How not to get ahead in music (This is Pop - Ed Jones)

Member Name: steerpyke

Product:	This is Pop - Ed Jones
Date:	11/01/07 (275 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: honest and humourous look at the music business

Disadvantages: fairly specialised reading

I think it is fair to say that the band known to musical history, as The Tansads doesn’t induce a spark of recognition in most people. In fact if that were not the case, this book would never had been written. Subtitled “the life and times of a failed rock star” Ed Jones autobiographical odyssey is the antidote to all the success stories, rags to riches, poor boy makes good rubbish that this celebrity loving culture of ours would have you believe happens every day. In the world of the celebrity-obsessed media, million to one shots make good nine times out of ten, if you believe the media coverage. “This is Pop” on the other hand is the reality of a normal, well normal-ish, bunch of talented, innovative and hard working individuals, who, like so many bands, don’t make it to the dizzy heights of superstardom. For every U2, every Queen, every Oasis there must be thousands of bands that get turned over by disreputable industry pundits, implode under personality clashes or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the Tansads it was a bit of each and more besides.

The Tansads hailed from Wigan, in an era before The Verve had been courted by the paparazzi and made the northwest a fashionably unfashionable place to be from. This was the late eighties and any band from this part of the world was automatically subjected to puns about whippets and flat caps by the London based music press. With Wigan there was the added temptation of using the word pier in the title, or peer if the writer was particularly clever. On paper the band seem to be an easy target, although their music was original, full of pop sensibility but able to charge headlong into the realms of heavy rock, it also had a love affair with…folk instruments, as well as numbering seven or eight members. Comparisons to The Levellers, who were just breaking through, were also an easy way out, but the Tansads were one of the most unique and non-categorisable bands in the contemporary genre of their day.

The one thing to remember about this book is that it is a biography of a band written by one of its members, albeit quite a key player, which means that there is always going to be a certain element of bias. Not implying that there is any hidden agenda in Jones writing, its just that it is a descriptions of events from only one view point, but that is always going to be the way in such an undertaking as this. I will actually say that Jones seems to go out of his way to be balanced. Hindsight, as they say, is a wonderful thing and it has enabled him to see the other sides of the arguments and understand the bigger picture, which may not have been so apparent in the heat of the moment. The book then is a biography of his time in the band, which he, as one of the more active members of the decision-making element, experienced from both a creative and business point. It is also a warning to people trying to make it in music, if there is a trip fall in the business, the Tansads seemed to go headlong into it. It seems if it weren’t for bad luck, they would have had no luck at all. We are not talking about a small local band here, by the time Jones finally bailed out of the sinking ship they had released three albums and live and worked as a professional band for five years. It does expose the nature of the business though. The rock and roll life style may be the image that most people get when they envisage being in a band but the realities are constant spiralling debts, unsupportive and greedy record labels and all the relationship problems that come from living day in day out with a bunch of people that have nothing in common except for being in the band.

It is an honest book with a fair and balanced view of the highs and lows of trying to make it in the music business. It is not bitter but reflective and you come away feeling that the author has that “well, at least I had a go” attitude rather than “its so unfair, it should have been me”. It is also a book that runs along at a healthy pace, I found it engrossing and read all 200 odd pages of it in one sitting. Even if you are not fascinated by the intricacies of the music business, its still a warm and human account of the bands struggles and highlights what its like for the majority of bands that never quite get there. The final words on the matter are to be found on the back of the book and come from Alan McGee, the man that made his slice by finding a little known Manchester band called Oasis.

“With every big selling album you should get a free copy of this book. This is how not to be famous. This is the Tansads.”

Summary: a look at the realities of life in a band