Blogs: Kevin Molloy #1
By: Kevin Molloy
In the first of an ongoing series of articles, Kevin Molloy, Rockfeedback's 'Head of TV', talks about himself in the third person.
As I write this I was prompted by the sight of a large barn in passing from a train window, and thrown back to a concert nearly a year ago, for which Mumford and Sons hired coaches to ferry (mixed travel metaphor - my apologies) people from London to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. In a barn, if that bit wasn't obvious first time round.
As a gig it was practically perfect - secret performances from a host of folk (pun intended), including Laura Marling; cloudy cider and a BBQ in the entranceway and a traditional hoe-down to end it all, in which no-one had a clue what they were doing. Given our drunken, giggling states, and the band's own gleeful and inexperienced involvement, that was more than acceptable.
From washing the straw out of my hair the next day, to the moment 5 minutes ago when I saw the barn whilst pondering what to write in this new quasi-blog-like feature, the gig has stuck in my mind as the perfect example of how to do something properly. Obviously no expense was spared, and not every show can be the show-to-end-all-shows, but I think bands and promoters can get the wrong end of the stick when they try to make a show special.
It's not that I'm sure quite what makes 'that show'. Seeing Prince at the O2 was probably the most magnificent example of stagemanship and individual genius and ego I've ever witnessed, which flies completely in the face of my normal views of stadium-sized shows. Similarly, Blur's performance at Glastonbury in 2009 was an exhilarating moment of community and musical connection - a rare thing to truly achieve from the headline stage of a major festival.
The most conventional and oft-touted wisdom is to catch the small shows, which certainly does seem to help. Seeing Gallows perform at SXSW in a room the size of my own lounge, I was simultaneously scared for my own life, and completely and utterly enthralled (I remember I was moshing over the broken glass from where Alex Gallows had smashed a light against the ceiling of the venue). If you need to sit down to re-orientate your musical senses and priorities after a show, odds are you've experienced something a little above-and-beyond. And my own personal highlight of Rockfeedback's own bookings over the last year-and-a-half was for the show we did with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes - a hippy triumph of a London debut, to 250 lucky people at the Lexington, with 'Edward' (aka Alexander) carried messiah-like into the crowd at regular intervals throughout the show.
I'm fairly convinced that all of this, however, has little to do with the size of the venue, nor the ardency of the fan base - but in fact is down to the energy that flows between the stage and the crowd: feedback loops of hippy cosmic power, or the high voltage shocks of rock. That to me explains why some shows are inexplicably hands-down amazing: sometimes the crowd are just waiting for the perfect set, and the band have it in them - it's at moments like that that you realise it's got very little to do with how much you already like the band. I'm still waiting for the Johnny Flynn or Laura Marling show that will utterly transport me... I know if I follow them round enough that show will happen - both have made albums that are rarely absent from my stereo for more than a week - but they’ve simply not played 'that show' for me yet.
But it's not all chance. As Mumford proved with their barn show, you can curate and cultivate the time and space for these things to happen. It's the stock and trade of that best of all festivals, in fact: ATP. With a mindset of curation the need to pander to wide musical tastes disappears, and with it come two things: amazing music (which is supported by a feeling of community already, a band having been chosen to perform by a peer, and to perform alongside other specifically chosen and curated acts), and secondly an audience of believers - people who have come to be converted, with their ears and minds open, who by their very attendance are participants in the community of that repurposed holiday camp for the three to four days they're in residence. With ATP - and other like-minded promoters, venues and events - the emphasis changes from being a 'gig'. A gig is a job, it's a bedpost notch. When the appearance is treated as distinct from the one before it and the one soon to follow, by either the band or the audience (but most crucially, probably both) then remarkable shows are born.
So it doesn't (or shouldn't need to) take stagemanship, fireworks or money - just an idea that a show has a reason and a purpose beyond being a different venue in a different city. The best performers I've seen can achieve this simply through power of charisma and a genuine interaction with their audience, but the constant touring schedules a lot of bands maintain can really knock the uniqueness out of their shows.
A solution? Only play awesome shows. I think it's probably that simple. There's too much music happening anyway - bands should just play in places or for people they believe in. Don't play at the Dublin Castle or the Hope & Anchor as an unsigned London hopeful - it's a dead-end rat-race of repetition. And unless you've got feet and costume changes to rival Prince's, stop playing huge impersonal shows just because you can sell them out. Play something that will make people's jaws drop, and if the demand's there, play it 5 or 6 times... everybody will prefer it, I promise.
And most of all, I suppose, the last key element is that, y'know, the music should probably be good, right? I guess I was ignoring that bit for a paragraph or five so I could ramble about the other stuff.
Enough for now, I've got to get off the train...
Artists in this article: Prince, Gallows, Laura Marling, Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit, Mumford and Sons