January 2009 Archives
So, where were we? Sitting on our fat arses as usual, surfing the net or watching some other screen for signs of life. There's nothing to see here and even if there was you wouldn't be able to see it because my enormous fat gut is blocking out the sun.
Last week we decided that advertising is very powerful. Or rather I decided that on your behalf, in fact it's mostly powerfully annoying. The Government use advertising a lot of late, they use it for public service purposes and also to try and convince us that your self-assessment tax form is easy to fill in. We're rarely fooled.
Their latest campaign tells us that we have to 'change 4 life' . The inclusion of the numeral is presumably to make them appear 'hip' (ironic use of outdated term) and appeal to the youngsters. It's important to appeal to the young because we, their irresponsible parents, have been filling them full of junk food and making them watch TV instead of exercising. This has nothing to do with our yearning for an easy life, or the fact that we're too busy working to pay our bills to bother what our children eat, or do in their spare time.
Advertising works. Having worked at the edges of the industry, both buying and selling ads, for many years I guess I have to believe this. I also have plenty of related experiences and even personal anecdotal evidence.
For instance my daughter recently showed me the compare the meerkat website. She's 12 and has no interest in buying insurance so you might imagine that the point of the ads is lost, but it's made an impression and the brand is now fixed in her head. There are countless other ad-jingles that she can sing with very little influence from me, usually I'm begging her to stop.
I often think I'm hardened against sales messages but even I became tempted by a press ad last week offering a free pint with a lunchtime meal at certain Irish theme pubs. I was tempted even though the pint was of 'trendy fake Irish cider' and I'm less likely to drink this (in a glass with ice) than I am to do a naked morris dance in the middle of Broad Street. Neither of these things is going to happen btw.
Sadly I find that due to my personal involvement and probable over-exposure most ads either fail to influence me or actually drive me totally nuts. There are two current TV ads for insurance which do a bit of both. I have no idea why Iggy Pop appears in the Swift Cover ads other than to destroy my love and respect for the man I consider to be the original punk and one of the greatest rock n' roll performers in history. It's not an ad about the company changing its name, why is he there? I confess that although I've probably seen the ad a dozen or so times but I get so angry that I completely miss the voiceover.
Are Swiftcover offering insurance for stage-divers or self-harmers or for those who over-indulge in drugs? Do they know anything of Iggy's history? If celebs in ads are meant to influence us - because of our affinity with the celeb - then this one fails massively. The only people who recognise Iggy will be people who love him. Those people (like me) will be offended by his presence in an insurance ad and choose any other company rather than Swift. Those who don't recognise him will see some wiry, muscular 62 yr old selling insurance and wonder why. Why, Iggy, WHY???
On Monday I had a melancholy moment, in the middle of Zavvi.
I was among the vultures picking the rancid flesh from the corpse of their bankruptcy sale, another 20% off - or 30% on books. Perhaps my sadness was prompted by memories of a misspent youth, the many hours I spent in Virgin Megastore flicking through the racks of vinyl and latterly CD.
Is this another representation of a bygone age? The thought that we once had to go into record stores to find out about music, back catalogue and the like - now all we have to do is move our fingers across a keyboard. We can even hear it and buy it without getting off our fat arses.
I used to love browsing in record shops, even Cyclops in Piccadilly Arcade where the owner was famously grumpy and appeared to hate customers, or maybe that was just me. The shop is even mentioned in Jonathan Coe's excellent Rotter's Club, although he avoids mentioning the owner's mood - perhaps to stay on the right side of the libel laws.
I'm not entirely sure if my mood was influenced by the devaluation of music generally, with some incredible albums on offer at less than £5. In all honesty I'm not sure why this should bother me so greatly - particularly as I didn't pay for most of mine. In a sense it should open up the greater world of music to a wider range of people, I'm not sure that it does - but at least the option is open. This said the low pricing seems to indicate the eventual collapse of recorded music retailing.
Most record stores have already gone to the wall or no longer sell much music. My local HMV in Coventry gives much more shelf-space to DVD than it does to CDs, it's a waste of time going there for anything vaguely interesting or obscure - even if it is there it'll be too expensive. It seems like a shame, a crying shame - whatever the current options have to offer they're not quite the same. Clearly I'm getting old, or I've already got there.
In an entirely predictable fashion this month is traditionally dominated by writers & seers making various prophecies for what might happen to us all in the next 12 months. The only reliable prediction is that by the end of the year we'll all have forgotten the bulk of the predictions that were made.
A few weeks back I read that 2009 would be one of the hottest years on record in the UK. Aside from the fact that we can barely trust our weather forecasters to get it right over a 72 hour period, the problem with this type of prediction is that we're unable to check it. I don't imagine anyone reading this blog will be noting down the temperature on a daily basis and checking it against their records for the previous years. I also seem to recall a similar prediction around 12 months ago - long before we waded through the damp squib of summer 2008.
The other types of predictions - best films, celebs to watch out for, new bands, etc - are more like well-educated-guesswork. People 'in the know' know things that most of us don't - or couldn't care less about. It's in their interests to know which films, TV shows or albums are due for release, what's been big in other territories (particularly the U.S.) and what's being given the biggest hype in the coming months.
For example as 2008 dawned it was easy to predict the success of Duffy & Adele because we all knew that the record labels were looking to replicate the chart fortunes of Amy Winehouse. By December 07 both Duffy & Adele had recorded the bulk of their albums and were being touted by various PRs to all the key music writers and radio presenters. On that basis it was clear that both acts would be treated as 'priorities' by their individual labels, making the task of prophesising their success a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
I appear to have lost my resolve. Not the fizzy hangover cure - though God knows I could use it - but the spirit and intent that we're meant to have at this time of year.
I've never been great at resolutions, I'm generally too indecisive to even make a list of things I could and should change about myself. The other thing is that whilst I can see the use of having a 'benchmark' like the New Year to start something positive, it's not usually a good time given that we're at our weakest from a long period of over indulgence and inaction. Or maybe that's just me. I haven't even contemplated work for about 8 days now and I have to force myself to sit and type this, despite having a plethora of blog ideas spilling from my brain.
Perhaps I just lack willpower. If I had resolved to improve my diet I'd have blown that within 15 minutes of waking this morning as I consumed two chocolate biscuits for breakfast. In my defence we did receive about four tins of biscuits at Christmas, is that really a defence? Similarly if I'd resolved to waste less time it would've been broken just after the biscuit incident as I spent 45 minutes on Mario Kart trying to unlock the Funky Kong character (and failing). Maybe I should resolve to get better at Mario Kart, if only I had more time!
Authors
Paul Flower - Paul Flower works in the music industry, a promoter, critic, (self)-publicist and all-round consultant to clients.
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