Wow, that’s really got your attention now, hasn’t it? Check me and my impact journalism. (That sudden and violent whirring sound you can hear off in the distance is Lester Bangs spinning in his grave).

Rob Paul Chapman

However I appear to have made a catastrophic error in selecting a new abode as somehow I’ve managed to fall outside the range of a DAB signal.

This is a genuine tragedy.

I was faced with the distressing – nay – terrifying realisation that, for the first time in years, I was going to have to rely on FM radio over breakfast.

I have three choices: Radio 1, Radio 2 or something commercial (I am not called Gladys and do not smell of rose water and therefore have no use for BBC local radio unless Alan Raw is on).

A quick shift of the tuning knob and I am greeted by Chris Moyles shouting. This goes on for many, many minutes. No records are played. Just Chris shouting. A quick re-tune and it’s Radio Aire…

…I am now bored of adverts.

Which leaves us with Wogan on Radio 2. And this is where the depression really kicks in.

I’m 32 years old. I cannot move for people telling me I am now the natural demographic for Radio 2. If that really is the case, then the abundant woes of the music industry now make perfect sense.

“But Wogan’s an institution” wail Mr and Mrs Backbone-of-England as the late, great Jeffery Bernard used to call them. Yeah, well so was Highroyds, until someone had the human decency to offer the hopelessly incarcerated a better chance in life.

I don’t have a problem with the old goat himself, and but one glance at the playlist (to which I imagine he has scant influence), confirms that I really did have to endure Michael Bolton, Simply Red, Kenny Loggins, Extreme (the appalling ballad, not the entertainingly dumb funk-metal-lite), Robbie Williams, Don McLean, Whitney Houston, David Gray and Newton Faulkner all in the same programme.

The only music that could remotely be described as ‘new’ was the sub-Spice Pixie Lott who makes Duffy look like Frank Zappa, and the much trumpeted ‘great new discovery’ Camilla Kerslake who’s anaemic belly-flop through She Moved Through The Fair had me inexplicably pining for the horrifically bloated, worthy and pompous Simple Minds track Belfast Child, based on the same song.

I felt disgusted with myself just typing that.

But the tipping point was the amount of time devoted to “Barbara Streisand Week”. I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll just leave that one hanging for you to fathom by yourselves.

Mr & Mrs Backbone will undoubtedly believe this assessment to be outrageously snobbish, and they would be entirely correct. Wogan is giving people “what they want” a feeble argument often used to defend the corrosive, cancerous writings of Richard Littlejohn and his like.

If “what the public wants” is the only factor of relevance, be done with it and bring back public hanging.
But this isn’t some populace-placating commercial institution, this is a public body funded by its own tax. It should not be concerned with “what we want”; it should be concerned by what is good for us. I want Mother from Auntie. We cannot survive on sweets and Sunny Delight, we need nutrition. If we don’t like it we can opt out and hang around with the borstal kids at Galaxy.

Critics of the BBC – and at this point, I want to declare that I am not one – point towards HBO as a business that has had success producing quality on subscription rather than a licence fee. Mr & Mrs Backbone are very fond of the BBC, we’re told, but don’t like the licence fee.

The clue, I feel, is in the word “fee”. People don’t like council tax either, but it’s largely essential if people want basic things like their bins collecting… oh.

Anyway, the HBO argument is a Red Herring. If the BBC went down the HBO route, the people to subscribe would be the sort of people who watch HBO. The BBC is in a unique position to gently enforce quality on those who would otherwise pick the easy, but long-term vacuous option.

At this point, I fully expect Mr. & Mrs. Backbone to pull out the classic that ‘quality is subjective’. Well let’s quash that myth once and for all, because it isn’t. Quality never has, and never will be anywhere near as subjective as some people think. Taste is subjective. But a fully-functioning brain, working ears and an open mind should be enough to filter quality.

Why should I care? The reason I get so upset about the decline, devaluing and trivialisation of the mainstream, is that I am privileged enough to experience in our local area some truly outstanding talent. If I had a pound for every time I’d said “I can see this working brilliantly on Radio 2” I’d be able to fund the print run personally each month. Yet I obviously didn’t appreciate what Radio 2 was. And therefore, if you’re a fantastically talented, potentially mainstream singer-songwriter, a Ric Neale, even a Benjamin Wetherill or a Jon Gomm, what are your options?

According to the assumed radio 2 manifesto, the only new artists they seem willing to support are those who are female, blond, hugely attractive and under 20. Even Laura Groves is going to struggle unless she dyes her hair… All of a sudden the Little Boots change of look is making more sense…

Anyway, to all of you who have also moved house this month to join us in glorious West Yorkshire as students at one of the many universities and colleges, welcome. It’s not all moaning and you will find a vibrant scene here. As you’ll realise, when you have the artistic talents of the people we regularly write about in these very pages, who needs the rest of the country getting their grubby mits on our prize assets?

They’ll only break them.

ATB.
RPC

Rob Paul Chapman