The Mercurys exposed

[Ian A.]

I wrote this for the fRoots board, but thought I'd bring it to wider attention here too, though obviously of less concern over here.


There's an interesting and very revealing story about the process of judging the Mercury Awards in today's Guardian G2, written by Jude Rogers, reviews editor of The Word.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2163040,00.html

To me, one of the most telling paras reads:

"In May, my life was overtaken by 233 CDs. Note this was just the CDs, none of them being accompanied with potentially judgment-skewing press packs or videos. Each judge was asked to make a longlist of 25 albums. At this stage, the responsibility you feel as a judge is immense, and the amount of love you invest in lesser-known artists surges - this, you think to yourself, could be this act's passport to success, a huge push up the music industry's tall, giddy ladder. The judges then meet to come up with a shortlist . . ."

This absolutely tallies with what a former judge sympathic to fRoots' areas of music told me about how we've had breakthrough nominations in the past like Eliza Carthy, Norma Waterson, Kate Rusby and Susheela Raman. It needs one of the judges with a passion and knowledge of a so-called "specialist" area of music to get behind one album from that field which could deserve wider attention. If they do so, then at least the other judges are more likely to be enthused and give it a proper listen - it doesn't guarantee they'll like it, but at least it gets it in with a chance and levels the playing field.

I had no idea that the press packs which entrants are asked to supply large numbers of (in addition to a fee) don't go to the judges. This particularly discriminates against artists in non-mainstream fields where the judges may have no prior knowledge. This year, though I may be wrong, I believe that our area of music had no expert/ally on the panel and it seems to me that by neither providing informed, sympathetic judgement nor supporting materials, the Mercury organisation took entrance money from artists/ labels under false pretences - could I even dare to use the words "con" or "fraud" here? The shortlist would certainly seem to bear it out in a year where they have been some very noteworthy albums in our fields that I believe were entered.

Just imagine the outcry if they were found to have had a judging panel that didn't contain anybody interested in white boy rock bands . . .

[Charlie]

I had no idea that the press packs which entrants are asked to supply large numbers of (in addition to a fee) don't go to the judges. This particularly discriminates against artists in non-mainstream fields where the judges may have no prior knowledge.

I hardly ever look at all the guff that comes with promotional CDs.

I don't have any place to put all that paper so it goes straight in the bin. Just send me a CD with a good sleeve note (see separate thread on this forum) and save a forest or two.

Jude's piece is very believable, and fits my guess as to what the process would be like. I think Nigel Williamson was a Mercury judge once, and I think wrote a similar piece a couple of years ago. Or am I dreaming it?

233 CDs does sound daunting, but most of the judges would have been getting most of the CDs on a weekly basis as part of their job, so there wouldn't be many who had not heard two thirds of them already.

So then it's the ones from outside their field that are liable to sound fresh - hence the Basquiat Strings made it this time, perhaps championed in the first place by Charles Hazlewood, a BBC classical music presenter/producer who was on the jury for the first time. He really did have to listen to 200 albums he'd never heard before.

On the night, I thought Ben Davis and Seb Roachford's group did the best performance, but there were several others I enjoyed for their one song each.

The Mercurys are great - they enable you to catch up on all the hip groups without having to listen to the inane chatter of the DJs who play their records on the radio for the other 364 days in the year.

[howard male]

'The Mercurys exposed' - so what's being exposed exactly: that rock still rules the roost? Well, no surprise there then.

Winners, the Klaxons, can obviously construct a half decent tune, but oh how tired they sound! Because the sad thing is (like every other pop/rock group) they have accepted what the template or pallet of colours they have at their disposal is, and they've just assembled some nice tunes for our consumption using those ingredients. It was astonishing (yet at the same time sadly predictable) that the Klaxons were under the illusion (with evangelical zeal - or was it just that they were pissed?) that they had something new to offer that was somehow going to change the world - which showed that it's not the judges that need to be sent 200-odd CDs, it's the bands! But those CDs should be from outside their normal field of reference, ie; world music CDs.

What the Klaxons are doing is relatively inoffensive, but nevertheless unbelievably stale and unadventurous. I wish it was within my power to dish out a copy of the Best of Ethiopiques to every band in the country, with a friendly note suggesting they start again. I'm not suggesting they should all start trying to get funky in the Ethiopian styley, but this music would at least show them it's possible to go somewhere else with the ingredients they have.

Charlie wrote:

The Mercurys are great - they enable you to catch up on all the hip groups without having to listen to the inane chatter of the DJs who play their records on the radio for the other 364 days in the year.

So, not great, but functional. It's quite useful, in our age of media overload, to have this show point out what we world music fans have supposedly been missing over the last twelve months - even if it's just to tell us we have been missing nothing.

[Con Murphy]

It was astonishing (yet at the same time sadly predictable) that the Klaxons were under the illusion (with evangelical zeal - or was it just that they were pissed?) that they had something new to offer that was somehow going to change the world

Even more astonishing is the number of experts who agreed with that view. Having read one or two opinions about how Amy Winehouse could never win because she was too retro, I was really looking forward to hearing the "forward" (as they put it) sounds of The Klaxons. They're OK, but I couldn't hear anything new in it at all. Maybe it's more evident on the album?

[Ian M]

I must say I didn't find much shock horror exposure in Jude Roger's article. In fact I found it interesting and encouraging inasmuch as they seem to argue their corner with some conviction, even if it's for music that I would hard to find the energy to get out of bed for, never mind promote. I would also be very surprised if judges like her and the others paid much attention to press kits, even if they had received them. I can understand the annoyance if you've paid some money (not a lot I hope) and got together a press kit, but surely it's pretty much a given that the Mercury is basically a pop/rock award. So it's no real surprise that it's full of indie bands rehashing the limited formulae of the genre. But i am grateful for the compulsory left field choice of a jazz or folk artist, and they have promoted people like Talvin Singh, Soweto Kinch and Dizzee Rascal in the past, and yes I would love to see more of these kind of artists on. As to who wins, I don't think it's important, but I always hope for a good diverse crop of nominees, to get some idea of whether anything interesting is happening in that field. I thought Bat for Lashes were potentially good, Amy W's song was great, and good to see stuff like the Basquiat Strings on TV. What I do take issue with is the Beeb's coverage - the sound was awful, and didn't do any of the artists any favours at all. And can they really not think of a better format than having Jo Wiley hanging about with some no marks gushing inanities?

Howard, I think you'll find it is supposed to be for British artists, and as we know they are disqualifed from belonging to the 'world'. As for the Klaxons, I predict some of them will listen to Ethiopiques, but probably not at least until they are in their thirties, or possibly even forties.

[Dominic]

As for the Klaxons, I predict some of them will listen to Ethiopiques, but probably not at least until they are in their thirties, or possibly even forties.

Perhaps they're discovering some good Brazilian stuff through CSS as they've been touring together. I understand from the NME that Simon from the Klaxons & Lovefoxx of CSS (below) are an item.

[Des]

I enjoyed most of the nominees featured in the BBC2 programme last night - weakest band (apart from the dismal Young Knives) were the Klaxons. Some interesting stuff in there though - Maps, Dizzee Rascal and Bat for Lashes were rather good.

[Nigel w]

Charlie is right - I was a judge for four or five years and I did write a similar article at the time in The Guardian.

When I wrote my piece I was still a cheerleader for the prize and I was particularly proud when Talvin Singh won it (1999, I think?). In the early years I was a judge, it seemed a relatively open and transparent process. But I became very disillusioned in the final year I was on the panel (c 2002). Not only, as Ian A complains, were press releases not sent out to the judges but many of the actual albums which record companies had paid to enter were not sent out to the judges either.

Instead, the prize administrators filleted what they thought were 'the most likely' and so out of say 200 submitted CDs. only 60-70 were forwarded to the judges. I thought this was scandalous behaviour, particularly towards the small labels who had paid a fee they could ill afford to enter records which were then not even supplied to the judges.

Needless to say, I protested loudly at this. The éxplanation I was given was that many of the judges had said they couldn't cope with 200 plus CDs and had asked to have the number whittled down before they were sent out to reduce the burden on their ears. This struck me as utterly feeble and my response to that was that íf you don't want to listen to all the music that has been submitted, don't accept the invitation to become a judge.

I was subsequently told by someone at the prize that the following year they reverted to the system of sending out all of the submitted CDs (Jude's article seems to support this,too). Possibly the prize's administrators feared that if news got out that they were witholding CDs from the judging panel, then record companies whose CDs were not given a fair hearing would have had a legal justification in asking for their entrance fees back.

Just as scandalous in my view was a new system of voting on the shortlist which was introduced in my final year . For the first few years, we voted openly during the shortlisting meeting and knew what was on the shortlist when we left the room. In the final year I was on the panel a new fra less transparent system was introduced in which we put secret votes in a ballot box and the prize administrators then took it away and a couple of days later produced a shortlist that was meant to 'reflect the will of the meeting'. I was never clear what the phrase meant for how could anything 'reflect the will of the meeting' better than an open vote?

In that final year I was a judge, when we were told what was on the shortlist several days later, it included one album which the prize administrators had pushed hard at the meeting but which almost every judge had spoken against. A subsequent straw poll I conducted among the other judges found every one of them denying that they had voted for the album in question. There could only be two possible explanations : either all of my fellow judges were lying to me (which seems unlikely) - or the shortlist was a fix.

I didnt go public at the time and abided by the confidentiality agreement but I did protest through the prize's internal channels. All that achieved, of course, was to guarantee that I was dropped from the panel for the following year!

Therefore, I was interested to read Jude complaining about the secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding the prize. Contrast this with the BBC Radio 3 awards for world music, the judging panel of which I have also been privileged to serve upon.

BBC Radio 3 posts biographies of all of us on the judging panel on its website. The Mercury Prize doesn't even publicise the membership of its panel (although Jools Holland always reads the names out on the night, after the voting is done). When the Radio 3 panel meets, we vote openly in the room so that we know who has voted for what and the total number of votes cast for each rival entry. For its shortlist (although not the final winner) the Mercurys in my last year had a system of secret voting (and from Jude's article it seems that it still does...)

I still think the Mercury Prize is a good thing and - for those now starting to feel rather cynical about the whole exercise - I can guarantee that it is totally impossible to 'fix' the winner. As Jude says, the final vote happens on the night and can be dramatic indeed, with the judges often still arguing ten minutes before Jools Holland is due to announce the result. But in my view, the lack of transparency in the Mercurys' methods, particularly over how the all-important shortlist is arrived at, has needlessly but severely tarnished its reputation as a serious prize.

[Ian A.]

Thanks, Nigel, for going public. I hope you and Charlie don't mind that I've quoted most of your commentary over on the fRoots board where this topic was first posted and there's a a parallel thread. http://froots.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2783

All that achiieved, of course, was to guarantee that I was dropped from the panel for the following year!

And I'm sure you'll be out for good now!

[Charlie]

The guy on the right, purportedly a member of the Klaxons, looks exactly like Tom of the Thomson Twins looked like at this age. What's going on?

[Dominic]

The guy on the right, purportedly a member of the Klaxons, looks exactly like Tom of the Thomson Twins looked like at this age. What's going on?

It was acceptable in the eighties...

[Adam Blake]

Aaaagh! The Thompson Twins!!! A perfect example of why I stopped following pop music in the 80s. I think they were also one of the first bands to allow a record company to sack the majority of its members once they got signed - keeping only the ones who looked "marketable".

God, they were crap. I remember my band supporting them at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden in early 1981. They were so snotty and up their own arses. Yuk. What next? A Flock Of Seagulls?

[garth cartwright]

i once had the misfortune to interview alannah - i think that was her name - from TTTwins (or twits). Possibly the rudest interviewee i have ever dealt with. This gave me the impression that arrogance in interviewees is paramount to diminishing talent - as she had none she was very rude. Life 20 years since has not changed this rule. Were they the worst band of the 80s British "invasion"? I like Culture Club but found most of the rest annoying - TTT were just dire, so bad they made Duran and Spandau look worthy. Remember their anti-heroin song Dont Mess With H or something. Enough to drive anyone unfortunate to hear it to drugs. I think TTT may have reformed in recent years. Maybe they should win the Mercury? Personally, i avoid all award ceremonies as totally bogus corporate garnish vanity ceremonies.

[Adam Blake]

Completely agree, Garth! When I was a jounalist I found exactly the same thing: the less the talent, the worse the attitude. Plus your description of awards ceremonies is apt. I think you're right: The Thompson Twins should re-form and make an album (under the aegis of Clive Davis and/or Tommy Mottola) which then goes on to win the coveted Mercury Prize in all categories and be described by Q magazine as the "finest album since 'Dark Side Of The Moon'"...

[simon frith]

I’m touched that people on this site takes the Mercury Music Prize so seriously but I do think you should also consider both the practicalities and the ridiculousness of the whole thing. To take the practicalities first. The Mercury’s basic purpose is to promote record sales. To function at all it needs a sponsor and the collaboration of the record industry. For it to make the investment necessary for the prize to have public impact, the sponsor requires, in turn, media coverage, which, these days, has to be lead by television. For TV to be interested there has to be a broadcastable live show, which, in turn, requires the collaboration of musicians, their managers and record companies. The prize further needs the support of record companies to enter records in the first place and to make their own investment in the promotion and marketing of shortlisted albums. The prize also needs the support of retailers (including online retailers) to stock and display the shortlisted titles. In short, for the prize to work a great variety of players have to be kept happy—sponsors (presently Nationwide), broadcasters (primarily BBC4/BBC2/Radio 1/Radio 2), large record companies with promotional budgets, small record companies without promotional budgets, musicians of all sorts. On top of this the prize has to have ‘credibility’ with both people who write about it (journalists/critics of often contradictory persuasions) and the public.

Which brings me to the ridiculousness. Choosing 12 records of the year plus a single prize winner is not something that can be done rationally, particularly given that it was decided, from the beginning, to put no restriction on the kind of music entered (just has to be a British/Irish album of new material released—and readily available—in a 12 month period). [Aside: whatever the accusations of tokenism, there’s no doubt that over the years the listed folk, jazz, classical records and artists have greatly benefited from being on the Mercury list just as the lists have been more interesting for including them. For me the single most depressing aspect of Mercury coverage is the way in which rock critics faced with an album they don’t know dismiss it as tokenism rather being eager to listen to something outside their usual ken.] My attitude to the judging meeting (as chair) has two premises, that the most important part of the judges’ meetings is the talk not the vote, and that the object of the meetings is not consensus of taste/judgement (impossible) but rather an agreement as to what makes sense as a Mercury album/prize winner that year, whether or not particular judges like or loath it—and how the argument goes changes from year to year according to the entries, the judges, the feeling of the year, etc (which is one reason why there are not transparent ‘rules’). Jude’s piece was quite a good account of how the process worked this year but also confirmed why the confidentiality clause is needed (and not just so that everyone can talk freely without thinking they’re going to be reported, accurately or not). Put it this way: the persona journalists present when they write may bear scant relationship to the way they were in the judging room, and the basic principle of the prize has always been that the judging results (and the featured music/musicians) matter rather more than the judging process (and the egos involved therein). Obviously who the judges happen to be (and the group dynamic that emerges) has a major impact on the list that emerges, and their range of tastes (and ability to argue them) is a factor in this. We don’t, though, expect judges to ‘represent’ particular musical areas, and in practice I’ve always been surprised by who speaks for or against what. Charlie’s right that a significant number of judges will have heard a significant number of records (otherwise the process would probably be impossible) but I certainly haven’t (the days are long gone when I got free CDs from anyone) and one of the interesting aspects of the first listening process is getting to hear all those hyped records which I seem to have been reading about for months. I certainly wouldn’t want press packs too (judges are briefed to pay attention only to the music) but they are important for the office in preparing shortlist press packs at speed (and in secrecy) in the time between the list being decided and announced. I’ve always had all records sent to me and I’ve always listened to every one, an experience that can induce extreme mood swings

I think it’s an achievement that the prize has lasted so long and developed the way it has. Year by year the number of entries goes up and these days all nominated musicians want to play the show if they’re in the country (it says something that Amy Winehouse wanted to play this year). On the night, anyway, it does seem like music makers and music-making is being celebrated by the Mercury, just as in the judges room the arguments are, despite everything, good fun. (In the long history of the prize only one judge hasn’t wanted to do it a second time. The problem is the other way round: judges who come off the list may be rather irked—there is for good reason a policy of having a slow but steady turnover—hey Nigel, you served more years than most journalists! )

I think the prize works precisely because the judging process is a bit of a mystery—if there were laid-out judging rules, criteria etc there would also be no flexibility, imagination, surprise and, yes, decidedly odd decisions. I was interested to read in Jude’s piece Jon Webster (who had the idea in the first place) suggesting that one of the prize’s key functions was getting people to argue about music. It certainly does that though I have to say the judges’ argument tend to be a whole lot more interesting than the screeds of chat room contempt for anyone/everyone on the Mercury list that appear each year. There are still people out there (rock critics mostly, I guess) who haven’t recovered from the fact that M People won the prize (“when Park Life should have doneâ€