Pete Townsend gets it SO wrong

I've just listened to the inaugural annual BBC John Peel lecture, given by elderly rock dinosaur Pete Townsend.

Read a BBC report HERE

Watch the lecture HERE

I expected him to ramble on about how great the old record industry was and to whinge about piracy and modern distribution methods for music. Well, fortunately he don't do quite what I expected. Unfortunately, though, he still delivered a rambling, incoherent and confused set of contradictions.

He went into some detail about how John Peel (pbuh) had acted as a filter, an introducer, a source of glorious random discovery of unexpected but brilliant music. He then went on to assert that such a person or process didn't exist in the modern digital music economy. He then went on to list many of the ways it actually DOES exist in the modern digital economy. Like I said, confused and contradictory.

He clearly had no real idea about podcasts or music blogs, despite talking about them.

Like everyone from the dying music industry or the radio industry, he made no mention of netlabels. They are not mentioned so often in discussions about the music industry that it has to be deliberate.

Next year, let's hope the BBC picks a speaker not because he was a member of some old band who made some good records 40 years ago but someone who actually has a finger on the pulse of emerging creative music. They're out there, BBC.

To use modern parlance, epic fail BBC! What a sadly wasted opportunity.

Musical rickshaw

We've known DJ Pathaan (a little bit) for many years , since we first met him at club Stoned Asia in Brixton. Back in 2008 we featured on his late, lamented, BBC Asian Network show, providing a World Odyssey mix.

He's released many excellent compilations over the years, all of them very much to our liking.

He has a new release, a double CD in an era of downloads. He is to be congratulated for that - some of us like the option of decent sound quality as well as the option of more portable mp3s.



It's called Musical Rickshaw with Pathaan, after his old BBC show. I will review it at a later date when I have time to give it my full attention but for now, you can buy it HERE or HERE. Or probably several other places.

The first rule of Record Club...

Have a read of this BBC News item: Are record clubs the new book clubs?

What do you think? I can see both sides of this old world v new world debate.

The new world is great; I can weed out crappy music, order tunes from an album any way I like and mix tunes from various albums. I love that music is now properly portable and that it's easy to share good tunes with other people. I can make my own DJ mixes. I can choose the sound quality I want.

The old world held some particular pleasures; it was normal to listen to an entire album all the way through and properly appreciate those albums that were written as a concept or were carefully sequenced to be heard in a particular order. A few weeks ago, a friend played our own 2008 CD, Babylon Halt, in full on an online radio station. It was the first time I'd listened right through probably since we released it. If I say so myself, it was amazing and the tracks were in just the right order. I remembered how many times we'd listened through to get it right. I realised how long it had been since had I listened to an album right through while paying attention rather than while walking around. I think maybe we've missed a trick along the way.



I'm sure there are still many musicians out there who write tunes to be listened to in a particular order - and I don't necessarily mean old gits like me from before the digital age. Some younger people still have a vision for their music of creating something that goes beyond the disposable four minute stand-alone tune (not that there's anything wrong with those!). I wonder if the ease of acquisition and use, the sheer disposability of modern digital cultural artifacts, has undermined their perceived value to the point where we don't respect the music, art or games that we fill our lives with.

Maybe we should make some time to listen to some good music, classic or new, properly and with full attention.

Music 'releases mood-enhancing chemical in the brain'

Music 'releases mood-enhancing chemical in the brain'

This BBC news item reports on a study which says about the chemical dopamine: It is known to produce a feel-good state in response to certain tangible stimulants - from eating sweets to taking cocaine. Dopamine is also associated with less tangible stimuli - such as being in love.

It also says: Dopamine is a common neurotransmitter in the brain. It is released in response to rewarding human activity and is linked to reinforcement and motivation - these include activities that are biologically significant such as eating and sex.

Years ago I saw a documentary that said that enjoying clubbing was a learned experience. At that time we were just starting to make electronic music and, although I had loved going to rock or folk gigs for years, I had always felt that my few visits to clubs left me cold or, more accurately, utterly mystified. What did people get from bobbing about to tedious repetitive beats for hours on end? I knew lots of them were probably dropping Es but some weren't. So, maybe this study explains it to some degree. Some of the same brain chemicals released or augmented by drugs may well be released quite naturally by music, volume and physical activity. And bass!

As the years have gone on and we've made a lot of dance music, been to a lot of clubs and learned to just relax and go with the vibe, I totally get it now. Music still moves me and I don't need drugs to enjoy it.