I Eat Music

Well, that was another funny week. No, funny isn’t the word. I don’t even know what the word is.

It started shortly after last week’s Weekly went out. Reports started coming in that a man had killed himself on stage at a Swell Season gig in California. Hours later it was confirmed that, in an entirely separate turn of events, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool frontman Charles Haddon had committed suicide shortly after playing at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium.

Add to that one pop type accused of punching his girlfriend, another convicted of sexual assault and one further death at Pukkelpop and by Monday morning you’ve got the most depressing edition of the CMU Daily ever.

Haddon’s suicide was probably the most depressing story of them all – it was an incident that was utterly devastating for all involved. Eddy Temple-Morris writes about this in his CMU column this week, and expresses things far better than I could. But there is something about Haddon’s death I do want to comment on: the way it was reported. And the way news stories can develop on the internet when few real facts are to hand.

When the first whispers of news started coming back from Belgium on Friday afternoon, it was claimed that another member of the band, Joe Hutchinson, had died. It was also noted that during the band’s set he had injured a woman in the audience when a stage dive went wrong. But once it was established that Hutchinson was still alive, this piece of information was dropped from most reports (including ours).

However, on Tuesday an Australian news outlet again reported this original rumour, but with one important difference: it was now Haddon who had injured the audience member. That report also included claims that Haddon had been overheard saying that he feared he’d crippled her, and that a “furious argument” with bandmates had occurred backstage after the show. Then there was the revelation that the woman is expected to fully recover from her injuries.

By Wednesday, this story had worked its way back to the UK and it was being reported widely that “new details have emerged” about Haddon’s death. Now, suddenly, this footnote to the original reports was being delivered as something separate, a story in its own right, a new ‘fact’ that could be used to aid speculation about what had caused Haddon to take his own life. Even though the fact was very possibly wrong and the speculation definitely baseless. Worse still, the speculation was soon reported as fact.

By Thursday one report distilled all this down to one sentence, telling us that the “inconsolable” Haddon cut the band’s set short after the stage dive incident and then killed himself. This is something that really doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

I understand that it’s natural to be curious about what happened, and it’s natural to connect events together to create a picture of what may have occurred. That’s how the human brain works.

Maybe it was Charlie, not Joe, who stage dived. Maybe he was genuinely fearful that the woman he landed on was permanently injured. Maybe instead of finding out, he went and killed himself. But maybe the two events were unrelated. Maybe, by suggesting a connection, someone’s more long standing pain and mental distress was completely belittled, condensing something awful down to nothing more than someone acting on a whim.

I’m not saying this news shouldn’t be reported. We report on rumours and speculation all the time. But if it is, such information needs to be treated very carefully. It needs to be acknowledged that the decision to end your own life is something complex and difficult for others to understand, and that rumours of events immediately before such shocking actions do not hold all the answers. In fact they almost certainly don’t. Claiming to have the story all sewn up in five days without having any of the real facts to hand helps no one.

This is taken from my editorial in the 27 Aug 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read in full here.

Hey, so it turns out that something on TV has been fiddled with in an attempt to make it more entertaining. How could something like this happen?

Okay, you might say this case is different. This is a singing competition. This is the ‘X-Factor’. This is a search for Great Britain’s next big vocal talent, and if the programme’s makers are applying Auto-tune to people’s voices, how are we to know who is genuinely the best singer?

Well, firstly, let’s not even pretend that ‘X-Factor’ is a singing competition. If it was, such a large proportion of the show wouldn’t be devoted to humiliating deluded people. People whose comically warped opinion of their own singing ability has already been spotted by the show’s production team in the early stages of the auditions (the ones before they actually get in front of Simon and co). This whole section of the series is about laughing at idiots, with the occasional break for a sob story or an introduction to a ‘possible future star’.

All of which makes it ludicrous that anyone would complain about Auto-tune software being used to make the good people sound better and the bad people sound worse. If everyone was portrayed as being as close to average as they probably are, it would make for some pretty dull television and everyone would complain that it was boring. And the last thing ‘X-Factor’ wants to be is boring.

Last Saturday a record 11.1 million people tuned in to watch the first episode of the new series. Some of them then accused the show of using Auto-tune. And the show’s makers readily admitted it, issuing a statement saying: “The judges make their decisions at the auditions stage based on what they hear on the day, live in the arena. The footage and sound is then edited and dubbed into a finished programme, to deliver the most entertaining experience possible for viewers. When it gets to the live shows, it will be all live”.

The people who spotted the vocal manipulation had not done so because they were specialists in audio production, but because it was plainly obvious. If you actually listen to the vocals that were edited on last weekend’s programme, the tweaks were applied so heavy-handedly (distorting, rather than tuning), and seemingly at random, that you can’t help thinking someone involved in the show wanted people to notice. Either that, or they’ve got someone new in to do their sound editing, and s/he’s incredibly rubbish.

As a result of this, the show has been in the news all week, which is good news for the programme, its producers, its sponsors and its broadcaster ITV. ‘X-Factor’ traditionally keeps itself in the news by feeding stories to the tabloids about how the judges all hate each other and Louis Walsh could leave at any moment. But people are wise to that now. And anyway, simply turning up the Auto-tune a little has resulted in far more coverage than Louis’ fake tantrums ever could.

The only really interesting part of this story reveals itself if you turn your attention to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, which is, of course, made by the same production team. The most successful thing that has ever happened on that show, or to any of its contestants (or to any contestant on a Cowell-owned franchise) is Susan Boyle’s first audition in front of the celebrity panel in 2009. She went on to be one of 2009’s most successful artists – worldwide – all because of that short audition peice, which became an internet phenomenon, thanks to YouTube and some high profile tweets. And this was an audition video that – rumours now has it – was very probably Auto-tuned.

But, hey, you’ll have to go a long way to find a mainstream artist whose voice isn’t Auto-tuned, even if just a little, these days. By manipulating contestants’ voices, ‘X-Factor’ is just preparing us for the reality of what’s to come. Really, instead of banning the software, which they claim to have now done, the show’s makers should have come out this week and said: “We’re going to Auto-tune the shit out of every single voice on the show from now on, because of your ridiculous high expectations. Now shut up and take it”. And then found a sound engineer who could use the technology without making it quite so bleedin obvious.

This was the ‘Beef Of The Week’ in the 27 Aug 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read right here.

August is typically a quiet month in music, with very little going on at all. Yet this week seems to have been a busy week for music news.

Okay, maybe ‘news’ isn’t the right term for all of it. Or even much of it. 76% seems to have involved Justin Bieber in some way, while one of the week’s major stories was whether or not Guns N Roses are still playing their upcoming UK tour dates – most importantly, Reading and Leeds at the end of the month.

That particular story all started with a tweet, as things generally do these days. A message appeared on Axl Rose’s page on the social networking site informing fans that all future dates were off. Such is Axl’s reputation for being a bit flaky, half the world had reported it as fact before anyone thought to check it out. On closer inspection, it was the singer’s first tweet for three months, and was posted via Twitter’s mobile website, rather than the Twitter For iPhone app, which Axl generally uses.

A spokesperson for Reading and Leeds quickly announced that everything was fine and that Axl’s account had been hacked. Oh, those pesky hackers, I reckon we’ll see more of them in this week’s Weekly, too. So, end of story, time to get on with our lives.

Except the story has continued to bob up again and again all week. By Thursday, it was Reading and Leeds boss Melvin Benn who was giving the statements. He’d spoken to Guns N Roses’ booking agent, who had spoken to Axl, who had said everything was still on. But that tweet remains online, and neither Guns N Roses nor any of their ‘people’ have made any direct statement, which is why the story just won’t go away.

The band played their last gig last Friday, headlining the Rock N Rev festival in South Dakota, the band’s only US date this year, following tours of South America and Europe. Next up is the band’s UK tour and more mainland European dates, which are set to begin on 27 Aug at the Reading festival, before taking in arenas across Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe through to a show in Barcelona on 23 Oct.

The fact that the band have completed all but two dates of their 2009/2010 tour schedule (and those were both due to problems with the stage in South America) does suggest that Benn is right and everything is fine. But there’s still that reputation Axl’s got himself in recent years.
Back in 2002, when the new Guns N Roses first went out on tour, Axl’s failure to turn up to a number of early shows resulted in rioting, leading to the rest of the tour being cancelled. Then, in 2006, Axl cancelled the final dates of a US tour to work on completing the ‘Chinese Democracy’ album, at the same time as firing the band’s manager, Merck Mercuriadis. By this point, the band had nonetheless played numerous shows successfully, but that’s not the kind of thing people get remembered for. Especially when they’re Axl Rose.

So, wow, look at that. All this because of one tweet, eighteen words long, which probably was put there by a hacker. But Axl really does know how to start up a fuss, even if he does it unintentionally. Any other band would have deleted the tweet and issued a statement clearing the whole thing up. Other bands wouldn’t assume that some festival in the UK could put everyone straight. But I guess that’s why other bands aren’t as entertaining as Guns N Roses.

Taken from the 20 Aug 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read here.

Last weekend began in an interesting way. I found myself wandering through derelict tunnels underneath Waterloo Station, where I stumbled upon a small theatre.

Okay, I was expecting the theatre to be there, I’m not generally in the habit of wandering into damp, smelly tunnels in the hope of finding entertainment. No matter what you’ve heard. I was there because the Old Vic has commandeered part of the space deep underneath the train station for a series of events this year.

Last week saw two performances of graphic novel writer Alan Moore’s new spoken word album, ‘Unearthing’, with musical backing provided by Crook&Flail (aka Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker and Fog’s Andrew Broder).

On paper, it doesn’t sound like much: Alan Moore delivers a biography of one of his friends, writer Steve Moore (no relation), set to abstract electronic music with accompanying photographs by Mitch Jenkins projected on a screen behind the stage. In fact, it sounds quite pretentious. And maybe it was a little, but that was easily diffused by Moore’s fantastic writing and unforced humour, all delivered in his distinct Northampton accent.

The story, told over the course of three hours (with two fifteen minute intervals), was far more grand, epic even, than you could possibly expect of a biography of a comic writer who has lived in the same house in Shooter’s Hill – “where Kent begins and London disappears” – for his entire life, save for a misjudged period of three months. It goes back through the history of the area, treating it as much as a character as anyone or anything else in the story, and through the eventual meeting of his parents before getting on to his travels through the words of comics and the occult.

As Moore spoke, Drucker and Broder’s soundtrack (played with the help of Jeff ‘Jel’ Logan), swooped and swelled behind him, rising up to add to the drama, or falling completely away to punctuate the story. Jenkins’ photography and graphical interpretations added yet more tone and colour, though the focus was always the words.

In fact, perhaps the most impressive thing was the delivery of the words. In three hours, Moore never fluffed one of them. Never stumbled, coughed or even, as far as I could hear, breathed. It was a completely hypnotic, gripping and intense show; that intensity ramped up by the fact that we were sitting in a damp, dark tunnel with rusted corrugated iron hanging from the ceiling and the entire space often shaken around us by the deep rumble of overhead trains. Simply stunning.

Taken from my editorial in this edition of CMU Weekly.

We don’t normally do April Fools gags at CMU, but this one seemed like a lot of fun when we thought it up. Fortuitously (for this story, not EMI), the first of April coincided with the collapse of EMI’s talks with Universal and Sony Music to license out the ailing major’s back catalogue.

Here are some of the bands who didn’t make it into the final story:

Coldplay + Goldfrapp = Coldfrapp
David Guetta + Jet = David Jetta
KT Tunstall + Katy Perry = KT Perry
The 69 Eyes + M83 = The 152 Eyes
Sigur Rós + Joss Stone = Sigur Joss

And here are the ones that did…

EMI to merge bands in new bid to cut costs
Following the news yesterday that all of EMI’s attempts to mortgage its recordings catalogue in the US market had failed, one last bold plan has emerged from the London-based major’s existing management that they hope can stop Citigroup from seizing control of the company when loan repayments become due in May.

It seems increasingly likely that the only way that EMI will now be able to meet its commitments to Citigroup is if it can convince investors in its parent company Terra Firma to cough up more cash. In a bid to get that support, a new internal report has proposed a radical way to enable further cost savings at the already cut-back major, principally by encouraging bands signed to the label to merge their activities, reducing upfront investment costs and financial risks.

The ‘April Report’, a name seemingly referencing the fact the major only has one month to save itself, was distributed yesterday to Terra Firma investors, senior EMI staff and key artist managers, and claims that so called ‘band mergers’ could be the solution to the major’s woes, enabling the record company to better service what some execs see as an overly expansive roster of artists by pooling marketing efforts into combined releases.

The report outlines some of the first band mergers likely to take place as part of the new arrangement, some of which seem to have already been run by affected artists and managers. If the proposals go ahead, Hot Chip will be partnered with Coldplay, and, despite having only just released their latest album ‘One Life Stand’, could be in the studio with their new bandmates and producer Brian Eno as soon as June. The new album from the combined band, working title Coldchip, should be out before Christmas.

While some merged bands will actually collaborate in the studio, other mergers will see American and British artists combined, with the singers performing under a combined brand name, but only in their home territory. This has echoes with the 1960s system where different artists on opposite sides of the Atlantic would release the same songs. It’s thought Katy Perry and Kylie Minogue, or Katy Minogue moving forward, might be the test project in this regard, with Katy representing the combined band brand in the US, and Kylie in the UK and Australia. There are, of course, also carbon footprint benefits to this particular idea.

But possibly the most surprising of the band merger proposals is that artists already involved in multiple projects with the label will have to pick one brand to perform under. This would affect the projects of former Blur members, whose new work would all be released under the Blur name. This would include all Damon Albarn projects, including Gorillaz, and Graham Coxon’s solo work.

Although it’s not clear if the band mergers proposal was included in the previously reported business plan prepared for Terra Firma investors by former EMI CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti, who quit last month, the proposal is now being spearheaded by the company’s Executive Chairman Charles Allen.

He provides the introduction to the April Report, and writes: “While it is no secret that EMI has had its fair share of problems in recent years, I genuinely believe that this measure will secure the company’s short term and long term future. I realise that many music fans will see it as a controversial move, but they must realise that it is a necessary one. Record companies need to keep their costs to an absolute minimum to stay in business, and when innovative solutions like this present themselves, we’d be fools not embrace them”.

Although most affected artists are yet to comment on the report, a source close to Hot Chip’s management last night confirmed that they had been consulted about the proposal the band merge with Coldplay. The source said: “We had our reservations about the Coldchip proposals, but, while driven by commercial necessity, they actually pose some interesting creative challenges that artists will find exciting. The Hot Chip boys are actually looking forward to working with some brand new bandmates. We’re not 100% sure how it’s all going to work yet, but given Coldplay’s huge global fanbase, it’s also a great opportunity for the guys”.

Other mergers proposed in the report include a new band called The Stones consisting of Angus, Julia and Joss Stone, and, perhaps most interestingly artistically speaking, an album by a combined Massive Attack and Liars, whose new moniker may be Massive Liars.

EMI are yet to comment on the leaked report.

See the story on the CMU News-Blog here and in CMU Daily here.