09 August 2009 — The Biggest Unsigned Band in Australia
Andrew Murphett had an interview with Jet in the EG on Friday, which you can read online here.
The story of Jet has been somewhat of a cautionary tale the past couple of years, with their lack of recent success attributed to all manner of things. Being dropped by a major label is a pretty common way for a band to fall apart, so full credit to them for managing to avoid destruction. Aside from that though, there were a couple of things in the article that caught my attention.
The first is the nature of the article itself. In its own way, it's a relatively informative piece, and perfectly well written. But I do get a little bit tired of what seems to pass for music journalism here - if not everywhere else. Again, no problem with the article itself, or with Andrew Murphett, but the fact that there are essentially only three ways in which the music press writes about popular music: reviews, interviews and announcements that are basically just reprinted press releases issued by the bands themselves. In this instance, like many others, it's a combination of all three.
Aside from it being an interview, Murphett briefly mentions the music on Jet's new album, suggesting that it's pretty good, without really offering any analysis beyond saying that there are "two excellent ballads, (and) a couple of rock-radio-friendly mid-tempo tracks". And it's also propaganda. At the top of the article we are told that "Jet are ready to soar", and the tone continues from there. Too often it simply feels like it's an article tailored to suit the needs of Jet much more than the reader.
The other thing I noticed was right at the end. Mark Wilson, the bass player, when talking about the fact that they weren't signed to a label until recently, says that "as arrogant as it sounds, we knew that somebody would pick us up." It's funny to think that it would be considered arrogant for a band to be confident that they would be signed to a record label. It suggests that the label is making a big investment by signing them, thereby making it arrogant to assume that one would so readily agree to distribute their record. This needs to change, if it hasn't already. Labels need to charge for their services, which can be anything from simply distributing an album to hiring producers to record it. The don't need to pay big advances, they don't need to act like banks. They need to operate in a way that their successes aren't nearly as profitable as they were 10 years ago, but their failures aren't nearly as costly. If a band approaches a label with an album already in the can, and the money to pay for their services, why reject them? If a band has no money and hasn't got any to record an album, send them to a bank to get a loan.