Ones and Zeros: Mixed Feelings

Mixed Feelings

July 31, 2002

The Houston Press's annual music awards were published in this week's edition of our weekly alt^TM newsrag. It's supposed to be better: more care, more local reporting, a better feel for the music scene. Except when it isn't. The Press started, some six or seven years ago, a Best Celtic Music category in their annual doo-dah contest. This was theoretically better than the "Best World Music" or "Best Ethnic Music", which compared Celtic to African drummers or Eastern European gypsy music. Now, there's nothing wrong with either of those competitors, but you'll never determine one is 'better' than the other, because they really don't have an overlapping audience. At best you'll find out which band has more readers of the Press. That might be the idea, of course, but it's supposed to determine 'best', so some rational comparison would be useful. Eventually, Ceili's Muse won, some 18 months after the band officially broke up. This year, The Flying Fish Sailors won. They beat out Jiggernaut. Ceili's Muse was nominated (as "Cecil's Muse"), but Clandestine and The Rogues were not. That's absurd. They still (after 5 or more years running the category) don't know or care who plays Celtic music in Houston. Fine, maybe (as Maggie Drennon of Ceili's Muse used to say) "Celtic musicians are the nerds of the music Industry." Nerds don't get respect, apparently, from the powers that be at the Alt paper. I'm really glad for my friends in the FFS, but damn, I wish it had been a better race, so they could have had a more meaningful win. In my world, the contestants would have been:

Clandestine
Powerful, beautiful songwriting backed by killer bagpipes and cool vocal harmonies
The Flying Fish Sailors
This revitalized local group smoothly moves from sea songs to love songs to songs of rednecks who abduct aliens. Don't ask me, just go see them.
Jiggernaut
The up and comer in the lot, with survivors from several favorites melding together into a folk/celt/rock-pop fusion thing that delivers solid fun.
The Rogues
Houston's unabashed Bad Boys with Bagpipes, the Rogues are fast, furious and fun.

If that had been the line up, I'd've been very satisfied. As an engineer, I've worked shows with 3/4ths of them and I like and respect them all and I attend shows by all of them. It would have been a horse-race between three old favorites and an exciting newcomer. There isn't a one of those bands whom I'd've been sorry to see win. But that wasn't the line up, because they didn't ask me. They didn't even ask Wolf Loescher, who was in Ceili's Muse and is in Jiggernaut. I've no idea where they got their list, but it wasn't written by anyone who's paid any attention since the turn of the century. Not knowing the major players in the field? And listing a defunct one instead? I wanted to vote for Mel Carnahan. Instead, I wrote The Press a letter. We'll see what (if anything) they do with it...

Does News Hostage print stories about clumsy reporting errors in the Press? While I understand your desire to expand to new genres of music, I would suggest that before you do so, you should make sure you can adequately handle the categories you've got. I found your nominations in the Celtic music category bizarre and sloppy. Your first listed nominee was "Cecil's Muse", which you later corrected to "Ceili's Muse", a band that last performed in 1997. You neglected to nominate "Clandestine", who have been a mainstay of the Houston Celtic music scene for years, and whose last studio album was produced by Gerry O'Beirne. Certainly they deserved a nod before a band that hasn't been performing for five years. I am happy for my friends in the FFS that they have won;they are talented, versatile, and interesting. Their win would have been more meaningful if they had been competing against their peers. [email address not for publication, please]

.:Posted by Michael on July 31, 2002 3:46 PM:.