Thirty Years Underground : Changes in the Music Industry
Slaine, poet/MC of Portrush funkster skate-crew, Team Fresh sheds some light on his band’s experience of the music indsutry in Ireland.
OffHerRocker: What do you imagine are the differences between emerging musicians today and that of U2’s day?
Slaine:Wow… when U2 were starting out, the only influence they had was traditional Irish music, The Dubliners and showbands touring the country playing that week’s top 40 from start to finish, probably in cold dance halls where you could buy a cup of tea and an egg sandwich afterwards…Bono himself said after watching The Clash play Dublin Castle that he and his mates sat up all night trying to figure out what they had just seen and how they were going to start a band like they’d just witnessed…. I guess today it’s easier to be an emerging band from Ireland but personally I feel there’s a lot of “Oh, you’re Irish? Why don’t you sound more like U2, Ash or Snow Patrol…?” It’s almost as if the music industry is saying Irish bands need to sing sad ballads and have soft voices… but wasn’t that what U2 were fighting against in the first place? And Stiff Little Fingers before them?
OHR: Which experiences of breaking into the music industry do you think remain the same?
S: I suppose everyone says it’s easier to get your music out there these days, thanks to the Internet and MySpace but in reality that just means record company people have a lot more crap to wade through before they find your stuff…you still have to get out there , play regularly and give a damn good show.
LR: How do you identify with your precursors of twenty years ago?
S:They were from the same place and sang about the same stuff. Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones, The Outcasts…. Punk didn’t kick off in the South the same way it did in the North, so growing up up here, we couldn’t really relate to U2 or Mundy or The Frames, but when I heard Jake Burns’ rasping 17 year-old voice screaming the lyrics to “Alternative Ulster” for the first time, my hair stood on end and I listened up… I hope we don’t make any enemies saying this but acts from the South always seemed more contemplative and kinda boring while our bands sounded like they were running full speed through a riot, and it sounded exciting, confrontational and even a little bit hopeful for the future…. Most of us moved on to listening to hip-hop because it had the same message but gave us a chance to relax after pogoing and punching the air.
How has Irish music progressed from its early roots? Are guitars and sex still a golden formula?
I don’t think they ever were. The only person i can think of when I think ‘guitars and sex’ is Phil Lynott. The sex formula seems to be a winner in southern England, all the bands coming out of there are trying to look sexy and weird but their music is pretty bland. Irish bands (just like their ancient bardic ancestors) seem to have an air of mystery about them that even they don’t understand. I’ve seen it in live venues in England: bands playing all night and the crowd loving them, then an Irish group get on-stage and the place is mesmerised, like somewhere in the back of their heads they know they’re watching something that goes back thousands of years, not just to the latest fad.
What do you think is brave and original about your sound?
We were all massive hip-hop fans when we were in our teens (still are beside all the other musical influences coming in) but we used to sit at parties listening to The Herbaliser or DJ Shadow and dissect each sample; “oh, thats the piano from that Tribe Called Quest song… is that a guitar or a mandolin at that point?” Eventually we realised, if hip-hop is made up from samples of every other type of music, imagine a band that did the reverse: took all those aspects of the music and exploded it out again by getting the guitarist to play the guitar samples, bassist to play the basslines and an almighty drummer thundering through everything from motown to the most hectic Chemical Brothers beat there is.
Brave? I guess getting up on stage in little towns in middle Ulster and shouting “I know I’m gonna get shot for this but it’s time your flags came down!” is either brave or stupid. We had to play a gig in Belfast recently where the front of the venue was decked out in red white and blue and Union Jacks. We stood outside, looked up and said “we are not playing that tune tonight.” Inside though, there were two hurling teams having dinner, who stayed to watch the show…so yeah, that was kinda scary but fun at the same time, we didn’t know which way it was going to go all night.
Is there a genuine garage-band scene today? Which acts do you feel are ‘underground’?
There is an amazing garage-band scene at the moment. Not too sure about the rest of Ireland but up around the north coast it’s more lively than it’s ever been.
Axis Of are a brilliant young punk group from around here, I went to see them the other night, and even though they’re a three piece and were playing on a really small stage, they moved so much you didn’t know where to look next.
Bulbous Head were a massive surprise, I don’t know where this crazy eight-piece band has come from but I absolutely love them. They sound like Talking Heads meets the Chemical Brothers (with a wee bit of LCD Soundsystem thrown in) and they’re all about 16-18 years old and just brilliant. You leave the gig, walk through a windy north Antrim town and feel your heart warmed.
How would the gig circuit in the Eighties compare today?
Well, it wasn’t too pleasant travelling around up here in the Eighties. There’s still a feeling of friction in the air sometimes but you just play anyway and let the dinosaurs grumble.
How much publicity depends on the Internet?
Quite a lot I think. When an organiser does a good job and promotes the night, that’s great but recently we’ve noticed that promoters put one flyer on the Internet and leave it at that. The Internet has made people lazy as well I think. In Team Fresh, our mates know we film alot of gigs and post the videos the next day, so a lot of the time they won’t show [knowing they can view the footage]…some mates, huh?
How do you think earlier bands compensated that lack of exposure?
I remember a band from Portrush, Dissent, used to wallpaper all major towns up here before their gigs. You couldn’t drive anywhere without being visually assaulted by their names and images, which worked. People thought if they had that many posters, they must be big… BANDS, LISTEN UP! Simplest way to get your name out there: wallpaper your town 
Do you think successful bands of the Eighties could still break the charts today if they were starting afresh? Give an example of who could/not…
Aw, The Clash could definately do it if they started today… any song from their first or second album sounds better than The Libertines.
The Specials could do a cracker collaboration with Asian Dub Foundation or The Beat… I reckon there’s gonna be a big throwback to this sort of stuff. The music at the moment reminds me of that terrible early 90s era where Simply Red and M People won every award for what felt like a hundred years, then suddenly BOOM!, the big smelly socks of Grunge kicked the door in and wiped the slate clean for another few years. Music is way too safe at the moment and rock bands out there just act rough to be marketable. Someone, somewhere is gonna explode soon and put all the fakers to shame…trust me, happens every ten years or so.
What fresh challenges do new bands face in the Noughties (image, internet, touring, distribution/management)?
A guy we know who used to work for record companies in Asia came home recently. He was our idol growing up but he came back and watched all the local bands and then told them to get new hairstyles and kick the less-cool looking members out… we were all in shock, how could this be?! Who stole our hero and replaced him with this zombie?
There’s probably not much room for bands to grow or develop anymore because labels want money ASAP: it doesn’t matter to them if you have writer’s block. Our man from Asia used football analogies to describe bands. Referring to the bands he’d signed as a league table, there were bands at the top, middle and reserves of the league. He’d pull reserve bands out for support slots and premier bands for big shows. If a premier band were showing signs of trouble he’d have his next team/band ready to take their place. I remember looking at him and thinking “you shouldn’t have told us that”.
Touring is hard in a band as big as ours. Most of us have full-time jobs during the week so any tour we’d go on would be a quick hit-and-run, commando-style raid on two venues in Belfast then back up the road to invade this lovely quiet cafe we know. We were supposed to be touring around the Balkans this summer, paying for it out of our own pocket. Unfortunately we [fruitlessly] asked Bushmills Whiskey for sponsorship the week after they got sold to a giant American corporation (and NO! Asking Bushmills for sponsorship isn’t selling out…it’s merely asking a company who has poisoned our villages for hundreds of years to put something back into the community by paying for us to leave it, haha!).
“Give the wee lad your glasses, man. You can get laser surgery when you get home!”
Are the pressures greater on talent or image?
Nowadays? Definitely image…. It cracks me up how many naturally-talented musicians live in Ireland but probably 0.05% will get heard. I lived in Sydney and every beachbum and his dog was a DJ, MC, singer or an actor but they were all talentless and image-motivated. Back home we look normal but have heads full of ideas and music. If everyone in Ireland who can play, realised and really really believed it, we could have something amazing here. Bono may be a bit mouthy sometimes but this is what he’s been trying to tell us all this time (and only because The Clash told him first!).
Bob Geldof organised Live Aid to highlight humanitarian crises abroad. What issues influence modern songwriters and musicians? Do personal issues take precedence over politics?
Most modern songwriters write self-indulgent tunes about love or cheating. That’s understandable though, most of these people are ego-maniacs, if they weren’t they wouldn’t be where they are now.
I’m all for artists who take on political issues as long as the politics affect them. It’s kinda weird seeing Bono on television telling me to send my money to Africa when he’s standing in a derelict village wearing Gucci shades. Also, why didn’t U2 put their millions into the Dublin slums- charity begins and home and all that?
I’d far rather listen to Asian Dub Foundation or Primal Scream singing about the state of modern society than any singer/songwriter with an acoustic singing about love… I mean c’mon! James Blunt used to be a soldier, he should be writing tunes to turn people off the idea of war by writing about what he saw. He could’ve been a modern day Woody Guthrie but y’know: “Sorry Mr Blunt, that won’t sell. How about a love-song?”
Finally, how do you think the industry will evolve in the next few years? Are changes already apparent?
All albums will be free and bands will only make money by gigging which is gonna be brilliant. It’ll separate the wheat from the chaff and we’ll be left with the dedicated, hardcore, focussed artists who deserve to be there in the first place.
Check out Team Fresh on MySpace and YouTube.