The real question is not WHAT music to listen to, or HOW to find it, but WHY listen to it at all?

There is so much music out there; finding stuff to listen to is easier than ever. Instead of having to choose which physical product to spend your money on, you now have almost the entire catalogue of recorded music available anytime, anywhere and at almost no cost, so don’t tell me you can’t find anything to listen to!

Amidst the sound and fury of all the voices clamouring to find a solution to the decline of the recorded music industry, I have never yet heard anyone ask the one question that, if answered, will give the best clues to that solution.
That question is: “Why do consumers listen to music?”

If you answer that, you can begin to reconsider how best to deliver it to those who want it. You can use it as a guide as to what to produce and how to present it… Unless you want to do music as fine art, which is OK too but will not “save” the recorded music industry. The very idea of “saving” that industry is an anachronism akin to insisting we “save” the status of the horse as our primary mode of transport: the world has moved on.

In an environment in which music is omnipresent (see my song “Music in the Breakfast Room”) we need to understand why people make a particular effort to listen to specific pieces of music at specific times rather than just passively consume it as a kind of emotional wallpaper… Or is that what music is now for?

The kind of music you liked used to be your social identifier: not any more. It used to express your politics, sexuality, philosophy for you: not any more.
So what DOES it do? The fantasy of the aspirational lifestyle is no longer viable: a hundred documentaries on “The Making Of…” and a million pap shots of stars without their make-up have exploded the myths on which the star system was built. So why should a singer or artist be so important to the public that they consume that artist’s product?
Two random strangers to whom I just posed that question came up with surprisingly similar answers: they use music either to enhance or change their moods. They both also said (unprompted) that the style was more important than the artist.

Does the device on which people store and consume their music have an effect on the nature of consumption?
The rise of the playlist culture was presaged by the burgeoning popularity of compilation albums: the “Now that’s what I call music” series and the Cafe del Mar/Hed Kandi compilations were the writing on the wall. Again, music chosen by genre rather than by artist…
But even this concept is prescriptive: “These are the tracks we think you should listen to and this is the order in which you will listen to them.” The iPod Shuffle was an iOpener: it turned out that consumers actually liked the surprising random juxtaposition, the musical non-sequitur, the culture-shock of genre-hopping.
The culture of genre as social badge has been smashed apart: everyone likes a little bit of everything and no-one fights over music anymore. (For our younger readers, research the “Mods vs. Rockers” wars of the Sixties or the “Skins vs. Heads” confrontations in the Seventies.) Genre is now used to adjust or fit your mood. Getting ready to go out? Some EDM to warm you up for the club. Having a dinner party? Michael Buble if you live in Islington…

And the ubiquity of inexpensive Internet-connected mobile devices means that consumers have their music available all the time. This removes the “specialness” of the experience: the ritual of buying the physical sound carrier from a shop, rushing home to play it on your expensive equipment while devouring every word of printed material on the packaging is almost unknown to the modern music consumer. That in turn reduces the significance of the event, the “specialness” of unwrapping the recorded artifact and revealing it to yourself, associating it strongly with the current events in your life: all of this gone. Why are you likely to remember the moment it took you to click the “Buy” button, and experience so transitory and effortless that you do it almost absent-mindedly?

However, even if we solve the conundrum of persuading consumers to pay for recorded music again, we will still have the problem of the micro-payment: there is a fascinating document on the Internet showing how many Spotify plays an artist needs per month to earn the US minimum wage, and the numbers are ludicrous! The signs are unmistakeable: forget making a living (never mind a fortune) from recorded music alone: that revenue stream is now just another element in a portfolio of income types.

Leave aside the eternal teen hysteria as a driving force for a moment: apply the basic question of why our customers consume music and how the do it to the populace as a whole and we might begin to understand what to do next.

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Of all the people to get me out of blogging retirement…

The outpouring of bile and venom directed at Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death has been shocking and dispiriting. Much of it comes from 20-year-olds who did not have any experience of her reign at all, and the rest comes from those who are old enough to know better.

To rejoice in the death of another human being is indefensible and to do so in the case if someone who attained such high office in public service doubly so.

First, let me fend off the knee-jerkers: I AM NOT AN APOLOGIST FOR MRS THATCHER. Ok????? Need to read that again? Please do so before you waste my time and try my patience with accusations that I am speaking in support of someone whose influence was sometimes as destructive as it was sometimes positive. I AM NOT DEFENDING HER EVERY MOVE AND ACT.

What I AM doing is trying to bring some sense of balance and reason to the argument. Anyone who remembers the sclerotic influence of the Trade Unions in the late 1970s will agree that one of her positives was the reigning in of the power wielded by (mostly) men who used their positions to fight some 1930s notion of the “class struggle.” Those of you too young to remember this might find an example useful; the first time I did a session at the BBC’s radio studios in Maida Vale I nearly caused a strike that would have silenced the Beeb in its entirety. How? I went to plug in my own amplifier. I was warned in no uncertain terms that this was the job of an electrician and that I had to wait until one became available before I could start playing. This kind of minor irritation (google demarcation lines + TUC) was multiplied a million-fold and amplified a zillion-fold, bringing the once-great British car industry to its knees and paralysing many other industries.

Simplistic caricatures: the original admirable purpose of the Unions had become perverted by zealots and bigots. On the one hand , all business and enterprise was characterised as grinding oppression and all business men and women as savage exploiters. On the other, any attempt by workers to speak with a common voice was greeted by management as though the corpse of Lenin had been revitalised and was leading the revolution anew. Neither caricature is accurate, but simplistic caricatures are easier to grasp than the complicated truths in the many shades of grey (count ‘em!) of which reality is comprised and a nation of Sun readers lapped them up.

The simplistic caricature of Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher was equally inaccurate. Many who knew and worked with her, whatever their political views, tell stories of her very real compassion and humanity: it’s just easier for those with lazy minds to ignore these greys and go for the black or white of The Big Bad Thatch or Our Greatest Prime Minister Since Churchill.

Possibly her greatest “crime” was that she pointed out that someone had to pay the bill… That milk was not donated by philanthropic farmers: the NHS is not staffed by volunteers, and workers’ pay has to be connected to their productivity and the profitability of the products they produce. Those same voices that protested against every cut screamed twice as loud at any suggestion that they should pay a penny in the pound more income tax instead o lose the service. “Your bill, Sir!” We still shy away from facing this truth, but she went some way to redressing the balance.

On the other hand, she famously declared that she recognised no concept of “society” and championed the primacy of the individual: an approach that can be traced clearly in the greed and abuse rampant in the financial system.

But all you naysayers: put yourself in her position for a moment. What would you have done faced with the same dilemmas? Would you have acted in a way that you genuinely believed to be evil and wrong? No? Then why impute these motives on her? Why should she have been any different to you (or your pet Prime Minister?) it’s easy to sit on the sidelines and carp, much harder to be in the thick of the action making decisions on sometimes incomplete information. Many of those who celebrate her death have never run a business or managed a project, never mind a country.

The problem with being in positions of power is that it isolates the powerful from the effects of their well-intentioned actions and she certainly never fully grasped the realities experienced by the mining communities that resulted from her insistence that someone pay the bill, but she is not alone in this and can’t really be blamed for it.

In the end, hubris caught up with her: her own flock ripped her to shreds and installed the ultimate manager in place of the ultimate leader: John Major was the safe choice who turned out to be a hopeless yoyo, presiding over the decline of the pound (I cheerfully admit to sitting on a tour bus in Germany on Black Wednesday calculating gleefully how much my payment had just increased by!) while shagging the one woman in the Tory party from whom any same man would have run several miles screaming “mad girl, mad girl” and putting on lame publicity stunts like visiting his Brixton roots but being filmed doing it in the back of a limousine… Wanker. The FA scored a similar own goal (pun intended) when they appointed avowed Christian Glenn Hoddle in place of wide boy Terry Venables and Hoddle turned out to be a public relations disaster.

Mrs Thatcher told us clearly what she believed and intended and left us to make our own decisions as to whether or not to vote for her: contrast this with the current crop of managers who in trying to be all things to all voters end up being nothing at all.

I’ll say it again: she did as much harm as good, but please don’t demean yourself or me by celebrating her death.

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Ok; I did it! A year’s blog! I think I missed no more than a dozen days, some through holidays, and a few towards the end of the year when I found myself working 9-hour days with a 90- minute drive either side!

In that year, I’ve been through some interesting transitions: I’ve taken on a part-time position as a Deputy Programme Leader at the Institute, taught a lot, gigged a lot, produced a couple of EPs and a full album for other artists, moved out of London, come up with some ideas for musical projects unrelated to pop music which I’ll be able to do in my free time this summer, got a dog, pissed off my cat, taken up woodworking, and other stuff that I can’t recall at the moment…

I’ve also begun to shake off the mental habits and expectations that have been the central pillars of my professional life for nearly 35 years. The story of why this is happening is a long one, but it bears telling because it’s a common experience among my generation of musicians. Or is it???

I was a session musician. I woke up most mornings to varying degrees, put my gear in the car, drive into the West End (or some other part) of London, parked the car anywhere I could find a space regardless of the parking restrictions (in those days there were no clamps and like most of my colleagues I amassed a fine collection of parking tickets that were never enforced) and went to the first studio of the day. There, I would do whatever was thrown at me and move on to the next one. It was massive fun and pleasantly lucrative. Along the way I picked up live work, building up to tours with international artists and all sorts of other one-off gigs. Like all my colleagues, my work ranged from duo gigs in wine bars to football stadium shows, publishers’ demos to million-selling albums, and all points in between.

As a result of doing an album in the legendary Inner Space studio in Germany (the recording facility established by German avant garde band Can) I met an artist who became my tame artist. Every session musician need one of these: an artist who always books you for everything they do. You juggle all your other commitments around this one tame artist: my artist was (and as far as I know still is) German. He sings in Herman and so was unknown outside of his territory, but we sold enough records and convert tickets there to achieve the status of stars. I became hi right-hand man in matters musical, though he was savagely protective of his writing income and never let anyone else in on that part of his career. Not that he needed to: he writes classic pop songs and if he had been English Orr American would undoubtedly been a world-wide star.

We always had great bands, and most English musicians know his name and reputation as being one of the good guys who respect and appreciate good players. Through this association I got to play with and know some of the world’s finest musicians and was honoured to find that I could play with the best and be accepted by them.
Working with him also led to lots more work with other German artists and producers: many of them would come to London to record and used lots of English musicians. Although I never moved to Germany I gradually lost touch with the English session scene and still meet old acquaintances who ask me if I’ve moved back to the UK now!
I wasn’t that worried about this disconnection because I could already see the writing on the wall: sessions were becoming scarcer as the succession of recessions hit. Advertising agencies who used to send their creatives on courses to learn how to spend three times as much money as necessary on any given project started pulling in their horns. Simultaneously, the advent of affordable recording technology meant that artists no longer need to go to a studio to do most of their recording. I took a great interest in this technology (partly as a result of my long association with Roland, one of the premier so-called “hi-tech” musical instrument manufacturers for whom I did product demonstrations for decades) and this proved to be the saving of me.

The session industry eventually shrunk to encompass just the very highest levels (though my pals who still do this stuff say it’s getting harder by the month) and as I was never a good reader I couldn’t get into this level. One of the most significant changes in my mind this last year or so has been the realisation and acceptance that I would be crap at it anyway: I admire those who can do it but the idea of sitting in the studio backing hopefuls on The Voice or being in the Strictly band fills me with horror. It’s so far removed from what inspired me to take up the guitar in the first place that I would eventually crack and offend someone so deeply that I’d never be called back.

It took me a while to recognise this, however, and when my tame artist acquired a new best friend who whispered in his ear that dreaded phrase “I think you need a younger band” and the work dried up I thought I could plug back into the English session scene. Of course, this wasn’t possible: firstly because there was no scene left and secondly because any artists and producers of my generation still working were settled with their teams and unlikely at this late stage in their careers to take on new musicians, unless they also had a new best friend….
(Somewhere in all this and with the help of my youngest brother, to whom I now officially express my heartfelt gratitude for his patience and enthusiasm, I started and ran my own business for a while (it still runs, but it’s core activity is now music) which taught me many things: how to write my own software, what life is like for “normal” people, but most importantly these two facts about myself.
1. I am a crap businessman.
2. I am a musician, and that’s not a matter of choice.)

So I had to think again.

One of the threads I’d always followed was my interest in recording technology and thanks to the substantial recording budgets of my tame artist I’d learned a lot about making records. I’d also always filled my spare hours making library music, and this now stood me in good stead: I started producing recordings for unsigned and self-financed artists.

Of course, the budgets were not what I was used to, but one of the first things I promised myself when I saw the way things were going was that I would adapt rather than become a bitter old muso in the pub whining about the good old days, and as I’d spent the money Warners gave me for recording when I was signed to them as an artist on building and equipping my own studio I could offer excellent deals. Thanks to my contacts in the musicians’ community I could also call on some very heavyweight players, and I’m very grateful to those who continue to do sessions for me at a fraction of their true worth.

I love doing these productions and they are now a major source of income for me: I don’t have to deal with some scared kid at a label telling me that the record should sound like whatever was a hit last week regardless of whether or not it suits the artist, and we can do whatever the hell we like.

Alongside that has come my return to teaching. I started doing this in the late 1980s when I met Alan Limbrick, founder of the Guitar Institute (which later became the ICMP, now The Institute.) In those days there was no such thing as a teaching qualification in rock music; you got the gig by meeting Alan!

I met him at a gig at the old Hammersmith Odeon. Quintessential Eighties techno band Art of Noise were doing their farewell gig there. They had recorded a version of “Peter Gunn” with Duane Eddy on guitar but Duane wouldn’t come to London for one tune with some bunch of English weirdos, so they hired four guitarists to play the guitar part (and do the walk, which was the hardest part of the gig!) While we were setting up, I played a couple of Country guitar licks. Alan immediately asked me if I’d write and teach a Country course at his new school, which at the time was in a two-bedroomed Victorian terraced house in Acton. I agreed, and found myself sitting in front of a room full of students (on one occasion including one of my boyhood guitar heroes, Brinsley Schwarz!)

I enjoyed it to some degree, but couldn’t rid myself of the thought that contemporary music should be a discovery rather than a subject of study. I also found myself in direct conflict with the school over the matter of Live Performance Workshops. In these LPWs the students had to learn a tune and then play it in a band in front of the tutors. I used to give the highest marks to those who ignored the original and did their own thing, my particular approval being reserve for the naughty boys who lit up the room rather than the studious ones who played it “correctly.” I found this so hard to reconcile with what the school told me I should be doing that I stopped teaching for decades.

I was tempted back by two things: the necessity of replacing the steady income from my tame artist and the kind invitation of the directors of the ICMP to give it another go. I found myself enjoying it enormously (and still do!) though I don’t teach guitar: I teach performance and production/creative skills and I protect my concept of music-as-discovery by telling my students at the start of each course that I can’t teach them anything (which gets their attention nicely) but I can help them discover stuff that may feed into their own music… Or not!

My work with these young musicians and the music my daughters introduce me to has been inspiring. I feel fresher than I have for years and am learning new stuff every day: most importantly, music is once again something that I do because I love it, not because I must.

I also became an artist myself: after 30 years of hiding behind the “turn” as we showbiz folk call the artist, I stepped to the front of the stage and put myself on the line. After my first solo gig I felt like calling every artist I’d ever worked with and saying simply “Sorry!” Not because I was a bad sideman; I was a good one, but there are levels and depths you only understand when you are the artist. I’m loving that new thread in my career hugely: anyone who wants to host a house-concert with me performing please get in touch: I love this back-to-basics kind of gigging.

An old and dear friend (who once prodded me out of a deep torpor, for which I am forever grateful) once expressed his admiration for my ability to reinvent myself: I’m not finished yet, Steve! I’ll keep blogging, although not every day, and there will be new music on the way soon.

I’ll announce the winner of the competition soon: thanks for all the entries!

And massive thanks to all who have read, commented, replied, or interacted in any other way with my year of self-indulgent expression: it’s been a pleasure.

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Great video here from TED: it’s a presentation by Amanda Palmer about her journey from signed artist whose label dropped her because she sold “only” 25,000 to a crowd-financed self-released artist. She ends by saying that as musicians “instead of thinking about how to make people pay for our music, let’s think about how to let them pay for it.”

Her description of the way she now operates is like a litany of the traditional activities of the Minstrel. It’s dressed up in the technology of the age (Twitter, etc.,) but there’s no difference between what Amanda does and what travelling musicians have done for the millenia before the distortion of the golden age of recorded music. I found the video inspiring and challenging, and I would recommend to any young artist starting out that they study this and think carefully about the underlying assumptions.

Then contrast this with the twattery of The Voice on BBC 1 this evening. I just watched a competitor say that when she failed in a previous competition her confidence was so shattered that she didn’t sing for three years. What the fuck?????? Forget these stupid freak shows: if you are truly a musician you will know that it is NOT a competitive sport and that the measure of your worth is not to be found in a beauty-contest line-up.

I’m not alone in my disdain for The Voice and its competitors: I know people who are involved in it professionally and their cynicism about it makes me look like a fan…

About the only thing that is truly entertaining about the show is watching Will.I.Am and Danny (to a lesser extent) winding up Jessie J, who seems incapable of realising that she shouldn’t take it personally and that she is being manipulated into bad decisions by them.

Back to positive matters: Amanda Palmer has got me thinking and I commend this video to you.

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There is a maxim well-known to yachtsmen: “don’t abandon ship until you have to step UP into the life raft.”
The reason for this is that the yacht is a safer place to be than a small rubber life raft and the yacht will usually stay afloat for longer than you think: many of the yachts that were abandoned in the Fastnet Race of 1979 were found still afloat when the weather calmed down. Their crews should have stayed aboard unless they had to step up, not down, into the life raft.

And what’s this got to do with popular music, I hear you ask? (Oh, go on: everyone who is reading this, please ask that question out loud, wherever you are! If nothing else, it may stimulate some interesting conversation with your partner/flat mates/fellow tube passengers.)

Simple: those of us who engage in the business of pop music are getting ever closer to having to make that judgement. The imperilled vessel is of course the pop music recording industry and the life raft is… What?

I vacillate. Frequently. I’m told I’ll go blind but I keep doing it. Is the recording industry really in decline? Some days I despair, some days I hope. For every Adele who sells millions there are millions who sell hundreds. If you get it right you can make a living out on the niches where previously the barriers to entry were so high that no-one outside the mainstream could hope to get a look-in, but increasingly I’m starting to think about (and hear about) other contexts in which musicians operate that are only distantly (if at all) related to the label/star paradigm.

My recent post on embedded music was about these new contexts (although on close examination many of them are not in fact new at all!) and as I shake myself free of the mental shackles of the business I used to know I start to see the shape of the future.

One example I’ve been thinking about is a partnership between experienced musicians such as me and new musicians in which my skills and experience help them develop their music. My role is a cross between label and producer but with less control and exclusivity: not the Svengali-style of a Phil Spector or Chinnichap, nor the stranglehold of a major label contract, but a kind of mentoring/provision of facilities relationship. In return for facilitating and assisting I take an ongoing share in the products of a wide range of artists: I can sell the product myself as well… So many ideas! Anyone wanting to explore this further please get in touch. All possibilities are open for discussion: anything could happen!

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I’ve started mixing the Will Hudson album: sounding fab (though I say it myself!) and it’s interesting to be having to do so little for a mix on this type of recording.

Normally at this point on a “live band” style record I’d be stripping everything down and starting again, but I’ve treated this more like an electronic production in one way: I’ve mixed as I’ve gone to a significant degree. I have the basic balances, the drum sound (thanks Ben Amesbury, see the video here) and it’s a matter now of tweaks and rides.

I’m also coming up to the summer when I have a break in my teaching schedule and would like to test the waters a little: I’m thinking of running a couple of Music Production for Musicians workshops: anyone interested? These would look at production as a musician rather than an engineer and would be platform-independant (i.e., the ideas could be used in Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, you name it…)

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During my drive in to London a couple of days ago I listened to Foals (Holy Fire CD,) Peace (1998 Delicious) EP) and Doves (Kingdom of Rust CD.)
It set me thinking about the developing vocabulary of the electric guitar, which is the subject of many discussions I’ve been having recently with other tutors and admin staff at the place where I teach. Please note: this is NOT meant as a criticism, but as stimulus to a debate.

The modern guitarist is not required to play solos as my generation knew them, nor fills or chord vamps, but motifs and structural parts, atmospheres and soundscapes; in architectural terms, the columns and frames, walls and ceilings rather than the curlicue and filigree. And yet we still teach the same old blues-based fusion licks and quasi-classical shredding arpeggios that the founders of my institution brought back from GIT in the 1980s and largely ignore these more recent developments.

The most successful guitarist in commercial terms to come out of these schools in recent years is Igor Haefeli, producer of Daughter, and he wasn’t even on a guitar course: he studied songwriting! He specialises in these atmospheres and soundscapes; listen to the Daughter recordings for examples of his work. It is a safe bet that his future as a producer is now assured, whatever happens to the band. And Guthrie Govan, a fine technician and “shredder” of the highest order, makes his money playing offbeats on the snare with Dizzy Rascal…

The curriculum in all the institutions i know of seems to stop somewhere around Eddie van Halen: mention Johnny Marr in the company of most guitar teachers and they will unleash torrents of scorn, howls of derision, and rage that you dare to mention him in the same breath as Hendrix, Page, Beck and Malmsteen, Ritenour and Carlton. Yet he certainly belongs in that pantheon, and his influence (which he drew from Roger McGuinn amongst others) is evident in all the bands I mentioned in the opening paragraph.
The Edge (another seminal guitarist) barely gets a mention in the standard guitar curriculum, yet he is the godfather of the indie style of timed delays and two-note chord fragments.

Why is this? Is my generation scared of the barbarian hordes invading our sacred temples? Do we regard it as beneath our dignity to even recognise the existence of these musicians (never mind actually study their styles and approaches?) Is it that we are reluctant to give up the limelight that foot-on-the-monitor solos afforded us and recede into the body of the ensemble, a member rather than a feature? Are we offended that a 3-chord merchant who has not studied the modes or practised altered scales in 32nd-notes at 160BPM should achieve fame and fortune while the woodshedders languish in their impoverished bedrooms, brilliant in their obscurity and hired by no-one because they don’t know how to play for the song? Or are we daunted by the challenge of having to come up with unique parts for each song rather than hide behind a library of stock licks and stylistic conventions?

Bring on the brickbats…

A few years ago I was touring with an artist I’d worked with for over 20 years and he decided he wanted to rearrange one of his old hits in a more modern style. Gone were the power chords and chorused arpeggios of the 1980s recording, in came the single-note with timed delay lines of the modern idiom. As I had been on the original recording and played the song on stage for two decades it took me a day or two in rehearsals to get it, but I persevered and found the requisite mindset.

The technique I used is a common and relatively simple one: choose an open string that is either the root or the fifth of the song’s key, set up a crotchet delay, and on an adjacent string slide up and down to one of the notes in the underlying chords while playing crotchets on both strings with a clean sound: simplesk. The root and fifth in a key can usually be forced against all the other chords without sounding too dissonant, and the result is more orchestral in its effect as most of the chord is left ambiguous, either to be filled in by other instruments or simply never stated.

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Wow, I can’t believe I’m nearly there! I know I’ve not posted every day over the last week or so: I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time to think, never mind write my blog, but I’m just 11 days away from having kept a daily blog for a year.

I’ve enjoyed it hugely and will keep posting, but not every day, just when I have something to say or am inspired to write.

In the meantime, the Creativity & Technique Competition will run up to the end of the year’s blog, so it closes on April 1st. There are some great entries: check the page and see what you think, and have a go yourself!

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Here’s an article I wrote in 2009 for the Rock Till You Drop website: I just dug it up (no pun intended) and it’s still relevant, so I’ll share it in this busy spell.

Rock till You Drop Article
A couple of things have happened recently that fit into my general musing about what it means to be a “pop” musician in the 2000’s, and more particularly for members of Rock Till You Drop, what it means to be a “mature” pop musician in the year 2009.

Pop Music: art or entertainment?

First, what is “pop music?” Originally regarded as a light, frothy and insubstantial form of entertainment for the masses, pop music has become the world’s common cultural denominator. The broad church of so-called “pop” music now encompasses the disposable trash peddled by Simon Cowell’s zombie hordes and the highbrow fine-art work of Roger Waters-period Pink Floyd and songwriters like Elvis Costello, as well as the abstractions of Jazz and soundscape artists like Phillip Glass. And who could deny the genius of Bob Dylan? My teenage daughters appreciate him as much as they do Elliot Smith or Jeff Buckley. Many people make their livings from the activities surrounding the pop industry and it is a significant contributor to the economies of England and America.
Its legitimacy as art is no longer questioned. As to the question “is it art or entertainment?” I recently heard a great definition of the two: entertainment is what you know you already know and know you want, whereas art gives you something you don’t already know or know you want. By this definition, pop music is definitely art.

The Age Contradiction

There is an inherent contradiction in pop music that is in the process of being exposed and resolved: the idea that pop music is youth culture. This preconception pervades its ethos and practise to the point where it has become the only industry in the world in which the more experienced you are as a practitioner, the less likely you are to get any work.

I’ve been a session musician for 30 years: nothing fazes me and I’m at home in all sorts of situations from stadium gigs to folk clubs, but I’m now considered too old to be booked to play with new acts, despite the fact that the presence of an “old hand” or two would benefit inexperienced performers immeasurably, (especially when they are faced with a hostile audience at the Glasgow Apollo on a dismal rainy February night .) The underlying assumption is that audiences want to see young people on stage and will find the presence of grey hairs offensive, but pop’s audience is now composed of all age groups, and artists like Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young are making music consistent with their ages.

It has become common for me to observe a phenomenon that never fails to make me smile: that of silver-haired old gentlemen in dinner-jackets playing air guitar when a covers band strikes up “Sultans of Swing” or “All Along the Watchtower” at the golf club dinner-dance. The front row of the recent Cream reunion gig at the Albert Hall was composed almost exclusively of balding but extremely well-heeled (check the ticket prices!!) ‘Captains of Industry.’ Not a teenager in sight! As one member of the “50-quid-man” demographic recently said in a survey; “My kids have allowances. I have a wallet stuffed with credit cards and cash!” And yet the music industry ignores this market, not daring to depart from the illusion that pop music is for “the kids.”

What use is Pop Music?

So having decided what pop music is, the next question I have been pondering is : what is pop music for? The answer came to me recently when I did my first ever Jewish gig at the age of 51; (yes, a little late in life to bite that particular bullet, but better late than never.) I sat there at a bat mitzvah in a Schule in Borehamwood, playing music that has been played at these events for thousands of years, and realised what I am for. If you leave aside the nonsense of being a “pop star,” what we as musicians actually do is provide part of the cultural context in which society exists and continues to exist. Look at paintings and read accounts of events from all through history; whether it’s the wedding of a King or a peasant, the death of a middle-class insurance salesman or a Sultan, there we are in the background; the minstrels in the gallery.

That is our function, and that is also our power. If I play the first few notes of the Funeral March during a wedding party I can totally change the mood in the room, and then I can change it back again simply by playing “I Will Survive” or “Dancing Queen.”

Pop music has entered our culture to the point where it is our culture. Even highbrows like Alan Yentob make documentaries about the history of the electric guitar. Commentators speak of the “triumph of vernacular culture”; the idea that the music of Elvis Presley is as valid artistically as that of Mozart. A recent complaint by a vicar that the music people choose to play at funerals is inappropriate completely misses the point: it is the old religious dirges that have become inappropriate. People relate more to “I Will Always Love You” than “Abide With Me.”

The Repertoire Theory

Pop music is now entering a new phase, similar in some respects to the world of so-called “classical” music. There is now a repertoire developing, and in the same way that an orchestra perform a programme of Tschaikovsky’s music or a concert pianist will go on tour playing the works of Rachmaninov, so a tribute band will present an evening of the music of Dire Straits or Abba, or any other band who are no longer touring themselves (or if they are, the tickets are prohibitively expensive and the concerts are in such large venues that there is no longer any sense of connection between audience and performer.)

This is what the phenomenon of tribute bands means; the emergence of an understanding on the audience’s part that the songs are more important than the performers who perform them, and the desire of that audience to hear those songs performed live. There are constant tours of so-called “revival” acts: Eighties pop stars now tour the world playing to audiences for whom that decade’s music was the soundtrack to their youth. In ten years’ time the Nineties revival tours wil be underway, Blur and Oasis sharing the same stage in an eerie echo of the Sixties package tours. Plus ca change.

The evidence for this is everywhere: EMI recently signed the Blockheads (the backing band of one of their dead artists), and there is a Dire Straits tribute band whose personel includes Chris White and John Illsley (both members of the original band.) I recently met a Pink Floyd tribute act who are playing the same 15,000-capacity venues I was playing with Roger Waters in the 1980’s. Where is the border between the original act and the tribute act?

Interestingly, many of the tribute bands are actually better musicians (technically speaking) than those whose repertoires they play: the original act just got there first and were the ones who made the music and style in the first place, but their interpreters are schooled at places like London’s Institute for Contemporary Music Performance, and possess sophisticated instruments and equipment that their heroes had to work for years to be able to afford.

End of the Blip

At the same time, the 50-year “blip” that was the explosion of recorded music is dying; ironically along with its inventor, Les Paul. The idea that it is possible to make millions of dollars by selling recordings of music (combined with the preposterous misconception that just because someone can sing a pop song and simultaneously have great hair should automatically be qualified to pronounce on the great political issues of the day) is falling into disrepair.

There is a generation that believes that recorded music is free, and that music is something you talk over. The music industry has to some extent only itself to blame for this: failure to invest in acts with long-term potential in favour of the “quick buck” boy- and girl-bands has devalued music in the eyes (ears?) of listeners. The ubiquity of music (in the mall, on the bus, in the airport, hairdressers, doctors’ waiting room and restaurant) has reduced the importance and value of music: it’s no longer special or unusual, just everywhere all the time.

Anyone who comes into the music business expecting to make millions is very quickly relieved of their illusions and goes off to make their fortune in organised crime, or The City. (No, not a lot of difference these days, I’ll grant you.) Those of us who are happy to make a living as musicians are having to adjust to a very different landscape.

The old music business paradigm of selling the fantasy of the Artist as someone whose lifestyle you should aspire to is dying. We have all seen far too many documentaries on “The Making of…” and “The Marketing of…” and “The Making of ‘The Marketing of’ “ to be taken in. It’s like being shown how a magician does his tricks; once you know how to saw a lady in half, the only interest that remains in the process is how well that particular magician performs that particular trick and whether they bring a new angle to it. The wonder is gone.

The attempt to sell us the fantasy that Bruce Springsteen rides his motorcycle through the streets of New York at 3 o’clock in the morning is increasingly ludicrous; we all know that he’s more likely to be tucked up on his orthopaedic mattress by half-past nine.

What Do I Have Left?

“You end up having to deal with whatever it is that you’ve got left.” Robert Wyatt ( a drummer who lost his legs.)

What is left is primarily live music, and this is where we find our metier, our place, and our living and being. Once again, the wheel has come full circle and musicians like me have returned to a very simple direct form of music-making: I put my guitar in the car, drive to a place where people go to hear musicians play their music, and play.

Selling CDs is a bonus: I no longer even expect it. I make money from recorded music by producing library tracks and producing unsigned/self-financed bands and singer/songwriters (which has the great benefit that I don’t have to kowtow to some scared kid from a record company who is so frightened of getting fired that the only thing he will accept is a carbon copy of whatever was a hit last week, regardless of its suitability for the artist.)

I teach, write magazine columns, play gigs in living-rooms pubs, theatres and all points inbetween, and am enjoying my profession more than I have done for decades. It feels more honest; less like whoring and more like the calling I felt it to be when I was 18.

I sit here in the gallery where no-one notices me and I observe the world at work and play. If I wasn’t there, you would miss me badly.

A wandering minstrel I —
A thing of shreds and patches,
Of ballads, songs and snatches,
And dreamy lullaby!
My catalogue is long,
Through every passion ranging,
And to your humours changing
I tune my supple song!
I tune my supple song!
Are you in sentimental mood?
I’ll sigh with you,
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
On maiden’s coldness do you brood?
I’ll do so, too —
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
I’ll charm your willing ears
With songs of lovers’ fears,
While sympathetic tears
My cheeks bedew —
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado.
Copyright Jay Stapley 2009-11-17

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Sorry, no post yesterday, but a fab evening recording backing vocals on Will Hudson’s album.

Jenny Howe and Donna Canale synched their vibs, oohed their oohs, aaahed their aahs, and wowed Will.

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