Why I Hope Yashin WIll Make It Big

Channel 4 have a show called mobileAct Unsigned, looking for fresh new talent. I think that Yashin are what they should be looking for, but the man from the record company doesn’t realise it..

I’ve become sadly addicted to the indie X-Factor that is Channel 4’s mobileAct Unsigned. In the show unsigned bands have to perform in front of a panel of celebrity judges (what else?) made up of Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley, blur bassist Alex James, head of A&M Records Simon Gavin, as well as a different guest judge each week.

This week’s show saw a band called Yashin come down to perform in front of the judges for a second time, having been eliminated in an earlier show; Jo Whiley was so convinced that the judges had made the wrong decision that she managed to get them a second chance. Now I have to say that I personally wouldn’t want to listen to one of their songs unless my life depended on it. It’s a pretty hardcore emo sound, or screamo if you like.

However, when refusing to let Yashin through to the next round for a second time, label bos Simon Gavin gave the reason that it would be hard for them to compete with Enter Shikari. Is he mad? Surely the fact that a band like Enter Shikari exist, and have managed to find pretty good levels of success with no record company assistance at all, would be reason enough for Gavin to snap up any band who look like they could make a wave in that market.

I have to say that I really hope that the decision comes back to haunt him, as it seems to show a complete lack of understanding of the way that the music industry is going; bands make records now to give them a reason to tour, rather than the other way round, so I could easily see Yashin following the Enter Shikari model and financing their own releases or tours, by hammering the MySpace generation.

What would be really great is if Enter Shikari could somehow use their success to give Yashin a boost, leaving Simon Gavin to wonder, a few years down the road, whatever happened to his business model.

Mobile photo: Gaetan Lee on Flickr

3 comments

  1. Oh, I don’t doubt that you will be right – I just kind of hoped that wouldn’t be the case.

    I still wonder whether both of these bands might not be even bigger if they’d had the kind of label support that seems to be regularly wasted on fire-work bands.

    Like I said, they’re not my cup of tea at all but the fact that Shikari still seem to be making a pretty healthy living with no backing of any sort suggests that I wasn’t entirely wrong either.

    By the way, thanks for taking the time to comment – I do have to say that you certainly seem to care a whole heap more than a certain other record label talent show judge!

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