MUSIC

Time was it was pretty tricky to get a gig if you weren’t old enough to vote. Not any more. Julian Owen joins The Next Generation.

Education Maintenance Allowance cut, university fees raised exponentially, Future Jobs Fund shelved. Yep, if you’re a school pupil surveying your post-exams prospects, you might well be asking what in heaven’s name you did to deserve so many key lower rungs on life’s ladder to be unceremoniously removed as you’re about to stretch for them. Truly, you have our sympathy. But... you also have our envy. Because if you’re a local musician, the ladder has never been more robust, nor filled with so many easily reachable steps. There’s Remix and New Generation Takeover at the Colston Hall (see below), Youth 4 Youth in Kingswood (see Don't Miss), and many others besides.

Including The Next Generation, whose debut night at the Fleece attracted a crowd of 350 to watch school-age bands sing out from its hallowed boards. If it’s long been a grievance of underage acts that venues are less than forthcoming in offering places to play, you’d imagine that midweek figures like that might help change a few minds. The Fleece were certainly impressed, with Terry Moore and Kate Rossiter’s not-for-profit brainchild now firmly booked as a monthly fixture. The former is the irrepressibly enthusiastic drummer with COI, the latter a music teacher who first hired the “big hit with the kids” as a drum tutor for her school three years ago. “I’m quite good at the front stuff,” says Terry. “Designing posters and flyers, talking to promoters on the night itself, but I don’t have contacts in the school itself.” Classically trained (flute and piano) Kate, meanwhile, “wouldn’t have had a clue” how to set up a gig, but knows “a lot of music teachers. They’re busy and might not pay attention to a mail-shot, but I speak to them personally. I’m good on the admin side, too.”

A marked shift in school ecology has helped, says Kate. “A lot of schools do BTEC courses now – performing arts and music – so, depending on the modules pupils take, they’re required to be in bands.” “When I was in school,” says 24-year-old Terry, “I didn’t even get to do GCSE music because only three of us wanted to do it. If someone had tried this concept then, I don’t think it would have worked.” Changed times. Access To Music – the college Terry himself attended – now run courses in schools, and also attend TNG nights. In return, they help supply the acts with equipment. As Kate says, “it really makes sense to link it up – everyone has the same aim. We want to give young people somewhere to go, to come along and watch and have a good time.” “Rather than drinking on the corner of a park, listening to music on their iPod when they could be listening to real music in a real venue,” adds Terry.

That ‘real venue’ is very much the point. Schools might have battle of the bands nights or end-of-term concerts but, says Kate, “a band want to see people standing and moving, not sitting down because of health and safety”. They don’t come much more ‘real’ than the Fleece. The bands are “standing on a stage where their idols have stood,” says Terry. “You see them walk in and they look at all the posters above the bar: Radiohead, Coldplay. That’s a massive deal for them.” And for the parents: he tells Venue of the dad looking on in rapt disbelief as his daughter played the same stage graced by the heroes of his youth.

Come curtain down, the acts playing the Fleece will have learnt how to promote (flyering, Facebook-ing etc), soundcheck and, of course, perform from a ‘proper’ stage. The potential for moving on from there is clear. “Some of the bands that have played have gone on to play The Cooler, The Croft, the Louie,” reveals Terry. “We put them in the loop.” Fancy a go yourself? Dead straightforward, he avows. “Everyone can record themselves on phones, so we’ll ask for a YouTube clip to get a general idea. It doesn’t matter what style they play.” Little wonder that the knock-on effect in schools is already striking, as Kate reveals. “I’ve had kid after kid coming to see me asking ‘Oh, miss, can we practise at lunchtime?’”

FFI: WWW.TNGMUSIC.CO.UK

REMIX/NEW GENERATION TAKEOVER

Just back from Green Man? Or Shambala? Chances are you might have seen young From Round These Parts performers thanks to a stage organised by the Colston Hall’s Remix and New Generation Takeover schemes. Remix offers free music-making workshops (in band skills, singing, MC-ing, DJ, music production etc) to u-19s (particularly those who’ve previously had limited access to such resources), and has just scooped £240k funding to develop a modern youth ensemble for Bristol. NGT, meanwhile, is aimed at 13-19-year-olds across the fields of dance, art/graffiti, music making, music business and events promotion.

FFI: WWW.COLSTONHALL.ORG/WHATSON/EVENT2633

Copyright Julian Owen 2011