Almost daily we hear someone or other bleating about the death of the music industry thanks to illegal downloading and the copying of recorded material. Sales of recorded music have plummeted and a song can reach number one in the charts but selling a few thousand copies.
I have always been a music fan and love to attend live concerts whenever I can, and am currently anticipating the 4Oth anniversary tour of Steeleye Span, complete with Maddie Prior. Having said that, I rarely buy music anymore, neither do I download it. I am becoming seriously disenchanted with the whole Pop industry and I for one hope that it dies a quick and painless death.
There was a time when to become a pop star, you needed either huge talent and some luck, or you needed a new and quirky idea and a lot of balls. Nowadays it seems that in order to sell a lot of records, performers need an image, a manager and an ability to look plastic and to fit into preset moulds that make you attractive to pre-adolescent girls. Boy and Girl bands spring up like weeds and die off just as quickly, always dozens more waiting to take their places.
Th "ECKS" factor is a very popular TV "Talent" show that is generating much controversy here at the moment. I mention it because it really does encapsulate all that is wrong with the world of music at the present time. For those of you who haven't seen it, vast numbers of hopefuls gradually get whittled down by a panel of judges, until a small handful are put through a series of trials and humiliations, each week one more being voted off the list, theoretically by the public. The panel of judges is of course led by the multi-millionaire who owns the show and he is accompanied by three other representatives of the "industry", none of whom seems to have a brain cell let alone a mind of their own. The weeks go by and the victims are led through various Karaoke moulds and in the end one will remain and will be given the strait jacket that leads them to become Mr or Mrs Plastic 2009. This year there is a large fly in the custard. A young duo who have the talent and the personalities of a pair of young labradors are storming along and could well win the contest. Neither of them can sing at all, but they look the part with their silly spiky hair and their utter lack of talent.
Each week, hard working singers with huge potential have been sent home while the talentless and highly irritating continue to garner support from the teenagers that are doing the voting and generating the Judge's retirement fund. Part of me suspects that there is a conspiracy going on and that the public is saying that enough is enough, but my cynical side is screaming out that this is just what people want - to see Pop Stars that are just like them - banal, ordinary and utterly dull.
I hope that these lads win, and as they accept their million pound contract, that the first thing they buy is a hammer so that they can drive in the last nails of the coffin. Maybe then, once this business is laid to rest, musicians will learn their trades in public performance and make their money for being talented and original and we can hear some real music once again.
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