Pearsall's Tunes

Some guy named releaseroger sounding off in response to a Hattie Collins column on the BBC site entitled 'Can Grime Pay?'

Maybe I'm getting too old for all of this.

Correct me if I'm wrong Collective Ed's but every two or three years a 'new' movement arrives to save us all from the 'majors'.

Let's play the cool card like all of the artists featured in the article have.

To champion something as 'fresh' and 'vibrant' is to make it cool? No? When something's 'cool' the quickest way to make it 'uncool' in a dad-dancing kinda way is to sell out to the majors?

You telling me this 'movement's not all about 'front'?

None of these guys want to earn any money right? They are all just doing it for the kick. I bet as long as there's room to breakdance everything's ok?

Get feckin' real. The REAL deal is that they're all out to make a quick buck on the back of any movement.
Jeez, why bother with it all if you're not out to make a few quid?

To me, this stinks of cultural snobbery. An exclusive club which allows entry to only cool people. There's a sense of hanging on to something precious yet something that would be sold as quick as your granny if the man with the suitcase full of money from the big major record label came knocking on the door.

"The worry now, of course, is whether Grime will go the way of UKG and end up merging into the mainstream,its real roots lost to the corporate coin eager to rake in the cash rather than build and nurture. "

You mean, it's not happened already?
"Real roots lost to the corporate coin"? My god, how funny is that sentence? Get a feckin' grip of the situation here.

"I've seen a lot of people at the top end of music who have no idea what's going on in the street; says 18-year-old Lady Sovereign, whose ear-splitting Cha Ching is just one highlight on Run The Road. They're asking 'What's the hottest thing?; And these people are controlling music? Some of them ain't got a clue."

You mean, like you?
What people at the top end of music? Oh, you mean you've had lunch with the head of BMG on Tuesday and went to a cocktail party with the head of EMI on Thursday?

Snobbery goes both ways here. The majors have the money and the marketing power.
The independants or the 'new wavers' or whatever they want to call themselves this week rely solely on that snobbish outlook that 'our music is too cool' for just ANYONE to like.
So, you don't want to be popular? You don't want adulation? You just want to 'keep it real'?

Obviously, my interpretation of being a respected musical artist is wrong. You should play behind closed doors, never release an album, just tell people you're 'keeping it real' and drive around in a knackered Ford Fiesta with a wonky exhaust and no MOT.
If that's the case, I'd like to be the first to champion myself as the greatest ever musical artist. I'm also the coolest as absolutely NOBODY has heard of me. Check that out. How 'real' is that?! Y'see the thing is that the majors don't get it. My guitar playing is so unique and so fresh that the big guns aren't ready for me yet. I'm ten years in front, baby! My way of combining Welsh Male Voice Choirs with Naplam Death samples whilst playing them over a speeded up version of 'Trans-Europe Express' is too goddamn cool to be heard by all you people that think you know music. Only my cat has heard it and he thinks it's sh*t.
You wait till you hear my version of 'Boogie on Reggae Woman' made with a kazoo, ping-pong balls on the back of a piano, nipple clamps connected to a 240V charge placed on the arse of my local MP and a bangin' house tune clocking in at 30,000 bpm's......oh, you can't coz if you do hear it then that means I'm no longer fresh and therfore I've sold out to the majors......f*ck it.....I'm off to be an insurance salesman.

[back on planet earth]

Somebody for fu*k's sake explain 'keeping it real' to me?
And I double dare anybody to explain it without reading back your comment and smelling the musical snobbery in it.

"Semtex agrees. 'The biggest conflict I have is with major labels because they still don't get it,; he sighs. "

I beg to differ.
I think you 'don't get it'. I think you don't understand how music evolves or has even evolved to your latest brand of 'new'.

Articles like this f*ck me off.
I am TIRED of being told what's 'real' and what's not, what's 'cool' and what isn't.
I'm an adult. Treat me like one.


"Abroad, they understand the cultural value and music of our artists."

You telling me that Britain doesn't?
Where the f*ck have you been for the last 50 or so years?
You think America understands the "cultural value and music of our artists"?

"you can guarantee we'd have a beautiful industry."

You bloody hypocrite.
Industry.
What is industry without money?
What is industry without a market?
What is industry without lots of people to finance your industry? Are they not fans? The ones that WILL BUY THE RECORDS?


"don't believe the hype" - Public Enemy
Ain't that the truth.

As someone who has sometimes used 'not real' and 'not underground' arguments in discussing music I don't like, reading this is receiving a cold, hard slap of truth.