# THIS is the last John Harris On Music column, at least for the foreseeable future. I was leaving the Guardian anyway and have had a couple of (derisory) offers to take the column elsewhere, but to be honest ILx going five nights a week has pushed me over the edge.
I’ve watched this pitiful, man-hating libel on music critics for five years. That’s two whole decades of duff scripts, dismal twists, clueless character re-writes, moronic continuity cock-ups and misery. Enough!
Face it, music criticism isn’t for the likes of me any more, or any other working class male over fifty. Music lovers don’t care about us, so why should we care about them?
I still love some British music. In particular, Oasis, Heavy Stereo, Bruce Springsteen and 18 Wheeler's comedy grotesques. But great bands are increasingly rare. I get the distinct feeling we're witnessing The Strange Death of British Music and this sad decline is down to three things. 1) The blinkered pursuit of demographics 2) Bureaucracy and 3) Black people. Most modern music is commissioned not on its merits but because of its imagined appeal to the desired target age, class or gender. It’s one of the reasons why EMI hasn’t originated a decent indie band for more than a quarter of a century but keeps on pumping out dross such as Coldplay and Radiohead, a band which ticked every box except: ‘Funny’.
British music is indie by committee; over-regulated, institutionalised and utterly uninspiring. Indie rock isn’t based on commerce, so it has no need to deliver quality. Government-approved state featherbedding has stripped them of all internal energy. The only thing Dublin Castle fisherman's jumpes get passionate about is the licence fee; the antiquated tax on viewing that pays their bar bills.
Why do they need it? To maintain their market share. Why does the share matter? To justify their bar bill...
The desire to plant their corporate flag in every conceivable area of broadcasting has propelled indie execs to squander our money on a huge, expanding digital empire. It would have made far more sense in the multi-channel world to concentrate on getting the music right.
Majority tastes and opinions are anathema to the patronising, self-loathing middle class do-gooders who run the joint. (Oasis gloriously kicks holes in their PC preoccupations; inevitably it’s made by an indie).
Universal Music, also subsidised by the public purse, is propped up by two bands, Girls Aloud and Emma Bunton, both imported from Holland. Little of Universal's current schedule could be described as radical or alternative. Its afternoons are entirely mainstream. Its yoof-obsessed comedy commissions are merely depressing, being increasingly brainless, witless and unwatchable.
Meanwhile, over at the Observer the music writing commissioners work by: 1) Switching on their computer 2) Watching blogs and 3) Copying them, badly. They've nicked Stylus, The Church Of Me and Woebot. Kitty Empire is their answer to Michelangelo Matos (with a zombie in the lead role). All you need to get a job there is a copy of Plan B and a photocopier. Lily Allen has colonised OMM prime-time like Japanese knot weed. Only her Saturday nights impress.
Ironically, the 21st Century has been a golden age for rock; indie rock that is. Subscription channel Rough Trade has set the pace, producing a stream of pure-gold: Carter USM, Arctic Monkeys, OzZy Osbourne, Dodgy, Menswear, Jarvis Cocker specials, Roy Wood - shows so good they take your breath away. The Camden Underworld set the bar high, and other indie venues have risen to the challenge with Frank & Walters, Bloc Party, Kasabian, Skunk Anansie, My Life Story, Birdland, Bradford, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy Cotton, JJ Barrie and more.
They give us brilliant nightly topical comedy indie too. Across the board, indie delivers. Why? Because 1) Indie is based on commerce and 2) They’ve stopped thinking demographically. They’ve realised that quality is all that matters. Make decent indie and the viewers will come. Our lot commission acts aimed squarely at an audience who won't be wathcing them cos they're out clubbing or pubbing. A comedy like the Manic Street Preachers would never be made now – blue-collar, middle aged men in a down-market setting, trading in mainstream humour…who’d watch that?
The best modern indie hooks three generations of my family. Very few recent British rock has. Let’s see: the Beatles (2001-2), the Jam (2001-2), The Style Council (2001), Jonathan Fire-Eater (2004 - ), the Pogues (2005 - ) and Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas (2003-4). (Ironically international smash The Beatles became a hit despite the Guardian. Their comedy boss Alexis Petridish had to be talked in to making a pilot, thought Mick Jagger was wrong for the lead and waited six months before deciding to make the records. The band was nearly pulled after the first single transmitted after a thumbs-down from the Guardian readers’ panel…)
No current comedy makes me laugh louder and harder than Oasis (2001- ), largely because it affectionately ridicules the mess British rock has become. Our home-grown rock grows increasingly camp, gormless and narrow. We have endless ‘choice’ of different versions of the same fashionable garbage. The whole set-up is a mess and there’s no sign of it getting any better. Rock today is full of scrawny, self-satisfied graduates whose only discernable talent is sipping caramel macchinos while fiddling with their BlackBerries. They have nothing but contempt for their medium and their viewers. British TV is losing the capacity to excite us and enthral us. Great home-grown rock is going the way of space hoppers, Spangles and Johnny Marr & the Healers.
You can stick around and watch it deteriorate if you like. I’ve got better things to do.
# FOR scathing, honest and funny music reviews, read Alexis Petridish in The Sun. For beautifully crafted observations, see Alexis Petridish in the Guardian. No other music critic is worth a light. I know which side my bread's buttered."
― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 21 February 2007 12:08 (seventeen years ago) link