My favourite quote from The Commitments film. And one which resonated heavily with me and my band mates at the time.

As I write this it’s a week since the death of Irish musician Glen Hansard who came to fame as part of the cast of The Commitments, a wonderful 1991 film directed by Alan Parker. He hadn’t actually intended to audition for the film and went along with a mate, but as is so often the case the director saw something special in him and got him to go for it, winning him the role of Outspan (a great pun on his ginger hair!) the band guitarist.

The film was a big thing for my friends and I at the time, we watched it an awful lot and it was hugely inspirational for us as musicians in a band in rural Lincolnshire. Our town didn’t feel hugely different to the Irish towns and cities the film showed, and certainly the people encountered in the film were incredibly similar.

The film is based on the excellent book by Roddy Doyle and it told the tale of a rag tag group of musicians who gave their all to make their band successful, and ends in chaos and drama as the band splinters and splits up. It was an interesting snapshot of life at the time as a musician, albeit in a soul covers band, and showed the highs and lows of this. It was also very funny.

We were living in the Groove HQ house in Gainsborough back then, see my previous blog post for details of that, and my wife at the time worked at a local video rental store, “Movietime”. A bonus of this meant we could get free video rentals most nights as she had to watch the films in order to promote them to potential customers. So The Commitments film came home a LOT!

We often used to quote the film and it became a bit of an in joke thing for us to use the quotes (like the one I titled this piece with) as we took our own band on the road. Ironically Children of a Lesser Groove ended up splitting up in a similarly chaotic and dramatic way so perhaps the film was closer to life than we imagined!

Back then musicians often had to claim the “dole” signing on each week and having to prove that they were actively looking for work at the Job Centre each visit, hence the quote “it’s better to be an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipe fitter”. After a while claiming the dole ourselves myself and Fozz managed to get ourselves on a government business start up scheme, and use the band as our business. It was ran by a lovely older man called Gary who understood the government system well, and made it work for us, he got on well with us both, and I think secretly had long gone youthful rock and roll aspirations. This was great as it meant we could focus on the band 100% but I know a lot of other musicians couldn’t do that, hence the large amount of rock and roll pseudonyms at the time, as people continued to claim dole under their real name while playing under made up names. Slade the Leveller of New Model Army for example.

We had our Children of a Lesser Groove names as a result of this too, mine was Hex Groover, Dieter was Stone Groover and Fozz was, well… Fozz Groover.

Ahem…it seemed like a good idea at the time.

To this day certain friend groups still call me Hex from those halcyon days.

The outpouring of grief and tributes to Glen after his passing last week has been really interesting and emotional to witness. I must admit post Commitments I didn’t really follow his career, I was aware of his band The Frames but never really listened to them. I did occasionally see him pop up on my news feeds through other artists, most memorably when he organised the tribute concert for Shane Macgowan in Dublin.

However I have been really moved this week by tributes from musicians all over the world, and it’s been really lovely to watch footage of Glen performing and interacting with fellow musicians, fans and ordinary people. The song “Falling Slowly” obviously meant a lot to people and his voice is just stunning in it. What struck me most is how well respected he was as an actual musician, not just by his fellow musicians but by ordinary folk too. Which in turn got me thinking how musicians are perceived; clearly in Ireland music is still a HUGE thing and musicians are valued culturally and as part of society, I may be wrong but I think most families have some sort of connection with music somewhere, an uncle/sister/grandfather who plays something, and it does seem to be encouraged and supported well, especially in the pubs and bars.

In mainland Europe too, my own experience is that as a musician you are seen as something “special” and valued accordingly. Playing over there is very different to the UK, people support events and the clubs and venues treat you well, making sure you have food and drink and paying a fair price for you to perform.*

Even the people who come to gigs look after you too, inviting you to other events, or to cafes and restaurants for conversations about music, aware of the kudos they get themselves for knowing the magical and mysterious folk known as “musicians”. I went to some cracking house parties after gigging in Europe and again people were interested to talk to me precisely because I was a musician/creative person.

In the UK it’s a bit different, musicians are still generally frowned upon by most people, the amount of times I’ve told someone I’m a musician only to have the rebuff of “Yeah, but what do you do for a proper job?” Even when I was a teenager the careers advice was to get a steady job as a mechanic and do music as a hobby.

As a nation we just don’t take creative roles seriously as a career option. Which is crazy considering how much influence UK musicians have had on world music over the years and how big the UK music industry is. This is equally applicable to artists too, these careers are seen as hobbies and not REAL career paths to follow. All these years on from my own teenage years and nothing much has changed. Of course the recent governmental decisions regarding music and arts courses haven’t helped this, they have over recent years, eroded arts education and devalued the credibility and importance of art and music in society.

Now we have the added layer of AI, which allows people with no creative bone in their bodies to create things which “simulate” art or music. Of course real musicians and artists know these AI constructs have no depth or real understanding of the process of creation, and that REAL art and music is inherently BETTER, but nonetheless it does feel like a battle we cannot win unless society changes its opinion on artists and musicians, and begins to value them.

Social media doesn’t help either, especially at grass roots level, as we try and get our work “out there” whether it’s a gallery show or a new release it’s very hard to get the wider public outside of your personal “echo chamber” to know about events and new products. This week I released a new track via YouTube, it’s quite good, here it is:

Now, I have over 600 friends on Facebook, and currently after 4 days the video sits at 64 views. That’s 1% of my friend pool, and bear in mind it’s not just Facebook it’s been shared on.

That’s pretty poor impact.

I’ve posted multiple times regarding the release and interaction from friends is minimal, in fact pictures I posted of a trip I made to Byland Abbey at the weekend have had more likes in total, with just one post.

It’s frankly disheartening that we have to fight these crazy algorithms to get our creative work seen, this is equally as applicable for events too, minimal engagement means minimal attendees.

The inevitable great quote we hear so often after posting multiple times about events is, “Aw no, I’d have gone to that if you’d told me about it…”.

So if you have friends who are musicians or artists please show your support and like and share their posts, make them VISIBLE attend their events and actually TELL them how great they are at what they do creatively, it means such a lot to hear that, believe me.

The irony is not lost on me that potentially only a handful of people will read this blog post precisely for the reasons stated above!

Ultimately we need to value all musicians and artists in the way that Glen was valued by his peers and his community.

Quite how we get that sea change to happen in wider society is something I don’t have an answer to.

But I’m hopeful we will.

One day.

We are human after all.

RIP Glen and thankyou for your inspiration all those years ago.

* Back in the 1990s when we played in the UK if we were lucky we got a fee of £50 from some pubs/clubs, some we got nothing, and some we had to pay to actually play. I don’t think much has changed and the standard fee in the UK is still between £50 and £100, with some places still operating a pay to play policy too. Contrast that with Europe where at base level you get paid 200-300 euros per gig as a UK band, plus food and drink etc on top.