[ni'k]

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/

Originally Posted by Rouge's Foam Blog

It’s been a troubling week for music as a collective activity, open to the general public. On Monday, news rapidly spread that legendary Shoreditch club Plastic People is under threat of closure by Hackney Council under the advice of the police, prompting an extraordinary ‘Save Plastic People’ campaign. The club has spent a decade housing and incubating the best and freshest of UK dance musics. Days later, we learnt that the unique BBC digital radio stations 6 Music and The Asian Network could well be shut down as part of a belt-tightening exercise that apparently pre-empts an oncoming Conservative government.

Plastic People, BBC 6 Music and The Asian Network all share a faith in music that’s outside of – even ahead of – the mainstream, and they exist to bring that music to a wider audience. Institutions like these are of course vital to the health of musical creativity and innovation in this country and worldwide. Moreover, the threat of their demise is a symptom of the trend that sees music slowly transforming from a collective activity that builds and benefits societies, stoking the imaginations of those who participate in it, into an economically viable product made for personally selected, individual consumption – or at the most, a fashionable, elite but ultimately inoffensive decoration for the solipsistic cycles of sex, money-making and waiting around that our lives are increasingly held to amount to.

Tellingly, one of the reasons given for the ‘application to review’ Plastic People’s licence was ‘Prevention of Public Nuisance’. Which public? Whose public? Here, PP’s promotion of public activity becomes the nuisance caused by a public, which evidently needs to be prevented. Music is being shifted from a publicly shared activity to the peaceful security of private consumption from within our own little kingdoms – from a collective, participatory act of open-minded creativity and imagination to an easy, stultifying, quality-controlled familiarity.

While i don't agree that bbc6 music is a particularily great insitution that is either vital to creativity or necessarily so worth saying - i do agree with everything else written here. the problem with the bloggers position is that they are too focused on seeing particular institutions as worth defending against mainstream capitalism - i say energy should not necessarily be focused on protecting whatever few bastions of slightly beyond medicority exist within official (enemy) territory and we should instead focus on new organisation completly outside of legal official channels. bbc6music may be a hell of a lot better than having to fucking listen to virginfm when you work - but it IS in a way a kind of ludditte extravagance. why not just go pirate? why do we need the bbc involved anyways? i can see it being tremendously valued if you are stuck in work and its a choice between that and the rest of the utter soul crushing disgusting advertising bullshit they play... but still, it's hardly vital to health and creativity... this point could be debated... but why always try meagerly to fight the fight we know we are going to loose? is there not a kind of invisible radiation beam of self concioussness and anxiety that makes us all edit and censor ourselves in public nowadays that renders official channels of communication useless? the fight for something worthwhile in the mainstream, something to stand in opposition to the uniform be happy and work and fuck and be hedonistic and don't dare think or feel anything abnormal evil disgusting social propaganda bullshit that they play on mainstream radio. for this blogger, and for the likes of k-punk et all who grew up pre vinyl/mp3 - what they criticise as the oed-ipod is often a younger generations only defense against the poisonous bile poring out of every shop radio. what do they think we are going to necessarily hear if we take off our headfones? noones allowed to come within emotional distance of a stranger that they might begin to feel some empathy, no, you best stick alone, remember your in competition with these people, and have property to defend.

what we need is more illegal raves, more illegal events, more illegal art and more public/collective events that are not basically a cattle pen for drugs/alcohol to use up our bodies. that are not basically a station for us to sit passively alone with each other having our cash and attention sucked from us by the available receptacles. events that happen and offer a space for new ideas to circulate, where we can escape ourselves - but not by trying to pound our self and body into submission with poisonous drugs. not to blot out with prescription nihilism and the "let's violently reduce everything to what we call 'enjoyment' and sex" attitude. fuck that.

events that involve music, video, art, text, conversation/whatever - hedonism that is constructive and builds friendships and alliances instead of everyone going home to enjoy their hangovers and merchandise purchases alone.
events that are for the dissemination of ideas and collective joy - not collective misery that tries to erase itself with the maintnenance of a false appearance that can only be sustained with a constant flow of drugs cigs booze junk and bullshit talk.

there is nothing to stop people from going out and doing stuff like this except their own self conciousness, after you deal with that then you can deal with the cops or assholes trying to keep it quiet and stop any life from breaking out.

and one more thing -

Moreover, the threat of their demise is a symptom of the trend that sees music slowly transforming from a collective activity that builds and benefits societies, stoking the imaginations of those who participate in it, into an economically viable product made for personally selected, individual consumption – or at the most, a fashionable, elite but ultimately inoffensive decoration for the solipsistic cycles of sex, money-making and waiting around that our lives are increasingly held to amount to.

does this part not make you think of noise right now? whats left of post punk/alternative/experimental rock esque genres?

[floatingslowly]

I'm used to Clearchannel (who owns most radio stations in the states) shutting down unprofitable stations.

the problem here is finding enough advertising money to keep stations that do not play Top 40 afloat.

a DJ hero of mine recently bought a local station that had been shut down and I've been doing everything I can to help support him (including getting my company to advertise).

[Glice]

I don't give a fuck about 6 music. I don't think it fosters anything other than a continued career for a lot of indie bore DJs. All I've ever heard that's anything like adventurous was Gideon Coe's Freak Zone (I think that's what it's called) which was, admittedly, great, but hardly worth keeping 6 music for.

I do care about the Asian Network going. Not that I listen to it much, but the additional stations for the BBC were freed up on the basis of servicing the national community. And Asian music and culture is, on a national basis, widely under-represented. One of the main reasons for keeping the BBC is that they can host programmes that are not particularly commercial. Radio 1 has gone to the shit, but before it did, it had Peel. It still has Hobbs. I don't feel either could've operated in the commercial sphere. For my own interests, there's Radio 3. The difference between Radio 3 and a commercial classical station is that... well, the symphony I'm listening to on the radio has been on for 45 minutes + now. That sort of behaviour doesn't happen in the commercial sphere, and it's thanks to the nature of the licence the BBC has. I'm surprised it's even an option to axe the Asian network on that basis. If 6 music doesn't fulfil its remit (and unless it stops being a 24hr Evening Session, it won't) then it really should go.

Sorry, bit convoluted there.

[the ikara cult]

Stuart Maconie was the one who did the Freak Zone, which was definitely well worth keeping in some capacity.

As for Asian Network, ive rarely ever listened to it but ive heard alot of people say that the prime time stuff it plays is alot like Radio 1. I think theyre finding it hard to justify the existence of these stations if theyre drifting towards being unneccessary for the license fee payer. I would be all in favour for a 6music that played genuinely diverse music in its daily schedules, but it just plays the same things XFM played the last time i listened to it, and thats why i can never be bothered.
I dont think any of us expects to have our needs catered to totally, but it seems like the big audience slots are under such pressure to achieve ratings that they water down their content.

Its the same old story about financial justification vs cultural significance, but if theyre gonna get rid of 6music and Asian network they definitely have to reconstitute the unique elements of those stations in some capacity.

[Glice]

Actually, that's a good point. The only Asian network programmes I've listened to were devotional Hindu shows, Islamic music, that sort of thing. But I remember tuning in a few times it's like 1xtra but with Bhangra/ Desi rather than hip-hop/ grime.

What I'd like to see is, rather than threatening to spread out the licence fee money to c4 (etc), if government put pressure on these newer stations to produce something more in the Radio 3/ 4 model than the Radio 1/2 mould. I know there's not many radio 3 fans on this board, but it honestly astonishes me the sort of stuff they put on there, day in, day out. They had about 2 hours of Derek Bailey in the early afternoon once, just 2 or so years ago. Earlier this year they had an hour a day of Schnittke, every lunchtime, for a week. They've had marathons of playing absolutely everything people like Debussy, Mozart, Bach (!) [etc] wrote. And if they were following the R1 model, this could never, ever happen.

But yeah... I imagine it wouldn't take much work to save the Asian network.

[the ikara cult]

There is a thing about Asian Network when compared to Radio 3 and 1Extra in particular. Radio 3 has a core audience that is never going to desert it, seeing as they never deserted classical music even when there was none of this "recorded sound" fad. 1Extra should have been in place 10-15 years ago truth be told, but it clearly has an audience beyond its remit as an "urban music" station, and its worth has been proven, just like radio 3. Its just a fact that "Asian" (i use the inverted commas advisedly) music has not found its way into the mainstream.
Im from West London, and I know for a fact theres a considerable audience that Asian Network clearly caters to. The best and most numerous posters round where i live are for the Asian club nights, buts it still seems too niche to justify a whole station.

[Glice]

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I can't really speak for Asian culture too much because I'm not Asian, and I don't spend that much time with British Asians. I suppose it's stuck between two poles - Black British culture is massively visible, broadly appealing and spreads beyond merely black British people. So it doesn't really have too much of a problem garnering an audience.

I know of very few people into Bhangra and Desi, even amongst the British Asians I know. So the 'youth culture' side of it is still pretty niche. On the other hand, the 'traditional culture' side of it is as diverse as South Asia itself. What appeals to families from Gujarati India probably wouldn't appeal to Sylheti Bangladeshis or Islamabad Pakistanis.

So yeah. Based on my wild speculation on a culture I don't know or properly understand, the Asian network is fucked.

[the ikara cult]

This whole thing has reminded me of the time 5 years ago when i was convinced to buy a digital radio because it was "The Future".

Obviously all this is a function of the rise of the internet. Perhaps the BBC could find another way to spend its money rather than actually playing songs? Sending DJs or journalists to do specific documentaries about music from different parts of the world and making them available as podcasts? If the broadcast audience is a problem, the podcast audience is massive.
I dunno why im saying this here, i guess its because i have a boiled little socialist heart that longs to be loved by the consumer.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by the ikara cult

This whole thing has reminded me of the time 5 years ago when i was convinced to buy a digital radio because it was "The Future".

Obviously all this is a function of the rise of the internet. Perhaps the BBC could find another way to spend its money rather than actually playing songs? Sending DJs or journalists to do specific documentaries about music from different parts of the world and making them available as podcasts? If the broadcast audience is a problem, the podcast audience is massive.
I dunno why im saying this here, i guess its because i have a boiled little socialist heart that longs to be loved by the consumer.

Precisely what you're talking about is available on the World Routes section of the Radio 3 website.

One of the anomalies of the general record industry collapse is that it's had minimal effect on the 'classical' market. The concert hall is struggling, certainly, but as far as I know, the classical stores in Bristol, Cardiff and Bath (the nearest big cities to me) are the only record stores still thriving in each city. Bristol's had a boost with the dubstep and the general DJ culture, but there's still a fraction of the record stores there was 5 years ago.

I only say this because I think people tend to misunderstand what function radio 3 serves. It doesn't delve into much that's SYG-friendly, but the breadth of their broadcasting is unparalleled, to my mind. Certainly I can only think of the Resonance of 5 or 6 years ago (the last time I seriously listened to it) that could come near.

Maybe I should just get "listen to radio 3" tattooed to my forehead and be done with it.

[Pookie]

I listen to Radio 3 more than any other radio station BY FAR.

And I scour BBC I-Player for all the gems I missed first time round.

Where else could you hear a feature on Masayuki Takanyagi?

[Glice]

I didn't even hear that. Thanks!

3 hours left to listen for those in the UK.

[Toilet & Bowels]

closing plastic people due to public nuisance or whatever is absurd, it's right in the middle of a nightlife area and within 5 mins walking distance of at least 3 other nightclubs, three strip clubs, plus a loads of open till the small hours bars, why not close down the whole of shoreditch?

[Genteel Death]

Yeah, that's a strange target they chose there. You can't move for noisy places on that street, especially on the weekends.