Surplus To Requirement: We Should All Stop Moaning, Now

by Johnny Truant Post to Twitter

Hello. You don’t need to know much about me, apart from I’m a music industry stooge, and I say what’s on my mind. Generally about the music industry. Basically, this is another blog that the music industry doesn’t need: it’s Surplus To Requirement. Clever, right?

Inspired by a particularly forthright blog by lovely trio Das Wanderlust, I feel it’s time to say some things which may not sit right with non-fascists like you.

I say, from now on, we all stop fucking going on about how hard our lot is. We could also shut up about how everyone else is a fucking idiot for not: listening to music we like/make, promoting music we like/make and buying music we like/make. I mean, who hasn’t heard it all before? Okay, so maybe one of those tribes Bruce Parry tends to visit might have missed out on independent bands crying their hearts out on tour, because they’ve played to their fiftieth crowd of three in as many weeks in a row. Probably not though.

So why this sudden, some might say aggressive, standpoint? Well, because, we don’t HAVE to do this. We are not dominated by some evolutionary scale which means we’re forced to be poor, hungry and unloved by the smarter, more ruthless wealthy people. We can quite easily - and I say this in the full knowledge that we are all reasonably intelligent people - go and take a job in a bank, move up the ranks and become millionaires. Well, if we’d done that in 2006 perhaps. Anyway, things are hard. Life is hard. Money is increasingly hard to come by. Employment levels just bombed like Razorlight’s new album and is still declining. So, let’s look at what we can do to cheer ourselves up, about ourselves.

1) Elitisim  - we’re more creative, exciting and sexy people because of our involvement in the music biz. We write stunning critiques on the most important aural art of our times, we have contact books that would make Paris Hilton envious and we’re all artistic, awfully clever humans. Everyone else is just a ‘normal’ person. We’re where it’s at.

2) Free stuff - okay so we have to buy food…sometimes. We get our entertainment for free - CDs, gigs, sex - we get drinks for free courtesy of expense accounts, we get travel paid for sometimes…and hey, we even WORK for free. WOW!!! Now who wouldn’t want to do that?

3) Cultural expression - yes, we are providing millions of people with the means, the ideas and the abilities to express them, and our, selves within a cultural framework.  Future generations will look back at the work of Los Campesinos! and wonder at how the lyrics, music and energy caused such little fuss in comparison to the dire works of…I don’t know…Leona Lewis. We’ll be remembered, the phrase "I can’t stop bleeding in love" will not. Rejoice!

4) Criticism - we have the innate ability to criticse anyone and anything, tell people how they should be doing their jobs, fight tooth and nail with people over the importance of Mogwai’s latest album and instantly be right, even if we lose the argument. Oh yeah, but I want to ban this sort of behaviour anyway don’t I?

5) We’re not sheep - except for what we wear, the bands we listen to, the food we eat, the art we discuss and the places we go, we’re fucking individuals, yeah?!

6) We get to do what we love - Seriously, who hasn’t dreamt of getting up whenever they want, eating, ignoring the red reminder posted through the letterbox about our water supply, listeing to music, going to a free gig with free drinks, stumbling back home and repeating? Perhaps with some paperwork and angry phonecalls inbetween, aswell. Not one hand raised? Oh.

7) We’re fucking wizards at music quizzes…and the music category of a pub quiz and Trivial Pursuit - You can’t actually beat us, providing the question is NOT about how many No. 1 hits Madonna has had. Anything on the No Wave New York scene of the early eighties, and we’re flying (as long as it’s exclusively about Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch and Glenn Branca because it’s been ages since we watched Kill Yr Idols).

8) Our jobs are safe -  because what we do ISN’T real work. If you do find yourself being chucked unceremoniously out on your ear for a younger, brighter, more attractive rising star, you can find another non-job (there’s plenty around with exceptional non-existent salaries). Otherwise you can get a real one and talk about your intentions to ‘get back into the music industry, I’ve got my foot in the door and contacts up to my eyeballs so I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me…was it cod and chips you wanted, sir?’

9) We’re part of a crumbling empire - we get to watch the industry dissolve, crash, burn and metamorphosise into something different FROM THE INSIDE! Now who can say they’ve done that? Not even the old school have a clue what to do and they’ve been doing this forever. We’re living in interesting times, as the Chinese would say.

10) We dictate what normal people listen to - whether you make the music, advertise it, produce it, package it, write about it, promote it, get it on the radio; we all have a say in brainwashing the general public. When the mindless drones listen to daytime Radio 1 we can all sit back, smiling, and think: "Our work here is done" as their blighted, dull little lives are enlightened with rays of audio sunshine in the form of repetitive, heavily playlist-orientated menus of music. Pride is a sin, but we’ve earned our right to be bad. 

In conclusion, we should have nothing to weep about now. Alright? Now get back to your stations people, we have product to churn out.

Johnny Truant