Would you really want to hear them live?
Girls Aloud at Bristol.
Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty
Ever wondered whether that teenage boy disconsolately stabbing a keyboard on CD:UK is actually playing it? No? What do you mean it's obvious?
The Musicians' Union doesn't think so. They've announced today that broadcasters should cease pulling the wool over our eyes (or indeed ears), and the public should be told when someone on TV is miming rather than playing live. Rather sweetly, they even propose that a little logo be flashed up on screen warning viewers that the act they're about to watch isn't the real thing, or has "recorded or mimed elements".
"Just as when you buy a can of beans and it tells you what's in the beans," says Horace Trubrige of the MU, "we think if you are going to buy a ticket for a show or watch a band on the TV, you should know exactly what it is you are buying and what you are watching." Infelicitous phrasing, perhaps - canned musicians, yuck - but you can certainly see their point. Or can you?
Of course it's undeniable that live music at shows and on TV is something to be nurtured, not least because it gives hard-up musicians work and much-needed cash. Particularly as otherwise they'd have to play in orchestras, which - reading the piece in today's paper - it appears you wouldn't wish on anyone.
But there are two flaws with this approach: first, won't this in fact do musicians out of otherwise plum jobs? You know, the kinds of gigs when all they have to do is turn up and mime at a pre-taped session, and hardly have to worry about playing in tune. One's heart goes out to the phalanx of pulchritudinous cellists who get those appealing gigs on Top of the Pops, when all they have to do is play along to the backing track, safe in the knowledge that no one will ever actually hear what they sound like.
Second, doesn't it misunderstand what most people want? Much chart music is hardly intended for live performance, and in fact has to be completely reworked if it is. Hardly a modern problem, too: for all the Beatles' late-period prattle of playing live one last time, perhaps it's just as well for everyone they didn't. And whether you'd want to hear what your average girl band sounds like after getting up at 5am to play kids' TV is a separate question entirely. In those circumstances pre-recorded tracks seem less like a cheat than a safeguard.
Anyway, too, isn't that why people actually pay to see musicians live? To hear something different, special, unique? Here's to the disconsolate teenager and his finger-stabbing magic on the keyboard.
