Morning Music Fans (it was morning when i wrote this OK). For what looks like becoming the best Download so far, an a tough one to beat in the future. RouteNote have decided to throw out a few reasons why this one is much better than the rest as well as help you learn the juicy line-up!
With a so far unconfirmed or really too reliable number of tickets sold for the festival so far, which i’m betting means they don’t know yet because of the sheer volume. Download, regardless of the acts on, will have the biggest number of legitimate music lovers in the campsite they’ve ever had. This is backed up by the fact that they released another 10,000 ticket around only a month after original release.
AC/DC will be performing on the 30th anniversary of thee biggest selling Rock ‘N’ Roll album ever “Back In Black”. On the 30th anniversary of the UK’s biggest Rock’N'Roll festival. ON TOP OF it being the biggest year for Download tickets sale. That makes it a Rock’N'Roll biggest to the power of three, which is huge!
Rage Against the Machine are continuing something of a comeback off the back one of the closest Christmas No.1 races the country has seen in 10 years and the successful free London shows. Apart from the obvious brilliance of the band’s live performances which have no doubt done there part in bolstering the ticket sales. And Bigger crowds + Warm Beer ÷ Weekend = more fun! Good work everyone…….
The knock-on affect of the extra ticket sales have pushed the organizers to open the campsite much earlier this year. The argument is that this will in fact decrease congestion, making it easier for the necessary authorities to monitor things like ticket touts and skint music lovers sneaking in. As well as, theft within the grounds and exhausted moshers needed much needed attention. On top of the obvious benefits of the stepped up security and larger police presence.
The other festival line-ups this year have largely be seen to be controversial by some and just plain out of date by others. It’s not our words, it seems to be public opinion, with distressed regular tickets buyer’s explaining they’re anger in forum after forum. With acts like the Libertine’s being payed extortionate amounts of money for one-off dates that in their opinions (the general public) add to a loss of integrity to the said events. Making Download this years festival of choice for regulars and music fans in general, not just metallers.
The main act for each stage are:
Main stage Friday: AC/DC. Them Crooked Vultures. Wolfmother.
Saturday: Rage Against The Machine. Deaftones. Megadeath.
Sunday: Aerosmith. Stone Temple Pilots. Motorhead.
Second Stage Friday: Bullet For My Valentine. Coheed And Cambria. A Day To Remember.
Saturday: 30 Seconds To Mars. HIM. The Blackout.
Sunday: StoneSour. Airbourne. Steel Panther.
Pepsi-Max Stage Friday: Job For A Cowboy. As I Lay Dying. Tyketto.
Saturday: Micheal Munroe. Skin. Y&T.
Sunday: Suicidal Tendencies. Zebrahead. Young Guns
Redbull Bedroom Jam Stage Friday: Funeral Party. IMICUS. The Humour.
Saturday: Breed 77. Glamour Of The Kill. The Dead Lay Waiting.
Ernie Ford and the Jack Fascinato Orchestra’s “Sixteen Tonnes” was the first number one of 1956, and went gold in the US and the UK inside just one month. In just nine weeks the song sold over two million singles and stayed at the top for four weeks and also the first time that the then Soviet Union, had ever heard Country and Western music.
“Tennessee Ernie Ford” was possibly the busiest man in the 50′s . With a five days a week prime-time television show that started to fall behind thanks to his commitments with Capitol Records. Ernie started to get strongly worded letters from Capitol Records telling him that he would be in breach of his contract if he didn’t start to work in the studio soon to get things done, but Ernie was holding out for a chance to work on a song form a man he really admired as a songwriter named Merle Travis. Merle had already proved his weight with some clean wholesome clean-cut American songs like “Dark As A Dungeon and ‘John Henry’. Ernie said “I liked the songbook Merle sent me, he lived in an old Coal mining town, similar to where my Father and Grandfather mined coal. I showed ’16 Tonnes’ to the conductor an we liked it very much, I told Capitol I’d chosen a song but they didn’t even listen to it, they were just inpatient an told us to get on with it”.
The song was a sort of Punk song of its day in the way that it argued against the unfair practices and conditions of a coalminers day to day job before the coalminers unions were created. Mine owners also owned the local stores, and seeing as most of the miners were paid in tokens they were cheated at almost every turn. With lyrics that were considered more aggressive than anything else at the time in its blatant poke at poor working conditions, the song is now seen as one of the first ”rebellious” main stream songs and supposedly gave birth so the trend of kids buying record as a form of protest against establishment. Tame compared to today’s ”Rage Against The Machine” standards of course, the song has still been seen to have contributed enormously to the movement we now know as “Rock And Roll”. Good work Merle.
The announcement was out by 2:30pm on Sunday, and leaked onto the internet long before the 7pm embargo that the Official Charts Company had set in their press release – Rage Against The Machine are No.1 in the UK this Christmas. Theirs is the first Xmas No.1 to reach that position on only digital sales. A milestone that will pass pretty much unnoticed in the turmoil surrounding the campaign that won it for them.
They are the beneficiaries of a campaign launched by Jon and Tracy Morter, mainly on Facebook but touted around most of the net by anyone who agrees with Charlie Brooker that Joe McElderry’s (the X Factor Winner) track is a “…pissweak vocal doodle… a listless announcement on a service station Tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet.” Reactions to the news have been predictable in their variation: the usual slew of vituperative comments on Facebook and YouTube crowing over Joe/the X-Factor/Simon Cowell’s failure – hilariously highlighting their “Number Two” ranking, journalists pointing out the disappointing irony that both tracks belong to Sony; the machine has anticipated your rebellion and is profiting from it.
This doesn’t really detract from the success of the campaign for me. What the Morters managed to do was give the motley rabble of alternative music fans a harlequin flag to rally behind. In his inimitable way, Mr. Brooker was making the point that Rage’s song is emotional, impassioned music for it’s own sake, unlike the X-Factor single, which is part of a vehicle created by Simon Cowell and others to make money from music
RATM are obviously very pleased about all this and are planning a free gig next year to say thankyou to all their fans:
“We’re very, very ecstatic and excited about the song reaching the number one spot and I just want to say we want to thank everyone for participating in this incredible, organic grassroots campaign.”
“It’s more about the spontaneous action taken by young people in the UK to topple this very sterile pop monopoly,” he continued. “When young people decide to take action they can make what’s seemingly impossible possible.”
This is a positive, encouraging response, and I’d love to see them make a comeback, but am I alone in thinking that the campaign was more anti-X-Factor than pro RATM? Good on them, plucky little 40 year old punks that they are – but they’ve moved on. The campaign seemed more about rejecting what is fed to the masses, the point that is covered in ‘Killing in the name of’, and was so succinctly put by Paul Weller – “The public wants what the public gets”. It’s a complaint that, well intentioned as Joe McElderry may be in himself, to the RATM buyers, he is a grinning mask stretched over the pitiless metal visage of Cowell and Co.’s marketing machine – a machine so successful that it has made even the process of disappointing hundreds of hopeful young people profitable, and reinstated the pillory as a form of national public entertainment, whilst simultaneously chiding us for expecting the worst from the pitiable social outcasts they drag up specifically for our ridicule, and profiting from their talent too. Yes, in the flurry of excitement over ‘Ragemas’, everyone’s ignoring the fact that the Simon monster has got it’s vicelike grip around the No.1 album slot.
Cowell’s response to his defeat is that of a true shark; he offered the couple that orchestrated the campaign a job. He told the Mirror: “I’m genuinely impressed by the campaign they have run. It has been a good campaign with no dirty tricks and without funding. They have been passionate and worked hard.” “This is their first attempt at putting out a record and they got a Christmas No 1, so they have not done badly at all.
Good, Simon, magnanimity becomes you.
“I wanted them to come and work for us. I was deadly serious but they haven’t taken me up on the offer.”
Wait… what?
“I now realise I’ve taken too much for granted. I have got to hold my hands up. I accept there are people that don’t like The X-Factor.”
Either he’s a master of dead-pan sarcasm to rival Humphrey Lyttleton, or his head is so far in the sand he can taste magma… Either way, he’s relentless – the mob are at the castle gates, pitchforks in hand, and he condescends to ask them if they’d like a job moving hay.
I think my favourite reaction to the whole debacle came from poor, naive little Joe, whose reaction on listening to ‘Killing in the Name Of’ was printed in the Sun:
“They can’t be serious! I had no idea what it sounded like. It’s dreadful and I hate it. How could anyone enjoy this? Can you imagine the grandmas hearing this over Christmas lunch?
“I wouldn’t buy it. It’s a nought out of ten from me. Simon Cowell wouldn’t like it. [Why Joe, what a brown nose you have!] They wouldn’t get through to boot camp on The X Factor – they’re just shouting.”
He really doesn’t get it! It’s wonderful! In his 18 year old little bubble, the world is really full of Unicorns, kittens and leprechauns snuggling rainbows. Let’s look forward in time ten years to when the phone in his Kensington apartment has bizarrely failed to ring for the sixth consecutive month. Let’s think about the moment when the first crack appears in that illusion he’s holding right now. It might even be next year, when the next X-Factor winner gets the food bowl next to Simon’s chair at dinner, and his is pushed down a row. Let’s understand that this is why there is no long tail on the manufactured, novocaine smelling, surgical pink pop that gets churned out by the Pop-Idol mill – there’s no emotion in it; no real understanding about music, no desire to communicate something passionate and unique in a way that makes the financial gain irrelevant. The art of music only exists when it transcends the material and is a thing for and of itself, and that’s what people love it for. Joe, Simon and Co. are using people’s base tendency to buy what is put in front of them to make money, not to make music.
[On the other hand, we here at RouteNote are providing a service to the underappreciated, hard working independent artists, and we would very much like to distribute your tracks for you, and make your music make money for you.]
So what can we take from the whole affair? It’s good that some musicians are at number one, rather than a marketing team wielding the bludgeon of a multi million pound marketing vehicle and weekly TV show. It’s good that the balkanised, fractured section of the public that loves music, be it Grime, Hip Hop, Metal or good old fashioned anti-corporate Rock have got together and taken charge of the charts for a week. It’s very good that the campaign to achieve this has also raised more than £70,000 for charity. But. It’s not sustainable – the people that like listening to music rather than staying in watching gumph on telly of a Saturday night generally like too many different types of music for this chart domination to be a regular occurrence; but perhaps we can feel reassured that there is still a music buying, music loving public out there, prepared to pony up for something they believe in. The artists that really care about what they’re playing will always have real listeners – ones that will buy them a beer and say thanks after the gig, and reminisce in the pub after their band has broken up. I don’t think anyone will mourn the passing of Joe McElderry’s musical career over a pint of real ale in the Islington Arms. I hope that the campaign organisers can repeat their feat, and that next year we can buy a record from a great new artist on an independent label; a proportion of the profits from which will go to support a charity, or to supporting more up-and-coming artists. Maybe, and I realise that this is a wistful, hopeless dream, just maybe that song could be Rolf Harris’ ‘Wonderful Christmas Pig’ [no derogatory comments about Susan Boyle, please].
You will have heard by now about the campaign that’s running against Simon ‘King of the Beavers‘ Cowell’s latest X-Factor protege. Instead of letting the doting housewives and goggle-box zombies claim another Christmas No. 1 for this year’s Winner Joe McElderry, we in the UK are all supposed to take the advice of this Facebook campaign and strike a blow against formulaic pop music by purchasing Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In the Name Of” before Dec 19th.
Ignoring the irony of promoting an anti-mainstream, anti-capitalist message by advocating a purchase, it’s difficult to understand who this campaign is intended to make a difference to. The campaign page claims that it’s not making a personal attack against the high-waisted one, and objectionable as alternative music fans may find Mr. Cowell’s brand of pop and opinionated self righteousness, he’s not the source of the problem. He was instrumental in creating a format which appealed to the appetite of the masses, one that allows the public to be involved in a very emotional and challenging journey for a group of pretty young things, and he’s succeeded with the development of that format to an incredible extent. If his Wikipedia entry is to be believed, then he went from being deeply in debt and living with his parents at age 30, to earning $50,000,000 in 2008. That’s $5,700 for every hour of every day, including while he sleeps! If I were earning that sort of money I would wear the silliest trousers I could find, and wouldn’t give a stuff about anyone else’s opinion.
The X-Factor winners have all been glad to win, have all got the bite at the cherry of fame that they wanted, a lot of people that stay in and watch telly and call TV hotlines on a Saturday night have been mildly entertained, and a lot of bland pop music has been sold. What’s the problem? The singles charts haven’t been of interest to anyone who really takes an interest in music since “Mistletoe and Wine” was at the top for Xmas ’88. Mr. Blobby was at number one for Christmas in ’93, for goodness sake. Mr. Blobby! Even 15 years ago, the cool kids were listening to John Peel, not the chart show. You don’t like the X-Factor? That’s what the power button on your TV is for… Go to a gig instead; I promise you won’t find any Susan Boyle fans there.
This is what makes the internet, and the digital music revolution, and the availability of universally available music distribution so great. Everything is available to you equally easily – OK you might have stuff that you don’t want to buy thrust in your face, but it’s the advertising that makes the greater part of the services on the net financially viable. Spread your negative message on Facebook, but realise that it’s the ad revenue from the things you dislike facilitating the social networking vehicle you’re enjoying the use of – your revenge? Ignoring them. Musical evangelism is no different to any other kind of hectoring ‘I know better’ behaviour. If you are right, then you will succeed – like Simon Cowell has – otherwise you’ll just have to accept that most people don’t think like you. This, essentially is what Simon Cowell’s typically tetchy and short tempered response to the campaign was saying. ‘I’m a millionare 100 times over, what you’re doing doesn’t affect me, only this hopeful young man who I’m exploiting, and the show is successful because the majority of the public like it, so you can’t dismiss the majority.’ Don’t get me wrong, I dislike manufactured pop as much as the next Generation Y-er (for all that we’re a disparate band), and I understand the frustration, as does RATM’s Tom Morello:
“I think people are just fed-up of being spoonfed some overblown sugary ballad that sits on top of the charts. It’s a little dose of anarchy for the holidays, it’s good for the soul. It’s this big machinery that puts forward a particular kind of music which represents a particular kind of listener. There are a lot of people that don’t feel represented by it and this Christmas in the UK they’re having their say.”
Take comfort in the fact that the pop-puppet you find irksome has never heard of the bands you like, and inhabits a different sphere to you – you’re unlikely to bump into him in the crowd at the Download festival.
The campaign’s Facebook page endorses giving money to Shelter, a homelessness charity – maybe if we all send Simon a Myspace message he’ll donate half the revenue from the next series of X-Factor to them, he can’t need the money – especially if the rumour that he’sgenerating 70% of Sony’s music income is true.
