NAKED CITY – THE GRUMPY AFTER GUIDE TO THE ARIAS!

If you are inherently cynical (like me), music award ceremonies have always had a very hollow ring to them. The Grammys – so what! Billboard Awards – who cares! MTV Awards – horrible! And then there’s the ARIAS – for some three decades the Australian music industry’s so-called night of nights. Okay – mmm!

Sorry, I’m not enthused because every year there’s an awful predictability about the ARIAS and just who gets the pyramid-like gongs. These days what’s left of the so-called ‘record industry’ is controlled by an ever decreasing number of global conglomerates and their featured artists invariably scoop the pool – sadly an indictment of the lack of diversity in Australian popular music. In previous years it was Powderfinger and Gotye – this year it was Flume scooping the bulk of the pointed booty. Incidentally, the number he performed at the awards sounded an awful lot like Kate Bush having a panic attack – or am I just out of touch?

Throw in your token big name overseas artist, this year it was Robbie Williams, assorted X Factor or The Voice winners and runners up, a couple of heritage artists like Farnsey and Barnsey, a cheesy set, a bunch of hand picked sycophants in the mosh pit and you have the standard, Groundhog Day, ARIAs recipe.

There are of course minor awards for Best World Music and Best Jazz Albums, but these are usually excluded from the televised hoopla of the night. Ironically this is where the real diversity in Australian music lies, but these artists don’t sell numbers so it’s the mass produced iTunes fodder that takes priority.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with good top 40 pop songs, but despite all the advances in technology, the music world seems to have stalled. Unlike previous decades that delivered dynamic new genres, there’s little these days to truly inspire like the emergence of soul, funk, punk, reggae, hip hop, alt-country and even disco. A lot of today’s popular music is in fact rehashed retro, tarted up with technology but offering very little in the way of anything new.

And what of the actual ARIA ‘after’ parties, that back in the 1990’s were legendary for their top shelf boozing, white line snorting and shameless debauchery, much of it at the record company’s expense. Well they’re not entirely gone, but these days the post-ARIA flings are reportedly a far more sober affair, with record companies loathe to indulge the kind of gratuitous largesse that defined previous decades.

Now here’s a suggestion: unleash the turpitude and bring back some of the unmitigated bacchanalia of the 80’s and 90’s. Rather than televise another Groundhog Day of boring ARIA gongs, scrap the awards ceremony altogether and take the cameras into the riotous ‘after party’, a three-to-four hour extravaganza of celebrities, frustrated lesser recognised musicians, X Factor cast-offs and record company big boys, all behaving badly. Television ratings would soar as this ‘Don’s Party’ meets ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf’ of the music industry strips bare all the ugly tensions, underhanded manipulation and rampant greed that define today’s recording scene.

Really – some people are just too goddamn cynical!