Sunday June 16th 2002
In today’s Observer, Barbara Ellen, the Julie Burchill you can eat between meals, criticises the male dominance of Meltdown, the annual unabashed middle-class, middle-aged, but definitely not middlebrow music festival held on the South Bank. This is the big London arts centre where everything is taken very seriously indeed. The people there even know how to mike up live bands properly. Despite my aversion to the general air of snobbiness, of an elitism that is genuinely connected to the real elite, the people who actually do run things (it includes the Royal Festival Hall, after all), I do prefer it to the more smelly venues in town, and would be quite happy if Fosca could play there forever.
Meltdown is ‘curated’ by a different person each year, usually a well-known figure of a certain age and the right kind of reputation: Scott Walker, John Peel, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, Robert Wyatt, and now David Bowie. Mr Bowie has a new album out, the critical consensus calling it euphemistically “his best for years”. Which is what they’ve said about every single album of his since “Tin Machine 2”.
Once appointed, the curator then gets to choose the bill of the festival. And then a man in charge reminds them that their best mate’s favourite Nigerian gargling jazz quartet are all very well, but they need to sell some tickets here. The curator then suggests Level 42, featuring Mark King’s effortless mastery of the slap bass. The man in charge shakes his head sadly and draws out a list of a few choice crowd-pulling, but broadsheet-compatible names from the world of Fashionable Rock. “Whatever”, shrugs the curator, and mutters sadly into his cocoa about how things were better in the old days when you could leave your paedophile unlocked and still get change from a pound. Later, he does an interview about how he was always a big fan of The Radioheads ever since their first album, “Dummy” was played to him by his granddaughter Plectrum Adenoid.
Barbara Ellen complains that, in ten years of Meltdown, only one curator has been female: Laurie Anderson, “who nobody remembers or cares about”. She doesn’t mention that earlier curators Magnus Lindberg, Louis Andriesson and George Benjamin aren’t exactly household names either. And I care about Laurie Anderson. And I think Lou Reed does too. So that’s at least two.
She goes on to bemoan the male dominance of the Matedown bills over the years, and equates this with misogyny. Misogyny is one of those strong words frequently misused and freely bandied about a little too quickly by columnists who hope that by doing so, they’ll be immune to such accusations themselves. Foreign regimes punishing adulterous women with public stonings might be more deservedly described as misogynist. Booking Supergrass and Coldplay over Pam Ayres or Maureen Lipman is just careless.
Ms Ellen finally extends her complaint to the implicit sexism of the music business, which is fair enough, except that she claims female artists get overlooked in awards and critics’ polls. This is quite untrue. Every time Polly Harvey gets out of bed she wins some tacky gong somewhere. And Kate Bush recently received a Q Magazine award for not even doing that.
So, there’s really nothing to complain about after all. Ms Bush gets an award without having to make a record for years, Ms Ellen gets her column done without having to check her facts, and I get something to write about in my diary without doing anything involving heavy lifting.
