Would an X Factor-style TV show featuring unknown bands or solo artists performing original compositions take off?

Because that's the only way I'm watching any of this sort of shit. My dad claims there's no chance, and that people will only watch musical talent contests if the singers are performing songs they already know. I reckon it's a great idea. Performance AND creativity, with values at stake far transcending visual and vocal pop marketability! The X Factor if The X Factor actually had a soul! Battle Of The Bands Live! I'd be hooked, would you?

But how are you supposed to know who's a good singer if you've got no original version to which you can compare them?

Kidding.

The biggest problem with this idea is that you'll inevitably be disappointed by who the public at large chooses to keep around and who they choose to send home. You'll end up with some Sara Bareilles clone winning, because the world really needs another one.

When it's just strictly a singing competition, you're free to judge on the vocal ability alone and leave it up to them how they use it after the competition is over.

can't believe you missed two series of T4 Mobile Act Unsigned, featuring such worthy winners as Envy and Other Sins and whoever won last year. Alex James is a judge.

Yeah, it didn't really take off.

erm, that post makes it look like Envy won it one year.

didn't tommy lee host a show like this? iirc it was hilarious

When it's just strictly a singing competition, you're free to judge on the vocal ability alone and leave it up to them how they use it after the competition is over.

a) the 'best' vocal abilities invariably belong to carbon-copy well-honed classically-tuneful utterly-boring voices with no hint of individuality, be it in timbre or in style
b) they will use it to record a string of diminishing pop hits with decreasingly well-known producers. their creative input will be near 0.

Also, the trouble with my proposed show is that shit bands would probably prevail, because people are sheep.

It was on Channel 4 Saturday mornings for the last two years, as j.o.n.a says.

Well, it wasn't publicised very well and as a student I was rarely very awake on Saturday mornings

Was the show a success? Any interesting music? What was the format?

not really, cheap and easy to make but people obviously cared so much that Envy and Other Sins became such big recognisable bands. no, unless you only listen to music jo whiley recommends. not really.

oh shit it was jo whiley music

foiled at every turn ;_;

there was some show w/ this premise recently wasn't there (in the states)? great american bandstand or some shit

The fact is that no one any good of the type you describe would bother with this route. X Factor etc works to a limited extent because there ARE relatively clueless people gifted with technically excellent voices (clueless in the sense that they don't really know how to exploit these voices themselves) who perhaps have no better route to success. It remains the case that people who are sufficiently with it and involved to make their own music & form whole bands AND have genuinely interesting talents will have no trouble "making it", so why would they bother with a TV talent contest which will only potentially hamper them? There's this myth propagated - not just by these programmes, but almost everywhere - that there is a wealth of undiscovered talent and that success is nearly a lottery. The reality is that there's a dearth of talent in every creative field, and anyone who is in actual fact any good will EASILY get attention and, unless they're lazy or fucked up (which admittedly rules out 50% straight away), get what they deserve. Talent shows - including X Factor and T4 unsigned - mop up the also-rans, that's all.

Talent shows - including X Factor and T4 unsigned - mop up the also-rans, that's all.

Yeah I know, that's why I don't watch them...the unartistic and the mundane are all that's on show. I guess I just like watching bands perform their own stuff...the thrill of the discovery and all that.

You're wrong that every band with determination, integrity and talent will "make it" as such...many such bands are riddled with debts and have to split in order to save their own pockets. Such a programme would ensure that a few good, low-key bands not only received national coverage but also got decent record deals.

I mean, there should be a big difference between vocal talent contests and full-band ones...the latter have at least gotten together and created something worth valuing, whereas the former are just part of a ghoulish pageant.

That said, it's probably a pipe-dream that bands with full artistic integrity would subject themselves to the barbaric LCD cruelty of television.

You're wrong that every band with determination, integrity and talent will "make it" as such...

Hmm, I didn't mention "determination" or "integrity".

Bands are complicated things to run, but when they self-implode I'd include that in the category of "fucked up". You can't blame the industry for that. I dunno what you mean by "riddled with debts". I don't trust your grasp of how people who devote their lives to this kind of thing operate economically.

"Integrity" is a meaningless word.

"Good, low-key bands" receiving "national coverage" is something I could not give a shit about.

It is true, there are millions of "good, low-key" talents who remain unexposed, and there are a very few "good, low-key" talents who've reached some form of success through the unpredictability of life, contacts, luck etc at the expense of those millions. Big deal.

Still, to repeat, no one in any creative field with any significant, unmissable talent - who is not lazy or fucked up - will have that talent go unnoticed, in 2009.

I suppose. I was merely speculating as to whether an entertaining and constructive means of propagating their talent easily to many people who wouldn't otherwise be aware of it could be derived from television. It's definitely a fantasy, and it probably can't happen.

"Integrity" is not meaningless. It belongs to bands who will promote their art at its zenith, at its foremost expression, when confronted by innumerable listeners. Not bands who dumb down and play what the people ostensibly want to hear.

btw, This interview with Envy and Other Sins is quite 'interesting', I mean it was obvious from the first episode that this show would fuck any band up, but still, quite interesting. (I could've posted that earlier but I went out, and now I'm too tired to keep up with discussion. The worst story ever told.)

"Integrity" is not meaningless. It belongs to bands who will promote their art at its zenith, at its foremost expression,

Eh "integrity" IS pretty meaningless and so is - much much more so! - "bands who will promote their art at its zenith, at its foremost expression". Seriously, what are you talking about? That's complete gibberish.

I mean bands who play music the way they want to play it, not the way they perceive others want it to be played!

Not compromising = having integrity etc etc.

"foremost expression"/"zenith" = the band's musical personality is enhanced, emphasised, displayed proudly at its peak rather than muted and tailored to demands...I can think of MANY bands who've come a cropper this way.

You have some funny ideas.

This would be like going along to yr average open mic night at a local indie venue i.e. mostly fucking excruciating. But with added Lauren Laverne. Integrity vs dumbing down is false dialectic 101, dude.

:(

It's cool to prefer bands that write their own stuff and try to do something different but that and Tin Pan Alley and popularity aren't mutually exclusive and don't exist at each other's expense. When I was a "must write their own songs" teenager dissing Sinatra to my Dad he said to me "would you say the only great actors are people who write their own lines?" and he was right, obv. But c'mon, y'know how TV works, a show like this wd either be that E4 monstrosity or some po-faced BBC4 shite and expecting otherwise is like wondering why ITV don't run Tarkovsky flicks at 9pm on a Saturday. People don't want/need to be "converted", and music has a lot of different and equal valid functions for different folks.

I don't want "conversion", I just want propagation and maybe something entertaining on television that isn't sport or a syndicated American show. It's a personal fantasy that good enterprising bands would participate in such a programme...or that many of them would make it past the pre-show entry rounds. I do believe that really, REALLY good bands of a certain kind transcend this "false dialectic" (see: Blur, Beatles, blah) and make brilliant, artistically thrilling music that also happens to be k-popular (albeit often after years of honing their craft), and this would be the kind of band I'd hope to see on this programme. You can't pigeonhole music, as you say, though, so I'm really not sure what the ultimate purpose of the programme would be, except to make money for TV executives.

Also, point taken re: Sinatra, but none of these X-factor singers are the equivalent of "great actors"...none of them have landmark individualism, and the medium they're performing in doesn't offer them an actor's scope. They're meat with good throats.

That's the thing tho, craft, and that's what mitigates against this kind of a show. I'm not that into the idea of the fabulous debut album followed by diminishing returns, altho I guess life can be like Ted Hughes' "Famous Poet" where years of obscurity create one awesome set of songs and success brings diminishing returns. But with bands it's not usually like that. You get better with practice and freedom. So new bands wd be not much fun.

What about if you had a show where a set of existing groups had to write and perform new material each week and get voted off until the winner was left after 10 weeks with a whole new album or something? (Still strictly fantasy here, obv.)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^awesome idea, roughly 50x better than mine

less awesome if jo whiley gets to decide which groups

Each week you could have some Drawing Restraint/I'm a Celebrity bullshit obstacle to overcome like you have to rehearse in a room full of killer bees or sump'n.

all bein' forced to compose for zither and kazoo in week 7

OK now we phone up Alex James and pitch this bollocks, rite?

we loaf about the New Forest until he comes by in his tweeds

We could flog him some overpriced "organic" food while we're on.

and convince him that lepidopterism and the blogging thereof is 'quintessentially hip'

also what about.....every band gets to release the tracks they've made, but only the winner gets proper funding/distribution/a tour...the rest are online-only or some shit, as part of a crappy 20%-of-proceeds-go-to-charity compilation

44 songs, about right for a double CD package mind

Thing is, people who make it to the later stages of X-Factor have sung a very large number of songs - more than your average up-and-coming act has, at least of any kind of decent standard. As the final loomed in this imaginary competition, produces would almost certainly start drafting in professional songwriters on the sly (or not) to help maintain some kind of standard in quality, thus sort of eliminating the point. If they didn't do this, the finale of the series would consist of songs of a debut album filler track/b-side lavel, which wouldn't make for the most edifying viewing.

We could flog him some overpriced "organic" food while we're on.

Last night, while being terrorised by police helicopters, I misread this as "We could flog him with some overpriced "organic" food while we're on."

The Envy and Other Sins interview posated upthread is fascinating. Now I'd love to hear the story behind how the second winner actually got given at least enough support to get a chart single and what the difference was - did the record company ensure that they got more of a choice over who won? His success from it actually came as a lot more of a surprise than Envy and Other Sins going straight on the scrapheap.