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Sound check: The Music revolution
Evening Standard 10.07.09
The BBC splurged on Glastonbury coverage again this year, enabling stay-at-home music fans to see more bands from their sofa than they would if they'd spent hours trudging between Somerset fields. This was the first year when TV schedules didn't matter, however, with BBC's on-demand iPlayer web service for the first time allowing instant access to the music people wanted, when they wanted it.
The internet has been necessarily the music lovers' port of call in recent years — as a glance at the barren listings for the mainstream TV channels reveal almost no other options.
Channel 4 might show you some brief live footage if you're still up after midnight on a work night, Jools Holland is off the air until September and gone for ever are Popworld, CD:UK and Top of the Pops. The biggest thing on MTV's main channel right now is a reality show about Kerry Katona. It's no wonder record companies were so frustrated when Jonathan Ross's Friday night chat show was suspended last year — where else can they show off their bands to such sizeable audiences?
The web has the statistics to claim equally impressive viewerships, but the fact that people are all clicking in their own time, rather than making an appointment to watch together in the living room, still makes popular footage feel less significant. It's unlikely that people will look back on the day Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent swept YouTube with the same sense of life being altered that they had when seeing The Smiths on TOTP or Nirvana on The Word.
Nevertheless, a few innovators believe that proper, web-only TV shows rather than mobile-phone footage are the future of entertainment, and that's good news for music lovers. Little Boots built the buzz around her synthpop by performing weekly self-shot cover versions in her bedroom and posting them on YouTube. Rather more professionally, Channelbee.com is backed by pop mogul Simon Fuller and fronted by Tim Lovejoy, the ultra-lad who presented Sky TV's Soccer AM for a decade. Amid the blokey banter there are music interviews and live footage, with participants including Doves and Johnny Marr.
Musiomusictv.com sits closer to the edge when it comes to hot new bands, having featured the likes of thecocknbullkid, Black Lips and Marina and the Diamonds on their 11 shows to date, but you might get put off the acts when you hear their tedious answers to the uninspired questions put by sisters Kysha and Che Charles. “What's, like, the ultimate direction now with the band?” Kysha enquires of indie gang Dogs. “Just writing songs and playing them,” they reply. Stop the presses.
Far more impressive is Fromthebasement.tv, the pet project of Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, which abandons all unnecessary fluff in favour of presenting live sets from major bands in beautifully shot HD. “The whole emphasis of the show is about being artist-friendly and making our bands as comfortable as possible, so that they can give great performances without the usual agony of TV promo which everyone has to do but no one seems to enjoy,” says Godrich. His reputation means he's already drawn acts of the calibre of Fleet Foxes and The Dead Weather to his studio.
But as with the Beeb's iPlayer, From the Basement simply feels like a quality TV show transported to the web. Two sites manage to channel the internet's culture of anyone-can amateurism and still make something truly special: London-based Blackcabsessions.com and French site Blogotheque.net.
Both take the idea of the spontaneous gig, Black Cab Sessions in the back of a taxi, obviously, while Blogothèque's Concerts à Emporter series has made arty films of Tom Jones singing unaccompanied in a hotel room, Sigur Rós in a Paris café, Tender Forever up a ladder and Johnny Flynn wandering around a railway siding.
These one-take, bite-size performances would be lost on TV but work perfectly here, tiny treats in a busy multimedia day. If they're not the future, they're a beautiful diversion.
NEW ON THE NET
*Arctic Monkeys are back with a new single, Crying Lightning, in download stores now. Alex Turner's voice has become deeper, more brooding, less brash, but he still has a sharp eye for life's details. “My thoughts turned rude as you talked and chewed on the last of your pick 'n' mix,” he sings.
*Jack White, usually such a dedicated Luddite that he probably still thinks the car will never replace the horse, has turned uncharacteristically to the net to launch a subscription service for his new label, Third Man Records. Twenty dollars per month gets you four T-shirts, four 7” singles and four 12” records a year. Go to www.thirdman records.com/vault.html.
*With a band name that looks like somebody's headbutted a computer keyboard, Colorado electropop duo 3OH!3 are set to be unavoidable. Their single Don't Trust Me, with its lewd rapping and hyper synthesizers, sold
1.8 million in the US and now it's coming here. In download stores from Monday.
