November 22, 2004 by A.S. Van Dorston

MTV2 aired the Shortlist Music Prize show on Saturday, November 20 in a short, tidy half-hour time slot. The ceremony actually took place on November 15 at L.A.’s Avalon Theater. It’s refreshing, compared to the bloated Grammys, with the grotesque spectacle of self-congratulatory music industry weasels that never seems to end. MTV featured an hour of the five hour show last year, but quickly remembered their role is not to introduce new music to the masses, but to pound the obvious chart hits into public consciousness relentlessly and far beyond the point of saturation. The Shortlist rules say the albums (released between July 1, 2003 and June 30, 2004) must not have sold more than 500,000 copies at the time of nomination. Reward an artist for being commercial failures? Outrageous! No big name recognition to milk? What’s the point? Where’s the quick cash? The red carpets? The industry ring kissing and celebrity arse licking?

Recovering weasels Greg Spotts, CEO of a management and marketing company, and MCA VP of A&R Tom Sarig exhumed the forgotten concept of awarding artistic excellence rather than mainstream chart success. They created the Shortlist Music Prize with a mission statement “to create opportunities for left-of-center culture to cross over to the mainstream,” with the long-term goal of building “the Shortlist brand into a powerful recommendation engine that will help grow the audience for adventurous creative works of all kinds.” The “Listmakers” are made up of “respected members of the creative community,” including musicians, record producers and music journalists. “Listmaker” has a bit of a secret-society ring to it, but not to the extent of, say, The Academy, which brings to mind a bunch of wizened old geezers who gather at dinner, toast with bejeweled goblets and discuss their nominations over a ghoulish feast of kittens and puppies. Instead, the Listmakers dinner consists of a much more humane, civilized ritual in which they drink the blood from a label executive who’s outworn their usefulness, or perhaps a washed out pop diva. If Ashlee Simpson disappears completely from the media spotlight, you can guess who will feed the Listmakers at next year’s dinner as they chew the silicone, er, fat over their selections.

A longlist of 49 albums is chosen, which is later whittled down to a shortlist of 10 albums. While it’s been compared to the British Mercury Prize, the Shortlist Music Prize doesn’t restrict by geography or genre. The winner of the inaugural prize in 2001 was Sigur Ros. N.E.R.D. beat out Bjork, DJ Shadow and The Flaming Lips in 2002, and in 2003 Damien Rice was the surprise winner over Interpol, The Black Keys, The Streets and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

This year’s Listmakers included filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Will-I-Am (Black Eyed Peas), Serj (System of a Down), Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional), Robert Smith (The Cure), John Mayer, Norah Jones, Perry Farrell, Jack Black, Dixie Chicks, 3D of Massive Attack, Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Josh Tyrangiel, Margeaux Watson, Neil Strauss, Nic Harcourt, Thor Christensen, Tom Moon and Toure.

The 2004 shortlist consisted of Air, Dizzee Rascal, Franz Ferdinand, Ghostface, The Killers, Loretta Lynn, Nellie McKay, The Streets, TV On The Radio, and Wilco. Left behind in the longlist were worthy contenders like Cafe Tacuba, Elbow, Fiery Furnaces, PJ Harvey and Snow Patrol. “What were they thinking” longlisters included David Bowie, Keane, Macy Gray, Peaches, Phoenix, Ryan Adams and Travis. Perhaps next year they ought print out a Fast ‘n’ Bulbous list, so they don’t miss out on the likes of Four Tet, Amon Tobin, Prefuse 73, Otto, Super Furry Animals, Tujiko Noriko, The Mars Volta, The Walkmen, The Earlies, Sketch Show, Mark Lanegan Band, Mission of Burma, Tom Waits and Arto Lindsay. The Shortlist site shows who Listmakers have nominated in the Shortlist’s four year history. Aimee Mann nominated The Shins, Iggy Pop nominated And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and The Flaming Lips, Beck nominated Clinic and Aphex Twin, both Lars Ulrich and Spike Jonze nominated N.E.R.D., Josh Homme nominated Wire, Tori Amos nominated Mogwai, Cameron Crowe nominated Interpol and Tom Waits nominated The Eels and Orchestra Baobob.

And the winner was TV On The Radio, who happened to have released the best album of 2004, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes. Imagine that! Singer Tunde Adebimpe was shocked, “It’s a little weird,” he said. “We met ?uestlove and he said ‘I nominated you guys for the Shortlist Awards’ and we’re just like “Oh my god ?uestlove knows who we are.” Indeed, interviews on the MTV2 special revealed that the hip hop artists had a keen awareness of the artists outside their genre, with the rock bands in turn acknowledging the still-growing influence of hip hop. The Listmakers recognized TV On the Radio’s fascinating mix of thoughtfully poetic lyrics, electronic soundscapes and their demonstration of how doo wop informed hip hop’s human beatboxing.Desperate Youth… truly deserves the prize for most creative and adventurous album. The band was also awarded $10,000 from sponsor XM radio. Having been on tour for 14 months, Adebimpe vowed to use his share to take his cats to the vet so they may “live into the next horrible part of the millennium.”

Billboard.com, knowing which side their bread is buttered, dismissively reported the two and a half hours of performances as “lacklustre,” and that the gleeful dual-drummer caveman rock of surprise guests Eagles Of Death Metal failed to rile up the crowd. The audience, which included Beck, Paz Lechantin, The Distillers’ Brody Dalle and Andy Granelli, was more likely in pure shock that they were witnessing real, non-lip-synching artists at a music industry-sponsored event.

It goes to show that despite the continuing dumbing-down of celebrity-obsessed pop culture, young artists are still managing to step outside of their cultural comfort zones, absorb a broad spectrum of genres and innovate. Let’s hope this fresh new blood bleeds outside of MTV2’s 30 minute cell and exerts some real cultural influence.

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