Angela Merkel has promised an intensive probe into the causes and until the results of that nobody should comment on the rights and wrongs.

Rainer Scheller, organiser of the event, has taken the quick decision to put an end to the festival for good – “Out of respect for the victims, their families and friends, we are going to discontinue the event in the future, and that means the end of the Love Parade.”

Hopefully out of this will come better safety precautions around crowd control, similar to those at football matches (which we’re similarly brought in after such tragedy).

Photo Courtesy of AcimaH

Strange then to see the Mirror having a bit of a go at her – http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/07/10/is-kylie-a-loser-in-fame-game-115875-22402190.  - through non other than ex GMTVer Fiona Phillips. The article is packed with lots of ‘oooo but I really do like Kylie’ statements and has tried to soften its criticisms by patronisingly wrapping up its sentiment in an overall ‘we’re just looking out for her tone’  - no doubt a hangover from her breakfast television days where this sort of insipid thing is encouraged.

Fiona declares Kylie’s kising of Scissor Sisters’ Matronic at Glastonbury was simply a Madonna inspired ploy and a “42-year-old star is coming across as an attention seeking 20-yearold”. What is ironic is that Miss Phillips writes this article just before completing her next one on Colleen Rooney bathing in the sea with her kid, accompanied by a clearly staged snapshot. Fiona though is never one to hype a 20 something seeking attention as being newsworthy content.

The Madonna allusion is particularly unfair. While Madonna is known for her fame tactics (and we always quite like them), Kylie has never really tried to hog the limelight in quite the same way. In fact the way she gracefully bowed out when she was ill has been conveniently forgotten by Fiona Phillips.

Fiona ends with the warning “…when the music and the looks and the career have gone, and all that’s left is fame, it’s really not much to look forward to.”. I have no idea why it is assumed Kylie’s music will fail as she heads towards 50 but Miss Phillips knows better. And she is right to point out it must be terrible to be famous and then lose your talent – best to become famous without any talent eh Fiona.

Picture Courtesy of Dave_79

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If you need a reminder of how good they are live, here’s a taster form when they played Austin Music Hall in Texas.

Nathan Followill has told Spin.com that the new album is “Fun” and “Beach Inspired” – so here’s hoping for a chilled out sunny day in Hyde Park to make the most of it – especially if you’ve missed out on V Festival tickets (like me).

Picture courtesy of Ceedub13

Another release from her upcoming album, Commander, raised eyebrows for genre hopping – but she was quick to defend herself.

I did not forget about my urban roots, nor will I ever…That is one of the reasons I am here period…I thank everyone for being so wonderful and so open to me trying something new. I won’t let you down this record, I promise you.

What is most interesting though is the wider context. With the success of Lady Gaga, all the american divas seem to be shifting towards a more electronic sound. Releases from Christina, Kelly and Kelis have all gone this way so far, and it looks set to become a trend.

Picture courtesy of alexander.mussard

Lily was not happy – she admitted she got drunk and added ‘that guy is a such a woman hating retard, there are pictures of Hugh Grant at the same game sipping pints, he didn’t publish those though” and declared “Perez Hilton thinks I am a vagina. I think he wants one of his own”.

She later stated she was not being homophobic – a smart move to shut down anyone who gets the wrong end of the stick.

Perez Reply did nothing but fan the flames…..’I could use a vagina. I’ve already got two assholes and shit just won’t stop coming out of my mouth! We’re a lot alike!’

This row has all the ingredients to rumble on for months….

Picture Courtesy of <Benoit>

The man we often look to in these situations, Simon Cowell, was absent, which seemed something of an innovation in televised competition. There were the same earnest youths of course, although the classicists are a little more melodramatic than their X-factor rivals. In between the awkward talking heads there was time for a good deal of music and plenty of talent to rank.

Perhaps I missed Cowell more than expected though, as trying to sort the night’s performers into their order of merit was harder than expected. Choosing between half a dozen brilliantly gifted people was not only difficult, it asked serious questions about what, as an audience, we look for in performance, how we define greatness in art and even how we interpret music with our ears.

Such questions are not limited to music of course – pub debates on ‘the greatest’ extend to nearly every area of life. Yet the dilemma is particularly palpable when, at such an early stage in their lives, the studies are so accomplished. And therein lay the first dilemma; how do we rank skill?

Let me ask, in the great scheme of things, how important is technique, the handling of an instrument? Often enough it seems the knack of making a noise from the damn thing is a source of wonderment, and whenever we hear a piece of music proficiency is something we recognise. Reputations like Jimi Hendrix’s are built on ability foremost, his legacy as someone who could ‘play’ more reaching than his other credentials. The guitar apparently lends itself to braggadocio because it has produced a string of instrumentalists lauded for their dexterity. In the ‘80s many of its players seemed intent on playing as quickly and precisely as possible.

In the Young Musician of the Year competition there was a more tempered kind of flair in abundance. These were young people who had dedicated hours and hours a day to practising and refining their muscle memory. Embouchures had been perfected and fingers strengthened through endless rehearsal, and all done around the business of going to school, making friends etc. If we were to go on skill alone, however, we would measure accuracy in a mathematical way, with a stop watch and metronome. The fact is that aptitude, a feature of learning an instrument, becomes less of a consideration once a certain standard is reached. “Forget everything you’ve learnt,” the be-boppers once implored, “and just play what’s on your mind.”

Which brings about the second dilemma, and how we quantify the “playing of the mind”. An expression that comes not from practice or technique, this nameless quality has become the basis on which most popular music is made today. The lack of skill in today’s young musicians is another discussion entirely, but one can’t fault the punks or the bedroom musicians for pandering to our respect of the ‘x factor’. A lack of surety can produce remarkable results on an instrument – John Lee Hooker’s strangely compelling meter, John Cale’s atonal violin on The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan’s singing…. All of these are a triumph of ineptitude, a celebration of incompetence. They are also some of the most important musicians we have heard.

The candidates for Young Musician of the Year gave a reminder of the importance in balancing these two opposing considerations, precision and emotion. As an audience we rate our connection to musicians and our opinion on their skills almost subconsciously, but for these young professionals a conscious effort has to be made to mould the two into a performance. It’s a lot to ask of people with such little life experience to draw on.

CLR James, author of Beyond a Boundary, is oft quoted for his famous line “What do they of cricket know, they who only cricket know?” It came to mind watching these young talents who have honed their ability and aspire to be the best. They are virtuosos for sure. But what can they know about the music they are playing when life revolves around homework and practice? What can they know of the strange love Chopin felt for George Sand, or the pain Beethoven suffered at losing his hearing? I had always assumed that the intangible aspects of performance, of connecting to and drawing emotion from an audience, relied a certain amount on firsthand experience. Can you really convey the emotion of love if you haven’t loved? How to make an audience believe in heartache if you don’t know how it feels yourself?

Very rarely, it seems, it is possible – a young Stevie Wonder for instance or an even younger Mozart. Could they have been guessing at emotions, or did they have a strange understanding of things they’d yet to face? Who knows, but more often than not it seems true that with age comes the ability to connect with people, the primary goal of the performer. The BBC’s young musicians were brilliant but age is not on their side, experience is yet to shape them as performers and there was too often something missing from their offerings.

So, how to decide a winner on Sunday evening? Will it be the most skilful or will it be the most emotional? No doubt the panel will find their winner but one thing is for certain, that for the disappointed there is still plenty of time. Because in the end it is the experience of life itself that will make them great.

Picture Courtesy of ninafrazier

Bionic is a by far the leader of these tracks, and it sure to be a hit – packed with radio hooks and will surely drive up sales for the album long term.After a bit of a break, she’s showing she’s still got it.

Bionic



You Lost Me

I Hate Boys

Picture Courtesy of BadMexicanBoy

Their new single reflects the problem with the TV pop competition though. They don’t want to make music particularly, they don’t want to write lyrics – they just want to be performers of songs, not musicians. This leaves them with little direction over their own sound; so they end up being packaged according to what is perceived as popular.

This worked with their first song – the background forces created a catchy pop hook that led to success. The Club is Alive though is an amelodic, overly produced mess. Their voices are tinkered with for no reason just leading to an annoying synth lyrics, which themselves are pretty meaningless.

A poor performance for the nice guys – but this can happen when you are buffeted around on the music companies will. Anyways, if you like car crashes, this is for you.

Picture Courtesy of Litonali

Elsewhere Scott Mills managed to beat Chris Moyles to win the, cough, Personality of the Year award. While Bono, who seems bent on winning every music related awards ever, won Best Music Special.

Here’s a full roundup of the winners:

* Breakfast Show of the Year (10 million plus): Today
* Breakfast Show of the Year (under 10 million): Dixie & Gayle, The Real Breakfast Show
* Best Music Programme: Dermot O’Leary Show (surprisingly we don’t mind this…unlike his election efforts)
* Best Specialist Music Programme: Zane Lowe
* Best Entertainment Programme: The Capital Breakfast Show
* Best Speech Programme: Nihal on BBC Asian Network (wow…if this is what the station offers maybe it should be shut down)
* Best Sports Programme: Sportsound
* Best News & Current Affairs Programme: Newshour
* Best Breaking News Coverage: Alzheimers Tragedy
* Best Live Event Coverage: Absolute Blur
* Best Community Programming: The New Ballads of Reading Gaol
* Best Internet Programme: Hackney Podcast

People Awards

* Best Interview: Jenni Murray interviews Sharon Shoesmith
* Best Specialist Contributor: Mark Kermode
* Music Broadcaster of the Year: Zane Lowe
* Music Radio Personality of the Year: Scott Mills
* News Journalist of the Year: Lyse Doucet
* Speech Broadcaster of the Year: Sir David Attenborough
* Speech Radio Personality of the Year: Frances Finn
* Station Programmer of the Year: Euan McMorrow

On-Air Marketing Awards

* Best Use of Branded Content: NME Radio for Skins Radio
* Best Single Promo/Commercial: Dear Stan
* Best Promotional/Advertising Campaign: Vote Joe
* Best Competition: Who’s Calling Christian?
* Best Station Imaging: Oxfordshire’s 106 JACK fm

Production Awards

* Best Music Special: Elvis By Bono
* Best News Special: Crossing Continents: Chechnya
* Best Feature: Archive on 4: Working for Margaret
* Best Comedy: Adam and Joe
* Best Drama: People Snogging in Public Places

Station Awards

* Station of the Year (up to 300,000): Moray Firth Radio (MFR)
* Station of the Year (300,000 – 1 million): BBC Radio Derby
* Station of the Year (1 Million plus): Kiss 100
* Digital Station of the Year: Planet Rock
* UK Station of the Year: BBC Radio 5 live

Special Awards

* The Gold Award: Trevor Nelson
* The Special Award: BFBS Radio

Picture Courtesy of Ben Sutherland

Unfortunately, Robert Waller’s character never did write his essay on the virtues of amateurism. But it’s a good title, even if we occasionally struggle to empathise with the premise. How, we may wonder, can a professional musician with an endless supply of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll have anything to admire of his amateur second-flute-playing counterpart sitting amongst the old ladies of the local big band? Like Kincaid, I believe he can.

The core of Kincaid’s philosophy is that, “Profit dominates art. We’re all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity.” It’s a common gripe isn’t it, as old as art itself I suspect; the artistic soul who longs to be more creative if only the audience could keep up. Yet despite the protestation, never have I seen anyone write a piece of music and later remove passages, lyrics or codas that the intended audience might struggle to comprehend. Quite the opposite in fact, the more general objection being too obvious rather than too high-brow as musicians and writers try to get away from their natural imitative tendencies and come up with something more expressive, more personal and less learnt. So the idea that composers are capable of producing works far artier than they do is, to my mind, a fallacy. Yet Kincaid is right, we are all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity. But it’s not the consumers or the marketers who are doing it – it’s the artists.

To elaborate further we must begin at the beginning of a process that unites amateurs and professionals as musicians and artists – creating. Inspiration is the light bulb moment, a moment we all know whether solving the problems of quantum physics or deciding what to have for dinner. For anyone struck by such a moment of clarity the focus is then to accurately interpret the idea, to realise the faint hum sounding somewhere in the right cerebral cortex. The word create comes from the Latin for make, and no matter how much the end product may alter as it is prepared it must essentially retain an accurate measure of that initial desire, must be made well for inspiration to have been realised successfully.

The next part of the process is to set the parameters within which your idea will be assembled. These decisions will shape the end product and define the type of artist you are. A crowd pleaser perhaps or a boundary pusher? A challenger or confronter? Do you want to shock the world like The Rolling Stones, or give it melody like Abba?

This is the first stage where the amateurs can consider themselves virtuous, because we are all multi- personas, all complex characters with unique expressions. Some days even Karen Carpenter might have wanted to stick a huge safety pin through her t-shirt and scream obscenities at the public, but there is a level of expectation for professional musicians that the amateur does well without. As a general public our expectations can be constraining – remember George Michael’s attempt at political satire back in 2004 with Shoot The Dog. If not in sync with our wishes, expression of a hither-to unaired personality trait can turn adoration into casual unconcern or even complete aversion in no time at all.

Yet, despite the strain a demanding public command there is another form of expectation that weighs even heavier for artists – that from within. Physiologists call it proactive role schemata, essentially working towards a self-devised image of your occupation. In short, if you see yourself as a rock star you will tend to rule out releasing an album of nursery rhymes because it doesn’t fit your vision of that profession. On top of that, there are perceived responsibilities that earning a living from something assumes; that somehow it must represent more than a plaything or hobby. These are levels of anticipation without which the amateur can move freer, expressing and exploring all the different sides of their personality with greater ease. For them, role schemata become instead self schemata which allow greater licence to express the complex self.

So, we have had a moment of inspiration and we have set the boundaries for the build. Our amateur and professional musicians are feeling different weights of expectation from both their audience and from within, but that is nothing compared to next stage of creating and the introduction of what I call ‘the great unknowable’. The great unknowable is what people will think of your creation, and it is a killer for artistic expression because to nullify it requires self belief that many musicians simply cannot have. In most cases there will be concession to the great unknowable, out of fear of rejection and loss of financial support, and the process of lashing us all to the great wheel of uniformity has begun.

The rate at which ‘popular’ music has gone through its genres in the past fifty years hints at our appetite for fresh sounds and styles. Yet, either we are not sending out the message clear enough or our musicians are not getting it. Whatever the cause, too many people who create carry a certain level of paranoia about the reception their work will receive.

Which brings us neatly to the final stage of the creative process, and that reaction for real. If she has been fortunate enough to get the response she had hoped for, perhaps congratulations as a maestro or maybe disgust as a punk, there is a sense of validation for the professional musician that the amateur cannot experience. She has invested more and the reward in the end is greater. Yet far more often, even when perceived as a success, there will be a sense of despondency at the public’s interpretation of a personal work; a lower ebb that the professional must suffer.

After the success of The Bends, Radiohead decided to adjust their musical direction. Realising that Top of the Pops was not the forum they craved, the band retired to make an album that would both extricate them from the popular Britpop movement and express their true musical values. OK Computer proved that audiences are not mindless cravers of mediocrity, for this slightly different offering went down a treat not only with their current fans but a new audience too. Where they had expected confusion Radiohead found reverence, and singer Thom Yorke was not a happy man. “All the sounds you made, that made you happy, have been sucked of everything they meant,” he said of the album’s subsequent success and regular airplay.

I suspect he partly blamed himself for submitting to the great unknowable. Unsure how far they could go the album was not a full tilt at the band’s original inspiration, it still contained concessions. Radiohead have not made the same mistake again, and from Kid A onwards they refused to pander to expectation. In part they have tried to amateurise themselves, supporting their work with ‘donations’ for records rather relying on album sales and the accompanying record label pressures.

Radiohead are fortunate enough to be able to sustain such creative ideals, however, for most professionals trying to express artistic principles without influence of market forces is a challenge too far. Instead we often get something that fulfils both their personal desires and earns a living – a compromise in other words.

Robert Kincaid is right, profit does dominate art, specifically dominates professional art. When all is said and done the definition of amateurism comes down to that one simple detail – money. But unlike Kincaid, I believe it is the brains of the makers rather than the ears of the listeners that profit lashes to the wheel of mediocrity. Without bills to pay, without role schemata or the expectations and reactions of large audiences, artistic expression can be more flexible and varied. For that reason alone, amateurism is surely virtuous.

Picture Courtesy of David Boyle