19 f Ranting & Reeling P
eople say the silliest things, don’t they? “Is anyone sitting here?” “It’ll be in the last place you look.” “No deal is better than a
bad deal.” We’re idiots. And we’re partic- ularly fond of saying stupid things to musicians. An informal survey I just con- ducted on Facebook revealed that some audience members think it’s appropriate to be critical or rude to artists they’ve just watched. “I could see what you were try- ing to do.” “Do you do any cheerful songs?” “Do you really talk like that or are you putting it on?” It’s the music equivalent of negging – that misogynistic pick-up technique designed to undermine confidence and demand attention. Faint praise is just as unwelcome. “I like the instrumentals best.” “That was lovely, why don’t you sing them in English?” “I don’t usually like female artists, but I actually enjoyed it.”
Overwhelming anecdotal evidence suggests women have it worse. “The boots you wore tonight were very sexy.” “You have a fantastic sexuality on stage. It’s the way you wiggle.” “You ladies’ harmonies give me a tingle.” Stop doing this. If you wouldn’t say it to a woman in the street, don’t say it to a woman after a gig she’s
just played. And if you would say it to a woman in the street, stop doing that too. And before you write in and complain, I know it’s not just men. But it is mostly men. Men are shit.
But there’s another thing people need to stop saying to musicians that spans the gender divide. It goes a little something like this: “How much is your album? £10? I’ll get it on Spotify, it’s free there.” “My husband and I have stopped buying CDs so we’ll just stream it on Spotify.” “That was a terrific show. Are you on Spotify?”
Other music streaming services are available and none of them pay the artist close to what they’d earn if you gave them actual cash for their records, either. Like, such a tiny amount that if you found it in your pocket you’d rather pop it in the tin of a charity you didn’t like than have it clanking around uselessly against your keys. If you genuinely can’t afford to buy someone’s album in a physical or down- loadable format, that’s fine; we’re none of us getting any richer. But telling an artist that you’re choosing to stream rather than buy is so insensitive it should set off an arsehole alarm somewhere in the building.
This isn’t
an argument against stream- ing. There are pros as well as cons that I don’t have
room to debate here. This is a plea to under- stand that if you see a musi- cian selling their own
releases then it’s likely they don’t have much money and are relying on people who like their music to buy it. As the acclaimed bassist Steve Lawson wrote on Twitter: “You’re not paying for this album, you’re paying for the next one. All record buying is crowd funding.”
I propose that musicians place a ‘Spo- tify jar’ on their merch table. It could work like an honesty box for anyone who doesn’t want to take home a copy of your record but is planning to listen to your music as if they own it. If we want nice things, we have to pay the people who make them.
Tim Chipping
The Elusive Ethnomusicologist “W
atch this,” said the man in our house. “I’ve read it’s the biggest thing on Netflix. Astronomical
viewing figures,” “But it’s about tidying!” I said. Marie Kondo, the diminutive Japanese woman dedicated to domestic order, the idol of people across the planet whether they have OCD or not, loomed large on the telly.
“I don’t know what it’s about,” he said. “I just thought you’d like it.” “Why, exactly?” Kondo was demonstrating how to origami your clothes into a drawer. He pretended to carry on reading.
“She’d go after your CDs,” I said. “And your LPs. And all the singles you’ve got in the shed in the back garden. That’s if she didn’t have an irrevocable nervous breakdown on opening our front door… And your books. She says something like you can only have 30 books! That if you’ve read one, why bother to read it again? I like reading books again. They’re like diaries! [I was getting louder]. All the food and drink stains on different pages, I remember what I was doing, what I was eating, who I was with…!”
“…I don’t know where she stands on DVDs,” I said, “but I bet she’d say, ‘Once you’ve seen it, THROW IT AWAY!’ She
wouldn’t let you keep that pile you think you’ve hidden behind the chair.”
He put his book down. “I like having the artefact. I like reading the liner notes. Netflix flashes past the credits. Spotify miss- es important details. I want to know who the musicians are, who produced it, who designed the artwork. No-one knows this any more. True worth is not understood. And the actual record, the feel of it, that brings back memories as much as the music itself. The whole experience sparks joy.”
“Ha! So you do know what she’s about!” (Kondo’s schtick is throw out everything that doesn’t ‘spark joy’, clearly not allowing that things do this maybe not on one day but another, even differently on the same day. If we acted on this, no-one on the planet would be in relationship.)
“Anyway,” I said, “aside from stream-
ing stuff cutting out information so we can’t value anything properly unless we search elsewhere, you’re better off with the actual thing: because when the shit hits the fan the electricity supply will be more reliable than our internet connec- tion. It already is, given that our internet provider is an actual SADIST…”
“This current popular obsession with tidying our cupboards, folding our clothes
and stacking stuff in a way that can only be done if you have centuries worth of
Japanese DNA in your finger- tips, is keeping our focus inside, imposing order on a small area. When we’ve all looked up from
colour co-ordinating the sock drawer and transforming our homes into a faceless IKEA facsimile of a mid-price chain hotel the world will be complete f***ing chaos.”
“We should step over stuff that any- way gives a place character and open the front door. And if Marie Kondo is standing there, turn her round to look with us at the BIG BLOODY MESS outside. And do something about that to avoid a shit storm of biblical proportions. And I don’t just mean climate change.”
“Oh, God,” he said. “Please don’t start on about Brexit. It’s just I’m not sure how characterful clothes are when they’re left on the floor.”
Elizabeth Kinder
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