Music with an edge
The music was, and is important because it always kept an edge to it. Unlike the Pop Idol panel, who treat the performer like a well-oiled machine that must continually pass its rolling programme of MOTs (tests on the voice in different styles, tests on the body in different costumes, tests on the personality in different promotional settings), the Factory produced a very different line of goods.
Factory artists were encouraged to stamp their own identity on the music, keep it personal and even
joyously messy and awkward. Hence, Factory artists did not possess lead singers with Will-like qualities of harmony and pitch; they had singers with flawed (i.e. human), but always distinctive voices that were immediately recognisable. So Ian Curtis of Joy Division, Barney Sumner of New Order and Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays all sung in a Northern monotone that established their music as ‘real’ not only in terms of emotion, but also in terms of place.
Keeping it local
For another vital thing about Factory Records is its sense of cultural geography: it expressed a very particular set of values, ideas and feelings about the city of Manchester. Like so much of the Factory story and of the wider tale of independent music production in this country (dance and rock, house and indie), this was made possible by the punk moment of the mid-to-late Seventies. Tony Wilson, co-founder of Factory Records, explains how he and his peers were inspired to get involved with creating their own music industry after watching the ultimate punk rockers, The Sex Pistols, at a live gig in Manchester:There are just forty two people in the audience, but every one of them is feeding on the power and strength and magic.
For another vital thing about Factory Records is its sense of cultural geography: it expressed a very particular set of values, ideas and feelings about the city of Manchester. Like so much of the Factory story and of the wider tale of independent music production in this country (dance and rock, house and indie), this was made possible by the punk moment of the mid-to-late Seventies. Tony Wilson, co-founder of Factory Records, explains how he and his peers were inspired to get involved with creating their own music industry after watching the ultimate punk rockers, The Sex Pistols, at a live gig in Manchester:There are just forty two people in the audience, but every one of them is feeding on the power and strength and magic.
Musical freedom –
I believe that this ‘power and strength and magic’ is largely the freedom to be young, to be angry, and to speak from a specific place with a particular identity. Such an idea now seems bizarre indeed at a time like ours, where so much music seems to come from some kind of Pop Utopia (literally the word ‘Utopia’ means ‘no-place’) or depthless post-modern hyperspace where the origins of the music and the artist are both carefully erased. And in today’s climate, how liberating and wonderful is Tony Wilson’s alleged comment: ‘I will never interfere with the freedom of my artists. Artists make their own rules.’?
I believe that this ‘power and strength and magic’ is largely the freedom to be young, to be angry, and to speak from a specific place with a particular identity. Such an idea now seems bizarre indeed at a time like ours, where so much music seems to come from some kind of Pop Utopia (literally the word ‘Utopia’ means ‘no-place’) or depthless post-modern hyperspace where the origins of the music and the artist are both carefully erased. And in today’s climate, how liberating and wonderful is Tony Wilson’s alleged comment: ‘I will never interfere with the freedom of my artists. Artists make their own rules.’?
Representation – For Every Band
that’s Made it
There is a Band that Should Have The film’s informal mode of address and narrative style shape its cinematic representations. Focusing on the stories of the bands themselves, Anyone Can Play Guitar does not include any of the iconic imagery normally associated with commercial celebrity or music stardom. Notably absent are any glitzy mag snaps, gold-plated records, glamorous girlfriends or fan-swamped limos. Jon Spira explains the reasons why:The point of the film is not success, it’s to play guitar. That’s what the song is about really. Fame does usually define bands and I wanted to puncture that and show them as real people – part of a vibrant scene of bands, fans and promoters who inspired and encouraged each other.
Changes in the music industry
In the last decade the music industry has faced the most complex set of changes in its history. The conventional industry models have been challenged, largely due to the emergence of new technologies and new ways for music lovers to listen to, and own, the music they love. The industry is still struggling to deal with how these changes have affected their balance sheets, and the pace of change doesn’t look like slowing yet, but for those who wish to pursue a career in music, it’s important to see how many of these new developments can be used to your advantage.
a perfect way for artists to distribute music. While Napster made it easy for users to share other people’s music, it wasn’t a massive leap to imagine that artists could use the same technology to promote and distribute their own music, thus cutting out two of the important functions of a record company. In this new world, there would be no place for physical records; instead music would live as data on people’s computers. The advent of the iPod and its followers cemented this new paradigm. If, in the future, the distribution of music no longer requires anything to have a physical form at all, then its distribution could be virtually free. And, in fact, that has come true: the music rights organisation PRS for Music reported this year that CD and DVD revenues fell by £8.7 million in 2009, but digital revenues grew by £12.8 million.
There is a Band that Should Have The film’s informal mode of address and narrative style shape its cinematic representations. Focusing on the stories of the bands themselves, Anyone Can Play Guitar does not include any of the iconic imagery normally associated with commercial celebrity or music stardom. Notably absent are any glitzy mag snaps, gold-plated records, glamorous girlfriends or fan-swamped limos. Jon Spira explains the reasons why:The point of the film is not success, it’s to play guitar. That’s what the song is about really. Fame does usually define bands and I wanted to puncture that and show them as real people – part of a vibrant scene of bands, fans and promoters who inspired and encouraged each other.
Changes in the music industry
In the last decade the music industry has faced the most complex set of changes in its history. The conventional industry models have been challenged, largely due to the emergence of new technologies and new ways for music lovers to listen to, and own, the music they love. The industry is still struggling to deal with how these changes have affected their balance sheets, and the pace of change doesn’t look like slowing yet, but for those who wish to pursue a career in music, it’s important to see how many of these new developments can be used to your advantage.
a perfect way for artists to distribute music. While Napster made it easy for users to share other people’s music, it wasn’t a massive leap to imagine that artists could use the same technology to promote and distribute their own music, thus cutting out two of the important functions of a record company. In this new world, there would be no place for physical records; instead music would live as data on people’s computers. The advent of the iPod and its followers cemented this new paradigm. If, in the future, the distribution of music no longer requires anything to have a physical form at all, then its distribution could be virtually free. And, in fact, that has come true: the music rights organisation PRS for Music reported this year that CD and DVD revenues fell by £8.7 million in 2009, but digital revenues grew by £12.8 million.
Twitter hits the headlines
When Twitter started hitting the headlines in the UK it soon became a part of everyday conversation. Esther Addley, Senior Reporter at The Guardian, noted that, in November 2008, 40 articles about Twitter were published, by December 85 had appeared and by January 2009 it was 206. In January this year the first pictures of the Hudson River plane crash appeared from keen citizen journalists via TwitPic, Twitter’s photo-sharing client. By April, celebrities Demi Moore and her actor husband Ashton Kutcher added to Susan Boyle’s rise to fame when they tweeted about her extraordinary Britain’s Got Talent appearance, which, in the space of a few days, led to millions of YouTube views of the clip of her Les Miserables song.
Although social networking should be for everybody, it certainly seems that different sites attract different user demographics. Whilst Facebook was originally set up for university students in 2004 (you had to have a university email address to register) it soon spread to high school students before being universally accessible. Now it is used by those aged 13 (the lower age limit) to 103. The latter is no exaggeration; in 2008 the Daily Mail reported that the oldest Facebooker is 102-year-old (at the time) Ivy Bean, who currently lives in a nursing home in Leeds.
Twitter has yet to show its popularity amongst younger users; it tends to be more of a communication and publicity tool for professionals, which includes well-known politicians and celebrities. Organisations use the site to promote upcoming events or share news. Many universities and colleges are also jumping on the bandwagon to pass on information to students or use the site as a way to share current news.
