Of course, BC Camplight was brilliant at the Trinity Centre. Beneath a cowboy hat, clad in black, swigging occasionally from a wine bottle, Camplight, or Brian Christinzio as he is really known, sang powerfully and beautifully alongside his multi-talented band. How could someone who released such a great album as Shortly After Takeoff possibly fail? And he succeeded, massively. Yet there was an element of sadness that touched me near the end when Christinzio, from Brooklyn via Manchester, urged the audience to meet him at the merchandise desk after the show where he would sign anything. “I have no money,” he said.
Meanwhile, on ITV there was the concert for Ukraine, with a ghastly line-up of millionaires doing awful songs for a good cause (with the notable exceptions of the Manic Street Preachers and Nile Rodgers, who it seems per performing great songs) in a world a million miles away from the Trinity Centre.
This is the problem for most performing artists these days: there’s not much money in it. Whilst the superstars can pack Hyde Park for £120 a ticket, playing to punters who are several postcodes away, artists like Christinzio are playing to a packed small hall for £15 a ticket. To bring his music properly to life, he employs a five-person band, which cannot be cheap. Worst of all, hardly anyone pays for music anymore with most content to steal legally from streaming sites. Only a minority of mug punters like me pay for their music and only yesterday I paid £2 to download a Camplight EP that I could have otherwise listened to on a popular streaming site for next to nothing. At least when he made his plaintive cry that he had no money, I could say with a clear conscience that I paid for my hard copy of Shortly After Takeoff and I paid to download his latest EP. No, that’s unfair. We’ve all been encouraged by the industry to stream music. Why should I blame people who then do it?
After the show, I went to the merchandise desk where Christinzio was signing T shirts and engaging merrily with his fans, with the intention of buying something I probably didn’t need to support the artist, but aside from the T shirts there was nothing. And I have rather too many T shirts as it is. If any of his earlier CDs had been on sale, I’d have bought one. Maybe Christinzio can’t even afford to run a merch stall or run to the expense of bringing items with him? I didn’t ask.
It made me wonder why artists, especially one as talented as Christinzio, really bother. It can’t be much more than a hand to mouth existence, travelling the land in a van just big enough for the band and their instruments, hoping, I guess, for that breakthrough that will promote them to playing arenas and concerts for Ukraine.
I know, I know: I think too much and when the star announces that he has no money played on my mind for the rest of the evening and, as you can tell, the start of today. I love my music but the business model for musicians today, such as there is one, is surely not sustainable, although if you look at the various gig guides there are more artists and bands on the road than ever, many of whom are still living at home with mum and dad.
BC Camplight was brilliant and if you get the chance to see him play live, then I recommend you take it. I just wish I’d remembered my ear protectors. My tinnitus and increasing deafness is bad enough as it is.
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