PSA: THE BIGGER PICTURE
NURTURING LIVE MUSIC FROM THE ROOTS This month we’re rounding up the action from Venues Day 2018.
Research and development, R&D, it drives industry. Not many of us get to see it in action, we generally only see the hits rather than the great ideas that just didn’t make it into production, and we don’t really get the chance to see the honing of new product. Live music’s different though, get away from the choreographed churn of arena-friendly hits and you have every opportunity to discover some rough diamonds, songs in the raw, bands developing, the real original t-shirt and a selfie with the singer who sold it to you. The price of this experience? Negligible compared to the online dash for the latest tout-fest, with tickets viagogone in seconds, 6 months before you get to see the show. In fact, you can probably pop into a live music R&D department tonight, they’re known nowadays as Grassroots Music Venues (GMVs) and they’re under threat. Should we, the production people, be bothered? Too right we should, for they are where our next generation cut their teeth too, it’s where all manner of tips are shared, mistakes made, skills honed. It’s why we’re keen to support the work of the Music Venue Trust (MVT), the organisation set up to protect GMVs from very real threats.
HER LOVE (OF GMVs) IS COOL From the growing number of artists that have become endorsees and supporters of MVTs work, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Roswell (pictured) delivered an opening address that epitomised the very essence of the Grassroots Venue scene, creating success from zero knowledge of the business, from open mic slots at the, here’s the killer, now closed Purple Turtle in Camden through a tour that took in the venues that they played when they were starting out to a mind boggling world tour schedule sprinkled with a dash of Mercury Music Prize along the way (quick dash from Bangkok to pick it up, leg it back to Oz to continue tour). Like she said: “When it seems as though the government doesn’t care about such things, it shouldn’t just be down to the likes of the people at the Music Venue Trust to campaign for their importance and lend a helping hand. Musicians can be perhaps one of the greatest helps of all. Last summer my band and I made a conscious decision to play in the venues where we’d first been given some of those early opportunities. Sometimes you think the world is against you when you’re making the grind in those early days of touring. It is easy to forget that just by being at these little 98
