holland, who has become the gatekeeper of the nations TV tastes. I can't knock Jules for his efforts, in some ways it is the perfect blueprint for a national TV music show in 2024. It introduces an established audience to a couple of new bands every week. It is great, but it is just about the only thing the BBC positively does for the UK's up and coming artists and music in any sort of
So what can we do? The title of the blog is "Time to Save London Music". As I said, I'm an engineer and if something is broken, I look for ways to fix it. I know little of the regional music scenes around the UK so I can't really comment, but I do know about the scene in London. I hark back to the days when I started my band, in the ashes of punk. The thing that is often missed is that the ethos was not about waiting for someone to do it for you, as a band you got up and did it yourself. You formed alliances, shared information and supported each other. When things reached a critical mass, things started to happen. Last year, something happened in London. I was contacted by a guy called Dan from a band called the Neversheds. Like me, Dan was sick of the way the industry was treating up and coming bands. He decided to do something about it. He set up a network called "Band Up" which was a network of independent bands, putting on their own gigs and promoting themselves and each other. The network mainly runs on Whatsapp groups and bands share info on promotors, gigs, labels, streaming services, etc as well as organising gigs.
It is clear to me that this is the way forward. It ain 't easy, but if bands get their acts together, organise merch to sell at the gigs and support each other, then they will start moving towards the critical mass you need to have to change things. Here is a list of up and coming Band Up! Gigs
Forthcoming Band Up Gigs
Sat 18th Jan - Fiddlers Elbow, Camden (Hosted by Foreign Shapes)
Fri 24th Jan - Lvls, Hackney Wick. (Hosted by myself, The Neversheds)
Sat 25th Jan - Cart and Horses, Stratford (Hosted by The Silent Era & is a charity fundraiser)
Fri 31st Jan - Off the Cuff, Herne Hill (Hosted by The Belladonna Treatment)
Sat 22nd Feb - Bacchus, Kingston. (Hosted by Almost Aliens)
Fri 28th Feb - The Engine Rooms, Bow. (Hosted by Life in the Dark)
Sat 15th March - Venue TBC (Hosted byTales of Perdition)
Sat 22nd March - Venue TBC. (Hosted by Sweet Anna)
The secret power of the UK music industry has always been its abilty to regenerate itself when the people at the top become stale. They have never been more stale. When I wrote the blog last month about the state of the UK music industry, Tom, our trumpet player pulled me up and made a playlist to prove that I was wrong about the lack of great new bands (in truth I wrote the blog to provoke such a reaction). Everyting is there and ready. All we need to do is take a leap of faith, get out to the gigs, download the music, buy the merch and listen to the stations that play it. If you consider the UK music scene to be something important, then the way to save it is to get out there and support it. If you don't, may I suggest that maybe you need to get out a bit more, before life just passes you by!
I'll end this particular rant with a request. Please come and see my band, The False Dots, for our 46th Birthday Party at the Dublin Castle on Sunday the 16th February at 2pm. It will be a blast!
CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS AND TICKETS
