Silly Season

Artrockers,
every summer the music biz goes into a hiatus, a kind of reverse hibernation, we tend to blink at the light (we're not used to it, spesh the bright stuff that tends to be around this time of year) so we burrow down and wait for the return of more rock'n' roll weather. You will see music biz types in the daylight, but it tends to be daylight filtered through the awning of a festival backstage bar where we sit and sweat and watch the band on the mainstage via the backstage monitors. Meanwhile, down in the burrow the biz is planning for the autumn when, traditionally, we all return to spending money on stuff un-releated to flip-flops and ludicrous shorts. This was always a good time to release a record cos the students all had their grants burning a hole in their pockets. I'm not sure that's the case these days, when you know you have to pay it all back, unlike the old grant system, you may be a little more careful about how you spend it. Anyway, that demographic expects everything for free these days, so they're not the cash-cow they were.
So it's all a bit quiet out there, it's the phoney war that precedes the end of year sellathon, we know the bombs are coming, they're being primed in silos right now, but for now we can only watch the skies and count the ammunition. Folks are bound to get bored and restless, youngsters might start a few fires, drink a few tinnies, throw up on your shoes, that sort of thing. In fact you might, in your boredom, wonder which band can do the most forward rolls, such are the thoughts of the idler in summer. But you might draw back from dedicating two pages in a weekly music mag to the subject. You might, I certainly would, but they didn't.
They call it 'the silly season'.
Bring on the snow

Tom Artrocker