Music, Artists, Talent Shows And The Death Of The Album

It is now commonplace for the music buying public to log onto an online download site and grab the tunes they connect with for a few pence and ignore anything they are not familiar with. So if you hear a tune on the radio and like it, you can just purchase that tune in digital format, and bypass the remainder of the body of work by that particular artist. You don’t have to buy the whole album to own the couple of tracks you may like, but do you lose out? Would you lose out if you bought just the subject part of a painting, or just watched the action parts of a film?

We put more questions and further observations to Agi Jarocka, with explosive results. Agi is a Polish born soloist /guitarist / vocalist, who now lives in Peterborough and as we found out, holds very strong views on TV talent shows and the value of the CD album as a physical product.
We met at the fondly remembered Glasshouse venue situated inside The Key Theatre, grabbed a coffee and jumped right in with the interrogation. Asking whether Agi watched TV talent shows at all, we received the vehement reply “No, I detest them. I don’t own a television because of them. I was at my grandmother’s house watching one and it put me off owning my own TV entirely. It seems to me you win the show by having the best sob story, it’s degrading and as far as I can tell has nothing to do with the music or performance. I think these shows have almost run their course now, people are seeing through them and becoming sick of them.”

Not too cleverly, we put the same question to Agi that we had asked Jeffrene, would she ever appear on such a show? After several expletives and comparing one of the show hosts to cow dung in Polish, it was fairly apparent that she probably wouldn’t. Maybe the reason behind Agi’s strong reaction to these shows, is her discipline with regard to performing her self- penned material. She said “I generally don’t play my own tracks in public, because I can’t honestly say there isn’t better material out there and I don’t want to add average songs to an over- subscribed art form. My writing is also too personal, I’m probably not prepared to lay myself open and bare my soul. I look at artists such as Bjork who is very individual and creative and feel that unless I’m at that level with my writing, I should not perform it. I don’t consider myself to be an artist, that’s too big a word. “

On the subject of the value of CD albums, Agi has this to say. “You have to realise that to buy a new album in Poland was so expensive that we couldn’t afford to do it. It would compare to spending about two hundred pounds in this country on one CD. So when I moved to England, to spend ten pounds on an album was iberating. I could afford to buy lots of music for the first time. It was great!”
“I buy CD albums, I want to own the CD and I really follow the artists I like. I don’t want to pay for a download, you don’t own anything!”

If Agi can see the value in the CD album, can the music industry find a way to re-ignite the interest in the format with the general public? And if the public infatuation with talent shows is waning, as Agi hopes, what does the future hold? Is there an opportunity for the music industry to fill the possible void? Should it seek quality artists to create quality material, in the hope of engaging the public at a deeper and more meaningful level, thereby holding their interest longer and enabling it to put a higher value on its product and encouraging physical ownership? Or is this all wishful thinking on the part of those who despair at the loss of the beloved album?

Finally we chat to well- known Peterborough musician Nick Smith, virtuoso bassist and all round good chap. We caught up with him, just prior to his disappearing into the orchestra pit at The Key Theatre, intent on supplying all the correct noises for the 2012 Gang Show.
Not knowing quite what to expect and mistakenly thinking the conversation would be with a musician only and not a songwriter, we fired our first salvo! Do you feel that talent shows have any real value for the music industry? “Yes I do, certainly in terms of engagements for working musicians. Even the contestants who do not win these shows receive national coverage and can live off of that for some time, and in turn, they often supply work for the supporting musicians they require.”
“Maybe what we have is the industry making money from the only format it can right now, with the amount of access we have to free online music and the variety available to us, celebrity based product may be the only thing they can have control of. It’s just the tip of the iceberg that’s available to them, the vast amount of work out there that’s under the radar is probably beyond their commercial control. It could be the case that video killed the radio star and the internet killed the video star,” he laughs.

So do you like these shows Nick? “I don’t like the ridicule that some contestants are victims of, I can’t watch that, however, I would be happy to appear on one”.
You have performed with Murray Hockridge in the past and Murray was recently a contestant on The Voice, what did you make of that? “Yeah, it was good exposure for him, but there’s so much more to his ability that you never get to see on the show of course, we didn’t get the full Murray or see his depth of talent”.

During our conversation it came to light that Nick also played guitar and wrote songs while with the band Urban Surf. Asked what he thought about exposure for bands right now, he was pragmatic. “We have the internet which is a double edged sword. Before the internet it was almost impossible to get your material out there, but if it was out there, it didn’t drown in the sheer vastness of material that is now available. It’s great we can put our own stuff out now, but we are each small fish in a very big pond.”

Is the problem with the death of the album simply about balance? Is there currently too much mainstream media focus on celebrity based music, even for its own good? This may well be the case, or at least a contributing factor! Maybe the music industry is to blame for its own partial demise and not just because of technology, but because it has lost its own sense of value.
There has always been frivolous throwaway tosh for sale and a public who will purchase it, and that’s just fine. But never before has there been quite so much attention given to celebrity alone, to the detriment of mainstream TV, radio and magazine coverage for creative music artists. So is it any wonder that the music buying public now value celebrity over content and purchase the resulting product accordingly?