What The Hell Is Going On? #53: Mercury Prize 2010 Week
By: Thomas Hannan
Hey mate.
Personally, I’ve not forgiven the Mercury Prize judges for saying in 1994 that M People’s Elegant Slumming was more of an important record than Blur’s Parklife (if there’s one thing I can hold, it’s a grudge), but some people seem to take it pretty seriously. This year’s winner will be announced tomorrow (Tues), and though a massive and inexplicable flurry of bets placed recently suggests it’s already been decided that the victor will be Paul Weller, we thought we’d spend the week on Rockfeedback TV having a look at some of the other nominees nonetheless.
We start today with footage of The xx performing a fledgling gig at the 2009 Camden Crawl at a time when their Mercury-nominated debut wasn’t even finished, before on Tuesday revisiting a feature length episode of RFBTV documenting the sights and sounds of the Underage Festival in 2008, which boasts performances from nominees Foals and our personal tips for the gong, Wild Beasts. Wednesday brings with it an exclusive session performed by gazillion-sellers (and many people’s Mercury nods) Mumford and Sons in our very own office, before it’s full length episode time again on Thursday, this time using our show on the 2008 Field Day Festival to convince you of the talents of second time nominee Laura Marling (pictured - those Foals boys make another appearance too). Laura might have a couple of Mercury nominations to her name, but Dizzee Rascal’s got like, ten or something, and even won it once, so we give the whole player over to him come Friday. Seems only right.
Speaking of Friday, come the end of the week there will only be seven days to go before our massive tenth birthday party ‘ROCKFEEDBACK X’ (or Rockfeedback ‘mwah!’) with British Sea Power, Future of the Left, Three Trapped Tigers and Anna Calvi performing live and everyone from Bloc Party and The Maccabees to Geoff Travis and White Heat DJing on Sept 17th at XOYO in London. We’re happy to provide you with more details and the last few tickets, but suggest you get them sharpish - team Rockfeedback plan on partying harder than Andrew WK when he listens to ‘1999’ by Prince. And you wouldn’t wanna miss seeing whatever it is that looks like.
We continue the celebrations on the site all through September too – stay tuned for in depth articles from the Rockfeedback team on a whole matter of musical topics ranging from the future of home recording to the importance of lyrics and why we hate it when our friends become successful, alongside RFBX: Birthday Presents – a set of competition prizes so massive that you’ll think all your Christmases have come at once. We started the celebrations by re-igniting our ‘It’s Genius, I Swear...’ series of columns, a feature whereby artists write about their favourite overlooked or obscure records in an attempt to convince you to love them as much as they do. Paul Smith of Maximo Park has already stuck his oar in, there are not one but two pieces from Le Tigre/MEN’s JD Samson, and more to follow daily throughout the month, starting later today with a playlist from The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess. Have a gander, you just might learn something.
Tom.x
Artists in this article: Laura Marling