Comments on: Mercury Music Prize 2008 – The Runners and Riders

By: God god, man!

God god, man! — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:27:32 +0000

I can think of 20,000 reasons for jsutice to come and collect the prize. Or send his mum.

Bet he’s a middle aged white guy. That’ll f*ck them up good and proper.

By: extremelisteningmode

extremelisteningmode — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:43:29 +0000

I’ll join a Corrosion of Conformity tribute band called Rust of Normailty.

And LO – kudos on the phrase “the Yorkshire Building Society Mortgage Salesman of the Year”.

My opinion is that you music is tough to judge. It hits you so viscerally, you can have 100 different reactions from 100 different people.

By: Longman Oz

Longman Oz — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:09:33 +0000

Broon, of course anything that relies entirely on qualitative assessment will always be prone to huge disagreements. It is the nature of the thing. Hence, as you say, the arguments for and against such things get repeated everywhere, so I will not rehash them anymore here.

If you want to talk about something a bit different though, I would love it if the notes of the judges were made available afterwards. Even anonymously. Be it the Oscars, the Mercury Music Prize, the PFA Footballer of the Year, the Yorkshire Building Society Mortgage Salesman of the Year, etc. At least with that degree of transparency, you could understand the logic that gets applied. With that, maybe you could show them some respect.

Instead, what you get is a list and then a winner and no one really knows why X won and why Y was never even in contention. Anything that opaque has to be treated with a large degree of cynicism.

Here endeth the sermon!

By: The Real Slim Dusty

The Real Slim Dusty — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:50:34 +0000

since we mentioned death metal bands earlier , is anyone interested in joining my Cradle of Filth tribute band – Cot of Dirtiness ?

By: extremelisteningmode

extremelisteningmode — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:33:38 +0000

Fair point Broon. Though I would say that the MMP is accused of being gtokenistic because they give the air of appearing tokenistic. I’m just bitter because they didn’t give it to Big Country for the Buffalom Skinners – fucking Suede I still say Radiohead are nailed on this year.

Simon Frith, who is on the panel, used to be my lecturer when I was at Uni. And does he call for my opinion? Does he fuck. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

In the end, I’m with Nick Cave – you can’t award musicians prizes, they ain’t cattle.

By: Broon

Broon — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:01:26 +0000

but d’you know what (i’m now ready for a rant), all I ever read about the MMP is about how predictable and tokenistic it is, and how crap the nominations are, when actually the sum of the criticisms I see are “they didn’t nominate all 12 albums I would have nominated = they is crap”. Besides, ‘predictable’ and ‘tokenistic’ overlap to an extent in a contradictory way. I tell you what’s not predictable – Neon Neon, Rachel Unthank, Portico Quartet, the absense of Portishead and Duffy (among others). And a ‘token x of y’ argument can be made for just about anyone – there’s no Scots on that list but I bet if there was they would be dismissed (by some) as ‘token Scottish’ – well it works all ways. The fact that there IS always at least one act that nobody’s ever heard of – Portico in this case – is dismissed as tokenism, but the specific choice of which record that is is never celebrated as unpredictability. Isn’t it good that there’s a record no-one was aware of before? Doesn’t that mean we might give it a listen now? Isn’t that exactly what we WOULDN’T get if the list exactly matched with any individual’s 12 predictions?

hey, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. The criticisms of the MMP are the same everywhere I look and I’m not convinced by them. Rip that to bits if you will, I’m going out.

By: extremelisteningmode

extremelisteningmode — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:22:19 +0000

I agree Broon, not having a go at the album, more the judges – we all know that the Mercury bosses do enjoy being a bit controversial.

What I have heard from it i have liked.

By: Longman Oz

Longman Oz — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:16:59 +0000

Broon, a good and sincere defence of the album. For what it is worth, I was not dumping on the album itself. Archangel, Ghost Hardware, and Untrue are all cracking tunes.

I was writing more about the insincere poseur bullshit that I have seen written in the past few days.

Anyway, its a joke award given what gets through and what does not. For example, PJ Harvey’s White Chalk was an amazing and deeply challenging concept album, Foals surely did something bright and innovative enough to make the shortlist ahead of most of what did, MIA’s second album was a real cracker, not to mention Fuck Buttons, Portishead, Frightened Rabbit, The Kills, and These New Puritans.

My like-I-care tip – Radiohead to get a “lifetime recognition” award. A bit like when they gave Scorsese the Oscar for the so-so The Departed!

By: The Real Slim Dusty

The Real Slim Dusty — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:01:24 +0000

“Raising sands ” would get my vote , if I believed in voting for these kind of things obviously.

By: Broon

Broon — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:14:33 +0000

I’m tipping it to win, and not to demonstrate how left-field I am. For me it’s the favourite because it’s dubstep’s Boy In Da Corner – just like Dizzee Rascal became the first superstar (relatively speaking) of grime, he took grime from the underground into HMV, most people who have ever heard any grime – what they’ve heard is Dizzee Rascal. Burial is the same with dubstep – Untrue broke dubstep overground, it was for many people (myself included) the first dubstep they ever heard, it’s a gateway album into the entire sub-genre. Dubstep’s popularity has rocketed since Untrue came out.

So from that perspective it’s an ‘important’ album for British music, far moreso than any of the others, representing things like “innovation” that Mercury always claim to look for. It’s fairly left-field, and the Mercury always wants to look like it’s an alternative-kinda prize (hence why Adele or Estelle won’t win).

generally, it’s a fucking incredible album. listen to it, in headphones, loud.

the only thing acting against him is that he’s still anonymous, so he won’t go to collect his award, which might put off the sponsors.

By: extremelisteningmode

extremelisteningmode — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:21:08 +0000

Yup, ‘look how left-field we are!’

By: Longman Oz

Longman Oz — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:07:39 +0000

Burial is an anonymous dubstepper. Album came out around the end of last year. Pretty sparse and dark stuff. Won’t be too everyone’s liking.

Those who (a) are sad enough to give a stuff about the Mercury and (b) want to always tip the left-of-centre nomination, have been tipping this one to win.

They could be right.

Yawn…

By: extremelisteningmode

extremelisteningmode — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:59:07 +0000

As Dusty says, there ain’t much merit in awarding prizes for music, except to teh Hold Steady, obviously.

By: howlinwhippet

howlinwhippet — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:19:43 +0000

I must be slipping…….who the fuck are Burial? A death metal band? If so, I hope they win it, then they can go murder the judges and burn down a church or two.

By: The Real Slim Dusty

The Real Slim Dusty — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:39:30 +0000

awarding “prizes” for music , its a bit ridiculous really.