Quote of the day

"As an artist, I don't want music to be shoved in everyone's face until they're sick of it. I don't want it to be a passive experience. I do not want to explain everything. I do not want to make ten million videos or show everything that goes on behind the scenes. I want an active, participant, engaged audience who are alive, awake and PART of what's going on, not sleepwalkers. And as a music fan, I want bands to expect something of me, make me work for it a bit, get me involved, don't let me switch off, make me value the music that I discover so it doesn't become just another piece of disposable modern trash. I think we all have a part to play in shaking this up, whether it's my band, your band, your label, your blog, or just the way you open a laptop and make a snap decision on whether an artist is any good or not...let's see if we can invest ourselves a bit more please."

Admirable sentiments, perhaps, but in this piece for Drowned In Sound Blood Red Shoes' Steve Ansell appears to be railing against nothing less than the internet age and as such his plea is always going to fall on deaf ears. And in truth, his argument is undermined somewhat by the unnecessarily frequent emails sent out to his band's mailing list, which regularly promotes all of the various different social media platforms they use to reach people...