my mailer says that John Dennett said:
I agree with you about the vitality of the UK scene versus the US, and I
have a theory about why they move at different speeds.
In the US, virtually all of the pop music press (other than industry rags
like Billboard) publishes on a monthly schedule. The average fan on the
street sees a change in who's "in the news" and who's "climbing the charts"
twelve times a year. Of course the different mags have different features,
but they all compete to cover essentially the same popular territory. In
the UK, the pop music press has been on a weekly schedule for decades now,
and the emphasis is on the immediacy of music trends; trends that the
typical bloke can see changing 52 times per year -- four times the frequency
of a music fan in the US. Papers like NME and MM lean more towards a
newspaper metaphor whereas in the US, Rolling Stone and SPIN are
feature-oriented magazines, so through both presentation and content the US
and UK sources are different in their impact on the reader.
In short -- although few of us would like to admit it -- I see the *media*
as the primary determining factor in the vitality of a music scene. If
listeners and audiences are conditioned to accept change at a higher rate,
then artists can be more adventurous and diverse without having to sacrifice
broad-scale recognition and success.
Whaddaya think? : )
Kevin Farnham:
I think it is some of both. I agree that the media has a huge amount to do
with it but it must be recognized that the immediacy of trends in the UK can
be at least partly attributable to the size of the country. I think that this
can change with the rate of information spread here in the US, but I think
that it is unrealistic to think that the US will ever have the rate of
absorption that the UK has. I also think that the music scene in the UK is
more predominately ingrained in the fabric of everyday life. There is a pretty
noticable difference in the attitude of clubbers in the UK vs. the US (add
your own theory here). There are too many other factors involved in what
shapes culture in the US. My personal opinion is that the UK will *always*
have a slightly superior edge over the US in terms of cultural trendsetting.
Another factor is the record companies. I think that distributors and record
companies in the US are much more apprehensive of fly-by-night trends. These
are generally the same people (fly-by-nights) that are setting the
cultural/fashion trends. Most major record companies want to see a proven
money-making ability in order to back the artist. It is these same companies
that are putting millions of dollars into advertising/marketing that help to
shape what the american market is willing to digest.
I *do* think that the weeklies in the UK also have a huge amount to do with
the differences in culture, but also take a look at the kind of things that
they cover... the culture is much more club/pop oriented than it is in the US.
If you take a look at the best selling records in the US, I think you'd be
shocked at the amount of heavy metal and classic rock is sold here. Maybe it
all comes down to the fact that we're all rednecks over here... ;-)
This is all IMHO of course.
Kevin Farnham
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