Guess Wha? HWCH time again. (1 Viewer)

[Scientician 0.8]

Like band - see band, everything else is pointlessness at this point. There is no industry, there's no money, there's very few opertunities for bands to do anything unless it's completely DIY.

I would like to see all the DIY bands in dublin throw in the fee to be considered for HWCH per man (so say it's € 25 at average 4 members per band and 100 bands playing that's €10,000 to hire venues publicity etc) and organise a festival where there own bands played and there was no fannying about expecting David Geffen or whoever the fuck is in charge of the "the industry" now to show up.

Call it Meh fest. Spend the money hiring Joanna Newsome to headline.

In fairness to Das Nugs, he's one of the founders of Popical Island and its all-dayers are essentially what you just described.

 

[ann post]

newsome is wil for cancelling at the last min.

 

[ernesto]

yeah fair play to the likes of Popical, but, they dont really cater for the heavier end of the spectrum and its mostly Pop(ical) type music innit? not a mark against them or anything just that do HWCH not cater to more variety?

 

[GO]

yeah fair play to the likes of Popical, but, they dont really cater for the heavier end of the spectrum and its mostly Pop(ical) type music innit? not a mark against them or anything just that do HWCH not cater to more variety?

They put Moutpiece on supporting Big Monster LL Cool Love one time.

Fucking amazing night.Some hot looking ladies at that show.Nearly went indie myself after it.

 

[ernesto]

They put Moutpiece on supporting Big Monster LL Cool Love one time.

Fucking amazing night.Some hot looking ladies at that show.Nearly went indie myself after it.

and how many gigs have been put on under the popical banner?
one time isnt really catering for the smellier end of things though

 

[washingcattle]

In fairness to Das Nugs, he's one of the founders of Popical Island and its all-dayers are essentially what you just described.

Popical Island isn't exactly the same thing to be fair. Firstly it's a label that puts out records so it's in it's best interests to put on a show with all the bands from it's roster on the bill. Secondly as far as I can tell every band on the label shares several members with the rest of the bands so it's probably what maybe 12 people spread over 8 bands ? So really it's a very small number of people pooling their resources to promote themselves. It's not quite the same thing as say 400 people promoting each others bands as a collective i.e each bands finances allows 99 other bands to play at a very large event. In that format the only beneficiaries are the bands if you get me. Thirdly and this may be misconstrued but bear with me. Popical Island is home to a certain kind of band, as ernesto said, it doesn't cater for say, Toymonger or Boys of Summer, and as far as I can tell nor does HWCH (I bet both of those bands have played at HWCH and thusly made my point invalid). The thing about HWCH which irks me the most is that it slightly pompously bills itself as the showcase for irish bands but it doesn't ever seem to reflect the current crop of great bands. I've never heard of 90% of those bands on that bill and as such it's therefore failed to cover at least a section of the current musical landscape of Ireland. Again with a purely DIY festival the line up is not "curated"(god I fucking hate that word) by or pitched towards one demographic. That's most important. You can't leave it up to a small number of people to decide what is worth seeing and expect it to cover all bases so to speak and as soon as compromises are made everything does veer towards the asinine. This is all getting a bit communist isn't it ? You get the idea.

Anyway I'm not criticising Popical Island I'm just pointing out how what I said is very different.

Fair play to Das Nugs though.

More of that.

Less of HWCH

 

[ann post]

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Popical Island isn't exactly the same thing to be fair. Firstly it's a label that puts out records so it's in it's best interests to put on a show with all the bands from it's roster on the bill. Secondly as far as I can tell every band on the label shares several members with the rest of the bands so it's probably what maybe 12 people spread over 8 bands ? So really it's a very small number of people pooling their resources to promote themselves. It's not quite the same thing as say 400 people promoting each others bands as a collective i.e each bands finances allows 99 other bands to play at a very large event. In that format the only beneficiaries are the bands if you get me. Thirdly and this may be misconstrued but bear with me. Popical Island is home to a certain kind of band, as ernesto said, it doesn't cater for say, Toymonger or Boys of Summer, and as far as I can tell nor does HWCH (I bet both of those bands have played at HWCH and thusly made my point invalid). The thing about HWCH which irks me the most is that it slightly pompously bills itself as the showcase for irish bands but it doesn't ever seem to reflect the current crop of great bands. I've never heard of 90% of those bands on that bill and as such it's therefore failed to cover at least a section of the current musical landscape of Ireland. Again with a purely DIY festival the line up is not "curated"(god I fucking hate that word) by or pitched towards one demographic. That's most important. You can't leave it up to a small number of people to decide what is worth seeing and expect it to cover all bases so to speak and as soon as compromises are made everything does veer towards the asinine. This is all getting a bit communist isn't it ? You get the idea.

Anyway I'm not criticising Popical Island I'm just pointing out how what I said is very different.

Fair play to Das Nugs though.

More of that.

Less of HWCH

FWIW 19 acts played the last all dayer. This doesn't include every single band who as released stuff under the auspices of Popical or have played at Popical shows. There's of course some overlap but Popical (is it a label? I know there's been some debate on that) represents the work of several dozen people. I don't know how exclusive it is, I mean they let me in, so it's possible the number of people involved will be much bigger in the future. I'm not sure how a collective of the size you describe would be practical, not saying it couldn't just it would be extremely difficult I imagine and while the idea is quantitively different to how Popical Island currently operates it's basically the same thing writ larger.


I don't know those bands you mentioned. I mean I've heard the names but that's about it. WRT your comment "I've never heard of 90% of those bands on that bill and as such it's therefore failed to cover at least a section of the current musical landscape of Ireland. " Surely a showcase should contain largely unknown acts or is there something I'm missing? In fact my criticism of it would be the opposite, that many of these acts are established so how come they need to play as part of a showcase (of course I understand das nugs' point above that it's just another gig to many of them). I've not gone through the list of acts I'm unfamiliar with to hear what each sounds like, have you?

 

[Deleted member 3435]

People lamenting the fact that the music they like doesn't seem to be represented by a "scene" they perceive as popular/vogue-ish/ clique-ish? People suggesting a pooling of resources and DIY attitude as an answer to that gripe?

This is coming full circle.

 

[Deleted member 3435]

Popical Island isn't exactly the same thing to be fair. Firstly it's a label that puts out records so it's in it's best interests to put on a show with all the bands from it's roster on the bill. Secondly as far as I can tell every band on the label shares several members with the rest of the bands so it's probably what maybe 12 people spread over 8 bands ? So really it's a very small number of people pooling their resources to promote themselves. It's not quite the same thing as say 400 people promoting each others bands as a collective i.e each bands finances allows 99 other bands to play at a very large event. In that format the only beneficiaries are the bands if you get me. Thirdly and this may be misconstrued but bear with me. Popical Island is home to a certain kind of band, as ernesto said, it doesn't cater for say, Toymonger or Boys of Summer, and as far as I can tell nor does HWCH (I bet both of those bands have played at HWCH and thusly made my point invalid). The thing about HWCH which irks me the most is that it slightly pompously bills itself as the showcase for irish bands but it doesn't ever seem to reflect the current crop of great bands. I've never heard of 90% of those bands on that bill and as such it's therefore failed to cover at least a section of the current musical landscape of Ireland. Again with a purely DIY festival the line up is not "curated"(god I fucking hate that word) by or pitched towards one demographic. That's most important. You can't leave it up to a small number of people to decide what is worth seeing and expect it to cover all bases so to speak and as soon as compromises are made everything does veer towards the asinine. This is all getting a bit communist isn't it ? You get the idea.

Anyway I'm not criticising Popical Island I'm just pointing out how what I said is very different.

Fair play to Das Nugs though.

More of that.

Less of HWCH

Your information about Popical is not correct. But so what, like? Why would you know the ins and outs of it anyway, unless you're interested/involved?

You are right that it's totally different from HWCH though.

Your idea seems pretty good. But wouldn't someone need to organise all that? And wouldn't that take some money? Would the organiser take the place of whoever you perceive to be the bad guys in the HWCH story? Maybe I'm wrong there.

I'm not defending HWCH at all, and I agree with some stuff you're saying. I'm not actually playing it either. I just answered Scientician's question.

And SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS!!!

 

[washingcattle]

FWIW 19 acts played the last all dayer. This doesn't include every single band who as released stuff under the auspices of Popical or have played at Popical shows. There's of course some overlap but Popical (is it a label? I know there's been some debate on that) represents the work of several dozen people. I don't know how exclusive it is, I mean they let me in, so it's possible the number of people involved will be much bigger in the future. I'm not sure how a collective of the size you describe would be practical, not saying it couldn't just it would be extremely difficult I imagine and while the idea is quantitively different to how Popical Island currently operates it's basically the same thing writ larger.

I didn't say it was exclusive but any collective by it's very nature is going to be a group of people knit together by common tastes/interests and this is reflected by what they produce.
Like I said I am not criticising Popical Island at all, what they do is great.

I don't know those bands you mentioned. I mean I've heard the names but that's about it. WRT your comment "I've never heard of 90% of those bands on that bill and as such it's therefore failed to cover at least a section of the current musical landscape of Ireland. " Surely a showcase should contain largely unknown acts or is there something I'm missing? In fact my criticism of it would be the opposite, that many of these acts are established so how come they need to play as part of a showcase (of course I understand das nugs' point above that it's just another gig to many of them). I've not gone through the list of acts I'm unfamiliar with to hear what each sounds like, have you?

Of course I haven't I don't have that kind of time and I don't really care enough to bother that doesn't change the fact that a certain types of music are seen as too leftfield (noise or grind core or whatever) or it seems too out of fashion (metal) or whatever to fit into a festival curated by people who at there core probably really do love music but at the same time are for my money a little to interested in fashion trends and again "the industry" side of things. I mean that has always been a lot of peoples problem with this festival. Much of it seems aimed at people who make there money/reputation through music but aren't musicians. All of this would probably be okay if there was an industry out there to speak of but there isn't. It's dying. It seems really odd that for all the great DIY that goes on here that this thing still has to exist. That's my problem with it. Can we not all just say fuck the showcases or whatever they're calling them and just ignore that side of things and let it slip off into history ?

Your information about Popical is not correct. But so what, like? Why would you know the ins and outs of it anyway, unless you're interested/involved?

You are right that it's totally different from HWCH though.

Your idea seems pretty good. But wouldn't someone need to organise all that? And wouldn't that take some money? Would the organiser take the place of whoever you perceive to be the bad guys in the HWCH story? Maybe I'm wrong there.

I'm not defending HWCH at all, and I agree with some stuff you're saying. I'm not actually playing it either. I just answered Scientician's question.

And SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS!!!

I know fuck all about the inner workings of Popical Island, I do know it has released records and for the most part the bands on the bills have been on the records it has released. I include the compilations in that so maybe that explains my figures a bit. Anyway, I guess the idea of the "organiser" is exactly what I'd be up for removing altogether. like I said 100 bands organise a festival where they all split the costs and orgainse the thing themselves. I guess you would have to leave the ins and outs of it to chance. Pay money into a pool throw your bands name in a hat and let sheer chance make the decisions. The result could be the most eclectic bills in the history of music. To reiterate my point to begin with was that we no longer really need "the industry" or anything that used to come along with it.

It's dead, lets dance.

 

[GO]

Edit..ahh fuck it.

I'm keeping this bit of knowledge to myself

 

[JohnnyRaz]

in fairness while most of the music wouldnt be my cup of tea, I think Popical Island is in many ways model for the DIY scene.

I'd agree 100% with the overall spirit of what washingcattle is saying, but having tried to pull similar together in the past Ive run up against similar problems as basically all it takes is a few unreliable/untrustworthy folks to bring the whole thing down. Collectives, while inherently self selecting (both in terms of musical styles and persona connections), work because theres a greater element of collective responsibility and trust amongst the members. Also (ideally) labor is shared amongst the group, although it may take one or two heads to pull it forward/organise.

while not trying to advertise oursleves here (drunkenlust), I'd personally be up for working with pretty much any genre of racket, as long as its somewhat original and the people making it werent complete cunts.

 

[snakybus]

For what it's worth I think there'd definitely be scope for what Washing Cattle's suggesting, if say three or four collectives/labels/whatevers like Popical Island and others got together and pooled their resources and bands/acts, and a few people with their heads screwed on made it happen. It's totally doable.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

Obviously, Popical Island never made claims for itself as a representative body for disenfranchised pop bands or bands of any stripe. However, we have put on gigs by loads of bands who aren't directly involved in the collective. But who cares? We don't owe anyone anything, and if we did, we couldn't afford it.
Anyway, yeah, putting on your own festival is a good idea. People do this kind of thing, look at Heft Fest last week for example.

 

[Anthony]

100 musicians organising a festival.. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha11!!!!!!

 

[near_zero]

I payed the application fee, got rejected and didn't get refunded(they never claimed they would refund people as far as I know). They offered "industry feedback", I listened, took it on board and then saw the lineup. Disappointing.

 

[snakybus]

maybe I was wrong about the tenner

anyway, it's a bit of a lottery so don't feel bad - bands I've been in have been accepted and rejected on what appears to be a whim so best not to get too hung up on it. Especially the 'industry feedback' bit, that's just Jackie-Hayden's-demo-dip type stuff. Plenty of other gigs out there to play, plenty of people doing good stuff.

 

[near_zero]

Absolutely, losing a tenner aint the end of the world either. I've lost a lot more money on gigs!

 

[ann post]

the industry is not dead. thats a complete indie fantasy myth. the industry is;

A: people who can smell any available grant within a 300km radius.
B: advertising. music needs to stop being stupid about advertising. that MCA thing about 'the beastie boys should never be used in adds' is a complete fantasy, a sales pitch. if the sabotage video didnt sell 100 hours of ads on mtv, then smells like teen spirit did, and advertising paid. tom waits sold advertising for network 2 when i watched no disco. the only thing that annoys me about advertising in music is the limited selection of beers at festivals. music sells ads, it always has and always will - get over it. and stop the bullshit anti-ads crap unless you have pulled all your music from all tv and all radio.
C: the major record labels who still buy radio airplay by schmoozing the programmers. as cool and hip as we are on thumped and the net at large, radio is still king. ask lady gaga's accountant. people go to work and hear the radio and then need to dance at the weekend so they dance to the songs they hear on the radio.
D: virals, should anyone on this site strike viral gold, they will tour the world and good luck if they do.

you can live and work on making music outside this, but it exists and is not dead.