No Rock And Roll Fun

RADIO ONE ATTACKED: The British music industry is pushing for a French style homegrown quota system for Radio One, moaning about the amount of Beyonce and Eminem being played on the station. Again, then, the record industry doesn't take the obvious message - you're not producing the goods, boys - and instead starts whining and demanding special treatment. And how great would it be if by law Radio One had to choose to play Victoria Beckham rather than Beyonce, or Goldie in place of Eminem. What a fancy-happy-singy world we'd be living in then. But perhaps we should give them their desire, on the strict understanding that the UK music industry is also forced to stick to a quota, forcing them to cut the level of total bloody rubbish they produce to 80% of their output by 2008. But, hey, perhaps if they started to release better stuff, there'd be better stuff for the radio to play?

As an example of how lame the music industry is, one of the bands the Sean O'Brien, chair of Telstar, suggests would be helped by the introduction of a fixed level of UK artists on Radio One would be The Thrills. Uh - would that be the band from Dublin, by any chance? Added to which, since they're so obviously influenced by Americana, you could argue that a strict Brits rule would have crushed them before they even formed.