The Beat Surrender

Maybe it’s just me as I get older but I can’t help but feel that all awards ceremonies are starting to blur into one these days, the same winners at the same shows with the same faces rolling out of each one drunk. The other week we had the Brit Awards which back in the 80’s and 90’s seemed like the cutting edge of music on television but now is the safest thing you’ll see on TV outside of a Sandra Bullock film.

Around the time that Brit Pop was riding the crest of a wave in the mid 90’s the NME jumped on the bandwagon and set up the alternative awards show as a way to stick one finger (literally if you’ve seen the gongs they hand out) up at the establishment (The Brits in other words).

The show and subsequent awards were in typical upstart fashion known as The NME Brat Awards and for a while it really did mean something to both the bands that won stuff and the fans who bought the records and magazine. This though I think has changed a lot in recent years.

The reason for that is that since the death of Melody Maker as a rival to the NME it is now nothing more than a jumped up version of Smash Hits (also gone you’ll noticed), ok so you might like some of the bands that are featured in it, but is it really as good as it used to be, is it really about the music anymore or is it now about fashion and gossip based on a loose musical theme?

Unfortunately the decline in the magazines standards (although the lack of competition probably means greater sales I would imagine) has also seen a decline in the awards show. As the magazine has become more mainstream, so has the winners of the awards, as the show itself gets sponsored up to the eyeballs by various companies, gone are the bad behaviour and exciting live music.

This year though the NME finally made the last step over into becoming ‘the Brits only a month later awards’ by giving out awards to exactly the bands who have either won awards in the last year or two at the Brits or will surely feature in the awards next year there. Step up Muse, The Killers (pictured), My Chemical Romance and Arctic Monkeys who raked in six awards between them and were nominated for a hell of a lot more.

Brixton Academy won venue of the year for the umpteenth time, George W Bush won villain of the year (shock horror) and Thom Yorke won best solo artist (also nominated at the Brits) and the NME have always loved Radiohead so that was hardly a shock. The only nod to the leftfield comes with the new band awards which saw The Twang, Klaxons and Enter Shikari picking up there lump of metal and deservedly so.

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