Leaders

Dab Hands
We need to take the power away from the A&R guys and put it with the suit

Gotta give it to this dude Guy Hands, who’s pulling EMI to pieces as we speak. He may be the grim reaper for the big biznatch end of the music industry, but he ain’t half got some audacity. The days of major label A&Rs and PRs sending taxis out to get their sushi boxes for lunch and running their cocaine bills through expenses as “flowers” are well and truly over, and not a moment too soon. Of course we’ve got our fingers crossed for the many good people we’ve met at EMI, but we’ve also been pissing ourselves at some of the things Hands has been saying.
To EMI’s 260 A&Rs, on marketing: “I said to them, you could have just put a £50 note on the outside of every CD and you probably would have done a better job… and then we wouldn’t have had to employ you.”

Also to the A&Rs: “The power and the decision has sat with the A&R man, who is someone who gets up late in the day, listens to lots of music, goes to clubs, spends his time with artists and has a knack of knowing what would sell… What we are doing is taking the power away from the A&R guys and putting it with the suits - the guys who have to work out how to sell music.”

Genius stuff, but it is a little alarming. Only a total spazzo would sign with a major label now, hence all these new kinds of deals, like Madge’s one with Live Nation, Macca’s with Starbuck’s and, most recently, Groove Armada’s with Bacardi. Yes indeed, as Jeremiah James reports on page 60, Groove Armada have signed an exclusive contract with a company that makes shit rum. Think about that for a second. Now punch yourself in the face.

Is nothing sacred? Is there anyone left who isn’t a cock-sucker? You have to dig deep, but try slapping ‘David Lynch on Product Placement’ into YouTube. Asked how he feels about movies receiving “budget support as a result of advertising”, Lynch coolly replies: “Bullshit. That’s how I feel. Total. Fucking. Bullshit.”

Now there’s my boy.

Soul Traders
Two pairs of good souls is better than one upper

Now that the arguments about whether posh people should be banned from making music are subsiding because, basically, the toffs won, the great debate in music has moved on again, or back, depending on how you look at it. The new question: who’s allowed to be soulful?

Soul is in the air! We’ve got our British gals - Adele, Winehouse, Duffy Springfield - and in this very issue we’ve gone to town on a British soul boy, Jamie Lidell. Anything wrong with this picture? Estelle thinks so. In a recent interview, she said: “I’m wondering - how the hell is there not a single black person in the press singing soul? Adele ain’t soul. She sounds like she heard some Aretha records once, and she’s got a deeper voice - that don’t mean she’s soul. That don’t mean nothing to me in the grand scheme of my life as a black person. As a songwriter, I get what they do. As a black person, I’m like: you’re telling me this is my music? Fuck that!”

Holy squirrel cage! In the same interview, Estelle says she was snubbed by the music industry in the UK and had to go to the States to be taken seriously. If that’s true, we should all be ashamed, but come on lady, surely this idea that only certain people are allowed to do certain types of music is as redundant and plain moronic as the dispute over whether Charlotte and Harry are permitted to form indie bands. The hippy way says… of course they can.

What is soul music anyway? Estelle: “Music that you feel in your heart and your experience. You can’t explain it, it just gets you. It’s in the lyrics, the melody, the beat - you can’t pull it apart.”

So Adele, Lidell, etc. don’t feel what they’re singing? “I know I’m fully there,” says Lidell in his interview here and he’s not bullshitting. You can hear it for yourself.

Over to Kid Creole on page 24 to nail this once and for all. “Please, music is music. It’s universal.”

Too right. Estelle, I’ll be round soon to pick up my Collie Buddz CD.

Language School
I perform deviant sexual acts with women of all kinds

Rest in peace new indie, 2002-2008! It began with The Strokes and ends with Foals. There’s nothing more tiring in this month of April 2008 than seeing a skinny-jean-and-plimsoll-wearing art rock band bleeding dry those angular riffs. It was amusing while it lasted, but it’s over. See above for the re-emergence of soul, and it’s coming from the States as well: there’s some solid new hip hop around (Cool Kids, C.R.A.C.), Danger Mouse has given a soul injection to rock bands (The Black Keys, The Shortwave Set), and Hercules and Love Affair have updated disco with mythological twist (page 9). All manner of interesting fusions are happening in UK dance music too (see Home News: Micachu, Tayo, Bok Bok & Manara).

But fear not, sweet haircut kids of Korova in Liverpool, London’s Shoreditch and Manchester’s Northern Quarter, help is at hand in the form of a young gentleman from Oakland High in California whose reading of Notorious BIG’s ‘One More Chance’ scored top marks at his school district’s ebonics translation competition. Struggling to understand what the MCs are saying over a Toddla T beat? Not sure if you’ll grasp Jay-Z’s headline set at Glastonbury? Look our man up on the internet! For now, here’s a sneak preview.

Lyrics: “First things first, I poppa, freaks all the honeys / Dummies - playboy bunnies, those wantin’ money / Those the ones I like ’cause they don’t get nathan’ / But penetration, unless it smells like sanitation / Garbage, I turn like doorknobs / Heart throb, never, black and ugly as ever / However, I stay coochied down to the socks / Rings and watch filled with rocks.”

Translation: “As a general rule, I perform deviant sexual acts with women of all kinds, including but not limited to those with limited intellect, nude magazine models, and prostitutes. I particularly enjoy sexual encounters with the latter group, as they are generally disappointed in the fact that they only receive penile intercourse and nothing more, unless of course, they douche on a consistent basis. Although I am extremely unattractive, I am able to engage in these types of sexual acts with some regularity. Perhaps my sexuality is somehow related to my fancy and expensive jewellery.”

The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

The Stool Pigeon issue 16, May 2008

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