The Futureheads have a new album out this week. It's called 'Rant'. What's remarkable about it is it's an a capella album. A brave move for a rock group that have a strong fan base and four studio albums under its belt.
At this stage of their career bands can live or die by their next move. They've come through the 'difficult second album' phase, been touring for a decade and need to do something that is different but is more of the same. Usually the answer to that dilemma is 'more cowbell'. Or in other words, lets do more of the same but bigger. More guitars. More drums. More noise. And lets do it louder.
Creativity is about subtraction. What you remove is as import as what you add. If you're making a blockbuster like Transformers and you add more robots, you simply have a film with more robots. If you're making a film like The Artist and you take away the voices you have something 'remarkable'.
What's really interesting is that when you combine elements in a creative way (such as rock bands and a capella) to create something new interesting posibilities that arise as a result. For example you could argue that it took the arrival of broadband and Flash to make Youtube a reality. In this case touring the album becomes a completely new experience for the band and the audience. Not only is the cost of the tour reduced because they have less gear (on ticket price) but the venue's they can now play a different kind of venue.
It's great to see the creative side of 'the industry' taking bold steps in risk averse times.
I've been talking a lot recently about how my team should start thinking a little less about an audience of individuals and a little more about the interactions between them and their audience. Once you get your head around your audience having their own audience then you start to ask the question 'What do they have to broadcast?' or better still 'What do they need to broadcast?' and 'How can we help them?'
We did some great stuff last summer with digital autographs and Reading Presents which created objects personalised to our followers that we knew they would share. They were pieces of media that went beyond the stream of status updates that they usually broadcast. They were visible and very desirable to their audience.
Then a few weeks ago I went to the excellent Firestarters event at Google organised by my Tanzania travel buddy Neil Perkin. As I'm not in advertising I felt a bit of an impostor, but like anryone else trying to get our messages broadcast these conversations are always going to be relevant and incredibly interesting. In particular I loved Mark Earls who spoke brilliantly about how people's natural instinct is to copy and how ideas can only spread if they are visible.
So this got me thinking about Gaga who is often compared to Madonna when she was a couple of years into her pop career. What is it that seperates Gaga from Madonna in her prime? Well, they both write great great pop songs, the both make great videos, they have great stylists and producers. Fair to say Gaga is a modern Madge. Right? Wrong!
What Gaga does that Madonna never did was to create a tribe. Sure, Modonna had fans but you wouldn't say it was a tribal experience. Gaga on the otherhand has the biggest tribe out there. Gaga wins where Madge, Britney and Christina fail by making copying visible. I'm not talking dressing like your idol here, everyone does that. No, I'm talking about creating visual language to go with the spoken language created by The House of Gaga. As well as the costume fans are recognisable by their interactions. They refer to each other as 'Little Monsters', Gaga is 'Mama Monster' and they give each other the 'paws up' to confirm their belonging to the tribe. By calling her entourage 'House of Gaga' she is drawing pictures in the minds of all those little monsters. Gaga makes it so easy for people to join her tribe because communication is strengthened through such a visible identifiable language.
There's nothing new about pop star tribes. In the 70's you couldn't walk down a high street without bumping into a Bowie or a Bay City Roller. But it kinda died off. Despite what retrospective TV dramas would have you believe the streets were not filled with Adam Ant or Boy George tribes in the 80's. The closest you got to Gaga was Morrissey who had his tribe wearing NHS glasses, becoming vegetarians and using a new vocabulary inspired by Wilde.
What's really interesting about the Gaga is that she's not alone in having a strong tribe. Nicki Minaj has her Barbies, Rihanna has her Navy and Beiber has his Beliebers - that's right, Beliebers, you better belieb it. This year the MTV Music Awards even has it's own Fan Army award with 13 different bands nominated.
So has social media played a role in the reinvention of these kind of tribes? Has the ease in which audiences can talk to their audineces via social media inspired a surge in creativity in pop music? If the visible language of Twitter is the hashtag then surely Gaga's 'paws up' is just as brilliantly useful in pulling together a global conversation around a given subject.
Whilst I've never been a fan of her music I'm a huge fan of The Gaga. Her attention to her image through fashion, video and social media is a lesson to everyone and her talk at Google was one of the best I have seen. If you've not watched it yet then what the hell are you waiting for. Go get it.
Apart from the cowbell I can't play any instruments. But if I was granted just one wish from the tune fairy I'd want to play lead guitar on this. I'd wear spandex as part of the deal and play it to Rikki every Tuesday morning. I know she fell in love me because I used to drop it during my sets. Together we'd air guitar so much that I'd forget to cue up my next tune.
When we started going out I'd sing her a silly song every Tuesday morning to put her in the mood for what would be a 24 hour work day in Ibiza. It continued when we returned to Blighty and lasted a good six months before I ran out of enthusiasm and she stopped seeing the funny side of being woken by the sound of me singing 'Living On A Prayer'. Looking back I'm amazed she put up with me for 6 years after what must have been a torturous first 6 months. All down to my air guitar skills I think.
'I was minding my business, lifting some lead off the roof of the Holy Name church'
Wow - Can't believe I got to Day 24 without a Smiths track.
The Holy Name Church name checked in the song was where I was christened so I imagine it will be the place of my departure too. Hope so, it's a lovely gaff.
It's just a brilliant song, one that springs to mind every time someone paints The Smiths as doom merchants. I love it. It sums up a lot of what was so good about Moz as a song writer, filled with humour and a brilliant rallying cry for anyone who sees themselves as being a little bit different. He encouraged people to celebrate their differences, whether it was wearing your NHS glasses with pride or swinging your hearing aid as you danced. It was an ethos that I took into clubland when I stared running my own club night because 'outsiders' and 'underdogs' and 'the different' were always more interesting 'the beautiful' and 'the glamorous'.
'A vicar in a tutu. He's not strange. He just wants to live his life this way''
Clubland was a pretty shallow place to work. There is no getting away from that. Always looking to do something different running my own club allowed me to create a safe place for people to celebrate their differences and express themselves however they wished. It wasn't a gay club and it wasn't a straight club. It was a club for the miss-shapes of the world - a safe haven for the kind of people the rest of clubland would rather stayed at home. We went out of our way to make 'the different' feel special. It was a club where you could wear a dress if you fancied it because no one would bat an eyelid. It was the kind of place where pensioners would star in our fashion shows, where shy people could come out of their shell and the confused could experiment with their sexuality without fear.
I remember doing a pirate themed party and used Adam Ant on the poster with the strap line 'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of'. Typical daftness but an amazing party. The following week a regular who suffered from Vitiligo (a condition that causes white patches on the skin and in the hair) turned up proudly showing off his new tattoo. It read 'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of'. I'd empowered him to feel confident about himself, to celebrate his differences via the power of an Adam Ant lyric. Who'd have thought it? It was then that I realised the power of my position and how even the most petty things can speak volumes to those looking for something to believe in.
I make no apologies for posting this. Despite the obvious flaw it's truly wonderful. Really beautiful.
I don't listen to it when I'm sad, but I did. Our Shay had a brilliant Laurel and Hardy album when I was tiny. I remember listening when I was feeling particulartly sad (probably when Dad was ill). It made me warm and fuzzy inside. Still does. I love them.
