Song, by Toad

[Alex Cornish (shown right on the Tom Robinson show) is an Edinburgh singer songwriter and a good friend of mine.  He has helped us out with contracts for Toad things for free, for no more reason than generosity and, although he may not be that well known in the alt-folk spheres inhabited by most people here, he has actually achieved considerable success, including being playlisted on Radio2, all using entirely DIY methods and entirely off his own back.  He wrote this on his own site recently, and gave me permission to re-post it here as part of this week's Sunday Supplement.]

I know everyone is writing about 6 Music being axed, but here is my viewpoint as an artist who works in a very DIY way and has first hand experience of sending out unsolicited CDs to producers at radio shows.

Once you have written and recorded the ‘masterpiece’, it’s time to decide who is likely to play it. This is all inapplicable if you have a wad of cash to pay a radio plugger, I didn’t, so I did it myself. Anyway, there’s no point sending out promo CDs to people who don’t play your sort of music and there’s no point sending it to the wrong address or the wrong producer. There’s also no point in sending it to the majority of commercial stations (XFM down south excepted). You need to spend a long time doing research on the old internet. After I had recorded Until the Traffic Stops first time around I spent said long time on the internet and the telephone (one of the great things about the BBC by the way is that if you telephone the switchboard they have to tell you who the production team for a show is, including the right box no. etc.). At that time, and this was before I had ever been played on the radio, I found that XFM Scotland might play it, so I sent a CD to Jim Gellatly for his new music show. I was also a massive fan of the Tom Robinson show on 6 Music, which at the time was on Monday – Thursday from 7pm to 9.30pm. There was also Vic Galloway’s Radio 1 Introducing show. So, out of all the radio stations, in general terms I had 6 Music, XFM and BBC Introducing on Radio 1. Now XFM Scotland has closed that leaves 6 Music and Radio 1 Introducing. If 6 Music closes it’s the introducing shows on Radio 1 as the only champions of new music, and to be honest they would rarely play my sort of music.

There are two reasons why 6 Music is so important to me:

- the first is that Tom Robinson and his producer picked out my little unsolicited package, which led to it being played, then a session, then someone at 6 Music handed it up to Radio 2 and a year later I got on the Radio 2 palylist. The same thing happened with Jim Gellatly, he picked it up and from there it led to other things. Without those massive leg ups I wouldn’t have had anywhere near the level of the exposure that I have had. There are obviously people at Radio 2 and Radio Scotland who have taken big chances in backing me, but I wouldn’t have got to them without those intial acts of support.

- the second is the new music I have discovered as a fan – I remember hearing ‘ The Ride’ by Joan as Policewoman on 6 Music and buying it right away. There are lots of occasions when that has happened.

So, as a musician where does that leave you? Well, there are obviously blogs and they are great, and I send stuff to blogs already, but as a reader or listener on a blog site you have to be active i.e. you have to actually read and listen to the material on a blog. With the radio, it is more passive – it is on in your home and when you hear something new, you stop, check out the tracklisting online and buy it from itunes or whatever. 6 Music closing is going to leave a massive hole for both those that love discovering and supporting new music and for those musicians trying to reach those potential new fans. I’ll never forget the first time ‘This One’s for You’ was played on the Tom Robinson show – first radio play. A huge thrill. It’s a fucking shame.

[Mrs. Toad has very kindly contributed this Friday's Fives, as I am busy being mounted like a five-dollar hooker at Proper Job.  Enjoy.]

I am in the middle of a secondment at Proper Job which basically means that instead of rushing around trying to get new clients or speak to existing ones about what is going on in the world of stocks and shares, I am undertaking company analysis and have time on my hands to contemplate the mysteries of the future.

So at the moment, I am mulling what cars will be like in 2030 and how many of them will be on the roads. This is usually predicted using an S-Curve function which predicts growth of consumption goods accelerating from matching income growth at low levels at twice the rate of income growth for a certain range of income finally slowing again to match income growth at higher levels giving an S shaped graph. According to this, there will be 2 billion cars on the road in 2030 (there are about 800 million now). Scary stuff. However, population density is also rising (only 46% of New Yorkers own a car whereas 92% of Americans do) and car sharing (ZipCar/City Car club) is also on the rise. So how the hell am I supposed to come up with an even half sensible estimate? Even Volkswagen don’t seem to think we will all own our own cars.

Of course, the point is that you can’t get it right, you just have to make a reasonable estimate and assign a probability to it based on current evidence. Despite the shelves and shelves of strategy books in airports worldwide, there is a great deal of serendipity involved in most business successes. The guys at Google for instance, didn’t start out to be in the advertising business but ending up there is why their company is worth $135bn. There is also the occasional trying to be too clever moment. If I said to you that buying a share of 100 dodgy mortgages packaged together and sliced up is as safe as lending to a blue chip company like IBM, you’d laugh in my face but that’s what all the physics graduates and math whizzes at places like Lehman Bros really believed. Business is hard especially, when mistakes mean that you could go down the pan or get taken out. Its easy to err too far on the side of caution and become defensive and oppressive rather than innovative (yeah, that’s you Microsoft).

Which makes it all the more galling that a non profit entity such as the BBC has apparently confused “value for money” with “bums on seats” in its recent strategic review, leading to the closure of 6 Music, the watering down of local content, and the downsizing of their successful website. The questions in the review also point to them considering reducing some of the innovative projects that they have undertaken such as pushing DAB and developing iPlayer. iPlayer is in large part why people like Murdoch(s) have it in for them, Sky and Virgin Media cannot make money if they cannot control content provision. By pushing people online to a familiar and trusted brand, the BBC has hastened their demise.

This has already been linked to but I would urge you all to take some time to respond to the BBC’s strategic review in full because its clear that fear of Tory/Murdoch harpies is pushing them in an all together more stolid direction than we have seen in the last ten years and that would be a great shame.

1. What do you think cars will be like in 20 years time?
2. Best piece of bullshit bingo you have heard?
3. Company/brand or product you most admire?
4. Company/brand or product you detest?
5. Your soothsayer like prediction for the world in 2030?

Ballboy – All the Records on the Radio are Shite

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Depeche Mode – Everything Counts

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Phil Ochs – Automation Song

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The Clash – Complete Control

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The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Company Town

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I know there’s been a lot of chatter about this already, but I feel really strongly that we need to try and stop the closure of BBC 6Music if we can.  If you want to help, please sign both of the following petitions:

Petition FM
Go Petition

And if you’re a Facebooker, please join this group.

You can also fill in the following consultation form if you can make the time, which would also be a big help.

Equally importantly, please email srconsultation@bbc.co.uk and tell them why they should keep 6Music.

And finally, make sure you listen to the bloody station.  I can’t stress this enough.  It’s not enough to support something by moaning, and it’s not enough just to like the idea of something existing, if you want to support something you have to actually use their product, whatever that might be.  Otherwise we become these people.

So, why, in all honesty, should we do all this?  What’s the big deal, and are we just being snotty about losing 6Music because it generally played ‘our kind of music’ or is there some wider purpose beyond specific taste which the station served which should be preserved?

The answer, from me, is yes on both counts.  Firstly and most obviously, in terms of supporting the actual making of new music, across all genres, 6Music was without parallel.  By giving so much opportunity to small and emerging bands, and by using specialist DJs who could put those bands into a broader historical context, the station fulfilled a unique function in actually supporting the development of music in the UK.

In saying this am I being insulting to the BBC Introducing network, with Vic Galloway, Bethan Elfyn and Huw Stephens?  No, I don’t think so.  As good a job as they do, and as grateful as I am to the consistent support and friendship Vic has shown Song, by Toad, they simply don’t have enough time to represent the entire BBC contribution to new music.  With so little time to play stuff, the volume of submissions to time allowed ratio means that the music cannot all be reasonably listened to or played and the whole thing becomes a crap-shoot, which becomes a real barrier to good things rising to the top.  6Music has enough airtime that good stuff is likely to be picked up – it’s still far from perfect, but it’s alright.

The other point is that in ditching 6Music the Beeb would basically be abdicating any role in cultural and artistic development in the field of popular music.  They may think that fits with their charter, but I do not.  Basically, Radio One is what is already happening, and Radio Two is what was never happening.  These stations are entirely dominated by the finished article, but who is going to finish that article for them?  In the absence of 6Music there will be the shiny, professional mainstream at one end, and tiny DIY enterprises like this one at the other, and absolutely not a single bloody thing inbetween.

How the hell are you supposed to progress, to step up, to actually make that massive leap without the developmental step of 6Music, where you can start out with a couple of airplays on one show, maybe get a session on another, and hope to eventually make the step up to a Maida Vale Session and perhaps eventually some Radio1 airplay.  Take away 6Music and you have to go from the Song, by Toad podcast to Radio1 in a single leap, which is not only a ludicrous expectation, but also makes the process increasingly arbitrary, because bands develop at different rates.  Not everyone can teach themselves all the stuff required to do this without intermediary steps, and even fewer have the stamina to keep going all that way without the encouragement they provide.

So from a label or band’s perspective, this is basically a disaster.  This was the closest we had to a reasonably understandable route to establishing ourselves, and in its absence this is going to become extremely challenging.  If I wanted to be a cynical bugger about it I would look at the Toad Sessions and look at the podcasts and watch the BBC and everyone else (XFM, anyone?) abandoning this middle ground for the higher echleons of pimping finished products and I would be rubbing my hands with glee at just how much audience they are surrendering and how much artistic ground they have abandoned, ground which we can now make a concerted effort to occupy.

Ultimately, though, that just isn’t how I feel.  Getting the likes of Gideon Coe, Marc Riley and Stuart Maconie off the air is a massive loss to anyone who cares about music and, more specific to the BBC, to anyone who cares about supporting cultural development in the UK.  The BBC are paid a lot in the form of tax, and they have a public service responsibility, and as far as I am concerned cutting 6Music will represent a very significant failure to fulfil that role.

So, erm, BBC 6Music seems to be closing, does it?  Well, firstly, let’s be clear on the fact that this is yet to be confirmed – in a rather strange turn of events even the BBC couldn’t find anyone from the BBC willing to comment.  Maybe it’s boycotting itself, in the Alex Ferguson style.

Anyhow, these reports originate from The Times, who are part of Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp media dinosaur who are themselves splashing about rather desperately in the ocean of free content, harried by internetters on one hand and the Beeb on the other.  So until this is actually confirmed by a credible source, I’d hold back on the histrionics a little – which is why I have yet to cover this month-old rumour until now as it is.

Still, it worries me because it’s part of a wider trend which I find rather scary at the moment: entertainment holding increasing sway over culture.

Of course, any fan of painting, sculpture, poetry, classical music or anything like that will tell you that this is just the same as it ever was and that basically it’s just our turn now for a change, and that they’ve had this problem for years.  If anything is killing the music industry, for example, it’s the fucking vacant populism of the X-Factor, it ain’t the internet.

Anyhow, late last year the Metro closed their regional arts offices, basically swinging the axe on some of the best local arts coverage in the UK.  Culture, simply, isn’t all that commercially viable.  But the Beeb themselves seem to have little idea what they are there for to begin with.  Why the fuck did they start trying to compete with reality TV?  Why the fuck did they foist the likes of George Lamb on 6Music and basically date-rape the daytime schedule?  Well the answer to the latter question is that apparently Lesley Douglas thinks that women are fucking idiots, but the whole thing speaks of general confusion as to what the BBC is actually supposed to do.

Tax is there to pay for things which commercial concerns will not cover, and to provide accountability to the public which commercial practises do not.  The Beeb is pretty clearly covered by the first, but it has slowly but surely been forgetting its remit and trying to compete with commercial channels on their terms.  6Music only costs £7m a year to run (just over a third of Wossy’s wages), and if they wanted to cut costs they could simply fire their fucking dreadful daytime celebrity presenters and return the station to the specialists for whom it was originally intended.  This mission creep has left it falling between two stools to a considerable degree

Mrs. Toad said to me once that you used to become famous by being on the radio, but nowadays the only way you got on the radio was by being famous to begin with.  This is patently not the Beeb’s job – they are there to ensure that all are represented, not just the most famous.  There is a sizeable audience for alternative music outside the Brits and Q fodder who represent the dismal indie mainstream, but the routes to success for small bands are continually being cut off by commercial pressures.

The problem with this is that in craving larger audiences the Beeb destroys the USP of the station, and risks turning it into XFM.  The trick is not to neuter your individuality by craving the mainstream, it is to accept what you are and budget accordingly.  If (and it is still an if, remember) 6Music goes then the BBC are essentially abandoning all pretense of supporting the development of alternative music culture in the UK.  Radio One is too populist, Radio Two too cautious, and therefore that will be pretty much the end of one of the most important points of access to their audience which existed for emerging musicians in Britain.

Or, to put it another way, how the fuck are any of us going to get our music out there now?  The States has already seen this happen, as print media failed completely and Clearchannel hoovered up and then euthanised all commercial radio, until all that was left was the blogs.  And inasmuch as I like blogs, I feel I need to stress the point that this is not a good thing.

However, there is a note or two of optimism to be struck.  As the major record labels have discovered, scrambling towards the lowest common denominator with such desperation leaves a void behind you which can eventually reach such critical mass that it swallows you up.  If the Beeb is abandoning the alternative to this extent, all it does it leave that space open for amateurs like us, and eventually they run the risk of making themselves so culturally irrelevant that they will lose their right to participate altogether and will have effectively ceded everything which makes them special to the rest of us.

The new Jesus H. Foxx EP is being given a full release on Song, by Toad Records in about a month’s time.  By full release, I mean that we will be making a run of five hundred copies, with hand-painted artwork and I will be doing my best to publicise it around the various magazines and radio stations and blogs out there.  It also implies that they are Song, by Toad Records’ latest signing, I suppose, in the sense that anyone is signed to Song, by Toad Records, which is something I am really pleased about because the stuff I’ve heard from them in the last year or so has been truly excellent.

I’ve not emailed bloggers yet, but we’re getting a little traction with radio it seems, with I’m Half the Man You Were appearing on both Gideon Coe’s 6Music show (my favourite show on the station, which makes it even nicer) and Jim Gellatly’s New Music show on Radio Magnetic.  And apparently I got hammered on the Toad night last Saturday and gave BBC Radio Scotland’s Mr. Vic Galloway a big sloppy kiss, so if that doesn’t get them some airtime on his show I don’t know what will.

That picture above is how the artwork is shaping up so far.  It will be printed on natural card, so there will be a texture to the flat areas of colour which should look really nice.  So, in general, I am really excited about this.  Publicising EPs is harder than albums in many ways, because a lot of magazines don’t cover them, but I am going to try to get through to as many online and community radio stations as possible and see if we can’t make up for it that way.

Any suggestions appreciated, and in the meantime, please enjoy Elegy For the Good Times from the Matter EP.

Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy For the Good Times

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Jesus H. Foxx on MySpace