Slow Life

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

Opportunity knocks

I said ‘bollocks’ on live daytime television last week, on a Sunday of all days. My children were watching, too. There were complaints, and quite right. I felt bad about it, even though it was absolutely the mot juste. I got rather carried away, frustrated that a good-looking boy with a lot of potential had apparently missed the point of everything so completely, and chosen to spend his three-and-a-half-minute stab at glory yodelling. And how far he had come to stand there, live, live, live in front of 12 cameras and a million people watching, stand there and blow it so utterly.

Back in October we’d set out with a field of 1,600 bands that we’ve narrowed down over the past few months to a mere handful. This coming weekend, the outright winner of Orange Unsigned Act, the TV show in question, will be decided by public vote and receive an album deal with A&M records, to include a cash advance, marketing and video budgets, endless taxis and the special blessing of my fellow judge, label boss Simon Gavin. He signed last year’s biggest-selling artist Duffy, so it’s a big deal, and for most of these bands this is probably their best shot at a career in what’s left of the record business, the best chance of all their dreams coming true. If it doesn’t happen now, it’s fair to say it probably won’t ever happen.

That was what frustrated me so much about the yodelling. All successful bands need a little push, a break, and this is as good a chance as any of them will ever get. It’s harsh. Last weekend, of the five bands left in the competition we watched the TV audience vote out a dazzling, talented and preposterously tasteful 16-year-old sex puppy and a none-too-ugly aristocratic chanteuse with the best song she’d ever written. I found it impossible to tell which of the five were for the chop. All of them were good enough to get this far and all of them good enough to have a hit, with a following wind.

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matt

January 29th, 2009 1:32am Report this comment

Murry the Hump (corrected spelling) are by coincidence my favourite band. They're called something else these days, but you can catch up with them on the Facebook group named after them.

Great to hear they live on in the hearts of a select few.

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