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THE
B R I S TO L MAGAZINE
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Save our songwriters!
A
couple of months ago I dug out the old record player. Sorry, I’m making it sound like a gramophone complete with horn and attentive dog, but actually this particular machine was state of the art as recently as… well it must have been about 1990. At the time I thought it a shocking injustice that my grandparents had bought themselves a music centre complete with double tape deck and – gasp – CD player, just so they could hear The Archers more clearly. Now I’m happy that they bought something good. The recent history of this analogue relic mirrors that of musiclistening in the wider world. We listened to records, then CDs. When streaming came along I stuck the old stereo in the basement, because who needs to fiffle about with vinyl when you can enjoy Bach or Beyonce at the click of a mouse? A shelf of records remained to remind us of those long-ago days when listening to music involved standing up every twenty minutes. I suppose we might have sold them if they’d been worth anything, but they aren’t, so we didn’t. And now, like lots of people everywhere, we’ve plugged the record player back in, fitted a new needle and are happily rediscovering forgotten treasures, some of them genuine antiques. We went to a library sale years ago, equipped with a borrowed supermarket trolley, and today our collection of Cold War-era classical records must be one of the biggest in BS3. Each one is a thing of beauty. The vinyl disc itself you could repurpose as a table top, while the cardboard sleeve is richly decorated with photos and erudite musings on composer and performers. In the 1950s these records were expensive luxuries, but if you couldn’t afford them you could listen to the radio or join a music library – the equivalent, I suppose, of signing up to a streaming service today. Except that now you can listen to pretty much anything you want, all day long, for – what – 10 or 15 pounds a month? Which, like so much in our digitised world, is great for the people who run the streaming service and great for the listener. But not so great for the people who write and perform the music. More than ever, musicians rely for their bread and butter on live performances and sales of their own merchandise. Whether you’re in a thrash metal band or a string quartet you need people to come and see you strut your stuff, which as we all know has been impossible for a year now. And as the future brightens ahead for the rest of us, musicians now face new difficulties created by our departure from the EU. Up-and-coming bands hoping to tour a new album, bassoonists looking to freelance with an orchestra in Berlin, rappers, performance poets, opera singers… all now have to negotiate an expensive tangle of bureaucracy. In the long term we will see concert halls and pub venues filled with people again, and deals will be done to help musicians rove the continent, but what about in the short term? Bristol is full of people desperate to hear live music, but how can performances be managed safely? Would it be okay, for instance, for a busker to play if there was enough space between them and the audience? Suppose you had a big circle painted on the pavement in the Centre and a trio of musicians stood in the middle of it and played. Would that work, Covid-wise? And if so, could the council take charge, licensing-wise? Of course the musicians couldn’t pass round a hat because a) it would be too germy and b) nobody has change anymore, but we could easily pay by phone. Who knows, perhaps this summer will bring a citywide festival, giving us a chance to support musicians – and musicians a chance to support us. Heaven knows we need them! ■
14 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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MARCH 2021
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No 196
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Steve Miklos steve@thebristolmagazine.co.uk
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