Homegrown My Ass Vol.4

Destroy All Monsters (pic taken off their myspace)
Originally uploaded by localbarkid.

Prior to the mid-70s in Canada and Australia, local music was hardly played on their radio stations. Perception of domestic music was poor. Around that period, several groups of individuals and record labels bandied together and drew up white papers to lobby their respective governments to foster a domestic music industry. The primary point was radio airplay. If you don't get to hear it, no one is going to know it. Newspaper, mags, print media might rave about this band and that singer, but music is heard, not read. If the masses don't hear it, no matter how many rave reviews your band gets, its not going to make a rat ass difference.

The main plan was to work towards a minimum quota of local music that radio stations must have on their playlist. If I'm not wrong, it was a 4 or 5 year plan. Beginning with Year One, 10%. Year Two 20% or something like that and going into 40% at the end, This is to allow the industry players to slowly have an infrastructure in place (staffing, fine-tuning their A&R, etc).

Sounds great right? But no. When the idea was first mooted, there were heavy resistance against it. Radio stations and advertisers didn't warm to the idea, that the public is used to American Top 40. It's too much work. So why rock the boat? Even the masses would (I imagine) go "eeee local music sucks" (sounds familiar right?). But both Canada and Australia's government then push it through and became mandatory law for radio stations have that quota in their playlist.

At end of the 4 or 5 year plan, it started to reap rewards. In the early 80s, both countries saw real $$$$ growth in their domestic music industry. So much so that there was a huge surge in Aussie bands making inroads into the American Top 40- INXS, Men At Work, etc. The same goes for Canadian music with bands like Men Without Hats. It created jobs (engineers, producers, A&R staff, etc etc). With that it created expertise. The more they do it, the better they get. With expertise, it attracts jobs/projects/businesses from overseas. Get the idea now? Beyond all this, I reckon is the most important intangible...

P R I D E.

It's priceless. National pride is something you cannot tag a $ value to it. It gives a profound sense of meaning to every individual in relation to the geographical space they call home. So often I've seen/spoken to Canadians and Aussies whose eyes will have that extra gleam whenever the pub/club plays something from their country. This is the result of what happened in the mid to late 70s in their countries.

Can it be done here in Singapore?

(Note: My info was accumulated from talking to overseas colleagues when I was working in record companies years ago. And also through the years of reading here and there.)

I can't get enough of 1234X. So here's(live) two more.

At the same gig was Destroy All Monsters. 1 vox, 1 bass and a mean drummer. Real kick ass stuff.

Wish I can hangout more with Aidil from Couple who is such a nice fella. They were here a few weeks ago and played a marvellous set. I told him that the opening guitar lines for Tentang Kita always make me gush. And I thought Say Hi was Stay High... I'm so silly.