Thursday, June 25, 2015

X Factor? Pass me a trowel - and the remote...


Some of this is true.
First, hand me a trowel...no, two trowels, one for each hand. I am going to lay this on Thick.

"My Grandad died. Yep. Tragic. He was lovely. He always told me to Follow My Dream. I remember he had a jolly twinkle in his eye. He played the concertina. That's what got me interested in music. Every time I see a concertina I think of my Grandad so I owe it to him that I am here now. That and my three small children, one of whom needs an operation for a disease you've never heard of. My mum has always been there for me and has given up everything, except pizza, so I can follow my dream. She's not a pushy mum, she just wants me to follow my dream. My Dad buggered off when I was three so I have always had to be really really brave. I don't think my Dad knew about my dream. This is all I have Ever wanted to do Ever in the History of My Life Ever.....!”

Sound familiar? Well, The Hat did have a Grandad – several, in fact. They lived till their nineties and one of them played the spoons as well as the concertina. Also, they were really expert at creative swearing and copious drinking. The rest is bollox...but I fear most of it will be hitting a screen near you very shortly – twice a week – until you want to smash the television with your handy trowel or tear your face off with a cheese grater. Yep. The X Factor Season is upon us again.

We have already had an announcement about the Amazing Expert Judges. The one who cries a lot will be joined in the competitive dress department by another this-week-I'm-blonde and a self-obsessed chap well qualified in reading out radio PR blurbs. They will be presided over by a rich smug bloke looking for the Next Big Thing (for Thing read Cash Thing) whilst pretending to be a philanthropic kind uncle. Rock 'n Roll this ain't. The X Factor programme is a Money-Making Behemoth that just keeps on giving in trowel loads. We will get Comedy, Tragedy, Satire, Buttock-Clenching Embarrassment, Bad Hair, Frocks and Spots and Misplaced Delusion....oh yes, and Grandad. Sadly the one thing it doesn't have in abundance is Talent. You would think that, for a talent show, this might be a shortcoming? Of course it isn't, because this stopped being a talent show, in dozens of countries around the world, light years ago. I want to have anyone who thinks it is a talent show given a strait-jacket and committed indefinitely to a dark place with wall-to-wall Magic Fm..

I have no problem with the existence of programmes like the X factor. I have a remote control. I don't have to watch them. They clearly tick some entertainment box somewhere – but then people used to watch bear-baiting in days gone by. If you started worrying about that crowded Dark Corner of television shows then you would have to kill yourself or go and live in a yurt in Mongolia Let's be sensible - a Kardashian Backside does not a Deep Thinking Documentary make. My problem is that, even after so many years of being served up candy floss, there are still so many people thinking in all honesty, that it has something to do with musical talent, vocal prowess or even the nursing of embryonic talent. The show is there to make money and, rather like the lottery, the chances of all the factors coming together for success are so minimal as to be non-existent.

The final of The X factor last year was watched by about 9 million people (say that very slowly) and yet that was the worst figure for a decade. Here are two names for you...Ben Haenow and Sam Bailey. No, I haven't either – but they are the winners of the last two years of the show. They disappeared, probably, like unwanted characters in The Apprentice and East Enders, in a taxi, cruising into the fading mists of time accompanied by some anodyne backing music.... However, even after years of mind bleach it is almost impossible to dispel images of Leonard Cohen and Whitney Houston weeping while 'Hallelujah' and 'I will always love you' are put through the mincer and the auto-tune engineer stabs himself to death with a mic stand...

The health side-effects of X factor are not my concern though. As a music fan, musician, writer about and supporter of musicians, The Factor that interests me about this programme - setting aside the knockabout ruthless and cavalier judging and dismissals - is the huge amount of money involved in this annual sleight of hand. The programme has, amongst other marketing ploys, massive sponsorship, huge commercial advertising income, money from downloads and apps, hoodies, T-shirts, tote bags, mugs (how appropriate) and a positive pirate's chest of income from phone voting – this last, always a secret, is usually estimated at somewhere around the £8/10million mark....and that's not counting the selling of a few copies of the competition winner's 'Music to Kill Your Neighbours' album...

Simon Cowell, the impressario behind the show, has personally given substantial amounts quietly to charity for many years and that should be acknowledged. His personal website lists a number of them. I don't doubt that he is nice to his mother and he is clearly brilliant at what he does. Also, there is a misplaced notion, to which I don't subscribe, that if you work hard and are rich and successful, you are obliged to give away your money to the less fortunate - or face Opprobrium and Abuse from the trolls. However, what intrigues me is the fact that despite basing its success on the mantra of 'discovering and encouraging new talent', there is no obvious sign that any of the profits from the triple-dialling fans finds its way towards meeting that end except as an occasional one-off high profile public relations exercise.

Yep. There is indeed, money in 'music'. Oh Really? There is another rather more tarnished side to this shiny coin.

When the long awaited Warwick Commission Report was published a few months ago on The Future of Cultural Value in Great Britain it drew a picture, in particular, of education in culture in disastrous Free Fall. Music tuition, support funding, education and opportunity in the UK are in dire straits. The British have always been ahead of the game when it came to the application of culture as a 'soft power' export and drama, film, art and music have been admired world-wide and exported with stunning effect for years. Creative arts financial export and turnover is annually estimated in billions. It is a phenomenon of which we can be rightly proud and yet over the last decade the funding of the 'arts' , in particular music, has been whittled away and eroded to the point of collapse in some areas. The Commission gives figures that show falls of anything from 33% to 50% in after school and higher education dance, drama, craft, music classes. The serious funding now only mainly goes via the Arts Council, Regional and National Arts Organisations and Boards of Management. This line-up largely represents just the top 8% of those engaged and they are the well educated, well heeled and least ethnically diverse group in the country. Facing austerity cuts, many local authorities have closed libraries and axed provision to small theatres and the provision of music services. Where music is concerned, it is also evident that parental funding (which in some areas covers nearly half the cost of these 'non-core' activities) is starting to fade and pupils are disappearing.

Sadly, this uncompromising report - which called for the Government to “...ensure that all children up to the age of 16 receive a cultural education in order to ensure their life-long engagement and enjoyment as audiences and creators..” - was published during the pre-election hustings and got buried in political flummery and the accompanying 'my promise is bigger than yours' braggodacio.
It is time for it to be rescued from the too hot to handle cul-de-sac where it has been shunted.

The new Culture Secretary, (who was Margaret Thatcher's political adviser for five years) would presumably heartily support the amazing private enterprise success of X-factor. However, he needs to look at his In-Tray where alongside the killer Warwick Commision report he will find the 'National Plan for Music Education', a government scheme, launched with fanfares by his predecessor in 2011, which promised up to £60million annually via 'Music Hubs' going into support grass roots development. However, the Educational Services Grant which covers many of those activities is now to be chopped by £200million. It is “un-ringfenced” which means that it is up to the local authority as to how it deals with these cuts. Consequently, contributions to these hubs have been cut back, classes curtailed, peripatetic teachers are a thing of the past, in some areas instrument hire charges and other fees increased and, inevitably as is always the case, those least able to pay are excluded and are disappearing. Music education always used to be wonderfully egalitarian. The society that allowed us to flourish creatively whatever our background or income is in rapid decline. That cannot be right.

When he is next invited to a gig by, for example, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (50 yrs old) or the National Youth Orchestra (65 yrs old), the Secretary of State would do well to give a thought to how they came to exist in the first place - and how in the future, he can call a halt to the steady erosion of the opportunities for such brilliant creativity. If ever there was a guaranteed blue chip investment in the future well-being of the country, then this is it. It's time Mister Secretary, that you let more children Follow Their Dream. Getting on to The X-Factor is not the answer – even if your Grandad does play the concertina....

Pip Pip!
The Blues Man in The Hat


All the above data and much more can be found in the 76 page Warwick Commission Report freely available on line.