So I recently took holiday in the UK, or more specifically Great Britain, and the trip was amazing! No doubt about it, although I had read about all of the stuff I saw at some point or another, everything felt new. Great Britain is really as green as it looks. It does rain, but never that heavy, and it usually doesn't last terribly long (unless a front hangs out for a while). The people have cool accents, and the accents can vary depending on where you are. The food's good, the beer's better. All in all, I had a great experience.
But the music bothered me. Or maybe it was the BBC that bothered me. There's no variety...it's all pop. BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 were playing pop basically all day. Enrique Iglesias (I didn't know he still had a career), Cheryl Cole, Travie McCoy, Travie McCoy with Bruno Mars, Rhianna, Rhianna with Eminem...I couldn't find a rock song, much less a popular rock song, for hours on in. Maybe once or twice I heard "Radioactive" by Kings of Leon (who probably wouldn't be popular were it not for our friends over the Atlantic), but for most of my trip it was all pop. I happily stumbled upon some classic metal while in Glasgow (Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath), and Keranng in the Southwest was a cool harder modern rock station, but that was toward the end of my trip and did project out to where I stayed.
I started to wonder if something was wrong with me. I'm not really a big fan of pop, much less modern pop. But I started to think that my thinking needs to change (and it probably does need to, to a certain degree). Maybe I don't know popular anymore. (Maybe we shouldn't hear the same songs over and over again.) The BBC played over and over these artists and several others (notice the use of "several" rather than "many"), and people seemed to still want it. Am I wrong? What's wrong with me? Is the stuff I have been trying to listen--Arcade Fire's The Suburbs or the Black Keys or others--the wrong stuff to listen to?
The problem with ‘pop’ is just that – it’s popular! And if what you like isn’t liked by the majority you soon find yourself out in the cold. Unfortunately X-Factor & Pop Idol type programs are great examples of this - Monday conversations in the office mean nothing to me regarding who was kicked off or why is Bob still in the competition? To answer a question you posed yourself, I came to the conclusion that I don’t know popular years ago!
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of radio is that you will never be 100% happy with any station unless it broadcasts your i-pod 24/7. Radio should always be challenging you with music & most stations in the UK fail miserably, the main exceptions being, ironically, BBC or the odd ‘specialist’ Independent station such as those you mentioned. Some stations promise much but fail to deliver - we have a local station that has the very promising title of ‘RockFM’ however the loudest it ever gets may be the odd Nickleback single & it would not recognise a ‘Rock’ if it stubbed its toe as it fell over it as it’s output is almost 100% pop.
The BBC also has its own unique issue in that in the UK we pay an obligatory annual licence of about £150 to receive non-satellite/cable TV. The majority of this money goes to the BBC to fund both TV & Radio output & has to cover everything from sports to drama to kids to news. In short its output has to be spread thinly to cover all bases. If it is not seen to be inclusive it could have its funding removed & it is a case of dammed if it does or dammed if it doesn’t!
Since its birth 40-odd years ago, Radio 1 has broadcast to the masses. However by the mid 1990’s it had become parody of it self & it decided to radically change it’s approach by making a conscious decision not to play any music that was recorded before the early 90’s. The fallout was severe with DJ’s resigning live on air & condemnation in the popular press. But out of those ashes rose a more diverse station. And since the untimely death of legendary DJ John Peel a few years ago R1 has continued to carry his torch focussing on new talent by re-branding its evening schedule under the banner of ‘In New Music We Trust’, be it indie, dub-step, hip-hop, drum & bass or whatever.
It’s post 7pm broadcasting is impressive - no other station in the UK would dedicate a whole evening over to Mumford & Sons or Kings of Leon incl. specially commissioned concerts. Similarly not many stations would dedicate a week of programs to classic albums which featured a full play through of the album, including the silences between the songs.
Over the years Radio1 ‘sessions’ have also become infamous in the music world from the legendary Peel Sessions of The Fall or Pulp through to the Black Keys playing live last week (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vf4rt )
However, as diverse as Radio1 is in the evenings, during the daytime Radio1 it still panders to ‘popular’ & to the dreaded playlists (www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/playlist/ ) which is where your repetition issue comes in – a point that I 100% agree with.
In the daytime it does attempt to provide some alternatives such as when artists come in & are encouraged to play their latest hit plus a cover version of their choosing which can lead to the absolute genius of Elbow covering Independent Woman (Destiny’s Child) or the bloody awful rendition by Travie McCoy of Mumford & Sons’ The Cave - both worth seeking out for their respective merits.
But, if you want a few shoots of hope to cling to, there is a BBC Digital Radio station that was ear-marked for closure. It is called 6music & is very much experimental / new music based along with specialist shows & access to the vast archive of BBC material. Such was the backlash over the perceived closure that eventually the BBC changed their minds, as numerous top-level musicians plus 85,000 Facebook fans can’t all be wrong. It was a victory for the common man - or at least the common man who doesn’t like pop music, but who does have great taste in music :o)
When I was driving home one night from work after our trip over, I did hear some rock stuff (Arctic Monkeys, Kings of Leon, Radiohead) and thought to myself "where was this while we were over there?" I then realized it would have been midnight where you are. When we drove back from visiting you guys, we caught some interesting blues music being played, which was easier to drive to than the current Bruno Mars record.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC is weird. I guess my only wish, if I could run the whole thing, would be to force variety on teh stations during the entire day, not just at different times. There are some great rock records out right now that can only be heard at night there, and the kids need to hear this stuff. They need to see that there are some artists with something real to say.