There’s a running joke in John Niven’s novel ‘The Second Coming’ that Moses fucked up when he came down the mountain post his natter with God. The Big Man had given Moses one simple two word message to deliver, but suffering from the human frailty of ego Moses felt embarrassed at only having two words to share having given it the biggin going up there. So he sexed things up, devising the Ten Commandments on the hoof as he legged it down the mountain.
That simple, clear, genius message Moses was meant to deliver was?
BE NICE.
Genius ey? So simple. So clear. So fucking obvious. Yet us homosapiens, we like to complicate things don’t we? Thou shalt not this, thou shalt not that. Hey ho, at least 3000 odd years later he inspired our Nusic Commandments, I’m sure that was his prophecy at the time (imagine if he had come down the mountain and proclaimed to the Twelve Tribes of Israel Thou Shalt Only Play New Music Born In The Great County of Nottinghamshire, it would’ve been head scratch central).
Anywho what’s this got to do with Nottingham? Well back in Feb 2012 we pontificated that “as a scene starts to succeed things can fracture, its easy to support each other when all huddled warmly at the bottom. As we see our peers climbing the music industry greasy pole, peers we may feel we are better than, we can start to get bitter.”
It’s a credit to Notts that two and a half years on there hasn’t been much of this but we can sense it happening a wee bit, so we just wanted to say don’t get your knickers in a twist if you weren’t mentioned in the NME article, we wanted to name drop the spirit of that legendary Nottingham soiree ‘Why Can’t We All Get Along?’ and we wanted to simply ask, can we all please remember to be nice?
We get grief ourselves, we’re questioned (that’s putting it diplomatically) re our ‘everything is amazing’ approach, some of which potentially has justification now the context of an ‘early scene’ has evolved, now things are good is 100% positivity still necessary, justified and/ or appropriate? Yes. Yes it is. Several biggies why.
– Being positive is nice. We could stop right there couldn’t we?
– It’s STILL an effective ‘encouraging approach’ when dealing with musicians at the start of their career, which is where our efforts remain focused. It has always been, and will continue to be, the case that the likelihood of our approach making you want to vom increases with every successful rotation round the sun.
– Nusic is a supportive organisation that does some media, not the other way round. Appreciating that context hopefully addresses some concerns about media impartiality being undermined by always being positive. We set out to create positive and, hopefully for some, inspiring media content. Sorry if you find the word inspiring naff. Our editorial position is vivid and transparent. We do not seek to gratify our own egos via vindictive wordplay, yes we always focus on the positive but that does not mean we distort things. If our ears aren’t rating someone, we try hard to be objective and pass over any personal musical prejudices. If we have nothing positive to say we will not lie, we’ll simply stay stum. Being nasty about a musician is not ‘honesty’, it is a conscious choice to be aggressive with the intent of pissing all over the aspirations of the musical victim, it’s a conscious decision to be a twat.
So even if it doesn’t come to you instinctively, even if your idea of spreading the love is spreading a highly contagious STD, a wee plea to do it (the love, not the std) for your own personal self interest, because… (increibly we’ve managed to write 642 words before rolling out the classic line) “a rising tide lifts all ships”. Back in Oct 2011 we suggested… “ Imagine if clinical research showed all men from Nottingham were great in bed but the news article didn’t mention you. Your ego may not have had a specific stroking (perhaps not the best word to use with this metaphor) but it would still be great news for you and your aspirations to get laid by the hordes of single women who then decide to deluge Notts, Lynx advert styley.”
Being nice, is, well, nice.
It’s also effective, in your interests and might even get you laid.
And if you can’t manage nice, to quote the great Notts MC and philosopher KARIZMA, at the very least…
Don’t be a dick.
Big Luv
Mark Del
