The big label

All through put my teenage years I wanted a big major label to sign the band that I was in at the time, in fact when I was 15 EMI did actually contact the band that I was in (we were called 'World Peace Machine'). Though it never materialised after a few meetings with a very nice A&R man it did make me wonder if I was almost there, I hadn't even left school and the bass player was only 14. It never happened and for a long time it really ate at me, the 'failed musician' label was dangling over my head for a long long time and it very nearly finished me off as a player and a musician. Mr. So & So is a great band, we've never been worried about that but it's kind of like the King Crimson problem, great band but never really happened after the '70's for them.

Now I'm older I realise that a major label would never touch us unless we had a huge clump of money behind us, making the band a safe bet or if we went viral on the Internet. The sad thing for the big four labels now is that they are struggling to exist, some people revel in this but I think it's really sad, these labels had the capacity to give us The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, U2 et al and support their longevity, now Simon Cowells take on music is different and a 'pop' star needs nothing more than to be blessed with outrageously good looks and a colossal ego. Incidentally I'm not a Simon Cowell hater, if he didn't do it, someone else would....give the people what they want and the loudest voice wins. The disposable pop star era is nearly at an end too and then we are left with the music industry smashed into a million little fragments, each one of these fragments is a band or small label scrambling for the next opportunity to pop their head above the sea of bands around them. There's no doubt that's its an exciting time for bands and there is scope for bands to be successful, just not like it was when ELP or Fleetwood Mac earned more money than they could spend.

In the end, it's the music lover who misses out as I'm sure that there are a handful of bands out there who would blow my mind and be everything I ever wanted in a band, but how do I find them? The scattering makes it hard work and no-one will go through hard work to listen to music. Sadly the big dream record deal died when Fraunhofer created the MP3.