Wildlife Conservation: Survival

by Susie Wild on Mon, 2008/12/15 - 2:38pm Post to Twitter

It’s a jungle out there for musicians. Even if you aren’t being stabbed on stage for playing badly, by your own band mate, you still have a struggle for survival on your hands. A struggle that stretches far beyond foraging for beans on toast and Supermarket Lager…

This week’s Return-from-Extinction Britpoppers, Blur prove that all you need are a few unwise choices, a decade or so, some mugs of tea and the promise of earning a lot of money from an over-hyped Hyde Park gig to be back in the game. Or in Damon Albarn’s explanation to the NME: "It just felt right again. There’s something for us to do again, we’re not completely useless or pointless, we’ve got a reason to exist." So the credit crunch really is hitting everyone.

Is the idea of having to die first all a bit much for you, my dear musicians? Well failing that you can try pooling resources with your fans to ensure that you are on your way again, a la Patrick Wolf’s own-my-next-album tactic through www.bandstocks.com: “Ever since I was younger I promised myself to look always to the future ways of being a human, or at least embrace the current options at least. This is a brave new world we face. I refuse to let the crumbling industry around me make me have to give up this life long passion and journey I’ve been on.” That’s the classic survival spirit, right there.

Winning accolades also helps with the whole quest against extinction, so Florence and the Machine must be happy to hear they’ve grabbed the Critics Choice Award at next year’s Brits. Mostly because it implies they are about to make it big. Just look at Adele. She won this year, and then sold 1.2 million records. As such, we probably won’t have many more Florence blogs on MySpace informing us that she is “STILL ALIVE. JUST.” She is, in fact, in the studio.

Others change their spots be it their genre, their look, or their output in general such as becoming a singles-only band. No, I’m not talking mating and dating today, I simply refer to Billy Corgan’s recent statement that The Smashing Pumpkins will only be releasing singles from now on. He told The Chicago Tribune: "We’re done with that [albums] There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest."

"What bothers me is the notion that we’re done. We didn’t come back for the cash, we came back to be great again. It made me mad that people thought we’re done, that we don’t have a future. Get out. We don’t want you. We’ve never been that band. That happy band. We picked up where we left off. We’re not the retirement band playing our old hits."