What Happened To The Music

Freshers week is now over. Don’t worry though, I’m not going to launch in to another one of those “wasn’t Freshers week great/awful/unforgettable/forgotten” type rants. I’ll control myself and be more specific: why is it that York cannot attract anyone the least bit exciting to play at Freshers events?
My younger sister is at Birmingham Uni. In her Freshers week, she managed to see Calvin Harris, Vernon Kay and Zane Lowe. Now I know many of you will question the merits of each of these acts. But had she come to York, my sister would have got the Cheeky Girls and that bloke that lost the X Factor.

Why is it that York University only attracts Z-listers and cheesy joke acts like these? What songs does Eoghan Quigg actually sing? Who knows any Cheeky Girls song apart from that one about touching their bums? It was the same at my Freshers ball two years ago: once B*witched played their one famous song, everyone wandered off.
That’s if the acts even turn up, that is. Wiley dropped out of the Freshers Ball this year, as Noah and the Whale did at the last one. The Noisettes dropped out of last year’s Summer Ball. At least I would have recognised more than one of their songs. But no, the spectre of cheese rose up and dissuaded them from playing. I am assuming here, but perhaps they thought they were too big for York.

Perhaps I am being overly critical. Mr Hudson recently played a James event, and in my First Year I saw the Mystery Jets in JJ’s over in Halifax. But there were still problems: I have it on good authority that Mr Hudson was a bit of a diva. But more importantly the Mystery Jets’ set was performed on a cramped stage at the back of the bar, lit by a lamp placed precariously on the side of the stage. What I thought would be an intimate gig became a bunch of guys trying to find their chords in the dark. The lack of even basic technical equipment was a travesty – I’m fairly sure I remember the lamp falling into the audience at one point, only for the most diehard fans to raise it back up Iwo Jima style.

The lack of a decent venue in the University is the problem. This is compounded by the lack of anything bigger than Fibber’s in town, but we can’t fix things in the city. On campus, however, we have a say.

Imagine if we had our own little venue in Langwith attached to the Courtyard – where L/N/028 is, let’s say. I agree that it would be a bit pitiful to begin with. But over time we could build the music scene at this university back up to the level of the mid sixties. I’m going to trot out the old Jimi-Hendrix-played-in-Central-Hall story, but it matters. Imagine anything like that happening today; Jimi Hendrix would have to play at the back of the dining hall at the next Derwent event.

To attract the big names to our Freshers events we need to establish the music scene in York here, on our campus. Otherwise we can sit about watching Hijak Oscar play Fibbers again. It will take time certainly. We’ll probably have to endure some pretty dire student bands for a bit, until the decent ones get their act together. Then maybe we could have a crack at someone bigger. But at least we wouldn’t have to look Eoghan in his puppy-dog eyed, slack-jawed face and try to work out if he’s singing a Boyzone or a Westlife song. Don’t look to me to work out where the money’s going to come from. It’s just that to attract the big names, we have to start out on our campus, and on our terms.