No Rock And Roll Fun

DREAMING OF THE BRITS: The Liverpool Echo has gotten itself all hot and bothered over the thought of The Brits or maybe the MTV awards coming from the city; they even phoned up the people who do the Brits and asked them how about it, then?

The BPI's Maggie Crowe didn't let them down:

"We are not London-centric so of course we would consider bringing the Brits to Liverpool. The city is a cultural hub - not just in the arts - but in the live music sector. Liverpool is a very up and coming place and we have a strong link with the city through our support of LIPA. We are lucky as our main sponsor is Mastercard so we don't rely on partnerships with arts councils in potential host cities -we can go wherever we want - and that could be Liverpool in the future."

Interesting that Maggie seems to think "the arts" is a subset of live music and not the other way round; it's also surprising that someone from the BPI thinks that a city with no venue capable of taking more than 2,100 is a live music hub. Let's take the BPI at the word that the Brits aren't London Centric - because they've held their awards outside London on a staggering no occassions - and just ponder, where would the Brits be held? What venue on Merseyside is going to be able to offer an Earls Court sized experience? Added to which, how many of the Record Industry lags - for whom the Brits is the prime winter jolly, keeping them happy until Midem - are going to want to drag themselves up to Liverpool and back? It's noticeable that In The City never bothered to repeat their Liverpool experiment, despite having promised the now-defunct Merseyside Music Development Agency they'd trial Liverpool twice.