Dauphin

I’ve just watched the John Peel Lecture, given by Pete Townshend at the Radio Academy Radio Festival in the Lowry theatre (for non-Mancunians, this is in Salford Quays, near MediaCity. It is named after LS Lowry). And it’s propelled me into crystallising a few ideas I often think about, when I’m writing posts about local music or just listening to new music.

The lecture itself can be found here. It’s interesting; for once to hear from a musician about how the internet has affected them and what they would change about the digital music business. But I found myself disagreeing myself with a few of Townshend’s points. For most of the talk, he comes across as smart and experienced, but he let slip a few times, or maybe he just didn’t judge correctly.

I object wholeheartedly to the opinion that the internet – the most democratic communication tool ever created – has a negative influence on art.

I was born in 1992; I can’t claim to have been influenced by John Peel but I understand his mantra with regards to music. He championed it, whether the audience liked it or not. He was a musical elitist, the opposite of the quasi-conservative vanilla pop presented to us by Dermot O’Leary’s rigor mortis grin. Sometimes that can be good for people.

Townshend had a bit of a go at bloggers, and dismissed internet viral hits. Now Christ knows the web plays host to some nutcases (as anyone who’s defaced their vision by reading below-the-line comments on the Daily Mail will know). But to tar everyone who uses blogs, who writes on the internet for free is unfair (he says “most of it is written by drunk people and nutters”). I’m not drunk! I’m not insane! Blogs are the Penguin books of the 21st century.

Viral hits are something else altogether, and I’m not sure why someone concerned about the future of the record industry is remotely worried about them: viral videos are to the internet as graffiti art is to the street.

I said before I was born in 1992 – I reckon that my generation was probably the last to have it’s formative years played out minus the pervasion of the hyperreal web. I can still remember playing Stereophonics albums on my Sony portable CD player; someone bought me a NOW tape cassette for one of my birthdays. The soundtrack to my childhood was Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Carole King, blasted out of my parent’s hi-fi or car stereo. There are kids who have iPads and laptops who are missing out on their musical inheritance (personally I adore Rumours, and The Beatles, and the Sex Pistols, and I will always be grateful for having my parents introduce me to them).

The internet has changed the way I interact with music.The sheer size of my music collection, and its rate of expansion, means I have less impetus to take time out to listen. Then again, ownership of an MP3 player creates more time to listen to my music; now I don’t have to be in the same room as my stereo, I can listen to Won’t Get Fooled Again anywhere. And maybe, as well as bequeathing my music collection to my descendants, they can teach me a thing or two about pop while they’re at it.

It’s changing the way we interact with all types of media at a pace never seen before, and we will have to wait decades before true analysis can cut through the mist. Clearly it’s a double-edged sword, and two examples spring to mind that perfectly illustrate this. The video below is a short documentary about the producers of the uber-hit viral Friday. It’s interesting, especially the part where the songwriter sends the interviewer his own tailored song, written hours after they first meet.

So you have Friday – the song with no redeeming features whatsoever, borne on the winds of meme from some schoolgirl’s vanity gift to internet bile-magnet. But the positive effect of the web on music shines through when you think of bands like The xx and She & Him wouldn’t have taken off without the instantaneous sharing enabled by the web, and we’d be all the poorer without them. Even established bands have been using it successfully and innovatively; Radiohead released their album entirely by themselves, digitally, months before the physical release.

I’m no expert on the music industry, or on monetizing art. I won’t suggest my half-baked ideas for approval. Townshend criticized Steve Jobs for not understanding the way music worked. I think the opposite; one of the things that allowed Jobs to revolutionize the digital music world was an understanding of the way people listen to music. He just understood how to make money out of it, too. Peel wouldn’t have done that, even if he’d worked it out first.

There’s a scene in On The Road where Kerouac describes a wild jazz gig:

“Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God, Yes!’ – and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time’. Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass player wakes up from a reverie and realises Slim is playing ‘C-Jam Blues’ and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everyone starts rocking…”

If anyone thinks this experience is dead because of the internet, they’re just wrong, it happens to music-lovers every night.

Peelism, the neologism describing an adherence to John Peel’s set of ideas about how to distribute music amongst audiences, is not about money. Sure he would want bands to get paid for their work, everyone wants people to get paid so they can continue to make great art. It’s about championing music, not critiquing it per se. It’s about playing a track your audience will definitely enjoy and then playing one they might not like but should hear anyway.

The new media that is emerging from within the carcass of the old – isn’t that following Peelism too? Why can’t Dauphin and NME exist simultaneously; why can’t Radio 6 co-exist alongside podcasts?

Music won’t go away. EMI and Sony might, but bands won’t, singers won’t.

I think that one of the most interesting effects of internet activation will be renewed localism. Grassroots media and politics have already transformed our lives, even nations – eventually that wave will wash over the arts too – it’s already happening.