HOT NEWS WORLD : Music: Music blog | guardian.co.uk (3 сообщения)

rss2email.ru

Блог Жизнь-Путешествие

Глум над рекламой и брендами

Анализ Политических Событий

Вкусные кулинарные рецепты с фото

Music: Music blog | guardian.co.uk
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Music about: Music blog
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog
рекомендовать друзьям >>

Ask the indie professor: Why it matters where you stick your guest pass
Slap an AAA badge on your chest and you might as well be shouting: 'I'm new to this backstage lark!' Instead, watch how professionals use subtle techniques to parade their passes
I think the festival wristband is the new band T-shirt ... see how long people make theirs last for. Agreed?
elvisbragg
Not unlike T-shirts, wristbands and guest passes communicate to members of a music community. But unlike T-shirts, which express band affiliation, passes and wristbands are status markers. A basic festival wristband signifies attendance. Some festivalgoers will leave them on for days afterwards, letting others notice they participated. Perhaps they want people to know they went to Glastonbury, but for others, it's because – let's face it – after wearing something on their wrists for three days when they haven't been washing, they forget it's even there. Guest passes, on the other hand, have a specific code of display related to whom the guest-pass holder wants to be aware of their privileged access. A novice will prominently display their guest pass, generally on the chest, the outside of a jacket or any other overt location. Such obvious display is ridiculed by more experienced members of the community. Music industry professionals use discreet pass placement so only fellow privileged professions know they have increased access. Professionals place passes on the insides of jackets and the undersides of shirts and dresses. The subtle signalling of status is nothing novel. Ornamental display is often used to convey wealth, power, social rank, leisure, profession and/or aesthetics. A glance at the placement of a turban on a Tuareg man's head is all that is required to know his social rank.
Things become more interesting with high-prestige passes. The rarer the pass, the greater the access, the higher the status accrued. For a typical gig, passes range from aftershow, guest, photo pass, table pass, access all areas and laminate. The laminate is the most prestigious as it is the same pass that band members have. This means at live shows, industry professionals negotiate status by the degree of direct access they have to performers. Now the fact that people in the industry scoff at the uninitiated who boldly wear their passes, doesn't mean they're not interested in showing off. However, professionals show off in ways that imply such behaviour is inadvertent. When an industry member gets a higher-access pass, it is placed in such way as to suggest it was accidental: half-obscured on a T-shirt or peeking out of a jacket. Of course with musicians, you are lucky if you can get them to even find where they left their tour passes. As band members are the fetishised commodity within the hierarchical system of access and privilege they have no need to show their passes at all.
With festivals, the dance of insider and outsider status is becoming increasingly limited because levels of access are determined by wristbands, where there is no flexibility of display, other than pushing up or pulling down sleeves. Yet, never to miss an opportunity, the professional who wishes to distinguish themselves from the industry hordes tries to maximise the number of wristbands acquired. If done properly, at a destination festival such as Coachella, you can get wristbands for the weekend VIP, the main stage, the headlining band, the secondary stage, the production area and a few house parties to boot. These wristbands demonstrate a temporary accumulation of status markers not unlike the desirability conveyed by young Masai women by the number of glass necklaces they have received. After the fact, guest passes and wristbands are mementos of the experience of live music where the lines of inclusion, exclusion and prestige were clearly demarcated.
- Indie
- Pop and rock
Wendy Fonarow

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Переслать
Pete Doherty's jewellery range: an exclusive sneak preview
Fancy getting your grubby mits on some Albion Trinketry? Well lend us a tenner first, you know I'm good for it ...
It's official: the Libertines have gone upmarket. Following Carl Barât's recent voyage into the world of unfeasibly dreadful fashion photography for his new album sleeve, Pete Doherty has also decided to wade into the fray with his own line of luxury jewellery.
Albion Trinketry – yes, that's what it's really called – fulfils Doherty's long-held dream to create something expensive enough to alienate his fans and pointless enough to alienate everyone else. But what items are available in this spellbinding new collection? Luckily, I got a sneak preview.
The range encapsulates Doherty's love of things that look much older than they actually are, as evidenced by the state of most of his organs. And, like his music, the Albion Trinketry collection appears to be the work of a wino trapped in a metal dustbin. Sorry, I meant original and timeless.
Here's some of the highlights ...
Cufflinks
Pete Doherty understands that the modern man wants his cufflinks to be practical as well as stylish. He should to be able to take them off at a moment's notice because, for example, he wants to inject himself with heroin from a bejewelled syringe or because he needs to roll up his sleeve and fish a bag of drugs from the U-bend of a grotty public toilet. So are Doherty's cufflinks practical as well as stylish? No. But he understands that they probably should be. Isn't that enough?
Rings
Possibly the highlight of the Albion Trinketry range, Doherty's rings all feature a hand-carved military-inspired cross and are made with oxidised silver, rose gold, black diamonds, mammoth tusk, some of Oscar Wilde's fingernails, milk-bottle tops, his mother's tears and anything Pete has been able to half-inch off the back of the rag-and-bone cart.
Watch chain
Why don't men carry pocket watches any more? Is it because wristwatches and mobile phones have rendered them redundant? No. It's because, until now, watch chains have always been notoriously ugly and unreliable. But thanks to a combination of Doherty's craftsman's eye and cutting-edge technology, you're now just one small step away from owning an item that you couldn't possibly afford and have no real use for. Thanks, Pete.
Bespoke commissions available
For the princely sum of however much money he happens to need at the precise time you ask him, Doherty is able to design any piece of jewellery you like. It doesn't matter what you want, he can make it for you. Order now. Just give him the money first. Oh come on, he's good for it. He needs this, all right? He needs this.
Stuart Heritage

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Переслать
Icelandic music still rules the Airwaves
The economic crash of 2008 nearly put a stop to Iceland Airwaves. But two years on, the festival has bounced back
A few years ago, Iceland was known for Björk, Sigur Ros and a namesake chain of frozen food stores. In October 2008, its fragile banking system collapsed leading to, among other things, a major headache for the annual four-day festival Iceland Airwaves.
Grimur Atlason, the festival manager, recalls the uncertainty: "There haven't been many bands coming to Iceland since 2008. When Airwaves was here that year the banks were closed so we couldn't pay fees." Last year's festival was nearly scrapped, but organisers refused to give up. "Our goal was to be bigger than ever," explains Atlason.
Perhaps the only sign of the recession at this year's festival has been a greater reliance on homegrown talent, with bigger bands from outside Iceland scaled back due to cost. With more than 250 bands playing across a vast array of venues – including bookshops and hairdressers as well as boring old bars and clubs – and a lineup featuring chillwave practitioner Toro Y Moi, dubstep duo Mount Kimbie and 80s electro-pop act, Bernsden, it's a festival that thrives on variety and a genuine passion for music.
It's a shame, then, that this year's festival starts with a bit of a whimper. While local favourites Amiina make pretty, multi-layered folk, their sound is lost in the cavernous main hall of Reykjavik's Art Museum. You sense the young crowd is itching for something more and sure enough there's barely space to breathe in the tiny club that hosts 18-year-old Tampa rapper, Dominique Young Unique. Over grinding, bass-heavy soundbeds, she manages to make the heaving mass of bodies dance, regularly interrupting her flow to scream "Iceland!" as if she can't quite get over how incongruous it all is.
It seems that when the tempo is increased the festival comes alive. Walls manage to create spectacular sounds from what looks like a bank of iPods, while Silver Columns' brand of squelchy, disco-tinged electro is less mannered and more fun live than on record. A DJ set from London's dubstep pioneer James Blake is the real highlight, seamlessly mixing his own piano-driven, vocal-heavy tracks with R&B classics by Destiny's Child and OutKast. A remix of his own Limit to Your Love is dropped mid-set and creates beauty in a dank, sweaty club.
If Blake aims to please, then Factory Floor's raison d'être is to confuse and beguile. The trio open with an ear-piercing squall of feedback, before walking around the stage unplugging and unpacking their instruments. No one's sure if it's part of the set or a soundcheck, but just after a round of sarcastic applause, the band launch into a brilliant, rib-rattling set that manages to inspire illicit dancing and fear in equal measure. Swedish duo jj, who are forced to follow, appear lacklustre in comparison, singer Elin Kastlander's weedy vocals barely evoking anything other than boredom.
By comparison, Saturday's headliner, Robyn, can barely contain her excitement. Having never played Iceland before, she draws a huge crowd, despite taking to the stage at 1am, nearly an hour late. Dressed like Neneh Cherry and imploring the crowd to dance, she's a ball of kinetic energy. At one point she chows down on a banana mid-dance, moving from sad-pop classics such as Be Mine and Dancing On My Own to darker, techno-driven tracks such as We Dance to the Beat and Love Kills. Despite the huge crowd for Robyn, there's an equally fervent turn-out for local youngsters Retro Stefson whose kaleidoscopic mix of genres shouldn't really work as well as it does.
Home to 60% of Iceland's population, Reykjavik is the centre of the country's music industry. It's supported largely by its independent record stores, many of which are run by labels (including Bad Taste, home to the Sugarcubes). In Britain, the economic downturn and the rise of download culture has led to the demise of many indie stores, whereas in Reykjavik the only shop to have shut in recent months was the sole chain store. With a genuine desire to promote local talent, it's an industry that is flourishing. Iceland Airwaves definitely helps, with 2,300 visitors coming into the city and buying relatively cheap CDs. As Atlason says: "[Brighton's] Great Escape [festival] is in a small city, but it's close to London. Here there's nothing else. You have Reykjavik, the big city, but it's about the music, it's about the bands."
Michael Cragg

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Переслать